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BBC NEWS | Europe | Bosnian Serbs guilty of burnings

Two Bosnian Serb commanders have been found guilty of war crimes, including burning women and children alive, during the Bosnian civil war.

Cousins Milan and Sredoje Lukic were members of a paramilitary group called the White Eagles, or the Avengers.

They were accused of murder, persecution, extermination and other inhumane acts against Bosnian Muslims near Visegrad between 1992 and 1994.

Judges at The Hague jailed Milan Lukic for life, and Sredoje to 30 years.

EUobserver / 60 million people need swine flu vaccine, Brussels warns

Sixty million Europeans will need priority vaccination against swine flu, EU health commissioner Androulla Vassiliou has said, warning that "there won't be vaccinations for everyone."

Speaking to Portuguese news agency Lusa after her visit to a health centre by the Portuguese town of Estoril, the Cypriot commissioner pointed out that the number of people across the EU most at risk from the new type of flu, A (H1N1), had been estimated at 60 million by Brussels' experts, according to AFP.

The new H1N1 flu virus emerged in Mexico and has spread to 136 countries, according to WHO

Health ministers from the 27 member states are due to meet in October to decide on the practical details of the vaccination programme against swine flu which has infected almost 95,000 people in 136 countries since April, according to official figures by World Health Organisation published on 6 July.

Although the new virus has most lead to less severe health problems than ordinary flu, the WHO has reported 429 deaths from the disease.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Cypriots divided on anniversary

Turkish Cypriots are celebrating the 35th anniversary of the arrival of Turkish troops in Cyprus, an event which led to its effective partition.

Turkey invaded the north of Cyprus in response to a Greek-backed military coup aimed at union with Greece.

Some 35,000 troops remain stationed in northern Cyprus, which is still shunned by the international community.

Correspondents say talks about the reunification of the island show no signs of reaching an early conclusion.

BNP to use EU taxpayers' money to fund chosen causes - Telegraph

The BNP is to funnel tens of thousands of pounds in taxpayers' money to its chosen causes, as the far-right party attempts to boost its support in the run-up to the next election.

Nick Griffin and Andrew Brons, the party's two MEPs, will skim off part of their expenses and salaries to fund a party-controlled "community chest", they told the Daily Telegraph.

People in their European constituencies - North-West England and Yorkshire & The Humber - will then be able to apply for the money in order to fund "worthwhile" local projects, including St George's Day celebrations.

EUobserver / Iceland's EU bid causes division in Germany

Centre-right politicians from Germany's Christian Social Union (CSU) have spoken out against Iceland's bid to join the European Union.

"The EU cannot play saviour to Iceland's economic crisis," Markus Ferber, head of the CSU's members of the European parliament, told Suedduetsche newspaper over the weekend.

Iceland's parliament last week narrowly voted in favour of pursuing EU membership

"We should discuss the structure of the EU before we discuss expanding it," said Alexander Dobrindt, General Secretary of the CSU, which is the smaller sister party to German chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democratic Union.

The newspaper reports that the manifesto for both parties for the 27 September general election will indirectly oppose further EU enlargement, with the exception of Croatia.

Bernard-Henri Lévy: French Socialists 'dead' - Telegraph

Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French philosopher, has decribed the country's Socialist party as 'dead'.

France's demoralised Socialists have been plunged into deeper gloom after one of the Left's most emblematic supporters called for the party to be disbanded.

Asked by the newspaper Le Journal du Dimanche if he thought the Socialist Party, or PS, was dying, Mr Lévy answered: "No - it is already dead.

Milan to fine parents of under-age drinkers to curb binge drinking - Times Online

Parents whose children drink in public or are caught in possession of alcohol are to be fined up to €900 (£777) under an emergency law designed to thwart binge drinking in Italy.

As it announced the move, Milan city council revealed that 34 per cent of 11-year-olds in the city had "problems with alcohol". Letizia Moratti, the centre-right Mayor of Milan, said that the measure, the first of its kind in Italy, was in "response to an emergency".

"This is not a punitive measure," she said. "It is a message to young people and their families that alcohol is bad for you and that alcohol abuse and dependence lead to negative consequences."

An Italian law already bans the sale of alcohol to those under 16 in bars and discos but is rarely enforced. Many youngsters buy vodka or rum from supermarkets and shops and mix it with fruit juice.

