[WTF] More than 10% of Texans currently wanted by police

As a result of a dramatic increase of tickets for traffic violations (to pay for local gov't debt), coupled to the inability of many to pay them. (Maybe that is why all that FEMA camps building lately). Read all here

Pipelineistan goes Iran-Pak - By Pepe Escobar

By Pepe Escobar - Asia Times May 29, 2009

"The earth has been shaking for a few days now all across Pipelineistan - with massive repercussions for all the big players in the New Great Game in Eurasia. United States President Barack Obama's AfPak strategists didn't even see it coming.

A silent, reptilian war had been going on for years between the US-favored Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline and its rival, the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, also known as the "peace pipeline". This past weekend, a winner emerged. And it's none of the above: instead, it's the 2,100-kilometer, US$7.5 billion IP (the Iran-Pakistan pipeline), with no India attached. (Please see Pakistan, Iran sign gas pipeline deal, May 27, 2009, Asia Times Online.)

This whole saga started way back in 1995 - about the time California-based Unocal started floating the idea of building a pipeline crossing Afghanistan. Now, Iran and Pakistan finally signed a deal this week in Tehran, by which Iran will sell gas from its mega South Pars fields to Pakistan for the next 25 years.

According to Iranian energy officials speaking to the ISNA news agency, the final deal will be signed in less than three weeks, slightly after the first round of the Iranian presidential election. The last 250 km of a 900-km pipeline stretch in Iran between Asalouyeh and Iranshahr, near the border with Pakistan, still needs to be built. The whole IP pipeline should be operational by 2014.

The fact that Islamabad has finally decided to move on is pregnant with meaning. For the George W Bush administration IPI was simply anathema; imagine India and Pakistan buying gas from "axis of evil" Iran. The only way to go was TAPI - an extension of the childish neo-conservative belief that the Afghanistan war was winnable.

Now, IP reveals Islamabad's own interests seemed to have prevailed against Washington's (unlike the virtually US-imposed Pakistan army offensive against the Taliban in the Swat Valley). The Barack Obama administration has been mum about IP so far. But it will be very enlightening to hear what former Bush pet Afghan Zalmay Khalilzad - who's been infiltrating himself as the next CEO of Afghanistan - has to say about it. (Please see Slouching towards Balkanization, May 22, 2009, Asia Times Online.) Khalilzad's Pipelineistan dream, since the mid-1990s, has always been a trans-Afghan pipeline capable of bypassing both Iran and Russia. ...

...So Islamabad still has all it takes to royally mess up what it has accomplished by approving IP. For the moment, Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia win. The SCO wins. Washington and NATO lose, not to mention Afghanistan (no transit fees). But will Balochistan also win? If not, all hell will break loose, from desperate Balochis sabotaging IP to "foreign interference" manipulating them into creating an even greater, regional, ball of fire. " Read all here

more than 5,000 metric tonnes of gold exported from the USA in 2007-2008

Over the course of 2007 / 2008 – more than 5,000 metric tonnes of “Gold Compounds” have been exported from the United States of America representing more than 62 % of reported sovereign U.S. gold reserves or about 24 times annual U.S. mine production.

5000 metric tonnes = 160 753 733 troy ounces [$128 billion+ at today’s prices]
Read all here

More: *****Comex And London Gold Vaults Being Emptied*****
by Eric deCarbonnel, May 29, 2009

And more: Dubai to get back gold reserves from London banks

Jim Rogers on the Next Financial Meltdown:

The next crisis in his eyes is in currencies which makes sense since sovereign states have taken much of the bad debt from the banks and piled them onto their own balance sheets.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/rogers-j/rogers-j13.html