June 2009 archive

Today Malcolm would be reviled even more than back in the day, even more, because he was change, the real deal.  He ought to be in the history books because his is a distinct American lesson.

‘Course we don’t teach about race in America in our schools and we sure don’t talk about it in our mainstream culture, so it’ll be a while before the rest of the country ever catches up to Malcolm.

His life embodied change.   He believed strongly in each phase of his remarkable life, his father taught him about black pride before the term ever came to be, and this in the Jim Crow south, and Malcolm just learned, he trusted each step in the way that he knew what was going on, he lived each phase of his life fully and completely the good and the bad.

Chief Leonard Crow Dog:


My Relatives,

Long, long time I come here – and during those trials. Now I’m 68 years old, can hardly walk, can hardly sing. Oh before I go, I want Leonard to be free.

1. The Guardian reports the U.S. says it will not demand binding carbon cuts from China. Instead of binding cuts, “Jonathan Pershing, head of the US delegation in Bonn, said developing nations – seeking to grow their economies and alleviate poverty – would instead be asked to commit to other actions”, including “sting energy efficiency standards and improving the take-up of renewable energy”.

   “Only developed nations, including the US, would be expected to guarantee cuts… China and the US are the two biggest polluters in the world, making their positions on the deal critical.” China has called on “the US to cut emissions by 2020 by 40% on 1990 levels.”

   While the Obama administration may be able to negotiate a climate treaty, without requiring binding cuts by China and other ‘developing’ nations, I am not optimistic of seeing such a treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate.

2. The NY Times reports As wind power grows, so does the push to tear down dams in the Pacific NorthWest. The Bonneville Power Administration transmission system has quadrupled the amount of wind power “in the last three years and is expected to double again in another two. The turbines are making an electricity system with low carbon emissions even greener – already, in Seattle, more than 90 percent of the power comes from renewable sources.”

   Environmental groups contend that the Bonneville Power Administration’s shift to wind turbines buttresses their case for tearing down dams in the agency’s territory, particularly four along the lower Snake River in Washington State that helped decimate one of North America’s great runs of wild salmon.

   Bonneville wants to keep all the dams, arguing that they not only provide cheap power but they also make an ideal complement to large-scale installation of wind power. When the wind slows and power production drops, the agency argues, it can compensate quickly by telling the Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Reclamation, which operate the dams, to release more water from reservoirs to turn the huge generators. When the wind picks up, dam operations can be slowed.

   The dams help alleviate a need for natural-gas-fired power plants, which are used in other regions as a backup power source when the wind stops blowing, but which release carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming.

Four at Four continues with Amazon destruction and gray hair.

When I had cancer, a close friend asked if I ever wondered: why me? I told her that I didn’t. I told her that given that one in three Americans will, at some point, be diagnosed with cancer, I felt why not me? Cancer happens. It’s sometimes random. It happened to me. There was neither rhyme nor reason. It just did.

A different friend recently asked the same about a close friend of mine, who was just killed in an auto accident. A speeding semi veered into his car, in a national park, in Uganda, killing him and leaving his wife widowed for the second time and seriously injured. My friend wondered: why? Why him? Why her?

Another friend asked how I took the news. If I tried to think my way through it. If I tried to look for cosmic explanations, or if I was angry at the Universe, or if I was trying to look for silver linings. I wasn’t. My friend wanted to make sure that I wasn’t trying to think my way through it, because he wanted to make sure I was allowing myself to feel my way through it. To allow the pain to wash over me, and through me. Which is the only real way to respond to emotional trauma. Did I allow myself to cry? I certainly did. And I have, off and on, for days.

Well, they sure know how to play hardball with Progressives over at the White House:

The White House is playing hardball with Democrats who intend to vote against the supplemental war spending bill, threatening freshmen who oppose it that they won’t get help with reelection and will be cut off from the White House, Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) said Friday.

