Author: Serkadis

A few weeks ago, we interviewed famed hedge funder Jim Chanos at his office in Midtown Manhattan.

We spoke for around an hour, touching on topics that ranged from his time shorting companies like Tyco and Enron to what kind of girl scout cookies he likes. Chanos spoke at length on more modern topics as well, such as Greece and how he’s shorting China.

The whole conversation was education, but we thought we’d boil down….

10 particularly interesting things we learned >

Be sure to check out our interview with Jim Chanos:

Part I: Greece Is A Prelude

Part II: China’s High-Rise Property House Of Cards

Part III: Inside The Fall Of Enron

The CDS market was invented to hedge non-marketable instrument risk

But what people forget is that the CDS market was created exactly for that. Because if you are a creditor of that government with a non-marketable instrument, say Greece owes you money, say Greece has promised to fund your projects. You don’t own a Greek bond. You can’t market that IOU, but you have economic risk. Your project may be imperiled if Greece cannot fund it as promised. The only way you can hedge that off is through the CDS market.

So that’s exactly why the CDS market was invented. Not just to hedge sovereign debt instruments, because you can simply sell those instruments if you’re bearish! It’s actually to hedge off non-marketable instrument risk. We saw the same thing during the banking crisis when people started saying “Oh there’s been an explosion of buying CDSes on banks, and short-selling the shares of banks in the Spring and Fall of ’08.

Read the interview ->

His investigation into Enron started with a phone call

A catalyst for our involvement was simply a phone call I got from a friend in Dallas who ran a hedge fund who asked if I had seen Jonathan Weil of the Texas Wall Street Journal’s Heard On The Street column if I had heard the accounting of the energy merchant banks. And I had not seen it.

So he faxed it to me – email was still not ubiquitous at that point – and it was a really interesting column about how the energy merchant banks had lobbied the SEC successfully for getting mark-to-model and mark-to-market accounting for their long term investing in energy derivatives. To take the present value of all the future profits that were written into the derivatives were sold as opposed to adjusting it pro-rata over the life of the contract. And they were celebrating.

The article if I can recall went on to say that there were a number of academics and accountants who were worried about this practice. That anytime you could front-load profits you’d really suspect that company of corporate abuse. We had experience with this in a number of areas in the first subprime fiasco in the mid-90s and then way way back going back to the annuity issuers – Baldwin United and others – back in the early-80s. They were selling insurance policies and cooking up all their future assumed income up front.

Read the interview ->

Enron was really just a giant leveraged hedge fund

The next thing that caught our eye was even with what looked to be some pretty aggressive accounting, we calculated the company’s pre-tax return on capital including their derivatives book to be somewhere a little north of 6% but below 7%. And based on what Enron bonds were trading at and the equity risk premium, we realize this company wasn’t earning its cost of capital.

So it was a giant leveraged hedge fund as my partner Doug Mellon said at the time that was earning 6% a year if you would, on a leveraged balance sheet and you were gonna pay six to ten times book for it. It made no sense.

Then finally, there were the more interesting secondary issues like the insider selling through 2000. A lot of executive departures in 2000. So all these things for us were enough for us to start initiating a position in November of 2000.

Read the interview ->

Skilling triggered the position

The “A-Ha!” moment for me that I suddenly knew that something was not in the grey area but the black area was when Skilling resigned. That’s when I knew.

When Skilling resigned abruptly at that point I knew that something was very very wrong that we couldn’t see. And what we couldn’t see of course was the gua ranted payments that they had made to the offshore entities should they sell them assets were suddenly loss-making.  So in order to get these toxic assets off their books, they agreed to issue Enron shares as a “make-good” to the offshore entities. And they didn’t disclose that.

That was the hidden troll, in terms of an equity analyst.

Read the interview ->

Condos in China are nothing but empty shells

The Chinese bubble has its own interesting set of anecdotes and circumstances and one of the more interesting ones from our perspective as a westerner is that when people were buying 2 and 3 condos in Miami for example, they would rent the 2nd or 3rd condo to try and get some rental income. In China, that’s not the case.

