Godless Communism!

A fantastic 1950s comic which educate you about the Evils of Godless Communism can be found here.

It even has an introduction by J. Edgar Hoover - protector of the glorious Land of the Free!

The Dollar is Fucked

If you have debt, now would be a very good time to pay it off.  Seriously, the dollar has been looking shaky for a while, and looks likely to undergo a rather large correction in the near future.

This sounds rather extreme, but wander this-away and read what the head of investment giant Morgan Stanley has to say

His prediction: America has no better than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic ``armageddon.''

America's record trade deficit means the dollar will keep falling. To keep foreigners buying T-bills and prevent a resulting rise in inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan will be forced to raise interest rates further and faster than he wants.
The result: U.S. consumers, who are in debt up to their eyeballs, will get pounded.

To finance its current account deficit with the rest of the world, he said, America has to import $2.6 billion in cash. Every working day.
That is an amazing 80 percent of the entire world's net savings.
Sustainable? Hardly.
Meanwhile, he notes that household debt is at record levels.
Twenty years ago the total debt of U.S. households was equal to half the size of the economy.
Today the figure is 85 percent.

Go read the rest - I've been reading similar stuff for about 9 months now, pointing out which way things are heading.  But it really is reaching the ridiculous stage at the moment...

It's dark outside

You can see the way the world looks from orbit here, updated every couple of hours.  Watch the clouds go by and the darkness come and go...

Changes at the UN

I believe in helping people.  I believe that while most of the time you can do so diplomatically, sometimes you can save more lives and do more good by forcefully stopping people from doing harm.

I do, however, believe that you need a framework of rules specifying when and how it's permissible to do so.

Which is why I'm in favour of changes happening at the UN which will make it easier for intervention to occur in countries where atrocities are occurring.