“We’re not going to help you. You’ll never hear from us again,” Woolsey said the White House is telling freshmen.

HuffPo: White House Browbeats Dem Freshmen On War Money: “You’ll Never Hear From Us Again”

More, after the fold.

Join Ed Encho, Gottlieb, and I tonight at 6pm EDT on Wild Wild Left Radio, via BlogtalkRadio.

Tonight we will be discussing the election in Iran, The Holocaust Museum violence (and the rise of right-wing violence in general) and attempt to make a dent in the Health Care debate. If time, we will op/ed on the douchebaggery of Lieberman and Graham, and discuss Rev. Wrights rights and wrongs.

Don’t be surprised if the shoe-ish conspiracy of Obama’s loafers comes up. Heh.

Please call with any questions you may have, or respectful commentary.

The call in number is 646-929-1264

The live chat link will be added around 5:15.

The well respected teacher, broker Jim Sinclair has been mentoring investors since 1977. Mr. Sinclair is a level headed, cautious investor void of the alarmist mentality. So when he says “Take the money and Run” you might want to pay attention.  

[..]You know that information that comes to me has been reliable. You also know that the entire purpose of all of working here at JSMineset has been to get you through this safely. You also know that if we had not been here hundreds of thousands of people now holding gold would not be.

So please pay attention to the following.

I have heard rumors for some time, but today it was confirmed to me, that the Canadian mint’s present problems are not unique and that other depositories (vaults) have had an army of auditors descend on them in the last two weeks. Some of these depositories have names so famous that it would scare the hell out of you. The repercussions would be drastic if they turn out to be troubled.

I suggest to you now that you take delivery of all gold held in vaults and depositories on your behalf, but this time even from the most prestigious.

[..]

What made Mr Sinclair issue this statement? In April a “discrepancy” in the Canadian Mints books turned up.

External auditors are investigating a discrepancy between the mint’s 2008 financial accounting of its precious metals holdings and the physical stockpile at the plant on Sussex Drive in Ottawa.

The mystery raises possibilities from sloppy bookkeeping to a gold heist.

Officials with the commercial Crown corporation are saying little and refuse to confirm the amount and value of the unaccounted for gold, silver and palladium.

“An unprecedented demand in gold in 2008 has led to an unreconciled difference between the mint’s financial statements and the physical count of precious metals. There’s a difference there that we’re looking into,” Christine Aquino, mint spokeswoman, said in a prepared statement Tuesday in response to questions from the Ottawa Citizen.

“We’re taking this very seriously. We’re conducting a thorough review and we’re expected to have that completed within the month. (It) includes the analysis of precious metal by-products and financial data. We’ve allocated all necessary resources to this review.”

She stressed police have not been called into what mint officials consider an internal matter. She would not say whether the gold and other metals in question were part of the refinery and bullion operation or one of the mint’s three other business lines: producing Canadian circulating coins, designing and producing coinage for foreign countries, and numismatics.

“We’re looking at many different angles right now,” she said.

That was April. Well low and behold it is now June and the

Mint’s conclusion? Call in the Mounties!

OTTAWA – On government orders, the Royal Canadian Mint has called for a criminal probe into as much as $20 million in unaccounted-for gold and precious metals at its Sussex Drive headquarters.

The looming police investigation comes eight months after the Crown corporation first learned it had lost track of the riches last October. The Citizen revealed the mystery last week.

The call for a police investigation is the third effort to determine whether theft or an accounting error is behind an “unreconciled difference” between the mint’s 2008 financial records and its physical stockpile of gold and other precious metals.

An internal “precious metals reconciliation” project was initiated by the mint last fall. In March, with that reckoning apparently no nearer to finding answers, an external audit was commissioned.

Security at these facilities is unsurpassed. So where did it go? This will continue to play out in the coming weeks. What is interesting (and yet alarming) is … it doesn’t appear to be an isolated incident, at least according to Jim Sinclair.