[Murdoch Alert]

FT.com / Europe - Warning to UK and France on derivatives

Rivalry between Paris and London could jeopardise Europe's competitiveness in the vast "over-the-counter" derivatives markets, France's stock market regulator has warned.

Jean-Pierre Jouyet, chairman of the Autorité des Marchés Financiers, the French regulator, told the FT that disagreement between the two countries over how to regulate trading in these complex products could hinder a European solution and drive business to the US.

"In the US they have seen the threat. They are creating centralised clearing houses. But in Europe we are not there because there is disagreement between Paris, London and Frankfurt," he said. London had "to accept that Paris has a role" in clearing trades in euro-denominated derivatives, while Frankfurt was more neutral in the debate.

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

Growing Fear of Credit Crunch: Germany Considers Forced Capitalization of Banks - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International

The German government is considering forcing banks to accept state aid and partially nationalizing them in return because it's increasingly worried that Germany faces a credit crunch, the Süddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported on Monday.

The German government is worried that the current shortage of bank credit plaguing industry will worsen later this year and is considering tackling the problem by forcibly taking stakes in banks, similar to the policy adopted by authorities in the United States and Britain, a German newspaper reported on Monday.

 Not lending enough -- German banks in Frankfurt, the country's financial capital. The plan envisages the government forcing banks to take state aid and to part-nationalize them in return, Süddeutsche Zeitung reported, citing unnamed sources.

So far, both Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück have rejected such mandatory aid and have allowed banks to choose whether to tap the government's bank stabilization fund set up last year.

But analysts at the Chancellery, Finance Ministry and Economy Ministry now concur that Germany is at risk of a credit crunch that could worsen the recession, already the deepest since the 1930s, Süddeutsche reported.

Why Japan's Smartphones Haven't Gone Global - NYTimes.com

But it is hard to find anyone in Chicago or London using a Japanese phone like a Panasonic, a Sharp or an NEC. Despite years of dabbling in overseas markets, Japan's handset makers have little presence beyond the country's shores.

"Japan is years ahead in any innovation. But it hasn't been able to get business out of it," said Gerhard Fasol, president of the Tokyo-based IT consulting firm, Eurotechnology Japan.

The Japanese have a name for their problem: Galápagos syndrome.

Recession forces a million to work part-time - Telegraph

Almost a million people are being forced to work part-time because they cannot get a full-time job, according to official figures that shed light on the hidden cost of the recession for thousands of families.

In the past year more than 250,000 extra people who would like to be in full-time employment have found themselves working four days a week or fewer, according to the Office for National Statistics.

This is an increase of more than a third on the previous year, and illustrates the extent to which companies are trying to cope with the downturn by reducing staff hours, rather than just laying them off.

Al Jazeera English - Europe - Nissan in jobs boost for UK

Nissan, the Japanese carmaker, has announced a $329m investment for a new British plant, securing the future of hundreds of jobs and creating a further 350.

The company, which gained financial support for the development from the UK government, said it planned to build the plant, which will produce batteries for electric cars, at its Wearside factory in the northeast of England

The announcement comes five months after the firm sought 800 voluntary retirements from the same factory, which is located near the city of Sunderland.

Gordon Brown, Britain's prime minister, said: "Nissan's investment in a new battery plant ... here in Sunderland is great news for the local economy".

"Sunderland could now be a strong contender to produce electric vehicles for Nissan in Europe, and we will continue to work with Nissan to ensure this happens," he said.

Could swine flu tip the world into deflation? - Oxford Economics

Health experts agree that, while the current flu epidemic that started in Mexico in April 2009 may weaken during the summer, it could re-appear in the autumn, possibly in a stronger form. Using historical benchmarks of previous flu pandemics and of the SARS episode, we estimate the economic impact of a global flu pandemic in the UK. The GDP loss during the six months of the pandemic would amount to around 5% in the UK. That a pandemic is likely to hit the global economy just as it starts to recover from recession could result in the economic impact being larger than would otherwise have been the case, and this could tip the world and UK economies into deflation. UK CPI inflation would fall to around -1% throughout 2010-12 and UK GDP growth next year could be as low as -7½%.  17 July 2009

learn more (pdf)

Hat tip Le Monde.fr

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

Banks Fail to Make Adequate Loan-Loss Provisions, Moody's Says - Bloomberg.com

Banks have failed to make adequate provision for the losses on loans and securities they face before the end of next year, Moody's Investors Service said.