They’re empty shells. When you buy a condo, you’re getting an empty shell and nothing more. By and large most of the developments are 1100 square foot boxes. And they [the owners] don’t rent them because people want to keep them basically as pristine as possible for when they flip them because new is better than old. So ironically, you have people that are buying multiple condos here to speculate who are carrying themselves – there’s no rental income.

Read the interview ->

A mortgage for a Chinese condo sucks up 60 to 100% of your pretax income

Keep in mind that the average median income in China, and it’s only slightly higher in the cities, is something like $3500 per person. Typical second-tier city real-estate prices have now gone above $100 a square foot. So a typical 100 square meter condo is probably going to cost you after all your expenses (if you build it out to live) $120,000 to $140,000 US. Well say you’re a dual income couple and you make $7000 to $10,000 a year total. OK? Even if you put down the 20% down that everyone’s pointing to, that’s 20% on your purchase price. You’re still paying mortgage interest of probably … 60 to 100% of your income, pretax.

Read the interview ->

China’s housing market is completely high-end

The other interesting thing about the boom here is that it is completely high end. When people talk to me about China’s “migration of people” into the cities and the population and blah blah blah, and the growth of the economy, I said “That’s all and good but they’re putting up the equivalent of New York City highrises at almost New York City prices for a populous that is 1/10th of that per-capita income.” So this building boom is aimed at: A) the corporate market, corporate highrises and office buildings or B) very high end of the residential market. It’s not the masses – it’s for people speculating.

Read the interview ->

Mark-to-market accounting is fine…if there’s a liquid market

Yes, there’s nothing wrong with mark-to-market accounting if there’s a liquid market in instruments. The problem really for Enron, and then as we found out later for the banking industry in the latest financial crisis, was really mark-to-model accounting. Mark-to-market for lots of derivatives is really, for the vast majority of them, looks towards something that’s liquidly traded, say something like a Treasury bond or IBM stock. And if it’s an option on IBM stock, or say it;s a simple mortgage-backed bond that trades off of Treasuries, it’s fairly easy to get a reasonable set of assumptions as  to what your derivative  might be worth by looking at the price of the “underlying” as they say.

Read the interview ->

He likes girl scout cookies

When Chanos walked into the conference room, he brought with him a fresh box of Girl Scout Cookies. Thin Mints, to be precise. The man has good taste!

Dubai was a property bubble

Dubai was a property bubble. Plain and simple. Go to Dubai and see what happened. It was…what I call it the “Edifice complex” – it’s just, we can grow by putting up lots and lots of buildings and trying to attract people to come here, stay here, and put up offices here and sooner or later, you put up too many. And whether it’s the Palm Island project or the indoor ski resort or, you know, take your pick because everyone has lots of Dubai stories. At first it seemed plausible and economic and by the end of the boom, they were putting on drawing boards all kinds of crazy projects. So it didn’t take a rocket scientist to see the excesses. They were pretty visible to the naked eye.

Read the interview ->

Want to learn about other men like Chanos?

Check out The Greatest Trades of All Time ->

Join the conversation about this story »

Filed under: Classics, Bugatti

You might remember a story from last summer about the recovery of a vintage Bugatti from a lake in Italy. The story was both fascinating and sad, and definitely one worth recounting.

The tale begins, or so we’re told, in Paris in 1934 when a Swiss man acquired the car from legendary racecar driver Rene Dreyfus in a game of poker. The man headed home in his new car, but when he arrived at the Swiss border, he was required to pay customs on the car. Not having enough money, the man left the car at Lake Maggiore. By law, the Swiss officials were supposed to destroy the car, and they apparently did so by pushing it into the lake.

A little more than thirty years later, the Bugatti was discovered by a local diving club in the summer of 1967. The car became a local attraction for divers who would plunge more than 170 feet to see the remains at the bottom of the lake. It would seem that the Bugatti would forever remain there until a tragedy changed its fate. A young local man, Damiano Tamagni was brutally beaten and killed, and the diving club decided that they would try and retrieve the car and sell it to benefit the foundation created in his name to combat youth violence. It took more than thirty volunteers and nine months, but the Bugatti was finally lifted from the lake on July 12, 2009.

