A Bad Month for the the Dollar

September was not a good month for the U.S. dollar.  The world’s reserve currency is sustained in large part by the Petrodollar, the agreement by the Saudis and OPEC to price oil in dollars and only accept dollars for payment.  The US gets a guaranteed demand for its fiat currency and in exchange the US has agreed to protect militarily Saudi oil fields.  However, after President Obama was forced to back off his plans to attack Syria in support of the Saudi backed insurgency fighting the Assad regime, one of the pillars of the Petrodollar scheme was shaken to its core.

 

If America has no more stomach for war in the Middle East, how certain can the Saudis be that  America will protect the regime militarily if the need arises?  Now that the President has acquiesced to public opinion in his decision on whether to use military force, can he be counted on in the future to hold up his end of the bargain in the Petrodollar scheme?  The United States may have by far the world’s largest military, but what use is it if it can’t be used?   And even when it is, seven years of war in Iraq  has done little more than bring the country under the influence of Iran.

The Emerald Tablet

The Secret of Hermes Translated by Isaac Newton 

1.Tis true without lying, certain most true.

2.That which is below is like that which is above that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.

3.And as all things have been arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.

4.The Sun is its father, the moon its mother,

5.The wind hath carried it in its belly, the earth its nurse.

6.The father of all perfection in the whole world is here.

7.Its force or power is entire if it be converted into earth.
   -Separate thou the earth from the fire, the subtle from the gross sweetly with great industry.

8.It ascends from the earth to the heaven again it descends to the earth and receives the force of things superior and inferior.


9.By this means ye shall have the glory of the whole world thereby all obscurity shall fly from you.

10.Its force is above all force for it vanquishes every subtle thing and penetrates every solid thing.
 So was the world created.

11.From this are and do come admirable adaptations whereof the means (Or process) is here in this.

12.Hence I am called Hermes Trismegist, having the three parts of the philosophy of the whole world.

13.That which I have said of the operation of the Sun is accomplished and ended.

Ted Kennedy's Eulogy for his Brother Robert

"I wanted to remind you that in Watts I didn't see pictures of Malcolm X or Ron Karenga on the walls. I saw pictures of JFK. That is your obligation...the obligation of staying true to whatever it was that put those pictures on those walls." Pete Hammill in a letter to Robert Kennedy

St. Patrick's Cathedral, New York City, June 8, 1968




Your Eminences, Your Excellencies, Mr. President:

On behalf of Mrs. Kennedy, her children, the parents and sisters of Robert Kennedy, I want to express what we feel to those who mourn with us today in this Cathedral and around the world.

We loved him as a brother, and as a father, and as a son. From his parents, and from his older brothers and sisters -- Joe and Kathleen and Jack -- he received an inspiration which he passed on to all of us. He gave us strength in time of trouble, wisdom in time of uncertainty, and sharing in time of happiness. He will always be by our side.

Somtimes a Man Stands Up During Supper

Paula Modersohn-Becker.Rainer Maria Rilke, 1906

by Rainer Maria Rilke

Sometimes a man stands up during supper
and walks outdoors, and keeps on walking,
because of a church that stands somewhere in the East.
And his children say blessings on him as if he were dead.

And another man, who remains inside his own house,
dies there, inside the dishes and in the glasses,
so that his children have to go far out into the world
toward that same church, which he forgot.

(Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke trans. By Robert Bly)

Peace Frog Redux

Former UN Assistant Secretary Urges Irish-Americans to Defend the Rachel Corrie

By Robert Naiman
Policy Director of Just Foreign Policy

June 03, 2010 "Huffington Post" -- Former UN Assistant Secretary General Denis Halliday said it was imperative that the Obama administration supported Ireland's call on the Israeli authorities to ensure safe passage for the Irish-flagged Rachel Corrie to carry humanitarian aid to Gaza, the Irish Times reports. Speaking by satellite phone from on board the Rachel Corrie, Halliday called on Irish-Americans to lobby the Obama Administration: "We also feel there is a role for the Irish diaspora here, in the US and elsewhere to lobby politicians over this continued illegal blockade of Gaza, which is causing such hardship to the Palestinian people."

Halliday has some experience with this issue, having resigned from his position as UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq in 1998 over the impact of UN/US sanctions on Iraqi civilians.

The issue of the Gaza blockade has tremendous resonance in Ireland, partly because of Ireland's high degree of engagement in international humanitarian causes - John Ging, head of the UN Relief and Works Agency in Gaza, who had called on the international community to break the siege by sending ships loaded with aid, is also Irish - but also, of course, because the Irish people have some experience with the consequences for civilians of a colonial blockade.

Miran-Duhhhhh!

By Matt Taibbi
May 11, 2010 -- WASHINGTON — "True Slant" -- WASHINGTON — 

The Obama administration said Sunday it would seek a law allowing investigators to interrogate terrorism suspects without informing them of their rights, as Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. flatly asserted that the defendant in the Times Square bombing attempt was trained by the Taliban in Pakistan.

via Attorney General Backs Miranda Limit for Terror Suspects – NYTimes.com.

Memo to those Tea Party activists out there who’ve been howling about those liberal wusses in the Obama Justice Department who read Faisal Shahzad his Miranda rights: congratulations. You’ve just opened the door for a major new expansion of government power.

Having followed the Tea Party around on and off for a few months now it’s been hard not to notice some of the contradictory messages emanating from the movement. You’ll hear the same people who want to abolish the EPA complaining about the slow federal response to the Gulf oil spill, or the same people who are stocking up on guns to ward off the inevitable government assault on their property cheering for beefed-up drug enforcement laws and the no-knock search warrant.