Dr. Jack Wheeler
CHILDREN OF THE ICE AGES
Wilhelmena Bay, Antarctica. This is a land of ice caps, gigantic glaciers, and frozen earth. The waters of the bay are filled with icebergs, chunks of glaciers calved off and fallen into the sea. In a month or two, the bay will be frozen over with pack ice, but now at the end of the austral summer, it is teeming with life. Rookeries of gentoo and chinstrap penguins cover the patches of bare earth on the shore. Crabeater and Weddell seals are lounging on the bergs sunning themselves. A pod of humpback whales is slowly skimming the surface, scooping up massive mouthfuls of seawater containing hordes of krill, tiny shrimp upon which they feed. It is a wondrous world on a sunny summer's day. Soon, however, the sun will vanish over the horizon and not reappear for months, plunging this world into a dark, lifeless, frozen hell. The Ice Ages still exist here, just as they do in the Arctic, where life blooms extravagantly in the northern summer, then vanishes with the sunless winter. It is a world that seems alien, remote, and exotic to us. Yet it is in this world that our species emerged from evolutionary history. Human beings are children of the Ice Ages - and we make a grave mistake to think we are no longer.
HIDDEN CHINA
Many travelers have been to the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. They've been to Shanghai, Guilin, and the Terracotta Statues at Xian. Everyone knows about them. This adventure is about going to truly extraordinary places in China that almost no one knows about outside of China, and very few Westerners have been to. The pictures you are about to see, you won't believe your eyes. These places exist, and if you are ready to experience them, I am ready to take you there - to the China that is unbelievable and unknown, to what I call Hidden China. Here we go. We start with the Precipice Long Corridor. It will take a couple of days to get there.
THE HIDDEN ALPS
none
HIDDEN ADVENTURES
It was ten years ago this week, in late March 2003, that I launched To The Point. I was almost 60 then, and I am perilously close to 70 now. I figure the only way to keep from slowing down is to speed up. So I am launching a series of what I call Hidden Adventures. Adventures and expeditions to amazingly cool places in the world that few people know about, and far fewer have ever been to. I start tomorrow with The Hidden Atlantic, which begins here in Ushuaia, where I and the people with me board an expedition vessel bound for Antarctica and South Georgia, home to fur seals and penguins numbering in the millions; the world's most isolated community at Tristan da Cunha; the island the Brits exiled Napoleon on, St. Helena; and secretive Ascension Island, with its joint US-Brit military base. I'll be at sea for a month, and most of the time be in touch with the world only with my satphone. I have to admit, I am really looking forward to this, not having to pay attention to all the craziness in Washington and everywhere else in the slightest way. Of course, TTP will still be here! I'll be posting my articles whenever I can. Jack Kelly will be manning the HFR ramparts, and Miko will make sure the TTP Weekly Report with a full complement of articles goes out every Friday. So -what Hidden Adventures are upcoming? (Hint: look in the TTP left side bar.) And what's the Easter message in this?
JAPAN BREAKS CHINA’S STRANGLEHOLD ON RARE EARTH METALS
Japanese scientists have found vast reserves of rare earth metals on the Pacific seabed that can be mined cheaply, a discovery that may break the Chinese monopoly on a crucial raw material needed in hi-tech industries and advanced weapons systems. "We have found deposits that are just two to four metres from the seabed surface at higher concentrations than anybody ever thought existed, and it won't cost much at all to extract," said professor Yasuhiro Kato from Tokyo University, the leader of the team. While America, Australia, and other countries have begun to crank up production of the seventeen rare earth elements, they have yet to find viable amounts of the heavier metals such as dysprosium, terbium, europium, and ytterbium that are most important. China has a near total monopoly in the heavier end of the spectrum, as well as being the dominant supplier of the whole rare earth complex after driving rivals out of business in the 1990s. That monopoly may soon be over.
THE WORLD’S MOST PATRIOTIC PEOPLE
Stanley, Falkland Islands. I was enjoying a pint of the local microbrewery's Peat Cutter Stout at the Globe Tavern when a Falklander on an adjacent bar stool engaged me in conversation. "Where are you from, mate?" he asked. "America," I replied. "You're an American, are you? Well, I have to tell you, Yank, I think your President Obama is disgusting." This did not elicit the response he was expecting. I raised my glass and with a huge smile across my face exclaimed, "I'll drink to that!" Taken aback, he queried, "You Americans are supposed to believe in freedom. Why do you have a president who won't stand up for ours?" "Because he won't stand up for our own freedom, much less anyone else's. His goal in life is to destroy our freedom, not protect it. He's a fascist interested only in expanding his power, just like the Falklands' enemy Christina Kirchner. That's why he will side with her and not with you." He looked at me quizzically, blinked a few times, then asked, "Can I buy you a beer?"