From there the Bugatti was put up for auction for the highest bidder. At Bonham’s Retromobile sale in Paris earlier this year, the Type 22 Brescia brought a top bid of £228,000 – around $350,000 USD – much higher than the pre-auction estimate. The winning bidder? None other than the Mullin Museum in Oxnard, CA. The museum has decided to not restore the Bugatti and display it in its current condition.

We were overjoyed to see the Type 22 Brescia in person at the museum’s grand opening last week, and were fascinated with the different parts of the car that survived three-quarters of a century submerged underwater. The right side of the body is completely gone, but other items like the tires and some of the gauges are perfectly intact. You can see the car in detail in the high-res gallery below.

Photos by Drew Phillips / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

Pics Aplenty: Recovered 1925 Bugatti Type 22 Brescia in detail originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jennifer Schonberger at Motley Fool interviews Professor Robert Shiller: Shiller: The Housing Recovery Could Be on Shaky Ground.

A couple of comments from Shiller, first on house prices…

Keep reading at Calculated Risk >

Join the conversation about this story »

Filed under: Budget, Hatchback, Nissan, Reviews

Small, affordable cars are like mushrooms. They quietly go about their business in the soggy bottom of the market, tolerated more than celebrated. Occasionally, the fungi mutates into a truffle, and so it is with this less-respected branch of autodom.

The Nissan Versa is no market newcomer. Introduced in 2007, it’s trudged along unloved in the U.S. while faring better in markets outside the States as the Tiida. As with cuisine, some regional flavors are an acquired taste. The Versa hatchback has a decidedly “big in Europe” thing going on, with its distinctive shape and tall-hatch proportions. Taking into consideration Nissan’s close relationship with Renault, the styling even seems Gallically influenced. We nabbed a pair of Versas, an S with six-speed manual and an SL with CVT, to see if Nissan’s efforts are fetid or delicious. Make the jump to find out.

Photos by Steven J. Ewing / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

Continue reading Review: 2010 Nissan Versa lives life large

Review: 2010 Nissan Versa lives life large originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With the market totally shrugging off any of the recent ructions, David Rosenberg of Gluskin-Sheff turns his attention to the simple question of valuation.

According to the Shiller P/E ratio, the S&P 500 is now 35% overvalued — a full
one standard deviation event.  

The April data was just updated and showed the inflation-adjusted normalized
P/E, premised on “bird-in-the-hand” (as opposed to consensus earnings
forecasts, which is historically more than 20% higher than we actually get — one
reason why Wall Street banks are dubbed “the sell side”) 10-year trailing profits,
expanded to over 22x from 21x in March.  

This is not nosebleed territory, but it is expensive; the historical average is 16.4x. 
So, this implies that the market is currently 34.7% overvalued benchmarked
against the historical norm.  It would be nice to say that a higher-than-normal
P/E is justified by low inflation and low interest rates.  But frankly, real bond
yields are not that far from their long-run averages; however, equity valuation is,
and something is going to give at some point. 

Valuation metrics are not meant to be timing devices.  Assets, securities, and
currencies can stay overvalued for extended periods of time, but inevitably Bob
Farrell’s rule number one on the concept of “mean reversion” will come into
play.  The operative strategy is to buy low and sell high, not the opposite; and to
be paid to take on risk as opposed to be paying for taking on the risk. 
Defensive income-oriented strategies, at this point, make perfect sense from our
lens.    

We expect the valuation debate to get more and more attention in the days and weeks ahead.

Join the conversation about this story »

Every year, the entertainment industry pushes Canada to update its copyright laws — which are already quite strict — with some misguided propaganda about how Canada is a “piracy haven.” Of course, the facts don’t support that assertion, but the entertainment industry keeps insisting that it’s the case, and that the only way to deal with this is through ever more draconian copyright laws to, as the entertainment top industry lawyers have falsely claimed, “bring Canada into the 21st century.” After public protests and outcries prevented a few previous attempts at bad copyright law updates (basically written by the entertainment industry) from being put in place, last year, the government held various public consultations and asked for feedback. The written feedback was strongly against more draconian copyright law, but it looks like the industry has started up a questionable moral panic campaign as it gets ready to try again to push copyright law in the wrong direction.

