Food for Anger and Conspiracy Worries

Why in the world did the cops go all Waco on this guy? Talk about fanning the flames of conspiracy theorists everywhere...

...unless, of course...

More Worries for the Coming Bear Era

The new issue of The Socionomist is out and the lead article holds up one of the dark demons of the past for us to think about as the West sleepwalks into the Great Collapse. Amazing research. Depressing as well as gripping. Looks like I'm going to have to start keeping up with DNA advances and the use of genetic testing as a way to keep an eye on things. My Google News topics are getting crowded...

A Socionomic Study of Eugenics: Will You Make the Cut?
by Alan Hall, The Socionomist, November 2009

...Most people think that the world has banished eugenics to the trash heap of bad ideas. But mounting evidence suggests that declining social mood will produce stronger expressions of dehumanization and social control than did even eugenics. There are three main reasons for this view: 1) Social mood clearly regulated the history of the eugenics movement in the United States and elsewhere. 2) The Wave Principle warns that the deepest bear market in social mood in 300 years is in progress. 3) Today's ideological undercurrents are similar to those of the early eugenics era. Now, as then, many intellectuals are wildlly optimistic about advances in genetics and fearful of impending social crises...

If the socionomic thesis is correct, and so far it has proven a very useful model, then the templates we as a society use to create the future may be as much Gattaca as Mad Max or Silent Spring.

Mr. Hall's discussion over a possible fusion of the environmental movement with a new genetics movement hits home as I have long believed that one of the hallmarks of this Great Bear Market is going to be a radicalized environmentalism that will burn to the ground much of the industrial materialism of the recently dead Supercylce Bull Market.

I Have Seen the Future, and it is Bankrupt

"I looked as hard as I could at how states could declare bankruptcy," said Michael Genest, director of the California Department of Finance who is stepping down at the end of the year. "I literally looked at the federal constitution to see if there was a way for states to return to territory status..."

A state looking to reorganize its relationship to the central government? Interesting.

I had expected more secessionist tendencies at this point than we have seen. Granted, we have a long way down to go, but an initial desire for Uncle Sugar to take back California as a territory (and, I assume, take on its finances? I am not versed on how territories operated. Hmmm) to make all that ooky debt go away and save California from her self-inflected pain is not the craziest thing I've seen come out of their debt crisis.

h/t Calculated Risk

Peak Oil and Rock Music

The bright men and women over at the Socionomics Institute are well-known for finding relations between measures of social mood and everything from hemlines to movies.

Well, the Peak Oilers have gotten into the game as well with a fascinating chart at Overthinking It that contrasts oil production in the Lower 48 with Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the "500 Greatest Songs of All Time."

The Hubbert Peak Theory of Rock, or, Why We’re All Out of Good Songs
Overthinking It, 23 September 2009

Many rock purists and music snobs (myself included) often lament the quality of most modern pop/rock music. “Music these days is so trite and derivative,” they say. “It’s just been downhill since the 60’s and 70’s. Those were the days.”

A few years ago, Rolling Stone magazine added fuel to the music snobbery fire with its “500 Greatest Songs of All Time” list. Anyone casually paging through the list would notice that the bulk of the list was comprised of songs from the 60’s and 70’s, just like the music snobs always say.

I, however, wasn’t content with the casual analysis. So I punched the list into Excel, crunched some numbers, and found an interesting parallel between the decline of rock music quality and, of all things, the decline in US oil discovery and production...

Peak oil. This huge bear market about to roll over. Now, song depletion. Rough times ahead for sure...

h/t The Oil Drum

Collapse

In a sign (to me) that despite what the algos and taxpayer-financed banksters that are helping drive this rally higher think, mass social mood is decidedly negative and becoming darker every day.

That someone with Mike Ruppert's history could get so much favorable press and that this documentary could score as well as it did in Toronto screams out that something big is coming.

There is a growing audience out there is ready for ugly truths, for hard times, for disaster, for a Collapse.

Congrats to Mike.

Violence on the March

Yes, there will always be wars and rumors of wars. That said, it only takes a few percentage points more worth of violent crime to cost society huge amounts in terms of lives, costs for security, militarization of the police, draconian laws that wind up crushing the economy through restrictions and taxes.

The media is going to play the "lone gunman" refrain for quite awhile, I think, but there is more to it. Much more. Social mood is turning and Lind's Boomerang Effect thesis gives a dark foreshadowing of what we face in the coming years...

Seattle police: Suspect in slaying of officer is 'lone domestic terrorist'

(CNN) -- A suspect in the shooting of a Seattle, Washington, police officer is also believed to be behind the bombing of four police cars, Seattle Assistant Police Chief Jim Pugel said at a press conference Saturday.

Christopher Monfort, 41, remained hospitalized in serious condition after being shot by officers during a confrontation Friday...

...Police named Monfort as a suspect in the Halloween night killing of Officer Tim Brenton, who was shot while sitting in his patrol car. A student officer was injured in the attack.

Investigators also suspect Monfort in the October 22 arson of four police vehicles with homemade explosives, Pugel said...

...Investigators found improvised explosive devices and two weapons, including a military assault rifle, inside Monfort's apartment, Pugel said. The suspect's car had not yet been searched....

Note how they are referring to Monfort as a terrorist - not a crazy gunman.

And let's not forget the potential for violence on a larger scale. This is almost certainly the tried and true ploy of whipping up a war frenzy to distract from problems at home, but it bears watching:

Chavez steps up Colombia war talk
from the BBC
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has urged his armed forces to be prepared for possible war with Colombia amid growing diplomatic and border tensions.

...Venezuela blames the tension with its neighbour on closer military ties between Colombia and the US.

Colombia says US forces are there to help in the fight against rebels and drug traffickers.

"Let's not waste a day on our main aim: to prepare for war and to help the people prepare for war, because it is everyone's responsibility," Mr Chavez said during his TV and radio show Alo, Presidente.

Mr Chavez has also ordered 15,000 troops to the border, citing increased violence by Colombian paramilitary groups.

The BBC's Jeremy McDermott in Bogota, Colombia, says that normally such declarations would not cause alarm, but because of the current tensions there are fears of a possible spark on the border which could lead to further violence...

Must Reads

John Robb has a new set of links that are all must-reads, in my opinion. Take a few minutes and check them out.

For those of you keeping tabs on the building anger and making notes for the future show trials, pay special attention to the story about how Goldman Sachs got more H1N1 vaccine doses than Lenox Hill Hospital in New York.

How can these bankster playerz be so blind? This is pouring gasoline on dry tinder and dancing on the woodpile, lit matches in hand kind of stupid.

Some Good News

Good news on the innovation front. Another example of the vast potential to blow open the doors of innovation during the coming Bear Market. Lot's of smart men and women out there doing big things. Fun to see advances in a "market" that has always been dominated by government structures.

Rocketeers Win $1 Million in Lunar Lander Contest
By Tariq Malik, Managing Editor, space.com

A California-based team of engineers has snagged a $1 million NASA prize by winning a pitched competition to fly homemade rockets on mock moon landing missions.

Masten Space Systems of Mojave, Calif., successfully flew its rocket Xoie (pronounced Zoey) twice within a set time limit to qualify for the top Level 2 prize in the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge, a NASA-sponsored contest to build mock lunar landers.

The Masten team beat longtime front-runner Armadillo Aerospace, a Texas-based team led by video game developer John Carmack, with precision flying on Oct. 30 that gave their Xoie vehicle the best landing accuracy of the multi-month competition. An award ceremony is set for Thursday in Washington, D.C....

There is much "doom" on the horizon for a lot of entrenched elites and interests. It certainly isn't all "gloom" though.