While the Iraqi government has made overtures to its Kurdish counterpart in the north to end an oil standoff, much remains in doubt without an actual law keeping the industry in check - rules which this time the Kurds are pressing for rather than Baghdad.

Propaganda, the most powerful real life method of mind control, is a technique of using information to control people's thoughts and actions. Few people are able to fully recognize it, even fewer are fully aware of how it works. One reason so many people remain ignorant about propaganda is because it has become so omnipresent that it doesn't attract attention.

The upward slope we have stood on for three generations has only gotten steeper; it’s more like a wall.

We have all seen it in graphs. Perhaps Al Gore’s is the most famous. But it’s not just Greenhouse Gases; It is Population; it is Production; it is Consumption; it is the number of people living on $2 a day; it is the amount of money hoarded by billionaires; it is resource depletion. It is, ladies and gentlemen, continual economic growth. But fundamentally, if you think about it in ecological terms, it is no more than Energy Input, without which we come nowhere near to the civilisation that has mushroomed before our eyes. In the end it is Petroleum.

While many Western investors remain fixated on somehow acquiring a slice of Turkmenistan’s natural gas riches, despite a recent scandal over the country’s actual reserves, there is another country further east whose energy and mineralogical reserves have been overlooked –- Uzbekistan.

I am going to preface all below with the disclaimer that I don’t consider myself, in the contemporary sense anyway, an expert on this subject. I do have a 1990’s education degree and I have done a lot of study on the subject on my own. I was fortunate on my last trip through a university that I had a couple of professors that introduced me to some rather radical writing on the subject that I doubt that I would have found on my own.

Past Illusions that we now realize were lies and distortions: (Paraphrasing what our “leaders” have stated in the past)

The dollar is as good as gold.

The gold standard (and gold) is a barbarous relic.

The war that will make the world safe for democracy.

...and many more...

Current Illusions that are weakening and will probably be destroyed by 2016.

What is good for Wall Street is good for Main Street. (only if you are a banker…)

Change we can believe in. The Audacity of Hope. Yes we can. (It sounds good for a few days.)

...and many more...

I thought I should write an article on the various aspects involved in leaving a country. I emigrated from the US to New Zealand in 2001 so I will speak of my experiences and those involving people I have helped along the way. Most of the people I help are usually seeking to establish businesses here in New Zealand, but the overriding principles are similar whether you are moving to New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Panama, Costa Rica or other such places on the radar screen of Americans who emigrate.

NOTE from CHS: Mr. Reps's firm aids people who choose to emigrate to New Zealand. Though he has a commercial interest in this specific emigration, this essay will, in my view, be of utility and interest to anyone pondering emigration.

We have been in a historic banking crisis of unprecedented proportion since GoldmanSachs/Paulson credit derivatives soon after their contrivance took the Western Central Banks off the cliff.

Fractional-reserve banking, credit derivatives and fiat currency have not served us well since '71. Until Humpty Dumptys’ shattered eggshells at the bottom (credit derivative liabilities) are revealed, accounted for, the enormity of the crisis cannot be defined. All US govt. bailout efforts totalling about $13 trillion now have been to no avail, and the debt service derivatives and US national and public debt combined is higher than that by a vast unknown amount. It can be guessed at.

November/December 2009

April/May 2009

Jan/Feb. 2009


2008 archives

2007 archives


For more on a wide array of other topics, please visit the oftwominds.com weblog.

                                                           

The views of the contributor authors are their own, and do not reflect the views of Charles Hugh Smith. All errors and errors of omission in the above texts are the sole responsibility of each author.

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