WE ARE ENTERING THE GAS AGE
Move over shale gas, here comes methane hydrate. Last week (3/12) the Japanese government's drilling ship Chikyu started flaring off gas from a hole drilled into a solid deposit of methane and ice, 1,000 feet beneath the seabed under 3,300 feet of water, 30 miles off the Japanese coast. The real significance of this gas flare probably lies decades in the future, though the Japanese are talking about commercial production by 2018. The technology for getting fuel out of hydrated methane, also known as clathrate, is in its infancy. After many attempts to turn this "fire ice" into gas by heating it proved uneconomic, the technology used in Japan - depressurizing the stuff - was first tested five years ago in Northern Canada. It looks much more promising. Methane hydrate is found all around the world beneath the seabed near continental margins as well as in the Arctic under land. Any combination of low temperature and high pressure causes methane and water to crystallize together in a sort of molecular lattice. Nobody knows exactly how much there is, but probably more than twice all the other fossil fuels, coal, oil, and natural gas, put together. The proof that hydrate can be extracted should finally bury the stubborn myth that the world will run out of fossil fuels in any meaningful sense in the next few centuries, let alone decades.
WHAT’S THE FED’S PLAN B FOR THE COMING FISCAL CATASTROPHE?
Perhaps the most troublesome question that investors and business decision makers confront today is, "When will significant inflation and interest rate increases show up?" The next quarter, the next year, the next decade? Everyone fears these, but no one can predict exactly when they will appear. Investment is severely hampered by this uncertainty. The potential inflationary/interest rate pressures exist largely as a result of Fed's massive purchase of government bonds and mortgage-backed securities. But much of this increase in money is locked up in the banks because the Fed now pays interest on the bank reserves held at the Fed (and therefore it is not lent or spent), because of increased regulatory restrictions that discourage banks from making loans to small businesses and consumers, and because of the lack of demand for new loans. In addition, many individuals and businesses are holding unusually high sums to weather regulatory and economic uncertainties. Yet, there are many factors that could trigger inflationary/interest rate increases that are largely out of the Fed's ability to forecast and control.
EMBALMING FREEDOM
"He's one of these narcissistic, charismatic sociopaths history has been bedeviled with for millennia. These folks are pathological liars, they care nothing for ‘the people' whom they pretend to love, their lives are devoted to ruling over others and controlling their lives, they bring misery to those they rule yet are worshipped nonetheless. Obama-worship is like some kind of religious cult, whose high priests are the media elite. Obama feeds off it, so his desire for more power and creating more misery increases. The human capacity to worship such sociopaths is one of life's mysteries." Asunción, Paraguay. The Congressman who told me that during the dinner conversation I described in The Traitor in the White House (2/20/13) voiced what I have never understood: the human capacity to worship evil. The Congressman was talking about Zero, but his words apply even more so here in South America to the man the whole continent is fixated on right now, Hugo Chavez. On every TV news show, in every newspaper and magazine, it's Chavez 24/7. And most all of it is lies. Let's start with what every spook agency in the world knows - from Langley to Whitehall to the KGB/FSB and China's MSS - but no major media outlet is reporting: Chavez didn't die on March 5th in Venezuela, he died January 3rd in Cuba.
THE GLOBAL SLUMP AND THE US STOCK BOOM ILLUSION
Asia's economic recovery is losing momentum and Europe's slump is proving deeper than expected, raising concerns that soaring stock markets globally have jumped ahead of economic reality. Japan's closely-watched index for machinery orders fell 13% in January, nearing levels last seen after the Lehman Brothers crisis. "It is a shockingly poor number and illustrates the divergence between the improvement in sentiment in financial markets and what is actually happening on the ground," said Julian Jessop from Capital Economics. China's industrial output rose 0.6% in January and 0.8% in February, the slowest pace since early last year. Retail sales growth dropped to 12.3%, the weakest since early 2004. "The goal of consumer-led growth remains a pipe dream for now," said the group's China economist, Qinwei Wang. "The economic rebound may already be stalling." The US economy is holding up, as cheap shale gas drives a manufacturing revival, but Charles Dumas from Lombard Street Research said America still has to navigate the most drastic fiscal squeeze since the Second World War. "We think tightening will be 2.5% of GDP this year and that will hit profits," he said. "We expect a 10-20% correction in the S&P 500."
THE WORLD’S MOST FREEDOM-LOVING PEOPLE
Hargeisa, Somaliland. Who are the most freedom-loving people in the world? Certainly not Americans. We gave that up when a majority of us elected Zero in 2008, and reaffirmed our abandonment of freedom by reelecting him (or allowing him to steal it) last November. Today, Americans are racing away from freedom and into The Traitor in the White House's Fascist Police State as fast as they can. Someday, Americans may find the courage to no longer sell their birthright of freedom for a mess of government entitlement pottage, as Esau sold his birthright to Jacob (Genesis 25:29-34). That's someday, it sure isn't now. Right now, the people who love freedom more than any other are a group of Moslems in the Horn of Africa. They are the people of Somaliland, who would rather be impoverished and free than sell their freedom for pottage. Their story is a heroic saga, epically inspirational. Let me tell it to you.
