Japan Gets Annual New Leaders Who Can’t Lead Anyone, Anywhere

doserate-ground-18junejg.jpg 1,061×1,468 pixels

Insidiously and rapidly, Fukushima is poisoning a big part of eastern Japan.  All the way to Tokyo, the poison silently spreads while the officials at the top of society’s pyramid there continue to be in shocking denial.  All we know from their perspective is, no one wants to be a leader of Japan because no one at the top has the faintest idea, how to save Japan from its own leaders.  This is very much like the US except we still have people anxious to be at the top so they can give out goodies to the very rich and powerful lobbying groups.  But Japan is rapidly being stripped bare of nearly everything a society needs to survive as a nation.  This is due to an inability to tax the powerful corporations which used Japan as an export base.

Jobs Will Never Come Back Until Tariffs Return

Understanding economics is all about understanding human thinking, human plotting and human religions.  But in modern times, theorists teaching in schools cut out all of that and psychology and above all, mythology, and reduced economic matters to statistics…and then proceeded to eliminate the information statistics give via obfuscation of cause and effect!  So it all became ‘manipulating numbers and statistics’ to get a desired outcome, not to understand the true dynamics.  This modern way of looking at things cross-eyed has led to fanaticism and doctrinaire thinking that doesn’t fit reality at all.  Meanwhile, things today goes from bad to worse in non-communist countries because they totally misunderstand what capital is and how labor is ultimately capital creation systems, not overhead costs that must be eliminated as much as possible.

Berlin NY Begins Digging Out From Hurricane Irene Floods

The floods from Hurricane Irene are subsiding in many places except the high mountains in Vermont and NY Catskill and northern tier mountains.  The rivers and streams in my own small town are still at flood level but finally dropping.  Neighbors are coming out to see each other and check out the damage.  The people in the above photo all lost their driveways and can’t drive their cars.  Last night, it was still raining and all roads in and out of Berlin were closed but today, a few are open but certainly, not all at all.  There is still very little traffic on the main road, Route 22 because of floods in the larger rivers above and below our town.  

Berlin, NY Devastated By Hurricane Irene Floods!

Some people are assuming that Hurricane Irene was no big deal.  Well, it is a HUGE deal here in the mountains of upstate New York, the Berkshire mountains of Massachusetts and Vermont!  My small town of Berlin is now utterly and totally isolated from the rest of the world due to flooding.  And it is still pouring rain as I write this story.  Everything is shut down, the only way out is via horse and my old horse, Sparky, died last year so I can’t get out except if I hike out.  Here are some pictures I took all of which are within 2 miles of my home.  I couldn’t go further even with my jeep.

Red Sunset, Safe Sailing, Red Sunrise, Big Blow

 

This morning, at sunrise, I took the camera and caught the amazing, pink sunrise that heralded a hurricane night.  An ancient saying of sailors is, a red sunset means a peaceful sea but a red sunrise means a big blow indeed.  So it is: all the hurricanes I have lived through had these lovely and deadly sunrises!  Below is a shot from my south deck showing the heavy mists rising out of the valleys and the high, pink and purple cirrus clouds of Irene:

Hurricane Irene Evacuation Orders Are Serious

I have family sitting right in the eye of the future track of this huge hurricane, Irene.  It seems to have slowed down somewhat and has lower winds, thank heavens.  But…it is very, very big and the biggest killer hurricane to hit Central America a dozen years ago or more was Hurricane Mitch which dropped immense amounts of rain on Central America, causing mud slides and overflowing rivers.  Just look at the GARGANTUAN size of this mega-storm!  It isn’t the wind in this monster, it is the volume of rain we should worry about.

Dangerous Hurricane Irene Begins To Race North

Most of my family lives in the NY/NJ/MA region.  Hurricane Irene, still building strength offshore of mainly Florida, is now plotted to run right over all of us up North.  The eye, as of the latest forecasts, is supposed to pass over basically, my windswept mountain.  I may be in the literal eye of this massive storm!  Meanwhile, people I love live in the lowlands or on the shores and I must warn everyone to take strong, strong measures to prepare for or evacuate from this huge, gigantic storm.