U.S. banks may incur about $470 billion of losses and writedowns by the end of 2010, which may cause the banks to be unprofitable in the period, the ratings company said in a report published today.

...

"The fundamentals of financial institutions are still traveling on a downward slope," Moody's said. "No-one should consider recent improvements as assurance that the current rebound can be sustained."

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

naked capitalism: Quelle Surprise! The Fed is Reporting Losses on Its Bear Stearns and AIG SPVs

Readers may recall that during the heat of bailout battle, the Federal Reserve got into the fancy finance business, relying on the sort of deal structuring sometimes used to try to turn toxic odd pork scraps into barely-digestible sausage, the procedure used for pigs so dead that merely putting lipstick on them just won't do.

The items in question are Maiden Lane, the vehicle used to backstop JP Morgan's purchase Bear Stearns, and two sons of Maiden Lane created for dodgy AIG exposures.

...

Willem Buiter, who has repeatedly pointed out that the three card monte operation being run by the Fed and Treasury are anti-democratic and possibly illegal, tells us that even by Fed's own, no doubt rosy, calculations. all three SPVs are under water.

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

IRS Gets Tougher on Offshore Tax Evaders - WSJ.com

The Internal Revenue Service has stepped up scrutiny of offshore accounts and foreign income, an enforcement campaign that could sweep up tens of thousands of taxpayers.

The push to recover some of the billions of dollars lost each year to offshore tax evasion goes beyond the government's high-profile effort to force Swiss bank UBS AG to release the names of 52,000 American account holders in order to nab tax evaders.

The IRS is using a once-obscure tax form called the Foreign Bank Account Report, or FBAR, to force taxpayers to provide information on income they earn or bank accounts they hold overseas. It is threatening tough action against taxpayers who don't file the form and has greatly broadened those subject to filings beyond direct owners of offshore accounts. The requirement applies to U.S. citizens and residents who have offshore accounts totaling $10,000 at any point during the year.

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

Why Toxic Assets Are So Hard to Clean Up - WSJ.com

Despite trillions of dollars of new government programs, one of the original causes of the financial crisis -- the toxic assets on bank balance sheets -- still persists and remains a serious impediment to economic recovery. Why are these toxic assets so difficult to deal with? We believe their sheer complexity is the core problem and that only increased transparency will unleash the market mechanisms needed to clean them up.
...
The fundamental problem has remained untouched: insufficient information to permit estimated prices that both buyers and sellers find credible. Why is the information so hard to obtain? While the original MBS pools were often Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) registered public offerings with considerable detail, CDOs were sold in private placements with confidentiality agreements. Moreover, the nature of the securitization process has made it extremely difficult to determine and follow losses and increasing risk from one tranche and pool to another, and to reach the information about the original borrowers that is needed to estimate future cash flows and price.

THe whole paper is worth reading.

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

TheHill.com - IG: Treasury 'failed' to adopt bailout safeguards

Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general over the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), will tell lawmakers on Tuesday that taxpayers are being left in the dark about what banks are doing with bailout money, don't know the value of the government's investments and will not know the full extent of how the money is invested.

Barofsky said that while the TARP program that Congress passed amounts to $700 billion, the total federal government support since 2007 for the economy and the financial sector could reach a far higher figure of $23.7 trillion. The government has committed significantly more money through a variety of other federal agencies and programs.
[emphasis mine]

Hat tip The Market Ticker

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

Paulson Pwned   by Tyler Durden   Zero Hedge

Rep. Cliff Stearns not heart GS.

Only view the CSPAN clip on this site if you are prepared to see "Giant Talking Penis" (H/T Drew Jones) brutally worked over with a baseball bat and then repeatedly stomped.  I don't think Clif Stearns is expecting any contributions from GS.

If sanity be culturally normative, then by the norms of this culture I claim insanity.

Financial Rescue I.G. Says Banks Funneled TARP Aid to Various Expenses - washingtonpost.com

Many of the banks that got federal aid to support increased lending have instead used some of the money to make investments, repay debts or buy other banks, according to a new report from the special inspector general overseeing the government's financial rescue program.

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

Al Jazeera English - Middle East - Poverty drives Iraq organ trade

Abject poverty across Iraq is fuelling an illegal trade in human organs.

Hundreds of people are believed to have sold kidneys and other organs through dealers in the capital, Baghdad, over the last year.

Karim Hussein made the long journey from Amara, a province in the south of Iraq, to Baghdad because he was desperate for the $3,000 he would get from the sale of a kidney there.
 