GRIEVING CELEBRITIES STRUGGLE TO FIND REPLACEMENT DICTATOR
(AP) The formal announcement yesterday (3/05) by the Venezuelan government that Hugo Chavez has died sent shockwaves through the ranks of the Hollywood elite, who had long been the Venezuelan leader's staunchest supporters. Throughout the day, celebrities struggled to cope with the devastating loss. "Sean is devastated, completely inconsolable," Sean Penn's publicist Amy Glattensturmer told the AP. "He's been in his bedroom all day. He won't eat, he won't berate his staff, he won't punch women, he wouldn't even come outside to look at the brand new Ferrari Enzo the studio sent him as incentive to read a script. He realizes that a true champion of the working class has died today, and, as one himself, Sean has taken the hit very hard." "The relationship between celebrities and their dictators is a very close one," PR guru Benjamin Shaltzberg told the AP. "Hollywood celebrities had formed a huge bond with Chavez. It will be difficult to replace."
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS WILL HAVE THE CHANCE TO REDEEM HIMSELF
Before the Democrat-led Senate rammed it through in the dead of night, Christmas Eve 2009 – Senate President Harry Reid used a House bill unrelated to Obamacare, struck all the language and the title so that only the former HR number remained, and then inserted a new title and over 2,000 pages of job-killing, economy-crushing, health-care-rationing compost.
Sneaky? Yes. Typical? No doubt. Unconstitutional? Absolutely. It’s like dropping a Ford Pinto engine into a totaled Ferrari body, patching it up and then selling it to some unsuspecting dupe as a “brand new Ferrari.”
Unfortunately, America was that unsuspecting dupe.
Well, the jig’s up. Although the mainstream media paid it little attention, back in November (11/26/12) the U.S. Supreme Court shocked many in the legal community by granting Liberty Counsel’s motion for a rehearing on its multi-pronged challenge to Obamacare. The high court ordered the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to rehear arguments. We will present our oral arguments May 14-17.
Liberty Counsel’s brief argues that Obamacare is invalid because, since it’s a tax – as the Supreme Court already ruled in June – it violates the Constitution’s Origination Clause. To pass constitutional muster, tax bills must originate in the House, not the Senate.
No matter how the 4th Circuit rules, it will be appealed to the SCOTUS. Chief Justice Roberts will get another bite at the rotten apple – this time, with a whole new quiver of legal arrows.
DO YOU HAVE A HEALTHCARE PLAN B?
It is imperative that you tend to your Plan B program, whether you decide to stay in Dodge (the US) or not! One significant part of your preparation should be to put together a medicine cabinet, because when the Unaffordable Healthcare Act fully kicks in, it may not be possible to secure critical prescription items such as antibiotics, even with a prescription. Yet it is possible to acquire antibiotics and other items today without a prescription. Furthermore, as has already been the case in Canada for some years under socialized medicine, certain surgical procedures may be unavailable because of your lack of "social utility," especially depending on your age. Or wait lines may be so long that your prognosis changes from problematic to critical during the intervening time. Also, new medical modalities may not be available here in the United States. This is why, as part of your Plan B, you need to know about medical tourism, through which it will be possible to access new alternatives, and to do so far less expensively than in the U.S. A healtcare storm is about to descend upon us. How do you prepare for it?
THE SQUARE MOGADISHU PEG, THE ROUND SOMALIA HOLE
Mogadishu, Somalia. Who would ever guess that you can have a fantastic lobster dinner here, in what is billed as "the most dangerous city in the world"? And that there's a first-class restaurant that serves it? Ahmed Jama managed to escape the bloody horror of warlord anarchy that enveloped Mogadishu in the early 90s. As a refugee in London, he borrowed money from relatives and opened a restaurant that did well - but he always dreamed of returning to his country when the time was right. His friends though he was crazy when he said the time was 2008. The hyper-terrorist lunatics of Al-Shabaab still controlled most of the city. Ahmed went back anyway - and his restaurants promptly became a terrorist target. The latest attack was last September, when two Al-Shabaab suicide bombers killed 18 people at his The Village restaurant. Ahmed rebuilt and reopened it in less than a month. Here is Ahmed in front of it today:
HALF-FULL REPORT 02/22/13
What a hornet's nest on the TTP Forum got stirred up by that Congressista's questioning of Social Security in The Traitor in the White House. I guess some clarification is required. He meant it as a "teachable moment," a thought experiment to demonstrate that just as his conservative audience was determined no matter what to demand their Social Security payments, so is everyone else in America who's receiving some sort of government payout. He thus sees truly cutting government spending as a hopeless task. He was not questioning Social Security, and was quite interested - as were his two colleagues - in the concept of selling off federal lands (1/3 of the entire US) to pay owed SS benefits when I mentioned it. But his thought experiment backfired, both in his townhall meeting and the TTP Forum because of the visceral emotions surrounding SS. Here's my perspective. People have been conned by government scammers into thinking that SS taxes are somehow different from income or other taxes. All the money taken by force or extortion by the federalies was earned by those from whom it was taken. Social Security is a government racket, a gigantic Ponzi Scheme. There is no Trust Fund. It does not exist. Your money has been spent. Further, the purpose of Social Security is to make people dependent on government. Even conservatives, most especially conservatives. I personally look at SS taxes as stolen and gone just like all others. Stealing money is what governments do, and SS money is no different.
WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT DEMOCRATS DESTROYING DEMOCRACY?