It kicks off with an article in Canadian Business magazine (sent in by a bunch of you) which is so ridiculously one-sided as to be laughable. That article kicks off with a record label owner complaining that sales are down. You think? Maybe that’s because you’re selling obsolete plastic discs, rather than updating your business model. The label owner goes on to point out that others — such as studio engineers are losing their jobs as well, and this is tragic. Sure, it’s tragic, but when markets change, jobs change too. We used to be a nation of farmers, and now a tiny percentage of the population farms. The telephone company used to employ thousands of operators to connect your call, but technology did away with that particular function. Markets change, jobs change. It’s no fun for those involved, but it’s no reason to pass laws that you think will protect those jobs (even though they won’t).

The article goes on to trot out the typical ridiculous stats and bogus claims from the industry, and the only attempt it has at anyone presenting the other side of the debate are some quotes from Michael Geist, who is introduced as “a media gadfly whose left-leaning views on the issue are openly disparaged by many in Canada’s corporate sector.” Uh, wow. Clearly, whoever wrote the article had no interest in hearing the other side of the story — such as the evidence that the issue here is not copyright at all, but business model choices. The views on copyrights are not anti-business, as the article presents, but pro-consumer, which when done right is also pro-business. It’s clearly a media hit job in anticipation of the next round of copyright debates.

Along those lines, a few folks have submitted a writeup by Canadian intellectual property lawyer Richard Owens, who claims that the public consultation on copyright in Canada last year was not fair because it was dominated by evil pirates and “shadowy organizations.” Seriously. The article dismisses the public consultation because sites like TorrentFreak (which he mischaracterizes, ignoring that the site is a well-respected journalistic endeavor) encouraged people to make their views known, and that many of the submissions came via a submission system put together by the Canadian Coalition of Electronic Rights — which he also mischaracterizes as “a clandestine group of mod-chip manufacturers.”

However, as Michael Geist notes in his response to Owens, lots of special interest groups had form letter offerings available — including the entertainment industry. But no one chose to use them. While form letters may not be the fairest system in general, the fact that there were form letter submission services for pretty much all points of view, it seems reasonable to assume that anyone on any side of this debate could have used one, and thus, the results are, perhaps, somewhat representative. Owens claims that many of the submissions were likely made by foreigners, but as CCER notes in its own response, it required a legitimate Canadian address, and it’s unlikely that many faked such a thing. Even if a few did, it’s unlikely that most of those submissions were from foreigners. Owens goes on to complain that many who submitted their views were “poorly informed,” but reading through the details, it appears “poorly informed” just means “did not agree with Owens.”

Amusingly, Owens also appears to cherry pick certain industry representatives to suggest that only they should have been able to comment on the issue:

We sampled twenty-five percent of the substantive individual Submissions, and of the professional authors, musicians, filmmakers, performers, photographers and designers, more than 90% were in favour of robust copyright protection as a means to secure their livelihood and protect their artistic integrity.

Uh, yes. If you ask those who have a law protecting them from competition, of course many of them will say that law is great and they want it strengthened. But that’s got nothing to do with the purpose of copyright law. Copyright law is supposed to be about promoting overall progress (and, yes, I know that’s the US version, but the general concept is true in Canada as well), and that means for both the public and for the content creators. To claim that only the content creators’ views should be considered when discussing copyright is incredibly disingenuous.

In the end, it’s clear that Canadians are gearing up for yet another fight over copyright law, and the early media campaign is beginning. It starts with bogus stories with little basis in fact, combined with weak attacks on the public who oppose such draconian laws. Hopefully, Canadian politicians will see through such charades quickly.

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Chrysler Group LLC today announced its financial results for the first quarter of 2010. The Auburn Hills automaker posted a $143 million operating profit and showed positive cash flow for the period ending March 31, 2010.

“This positive operating result in the first quarter is a concrete indication to our customers, dealers and suppliers that the 2010 targets we have set for ourselves are achievable,” said CEO Sergio Marchionne. “We are also generating cash to finance the investments being made in our product portfolio and brand repositioning,”

Marchionne said that in 2010 alone, Chrysler will launch 16 all-new or refreshed products.