"I have taken a loan to build my house," he told Al Jazeera.

"I thought I would be able to get work in order to be able to pay my debts back, but the daily amount I am getting is not enough to feed my family, I have eight children."

About 23 per cent of Iraqis live in poverty, meaning that they are forced to survive on $2.2 a day or less, according to government figures.

Unemployment is also high, with at least 18 per cent of the population out of work, UN and government reports suggest. Unofficial estimates have put the figure as high as 30 per cent.

Tensions rise in Honduras after mediation talks collapse | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Costa Rican president Óscar Arias Sánchez, the mediator in the Honduran crisis, has warned of civil war in Honduras after talks broke down between the two sides.

Representatives of the de facto rulers on Sunday rejected a proposal by President Arias that ousted leader Manuel Zelaya return as president in charge of a "reconciliation" government. This prompted Mr Arias, who has won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work resolving conflict in Central America, to warn that Honduras was on the brink of "civil war and bloodshed".

Backers of the acting Honduran president, Roberto Micheletti, were unhappy at the use of the term "civil war". Deputy Foreign Minister Martha Lorena Alvarado accused the Costa Rican president of "taking us towards a situation of near-panic".

Elderly Will Double to 14% of Global Population by 2040, U.S. Report Says - Bloomberg.com

The elderly population is growing in every part of the world and will double to 14 percent from 7 percent of the global population within the next 30 years, according to a report by the U.S. Census Bureau.

The number of people older than 65 was estimated at 506 million as of mid-2008 and will reach 1.4 billion by 2040, according to the report, "An Aging World: 2008," commissioned by the U.S. National Institute on Aging.

The most rapid rise in the elderly population is in developing countries, where the increase in the number of people 65 and older more than doubles the rates in developed nations. Last year, 313 million, or 62 percent, of the world's elderly lived in developing countries. The number is projected to rise to more than 1 billion, 76 percent of the world's 65-and-older population, by 2040, according to the report.

"Ne te courbe que pour aimer..." René Char

A deal -- at last

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and legislative leaders agreed Monday to erase California's $26 billion deficit by cutting broadly across state government, shifting costs into the future and taking funds from cities and counties.

<snip>

The budget includes $6 billion in new cuts to K-14 schools, as well as $3 billion in cuts to higher education, some of which colleges can offset with federal stimulus dollars.

See.  Told you it was no big deal, other than the helpless getting screwed again.  Nothing to see here.  Move along.

I love the smell of roast chicken in the morning!

India Sets Goal to Harness Renewable Energy - washingtonpost.com

But India hopes to move from near-zero to 20,000 megawatts of solar electricity by 2020, as part of the National Action Plan on Climate Change. Announced in June 2008, the plan is a structured response to combat global warming and part of a proposal India intends to pitch at a climate change summit in Copenhagen this December.

The centerpiece of the plan is the National Solar Mission, which is aimed at harnessing India's neglected energy source. Today, India's solar companies say they generate so little electricity because of inadequate state support.

"Unless the government guarantees that it will purchase solar power at a lucrative cost with feed-in tariffs, the industry will not take off. We end up exporting three-fourths of solar cells and photovoltaic modules to Europe," said an executive of a solar power company, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "The government has to cough up money and go beyond making the right noises about renewable energy."

Locals discover the joys of Paris in the summer as the recession bites | Europe | Deutsche Welle | 19.07.2009

France is the world's biggest tourist destination with some 72 million people visiting the country last year. Many choose to come to Paris in the summer when most Parisians are not there! 

This year, thanks to the recession, more Parisians are going to be staying at home... and finding out what they've been missing. Our correspondent John Laurenson sent us this postcard from Paris in the summertime.


I'm writing this inside a Left Bank café called the Rouquet, a place that hasn't changed since the 1950s.

Bildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift:  John Laurenson sent his "Postcard from Europe" from Paris

Motorists honk unhappily along the Boulevard Saint Germain, but the plane trees form a green roof over the street, filtering the sun and giving the place a relaxing air. A sparrow hops in, grabs an abandoned chip off the floor and flies towards the door, lop-sided because of the weight of the thing.

The Patronne sidles up and tells me she's been here for 55 years. She remembers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir coming here every morning. They'd hide away in the little room at the back. Get a bit of peace and quiet before exposing themselves to the rubber-necking crowds at the swankier cafés - the Flore and the Deux Magots down the road.