The biggest problem we now face is the most basic of all: our elections are tainted, and our government is becoming more illegitimate each election cycle. Totalitarian control of our lives is just over the horizon. There are several concrete steps that can be taken to ensure fair elections, but Republicans on Capitol Hill are either too fearful or too corrupted themselves to propose a solution that would result in a legitimate government. I'm writing to ask TTPers what you think should be done. This week (2/19), Fox News headlined a story: Did An Obama Supporter Vote 6 Times? This article represents the barest tip of the iceberg. We all know who is benefiting from the fraud, which gets more and more brazen every electoral cycle. Every politician who opposes rational and reasonable steps to prevent cheating and ensure honest elections deserves to be thrown out of the Capitol then prosecuted for knowingly enabling or perpetrating election fraud. Fraud is rampant and naked, especially in national elections. If it's not stopped -- and it can be -- you realize that we no longer have a legitimate government. And illegitimate governments deserve to be overthrown, indeed they must be.
WHY IS OBAMA FUNDING POLITICAL WARFARE AGAINST ISRAEL?
Earlier this month NGO Monitor released its report on foreign government funding of radical political Israeli NGOs which work to undermine Israel's international standing and subvert Israeli society. Along with the usual European suspects who give millions of shekels (or euros or pounds) to Israeli groups like this, it works out that the US government is also funding extremely radical organizations, courtesy of American taxpayers. Notably, the three groups that reported receiving funding from the US are all in the business of waging political warfare campaigns directed at the Israeli public. According to the report, in accordance with the NGO Transparency Law which requires NGOs to report on donations received from foreign governments, three Hate-Israel Israeli NGOs received funding from the US, i.e., Obama's State Department. They are:
THE TRAITOR IN THE WHITE HOUSE
This past weekend I had a private dinner with three Congressmen. I can't tell you who they are, other than one is the chairman of a powerful committee, the second the chairman of another major committee, the third a freshman. I can't tell you where the dinner took place either. Ostensibly, we gathered to discuss threats to national security such as Islamic terrorism, Iran, Pakistan support for the Afghan Taliban, and the Chicoms. After we got into this for a while, I decided to see what would happen if I said what I really wanted to say: "Fellas, what about the single greatest threat to America's national security, far greater than anything else? That's the traitor in the White House." I expected them to recoil in shock and dismay, but they didn't blink an eye. All three nodded grimly in agreement.
HALF-FULL REPORT 02/15/13
We start by celebrating the death of two pieces of human garbage. On Tuesday (2/12), leftie psycho cop-killer Chris Dorner was turned into a crispy critter when the LAPD burned down the mountain cabin he was holed up in. Nine days earlier (2/03), this monster murdered a young woman, and her fiancé, in cold blood. Her name was Monica Quan. Dorner shot her to death in revenge for her father, a retired police captain turned lawyer, failing to get his badge back after being fired from the LAPD. In his maniacal "manifesto," he tells Monica's father Randal Quan: "I never had the opportunity to have a family of my own. I'm terminating yours." This would be just another case of individual criminal lunacy, but it has instead created enormous educational value. It has exposed the hideous evil residing in the souls of those on the Left. Believe it or not, Dorner has become a "folk hero of the left." There are tens of thousands of Dorner fans on Facebook pages like "We Stand with Christopher Dorner," and "We Are All Chris Dorner." Now we know for sure: Libtards are indeed Chris Dorners with murderous evil in the hearts. Liberalism really is a form of criminal insanity. And the other trashing of human garbage? That would be Iranian General Hassan Shateri. Also on Tuesday (2/12) while the LAPD was barbequing Dorner, Syrian rebels were gunning down Shateri outside of Damascus. He was a terrorist of the highest order.
IS AMERICA’S ONLY HOPE SOMEONE WHO ISN’T WHITE?
Please tell me you're not so into masochism that you subjected yourself to watching Zero's latest Ode to Fascism on Tuesday night (2/12). The slightest attempt to make the tiniest-eensiest reduction in federalie spending growth is depicted by the Fascist-in-Chief as "heartless," "brutal," and "savage." CommieMedia rags like the LA Times always without exception call any reduction in spending growth a "cut" that is "axeing," "slicing", and "slashing" government programs that women and children couldn't survive and will die without. The dreaded Sequester Monster scaring everyone cuts nothing (except Defense of course). It merely marginally reduces automatic increases in federalie budgets. This is called The Budget Baseline Con. Here's a chart by CATO showing sequestration is a miniscule slowdown of increasing trillion-dollar deficits. So... is there no hope? No hope that we can rescue our freedom from the maw of Leviathan? It's not just that our Constitution has been trashed. It's that America is no longer a democracy. It is a mafiacracy like Putin's Russia or Chavez's Venezuela. Democrats from Zero to the punk who stole Allen West's seat did not get honestly elected last November. Democrats win by acting on Stalin's dictum, "It's not who votes that counts, it's who counts the votes." We can't get out of this, we can't aspire to a solution until we understand the basic reason and cause for how we got into this tragedy in the first place.
