China fears unrest – with good reason.
Chinese riot cops.
As much as I dislike China, more specifically the Chinese government, I have to admit they’ve been pretty consistent and candid about one fact: They have to keep GDP growth at at least 8% or risk facing wide-spread social disorder.
In an article on the McClatchy News site, Tom Lasseter notes the unease Chinese officials and other observers are feeling:
Lots of export factories will be shut down, and a lot of migrant workers will lose their jobs,” said Ma Yang, the director of a Beijing-based migrant workers advocacy group called On Action. Ma paused and considered his words: “If the government does not provide assistance to help them through this economic transition, it will create a lot of social problems.”
As a side note, this weekend I was in an REI store (not by my choice) and I happened to notice that all of the products on offer were made in China. ALL of them. At last, I found a flashlight made in the good ol’ USA, albeit with a caveat attached: “Some” of the parts “might” be imported. SIGH!
Presidential Science Panel says 90,000 could croak this year from the swine flooos
Close to HALF the Country could be infected.
Coming soon to an ER near you.
Read it and weep HERE.
NOW:
The carnage could start as early as next month, which is little comfort to those most at risk since a vaccine will not be ready until mid-October and it will take weeks to get people fully immunized, probably because it comes in a SERIES of shots. (Now they say two, but last week it was three.)
Then there was this reassuring quote from THE pandemic expert, the guy who wrote the book on flu pandemics:
“The Northern Hemisphere medical care requirements for the next six months are a train wreck waiting to happen,” said Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy in Minneapolis. “In the fall, even if nothing else changes in terms of the virus’s severity and our preparedness, it’s going to be a real challenge.”
A Nation of Dumbasses
Birthplace of our President. Really, no kidding.
According to a new Public Policy Poll, 10% of Americans either believe Hawaii is not part of the United States or are unsure about it. (See, Q4 on Page 2 of release.) Jesus H. Limping Christ on a Fucking Raft! We deserve whatever awful fate awaits us. Perhaps the swine flus will kill off a lot of stupid people and ultimately save us from ourselves. One can only hope.
“The World is in Trouble” sez German Bank Econ
Weimar Currency.
The top economist at Germany’s D-Bank says the green shoots are about to turn brown.
‘The World Is in Trouble’: Deutsche Bank Chief Economist
The global economy still faces turmoil as governments try to figure out how to move out of fiscal rescue packages, which could lead to another two downturns, Deutsche Bank Chief Economist Norbert Walter said Thursday. In addition, nervousness on the part of major dollar holders could pressure the greenback and lead to a very worrying 2010, Walter said. Norbert said recently in research notes “the world is in trouble.”
“I believe that the rescue packages brought on have been so costly for so many governments that the exit from this fiscal policy will be very painful, very painful indeed,” he said. “Some of us are already talking about a W-shaped recovery. I’d probably talk about a triple-U-shaped recovery because there are so many stumbling blocks here to get out of this.”
This explains it all or Why we spent two trillion dollars we didn’t have
To Battle Gog and Magog.
A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush
JAMES A. HAUGHT
Gog and Magog - what worried Bush the most.
Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.
Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.
Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their “common faith” (Christianity) and told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East…. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled…. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”
This bizarre episode occurred while the White House was assembling its “coalition of the willing” to unleash the Iraq invasion. Chirac says he was boggled by Bush’s call and “wondered how someone could be so superficial and fanatical in their beliefs.”
This is US in 10 Years
Think of Borat's home town. Yours could look like this sooner than you think.
I heard someone on the radio the other day who had a new definition of a “Gaffe” – you know, those verbalizations politicians make all the time and wish they hadn’t. Vice President Biden owns the Gaffe Factory, for example.
Well, the new definition of a Gaffe is when a politician screws up and accidentally tells the truth. Turns out the Veep’s recent observations on Russian fall squarely into this new view of gaffsterism. Biden got it right. He just regrets saying it out loud.