“There has already been an uptick in customer traffic in our dealerships in Q1 and we are confident that Chrysler sales will continue to increase as we launch new products in the second quarter, beginning with the all-new 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee. Moreover, later this year, Chrysler will launch 16 all-new or refreshed products including the all-new Chrysler 300, Dodge Charger, E-CUV, the iconic Fiat 500, and the Sebring replacement.”

We’re guessing E-CUV stands for an electric crossover utility vehicle – so stay tuned for more details on that.

2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee:

– By: Stephen Calogera

Filed under: Sedan, Plants/Manufacturing, Chevrolet, GM

We first heard that General Motors might add production of the next-generation Chevrolet Malibu to its Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly plant back in December, and that news has been confirmed today. GM Chairman Ed Whitacre held a press conference this morning at which he announced the automaker had paid back the remaining $5.8 billion owed to the U.S. and Canadian governments a full five years ahead of schedule. He made the announcement at the company’s Fairfax plant in Kansas that currently builds the Chevrolet Malibu and Buick LaCrosse, a perfect venue to announce new plant investments for the next generation Malibu.

GM will spend a total of $257 million to get both the Fairfax and Detroit-Hamtramck plants ready for the new Malibu. The Kansas City plant will receive a $136 million investment and be the new car’s primary production site, while $121 million will be spent tooling up the Detroit plant to build the 2012 Malibu alongside the Chevrolet Volt.

The Detroit-HHamtramck plant currently builds the Cadillac DTS and Buick Lucerne, both of which are expected to end production some time in the next year. The Lucerne will likely be dropped from the lineup and the DTS will be replaced by the Cadillac XTS, which will likely be built in Oshawa.

[Source: Automotive News, sub. req.]

Continue reading GM investing $257M in Fairfax and Detroit plants to build next-gen Malibu

GM investing $257M in Fairfax and Detroit plants to build next-gen Malibu originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 11:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been a while since we’ve asked you a Question of the Day so we thought what better day to do it than on hump-day. Today, we’re asking you which Japanese brand you think has the best model lineup.

For this segment we’re staying away from luxury vehicles so you can pick from Nissan, Honda, Toyota and Mazda.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below and let us know which Japanese vehicle is your favorite.

– By: Kap Shah

Among the many defining – and practical – tenets of the Primal Blueprint is the good old 80/20 Principle, the guideline that suggests we needn’t be 100% perfect 100% of the time to achieve great Primal health. It’s the sensible caveat, a functional motivator, the saving grace for many of us. It means we don’t guilt ourselves (or hand down punishing cardio sentences) when we indulge on a special occasion or get caught in circumstances that don’t allow for fully Primal conditions. It means shedding the traditional view of a “diet” and exercise program as a select list of actions we either ace or bomb. As I’ve said many a time, the PB doesn’t make the perfect the enemy of the good. Finally, the 80/20 Principle encourages us to wholly own every choice and respect the impact of our total lifestyle within our personal Primal commitments. An immensely empowering – but sometimes challenging – feature of the Primal Blueprint is its subjectivity. Although it offers plenty of solid guidelines, tips, lists and recipes (not to mention an incredible community of fellow adherents!), the day-in-day-out isn’t regimented into a set of check-off boxes. Bringing your honest intentions and Primal lens to each choice is usually enough to stay on track. While your Primal perspective each day is an earnest 100%, the practical execution trends toward 80% for most people, especially those new to the PB. But what happens when focus temporarily wanes or life circumstances become – well – more imperfectly “real”? How do you push back on the tendency of 80/20 to creep toward lesser ratios?

How It Happens

Life has a funny way of shifting the routine just when we get secure and comfortable. A new baby, a new job, a move, an illness, an injury, maybe just a month when the schedule picks up can throw a serious wrench in your finely tuned Primal practice. These transitions, whether they overhaul life or just make for some bumps in the road, shift everyday routines enough that suddenly the old schedule and habits don’t apply.