PRAY FOR A BLACK POPE
Gosh, won't it be marvelous if the next pope turns out to be black? And I'm not saying this as a Catholic or one of those earnest Lefty types who yearns for an ethnic minority figure to be appointed to every position of authority. It's that I can hardly wait to see the cat among the pigeons, if someone like the current favorite - Cardinal Peter Kodwo Appiah Turkson - gets the job. Turkson is Ghanaian (from Ghana, West Africa) and considerably darker of hue than the previous three African pontiffs -- St Victor I (p. 189-199), St Miltiades (p. 311-314) and St Gelasius (p. 492-496) -- all of whom hailed from Roman North Africa and as you can see weren't black at all. I've no doubt in the salons of academia and the media canteens, they will all think this is a jolly good thing, much as they did when Barack Hussein Obama ushered in a golden new era of joy, healing, reconciliation and endless world peace. But I'm not sure that's what they're going to get. African churchmen - non-Western or non-white clergy, generally - tend to be considerably more robust and old school than your oh-so-modern Anglican vicar with his very real concerns about diversity and homosexual rights and the urgent threat of climate change. They're so old-fashioned, in fact, that they even all still believe in God.
WHY WOULD OBAMA BE ON THE SIDE OF THE DYING REGIME IN IRAN?
Late last month, something went seriously wrong in the underground tunnels beneath the Iranian nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz. I don't know if it was an explosion, on-site sabotage, an accident, or a cyber attack, but eight people were killed, and several others are being treated for irradiation. The tunnel leading to the damaged sector has been walled off. And another disaster, several days earlier, took place at the heavy-water facility at Arak, whose existence has been public knowledge since the mid-nineties. Along with the explosion in a gas line leading to a new, secret, nuclear facility in a mountain near Fordow, this makes three setbacks to the Iranian regime's nuclear program. Maybe their feng shui has gone negative in anticipation of the oft-dreaded Year of the Snake, but whatever the explanation - no doubt the supreme leader sees the omnipresent satanic activity of the Jews hard at work - things are not going swimmingly for the terror masters in Tehran. Why, then, would Obama lead from his behind and support them?
HALF-FULL REPORT 02/08/13
"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government cannot pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies... Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that 'the buck stops here.' Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren. America has a debt problem and a failure of leadership. Americans deserve better. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America's debt limit." These are the first and last lines of a speech delivered on the floor of the US Senate on March 16, 2006. The speaker was Illinois Senator Barack Hussein Obama. The full text of the speech from the Congressional Record is appended at the end of this HFR. Feel quite free to cut and paste the full speech into an email informing your friends of the hideous hypocrisy of President Zero. Speaking of hideousness, our next subject is The PIAPS - The Pig In A Pants Suit - Hillary Rodham Clinton.
OBAMA IS OBSOLETE
Zero's fascist seizure of America's healthcare system is kicking into high gear. On Tuesday (2/05), the CBO - Congressional Budget Office - issued its updated budget and economic forecast. Zerocare, the CBO says, will now cost $233 billion more than previously estimated, and will surge well over $1 trillion for the next 10 years. Seven million workers will lose their employer-paid health coverage. In addition, one of the more lethally noxious consequences of Zerocare is its enabling of an enormous expansion of power by the Federal Death Agency - the FDA. The FDA is the perfect example of the ball-and-chain the Federalie Fascists place around the economy. The "safety and efficacy" requirements of the FDA now take an average of 12 years and between 1 and 4 billion dollars for a pharmaceutical company to gain approval to bring one new chemical entity drug to market. Here's how insanely obsolete this is. You've heard of Moore's Law, right? Back in 1965, Intel co-founder Gordon Moore predicted that the number of transistors on integrated circuits would expand exponentially, doubling every two years or less - and it has ever since. So - here we go. Strap yourself in for a ride in a rocket sled. Moore's Law has come to biology.
WE ARE OUT OF TOMORROWS
After Mr. Obama delivered his second inaugural address week before last, it has been dawning on people that his political strategy is that of the Thunderdome in Mel Gibson's Mad Max 3 movie: "Two men enter, one man leaves." He is totally win/lose, the total antithesis of win/win. From Mau-Mau tautology mixed with Marxist ideals inbred from his absent father and a mother enriched in the heresies of the deep left Communism of Frank Marshall Davis, this man has unfurled his true colors. Unbridled by the need to appear moderate for his next campaign, "the One" has declared war on anything or anyone who would stand in the way of his Progressive radical agenda. Yes, Saul Alinsky's hand can be seen everywhere along with Chicago thuggery, but there is much more.
WHY CHINA WILL NEVER CATCH THE UNITED STATES
The reason in a nutshell? China's vast reserve of cheap workers in the hinterland is vanishing at a vertiginous pace. We can now discern more or less when the catch-up growth miracle will sputter out. Another seven years or so -- enough to buoy global coal, crude, and copper prices for a while -- but then it will all be over. China's demographic dividend will be exhausted. Beijing revealed last week that the country's working age population has already begun to shrink, sooner than expected. It will soon go into "precipitous decline," according to the International Monetary Fund. Japan hit this inflexion point fourteen years ago, but by then it was already rich, with $3 trillion of net savings overseas. China has hit the wall a quarter century earlier in its development path. The ageing crisis is well-known. It is already six years since a Chinese demographer shocked Davos with a warning that his country might have to resort to mass suicide in the end, shoving pensioners onto the ice. Less known is the parallel - and linked - labor drain in the countryside. A new IMF paper - "Chronicle of a Decline Foretold: Has China Reached the Lewis Turning Point?" - says the reserve army of peasants looking for work peaked in 2010 at around 150 million. The numbers are now collapsing.