This is what is in store for the good old USA. Think I’m nuts? Check out Dmitry Orlov’s Blog, Cluborlov. He had a front row seat at Russia’s crack up. He sees one coming for us, too.
Biden had it right: Rural Russia is dying of poverty, neglect
Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: August 05, 2009 04:31:57 PM
KUVSHINOVO, Russia — The government administrator was bursting with optimism: More children are being born, many rubles will be invested in infrastructure and his region is weathering the global economic storm.
“The situation is so good,” said Boris Zaitsev, a broad-shouldered man who spoke in a confident monotone.
Outside his office, some 170 miles northwest of Moscow, the front steps to the Soviet-era government building are falling into a pile of rubble. Deep, spine-rattling potholes that rival sections of Baghdad riddle the town’s streets. The region’s population has plummeted by more than a quarter. Officials here like to point visitors to Kuvshinovo’s new Russian Orthodox church, an elegant wooden structure. Work inside the church hasn’t been finished, because the money ran out. Looters searching for icons and cash previously torched the office of another local church. Twice. A priest in a nearby village, who’d led an anti-alcoholism campaign, was burned to death with his family. The area around this rural enclave is in steep decline; once-thriving fields are empty and the population is in free-fall. Along with many other towns and villages in vast rural Russia, it’s a microcosm for a country that, according to recent studies, is withering away.
Government Scientists: “…scared to death because they see just how intelligent this virus is.”
Biotech Drug Company Preparing for Worst Case H1N1 Flu Scenario Using Extremely Promising New Technology
“…Off the record, in a deep conversation in a dark bar, a government scientist researching pandemic flu would say that they’re scared to death because they see just how intelligent this virus is…”
1918 Pandemic Poster
LOS ANGELES, CA–(Marketwire – July 31, 2009) – BioMedReports, the news portal covering the biomedical news and financial sector, in a special report about the H1N1 flu pandemic, is reporting that CEL-SCI Corporation (NYSE Amex: CVM) is positioned to help combat the virus after diligently preparing for the worst case scenario with promising results. CEL-SCI’s preclinical studies have demonstrated that vaccines utilizing its proprietary L.E.A.P.S. (Ligand Epitope Antigen Presentation System) technology potentially induce protection against illnesses such as the swine influenza. L.E.A.P.S. helps direct the immune response to the vaccine epitope and company scientists have been working to ensure that it will be available should the virus continue to spread and mutate.
Anti-Abortion Extremist Predicts Violence if Abortions are paid for in the Health Bill.
Mr. Terry's sick handiwork.
(My question in all this is why the hell an aide to Nancy Pelsosi ever agreed to meet with these nutbags. And, a great example of right-wing crassness was “Ms. Roe” of Roe vs. Wade fame bringing up the Speaker’s Catholicism.)
By Jonathan Allen | July 28, 2009 4:21 PM
Randall Terry, the controversial former head of Operation Rescue, is predicting that extremists would retaliate with violence if a health care overhaul allows taxpayers to foot the bill for abortions. Terry offered his forecast during an unusual meeting on Tuesday between two dozen or so anti-abortion activists and an aide to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., during which Terry spilled hundreds of miniature plastic babies from a small faux casket onto a conference table in a room adjacent to Pelosi’s personal office in the Cannon Building. During the meeting, Terry warned of ominous repercussions from extremists if House provisions that would expand insurance coverage for abortions are made into law.
“If you force people to pay their money” he said afterward, “there are people who will resort to acts of violence.”
Orange County men’s jail closed because of swine flu
This is just the beginning. In a pandemic, when half the prisoners have it, see how many guards will show up for work, or if any contractors (health, food service) will want to provide services to a jail full of a deadly infectious disease.
Swine flu keeps Orange County men’s jail under quarantine
The original closure was ordered Friday evening after five inmates had been infected. Since then, others have contracted the virus, a county health agency said.