Don't celebrate, escalate -  Der Spiegel/Presseurop

Every year, tens of thousands of German secondary school graduates descend by the busload on the beaches of Southern Europe to party, now that they are done with their finals: both a bonanza and a poisoned chalice for the towns hosting these binging teens. A report from the Spanish Costa Brava.

The night sky over Lloret de Mar is hung with myriad red and blue neon signs, but in the morning when the lights of Magic Park, Hollywood and the other bars and clubs go out, the town turns as grey as concrete. As the scavenger squads emerge to clear the pavement of last night's excesses with road sweepers and humongous hoses, the graduates plunk down onto their hotel beds. Olli, the holiday host, won't be revving up his programme again till two in the afternoon: get-together at Dr. Döner, where the barrels will be waiting for the sangria party. But anyone who gets up before then can have a beer or Vodka lemon at the hotel bar. There are virtually no holds barred in Lloret: that's why they've come here.

These past few weeks, the students heard their teachers and headmasters say what all teachers and headmasters say when they send their students off into life with somewhat too much élan: you are the elite, you will be the cream of your country. The graduating class contingent taking off for Lloret de Mar on Spain's Mediterranean coast put all that elite business on ice for the time being, and before leaving they make sure to book the booze at the hotel in advance, which is cheaper than paying each drink as they go. Some 35,000 school-leavers from all over Germany board the buses bound for the Costa Brava right after their final exams: the nation's future engineers, dentists, federal police.

Playing at revolution - the Dutch in Nicaragua | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Thirty years ago, Nicaragua's Sandinistas announced the start of the revolution. Dutch volunteers rushed en masse to the Central American country to help. But how do the 'Dutch brigades' look back on that period? Has the magic spell worn off or was it all worth it?

It was the end of the 1970s: the United States, the great capitalist superpower, had been defeated in Vietnam, South Africa's apartheid regime was subject to a massive boycott and Nicaragua's Sandinista revolutionaries toppled dictator Anastasio Somoza after 45 years of oppressive rule.

The Sandinistas' communist ideals were viewed with suspicion and revulsion in the US but the exotic, socialist revolution worked like a magnet on left-wingers in the Netherlands. Dutch doctors, agricultural experts and sociologists rushed to join the revolution and create a better world.

Nun fined for 112mph Italy mercy dash | World news | The Guardian

In a country where speeding is a national sport, Italian traffic police are used to hearing the most colourful of excuses from drivers.

But the patrol that pulled over a Ford Fiesta on Friday doing 112mph was surprised to find at the wheel a 56-year-old nun who claimed she needed to be at the pope's side after the pontiff lost his balance in the bathroom and broke his wrist.

In the back were two fellow Salesian nuns, aged 65 and 78, who had jumped in the car in Turin when news broke of Pope Benedict's fall near Aosta, where he is spending his summer holiday.

"The police were shocked to find three nuns of a certain age in the Fiesta," confessed the nun, named only as AM. "But we were afraid of getting there late. I know you shouldn't go so fast, but the news of his Holiness's injury had made us truly anxious."

'Hello mum, this is going to be hard for you to read ...' - Home News, UK - The Independent

At 19, Rifleman Cyrus Thatcher was one of the youngest victims of the Afghan war. These letters - given to The Independent by his family - reveal the excitement of a teenager sent to fulfil his dream, and his maturity in confronting the possibility that he might not make it home

In the spring of this year, the 2nd Battalion, The Rifles deployed to Afghanistan. Halfway through the battalion's tour, it has lost nine soldiers, with dozens injured.

Of those to have given their lives, four were teenagers. Here Rifleman Cyrus Thatcher, who was 19 when he was killed by an explosion near Gereshk seven weeks ago, tells his own story, through letters home and the last letter he left behind to bid farewell to his family - his mother Helena, father Robin and brothers Zac, 21, and Steely, 17.

Following are the words of a proud soldier described by his officers as possessing "a rucksack full of potential", and by his friends as a rascal always cracking jokes and helping to keep morale high. Most of all, they are the words of a young son to his mum, dad and brothers.
Terri Judd

Is Obama Gorbachev?
By James Howard Kunstler

It should remind us more generally that when a society's operations become broadly fraudulent and unreal, authority and legitimacy wither.  This is analogous to the position Barack Obama now finds himself in.  He was elected as the politician most trusted in America to change the fraudulent and unreal operations of the US government.  Don't bother protesting that all politics is necessarily unreal and fraudulent. If it were so, you'd have to argue that the US Constitution was wholly a fraud, as well as Madison, Jefferson, Hamilton and the rest. It only has strong tendencies in that direction. (The Declaration of Independence was itself a direct strike against the fraud and unreality of British royal governance in America.)