WHAT WE HAVE IN COMMON WITH MONARCH BUTTERFLIES
You've probably heard of the spectacular migrations of hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies, which home in on one small region of Mexico for the winter then return as far north as Canada in a flight of thousands of miles that takes more than one generation. Clearly the insects have an inherited "map" of where to go, but what compass do they use? It seems they have at least two compasses. One is a "time-compensated sun compass," located in their antennae, which calculates bearings from the angle of the sun corrected for the time of day. But butterflies can also use the Earth's magnetic field to navigate. The butterfly antennae contain a protein molecule called cryptochrome, which can apparently act as a magnetic compass when exposed to blue or violet light. Human beings and other mammals also have a cryptochrome in their retinas, albeit in slightly different form, but until recently it was thought not to have magnetic directional properties. Recently Dr. Steven M. Reppert of the University of Massachusetts Medical School and his colleagues took the human version of the gene that's the recipe for cryptochrome and genetically engineered it into flies, replacing the flies' own version. They then showed that, presented with two routes in a maze, the flies could choose a magnetic direction they had been trained to associate with a sugar reward, and they did so just as well with the "human" cryptochrome as with their own. If it is at least possible to use our cryptochrome molecules to sense direction from the Earth's magnetic field, do we?
ENHANCING AND EXTENDING YOUR LIFE WITH DURK PEARSON
A Special Announcement: To The Point is co-sponsoring, along with Life Enhancement Magazine, a Life Enhancement Symposium with Durk Pearson & Sandy Shaw in Las Vegas, March 22-24. Shortly after Merv Griffin, the beloved talk show host, passed away in August 2007, I penned a tribute to him in To The Point, How Merv Griffin Enhanced and Extended the Lives of Millions. I told the story of how I introduced Merv to one of my dearest friends, Durk Pearson. He was a completely unknown scientist with an IQ so high MIT could not measure it. It was 1978, and Durk was dedicating his IQ to figuring out how to live healthily for a very, very long time. What's more, Durk could explain how to do so with incredible clarity. 35 years have passed since Durk's first appearance on Merv. The amount of anti-aging research, the number of years added and quality of life improved for so many millions of people stemming from it is incalculable. But as Durk and his partner in science Sandy Shaw say, there is so much more to come! The latest advancements in life extension science are astounding - but how do you learn about them? To enable TTPers and friends of To The Point learn about where Durk & Sandy's latest research is leading, my wife Rebel and I are co-sponsoring, along with my friend Will Block, publisher of Life Enhancement Magazine, a rare public appearance of Durk & Sandy at a Life Enhancement Symposium in Las Vegas next month. The length and quality of your life may indeed depend on what you learn at it.
HALF-FULL REPORT 02/01/13
In The Brexit and Texit this week, we learned an important word: hysteresis. Originally a concept in physics to quantify the effects of lag time, it's now used in economics: "If people are out of work for long enough, the damage to skills and human capital becomes a permanent loss. The underlying growth potential of the economy is damaged for years." Under Zero, hysteresis has become a political strategy. Damage America's economy, national security, and moral culture long enough and consistently enough to become permanent. Part of the strategy is convincing people that resistance to it is futile, even immoral. Thus the number of his fellow travelers and useful idiots increases. You could not get a clearer example than, on Tuesday (1/29), 94 out of 100 Senators voted to confirm a treasonous, characterless scumbag as Secretary of State. There are now only 3 Senators with any self-respect or decency: John Cornyn (TX), Ted Cruz (TX), and Jim Inhofe (OK) who voted No (Kerry along with 2 others abstained). And it could get worse. Yet for all of this, there were a number of bright spots this week. Here we go.
BOB KABOB AND SNUFFY JACK
Col. Robert K. Brown, Founder, Publisher and Editor of Soldier of Fortune Magazine, is writing his memoirs. It's about time, as Bob turned 80 a couple of months ago. Bob and I have been good friends since 1977, when we met as guests on the Merv Griffin Show and instantly hit it off. The most memorable adventure we had together was in Afghanistan with the Mujahidin fighting the Soviets. That was in 1988, and Bob asked me to recount it for his book. I thought I'd share it with you. Early on in the Reagan Presidency, I began working with my buddy from our Youth For Reagan days (Reagan's original campaign for California governor in 1966), Dana Rohrabacher and other friends in the White House, such as Constantine Menges on the National Security Council, on a strategy that became known as The Reagan Doctrine. (That wasn't our name for it - we just called it FTC... Foil the Commies, or something like that.) My role was to "go inside" captured guerrilla-held territory in those Soviet colonies where anti-Soviet insurgencies had emerged, such as the Contras in Nicaragua, UNITA in Angola, RENAMO in Mozambique, the EPLF/TPLF in Ethiopia, the KPNLF in Cambodia, the Hmong in Laos, and most of all, the various groups of Muj in Afghanistan. I did this all through the 80s, and Dana and I often talked of his going inside with me at some time. His chance came after he left the White House to run for Congress in his California home town district, and got elected. He celebrated by coming with me and Bob, who I'd been promising to take inside as well. We convened in mid-November, 1988, at Green's Hotel in Peshawar, Pakistan.