July 29, 2009
Riot at a prison in Mexico
Orange County men’s jail will remain closed today as part of a continuing, temporary quarantine. The closure was ordered after five inmates were infected with swine flu last week and more were diagnosed over the weekend, officials said. Three inmates were diagnosed with the H1N1 virus Thursday, and two more on Friday. Those cases prompted the jail’s quarantine at 6 p.m. Friday, said Orange County sheriff’s spokesman John McDonald. On Monday, the county’s Health Care Agency identified “additional positives” that made it necessary to extend the quarantine. They would not say how many, said Deanne Thompson, a spokeswoman for the agency.
Four Yemeni soldiers killed as unrest swells
Violence widens in Yemen.
By Hammoud Mounassar (AFP)
Many of the demonstrators have been protesting against poor living conditions in the region.
SANAA — Four Yemeni soldiers were killed on Tuesday when armed men attacked a checkpoint in the restive south, in the latest in a series of violent incidents rocking the country, a security official said. Yemen, the poorest nation in the Arab world, is an Al-Qaeda target and mired in a rebellion by Shiites in the northern province of Saada as well as an upsurge in violence in the south. The growing strife has led parliament to question the government’s ability to tackle the country’s problems. The security official said it was unclear who was behind Tuesday’s attack, which took place on the road linking the provinces of Abyan and Hadramaut and which also left another soldier wounded. A website linked to the defence ministry reported that 10 armed “saboteurs” ambushed the checkpoint. The army has launched a manhunt for the assailants, it quoted a security official as saying.
Labor Strife Roils South Africa
Cops are shooting protestors with rubber bullets.
(See also the CSM HERE.)
Protesters chant slogans during a strike in Johannesburg July 27, 2009. REUTERS
South Africa’s government faced more violent protests on Tuesday as police fired rubber bullets on marchers as a strike by tens of thousands of municipal workers entered a second day. Police broke up a demonstration in an informal settlement in the Mpumalanga province where some 500 residents angry over a lack of service delivery burned down a clinic, a library and a fire engine. They also stoned police, landing a policeman in hospital.
“We had to use rubber bullets to disperse the crowd, I believe there are some injuries but they have not been reported as yet,” said provincial police spokesman Abie Khoabane.
In Thokoza, a Johannesburg township, police dispersed 200 residents with rubber bullets after they blocked off streets and stoned a police cordon in a protest over the lack of service delivery by the municipality. Thokoza has been a hotspot of rioting as a series of service delivery protests have swept South Africa in recent weeks. Rising discontent over wages and slack service delivery have increased pressure on the new government of President Jacob Zuma in the midst of a recession.
Mob beats Chinese steel factory executive to death
China Unrest: Chinese riot police get into position as Uighur protesters gather during a demonstration in Urumqi, earlier this month.
Thousands of workers had gathered in northeastern rust belt city of Tonghua to protest the takeover of their company and threatened layoffs.
Chinese state media confirmed Monday that a steel factory executive was beaten to death after thousands of workers gathered to protest the takeover of their company.
Chen Guojun, an executive at Jianlong Steel Holding Co., died Friday after an angry mob in the northeastern rust belt city of Tonghua beat him and then blocked ambulances from reaching him, according to the China Daily.
The protesters worked at the state-owned Tonghua Iron and Steel Group, which was going to be sold to Chen’s privately owned Jianlong Steel. Chen sparked the riot by announcing 30,000 workers would be laid off, the newspaper said.
They dispersed later only after they were assured by authorities the sale would not go through.
– David Pierson
Huge Regional Thrift Set to Collapse
Guaranty Bank, the second largest in Texas has been ordered to turn itself over to the FDIC.
Pig Flu Pandemic: Blame it on the Kids
It’s all the fault of the little rugrats. They are super-transmitters, apparently.
Democrats cave on card check
I fucking KNEW this would happen – kissing Blanche Lincoln’s and Mary Landrieu’s Confederate asses.