As president, Barack Obama is faced with the essential fraudulence and unreality of the US economy.  Notice that, as ominous as they are, the wars in iraq and Afghanistan have generated only minimal protest so far in the early Obama period, despite the fact that they are not operationally different from their conduct under Bush. There is no protest because, for now, a consensus exists that our troops are in these places for perceived reasons -- to keep Mideast oil supply lines open... to keep Islamic maniacs busy in their own backyard instead of on US territory... to keep Iran in a vise... to maintain the American "empire" (take your pick). There's something there to appeal to a broad majority of US voters. Unlike Vietnam, Iraq and Afstan are not perceived as out-and-out frauds...

As another blogger put it so nicely last week on the web (sorry, but I forget who or where), this isn't a "recession," it's a collapse. The excellent Dmitry Orlov has outlined the process very nicely in his book "Reinventing Collapse" about the parallels between the demise of the Soviet Union and the prospects for demise of the US as currently constituted.  Mikhail Gorbachev presided over the Soviet collapse. He must have been a leader of very subtle abilities.  Not only did he survive to enjoy a busy second act of life with a Nobel Prize in his pocket, but he accomplished a nearly bloodless transition in a society long-conditioned to bloodletting as the primary political act.

Here in the USA, where we have had over two hundred years experience with peaceful power transitions -- even during the convulsions of 1860-65 -- the outcome this time might not be so appetizing. It would be one of the supreme ironies of history if it turned out that the US was incapable of ending its most self-destructive rackets peacefully and bloodlessly, while the Russians shucked off its Soviet racket like an old sweater.  The way I see it, Mr. Obama just doesn't have much time before his authority and legitimacy slough off and he is left with only his genial smile. The "hope" vested in him will end up in a Museum of Lost Hopes, along with the integrity of TV news and the rectitude of the medical profession. And funding for that museum will be cut by President Sarah Palin, representing Naziism US style -- i.e. Naziism without the brains.

Cyber Surveillance of MPs Summer Break | geeks.co.uk

MPs have had quite an eventful year as they look forward to their summer recess.

The 82 day holiday for MPs will see them reflect on 12 months of economic downturn, swine flu, the departure of the speaker and cabinet reshuffle and most poignantly and destructively of all - the expenses row.

But campaign group 38 Degrees, the degree at which an avalanche falls, want people to research and even put their MP under surveillance to see exactly what they do with their time off from public service, reminding us that MPs are still on the payroll as public servants.

I'm tired of this backslapping, aint humanity great BS, we're a virus with shoes Bill Hicks

I love this one, comparing himself directly and indirectly to Einstein and Galileo, pointing at how the square-cube law was "ignored" and "repressed" by the "scientific community" while he rediscovered it all by himself as a teenager (so did I, as it's a bloody obvious and simple law for anyone who has ever seen a handful of dice), how his reasearch will change how we look at all scientific diciplines, believing himself to be an expert in another completely different dicipline than his own, talking about how long he has been working on the theory, brandishing his academic career and his physic degrees, even his grades(!), cavalierly dismissing widely accepted concepts (like the earth being heated by radioactive decay), overuse of words like "rational" and "scientific" therefore imlpying no one else is those things, overuse of Capital Letters in Important Words, and so on, until he drops the bombshell: during the Mesozoic the atmosphere of the earth had a density 2/3 of that of water.

For the short story, see this presenentation (pdf!) and for the long story check out his webpage. Did I mention the lack of reference to peer-reviewed articles, and instead we are told that "50.000" scientists have read his webpage, and that articles have indeed been submitted to peer-reviewed papers. We do not get to know if they were accepted, their names, the names of the papers or even the articles.

Still, I do have a soft spot for crackpots and original thinkers. Without them science wouldn't move forward as fast as it does. Furthermore, I'm a supporter of a scientific idea which just a few years ago was considered about as sane as believing ZOG blew up the WTC and the Pentagon on 9/11 using black cattle mutilating helicopers but which has later taken a central position in the current conventional wisdom (ie the peak oil theory). Furthermore, his theory is both entertaining and, eh, original.

Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.