THE BREXIT AND THE TEXIT
Last year, Europe's fear was the Grexit - Greece's leaving the EU. Now, the fear du jour is the Brexit - Britain's departure. Yet British Prime Minister David Cameron's pledge for an 'in-or-out' referendum on UK membership in the European Union will be overtaken by internal events long before we reach 2017. The vote may never be necessary. The eurozone's North-South misalignment has not been resolved. The Club Med bloc is still sliding into deeper depression. The financial crisis - never more than a symptom - has graduated into a more intractable economic, social, and therefore political crisis. Take a moment to read Eurozone crisis: it ain't over yet by Professor Paulo Manasse from Bologna University, posted on VOX EU. Look at the German-Italian gap below. The two economies have diverged 14% of GDP since 2006 and the split is certain to keep growing this year, next year, and the year after that:
GET OVER IT! WE ARE NOT ALL CREATED EQUAL
The Marine Corps Times recently published a handful of articles in regard to opening Infantry Officer Course (IOC) to females and the possibility of integrating women into the infantry community. In mid-April the Commandant has directed the ‘integration' of the first wave of female officers into IOC this summer following completion of The Basic School (TBS). Before the Marine Corps moves forward with this concept, should we not ask the hard questions and gain opinions of combat-experienced Marines (male and female alike) as to the purpose, the impact, and the gains from such a move? As a combat-experienced Marine officer, and a female, I am here to tell you that we are not all created equal, and attempting to place females in the infantry will not improve the Marine Corps as the Nation's force-in-readiness or improve our national security. This issue is being pushed by several groups, one of which is a small committee of civilians appointed by the Secretary of Defense called the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service (DACOWITS). Surprise: none of the current committee members are on active duty or have any recent combat or relevant operational experience relating to the issue they are attempting to change. Here's what they and the DoD need to know: should the Marine Corps attempt to fully integrate women into the infantry, we as an institution are going to experience a colossal increase in crippling and career-ending medical conditions for females.
IT’S TIME TO STAND UP TO THE FASCIST BULLIES OF THE LEFT
Who are the most unpleasant people on the internet? Obviously with so much competition, it is, to paraphrase Dr Johnson, like arguing the toss between lice and fleas. Disability rights activists would be a strong contender. Thanks to them, money which could go to the genuinely needy is instead being hijacked by scroungers and fakes. Yet this doesn't just apply to disability rights, of course. It applies to almost everything in the political domain. Pick any issue - the environment, education, healthcare, the economy - and time and again you'll find the agenda has been successfully hijacked by a handful of zealots who are not remotely representative of the broader public interest. Why? Because politicians will do almost anything for a quiet life and find it much easier to buy off noisy troublemakers by capitulating to their demands, however unreasonable, than to take a principled stand. Also, of course, it's much, much easier for a lobby group to make a powerful, emotive case for more government spending on its favorite deserving cause than it is for the government to explain why it can't afford it. I don't know about you lot, but I've had just about enough of this apathy, ignorance, purblind denialism and culpable dishonesty.
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/25/13
Ia orana! That's Hello! in Tahitian (ee-ah-rana). Captain James Cook (1728-1779) made his first voyage to Tahiti in April 1769. Whenever introduced to a chief, he would doff his hat, sweep it before him with a slight bow, and greet him by saying, "Your Honor." Tahitians have been greeting each other by saying how they pronounced "your honor" ever since. Most all of us dream at one time or another of living in a Polynesian paradise of perfect balmy weather, palm trees wafting in the breeze over soft sandy beaches, turquoise lagoons laden with fish, dramatic mountains covered with fruit-laden tropical forests - something like this, maybe... 
I took this on a motu or sand islet on the reef surrounding the island of Raivavae in the Austral Islands of French Polynesia. This is remote or real Polynesia, not the tourist version. No hotels, no restaurants, no air conditioning, no swimming pools (infinity or otherwise), no Internet, intermittent electricity, and what few modern conveniences exist from a cold Hinano beer to a liter of gas are exceedingly expensive. Which is why there are so few tourists in this "unspoiled" idyllic island, and almost no one comes here to retire. The islanders who live here are wonderfully friendly, Raivavae is breathtakingly beautiful, you'll never forget a visit here - but it won't take long before you want to get back to America. The current on-going tragedy, of course, is that the America we'd want to get back to seems no longer to exist. Reading every morning's news these days is like reading - and living in - a horror story. When will it end? Will we ever get our country back from the fascist thugs in Washington who have stolen it? Two events this week suggest we may.
THE EARTH GETTING GREENER EXPOSES CLIMATE ALARMISM AS A TOTAL FRAUD
Did you know that the Earth is getting greener, quite literally? Satellites are now confirming that the amount of green vegetation on the planet has been increasing for three decades. This will be news to those accustomed to alarming tales about deforestation, overdevelopment and ecosystem destruction. This possibility was first suspected in 1985 by Charles Keeling, the scientist whose meticulous record of the content of the air atop Mauna Loa in Hawaii first alerted the world to the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Mr. Keeling's famous curve showed not only a year-by-year increase in carbon dioxide levels but a season-by-season oscillation in the concentration. The latest and most detailed satellite data, which is yet to be published but was summarized in an online lecture last July by Ranga Myneni of Boston University, confirms that the greening of the Earth has now been going on for 30 years. Between 1982 and 2011, 20.5% of the world's vegetated area got greener, while just 3% grew browner; the rest showed no change. What explains this trend? Man-made nitrogen fertilizer causes crops to grow faster, but it is having little effect on forests. There are essentially two possibilities: climate and carbon dioxide itself. Warmer, wetter weather should cause more vegetation to grow. But even without warming, an increase in carbon dioxide should itself accelerate growth rates of plants. CO2 is a scarce resource that plants have trouble scavenging from the air, and plants grow faster with higher levels of CO2 to inhale.
IS TEXAS AMERICA’S HOPE FOR THE FUTURE?
Papeete, Tahiti. Yesterday (1/21), at the very moment Zero was being sworn in to his stolen second term and delivering a speech so bad even WaPo's premier liberal columnist panned it as "flat, partisan, and pedestrian," I was on a shark dive off a remote French Polynesian island. We were 70 feet down and surrounded by a half dozen ten-foot long lemon sharks sporting impressive arrays of knife-sharp teeth. But they were after the multitude of schools of brightly colored tropical reef fish all around us, searching for those whose abnormal swimming (sensed by electroreceptors in their head) meant easy prey. I wanted no part of the irretrievably disgusting spectacle in Washington and was happy to be as far away and as oblivious to it as possible. When you're diving, you are totally in the moment. You are in a completely different universe of incomparable beauty, and while you are in it, the world of dry land and all that is happening there, does not exist. Especially if very large sharks are swimming very close to you. It was only when I got here today and learned of the spectacle in DC that it occurred to me Americans are surrounded by fascist sharks like Zero and his thugs. Many of them will be easy prey. How do we make sure we are not?
WHY DON’T THE GERMANS TRUST OBAMA WITH THEIR GOLD?
Back in the mid-1920s, the head of the German Central Bank, Herr Hjalmar Schacht, went to New York to see Germany's gold. However the NY Fed officials were unable to find the pallet of Germany's gold bullion. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Benjamin Strong was mortified, but to put him at ease Herr Schacht turned to him and said "Never mind, I believe you when you say the gold is there. Even if it weren't you are good for its replacement." But that was then and this is now. In the eyes of the Germans - and who can blame them? - America has lost its mojo to such a degree that it can no longer be trusted honor its debts, even in the unlikely event that it were financially capable of doing so. Which is why, following in the footsteps of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez (who may be an idiot but is definitely no fool), Germany is repatriating its gold from the New York Federal Reserve, which will now be stored in Frankfurt. Now, why in the world would they do that? Don't they trust Obama with their gold?
WILL THE WORLD SOON HAVE A NEW GOLD STANDARD?
The world is moving step by step towards a de facto Gold Standard, without any meetings of G20 leaders to announce the idea or bless the project. Some TTPers will already have seen the GFMS Gold Survey for 2012 which reported that central banks around the world bought more bullion last year in terms of tonnage than at any time in almost half a century. They added a net 536 tons in 2012 as they diversified fresh reserves away from the four fiat suspects: dollar, euro, sterling, and yen. Gone is the illusion that the euro would take its place as the twin pillar of a new G2 condominium alongside the dollar. That hope has faded. Central bank holdings of euro bonds have fallen back to 26%, where they were almost a decade ago. Neither the euro nor the dollar can inspire full confidence, although for different reasons. The euro is a dysfunctional construct, covering two incompatible economies (northern vs. southern Europe), prone to lurching from crisis to crisis, without a unified treasury to back it up. The dollar stands on a pyramid of debt. We all know that this debt will be inflated away over time - for better or worse. The only real disagreement is over the speed.
HALF-FULL REPORT 01/11/13
On Wednesday (1/09), we saw the greatest headline ever posted on Drudge: 
It was linked to a Weekly Standard story on Zero's considering an Executive Order to effect gun control without legislation from Congress. It gave CommieMedia libtards the vapors, as chronicled by the Washington Examiner. They can't stand it whenever someone reveals they worship an Evil Messiah. Yet, in truth, there is in fact an enormous difference between Zero and Hitler-Stalin. Hitler and Stalin were both rabidly crazed nationalists, determined at whatever cost to conquer other peoples and subject them to Germany or Russia. Zero, on the other hand, is a rabidly crazed anti-nationalist, determined at whatever cost to destroy his own country. He is filled with hatred and contempt for America, as neither Hitler nor Stalin were towards their own countries. Zero is at the extreme end of American liberalism, which has always been characterized, at a minimum, by embarrassment. Liberals are embarrassed to be Americans, embarrassed over the very existence of America and in a state of constant apology for it - look what we did to the Indians, our Founders owned slaves, we're racist imperialist capitalist war-mongers, blah-blah-blah. This is why Zero - who feels free to take his phony-nice mask off in a second term and expose who he really is - has nominated three revolting embarrassed-to-be-American libtards to be in charge of our defense, foreign policy, and intelligence security.