What used to be a “fallback” 20% gradually, insidiously gravitates toward 30%, even 40%. Instead of a margin of error, the concept of 20% takes on a new life of its own. Practical contingency gives way to self-justification. And so the cycle continues…. Primal focus and/or motivation wane, practical planning apparatus isn’t maintained, and daily habits begin to shift.

Maybe you used to make more elaborate Primal meals for lunch or dinner, but now can’t find the time. Perhaps you gave up your gym membership to save some hard earned money each month and now you struggle to get motivated enough for full workouts at home. You might have done a CSA last season, but chose not to participate this year and now feel wholly uninspired by the produce at the grocery store. A new job might include enough travel that you’re facing new challenges to keep up on your Primal eating, workouts and sleep. Maybe you moved to be closer to family, but now host so much that your meals mirror their tastes more than your Primal interests. Maybe you just feel like you’re in an overall slump and have been reverting lately to old pre-Primal habits.

How to Spot It

You might not realize you’re backsliding until you’ve been going that direction for a while. For some folks, the scale (or your trouser button) is the first to offer the suggestion. For others, it’s a delayed return to the gym only to find a downgrade on the lifting ability or new found post-workout soreness. There’s a million ways to take your Primal temperature, and I’d venture to say that most of us do it in some form consciously or unconsciously. Maybe just forgetting to do exactly that– or avoiding it – is indicator #1 that you’re indeed backsliding.

Do you find yourself more tired in the afternoon? Are you craving carbs suddenly? What’s your workout schedule these days? If you made a food journal, would you be afraid to read it? Do you ultimately feel like you’ve been investing in yourself lately? Where have things fallen short? Where have they stayed strong? Finally, what’s behind the change? Sometimes all it takes is some honest questioning. You just have to be willing to face the music.

How to Rein It In

So, how can 30 or 40 become 20 again? If you’ve been there before, trust that it will be easier to make it back than you think. The hard part will be shifting course. Once you start steering in the right direction and rebuild momentum, you’re good to go. Your Primal template might not look the same when you’re done (a good thing), but you’ll re-experience the advantages and wonder why you ever backslid in the first place.

The crux of the solution here is realizing what exactly needs to change. Life circumstances shift, and our routines need to transform with them. The Blueprint can be easily refitted to do exactly that. Whether the 30-40 lapse is related to a temporary disruption or a longer-term shift, it’s time for a healthy – and, I’d argue, periodically necessary – Primal renovation, so to speak. Choose your own metaphor: makeover, revolution, reconstruction, molting, what have you.

Examine your routine and see what still works – what fits your lifestyle and maintains your motivation. Then look at what needs a substitution, and lay out a plan for yourself. If it’s your schedule that’s got you struggling, consider the Primal for Busy People approach – food, weight loss, workout, sleep and stress management, and socialization.

Check out our past tips, and our good readers’ comments. If travel has you grappling for Primal ideas, brainstorm your plan of attack next time you have to head out into the wild blue yonder – with some help for how to forage in less desirable territory, and get a Primal worthy workout in the modest space of that beloved Microtel.

If the 20% drifted into higher territory because of motivation issues, it’s time to shake up your Primal life and get out of the box it’s narrowed to. Skip the gym and head out into the world. Go for broke with new recipes. Get out and play! Make your goal this: have some fun. Design a weekend’s Primal adventure – whether it’s in the kitchen, the mountains or your backyard. Go whole hog, and see how it makes you feel.

Finally, sometimes a brief lapse or longer slump suggests the need for reflection. Have patience and invest in that process.

Recommit to the Primal basics and do some thinking about what you want your lifestyle and overall health to look like. Examine what’s missing. Imagine what you want to take on. Re-envision. Recreate. Recommit – and Grok on.

Share your thoughts on facing – and turning around – a Primal backslide. Have you found yourself delving into fuzzy Primal math? How did you get back to the golden 80/20, and what does it mean for your Primal practice?

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Related posts:

1. 80/20 Principle
2. Fasting May Stave Off Jet Lag

General Motors’s CEO Ed Whitacre announced today that the Detroit automaker has made its final paying of $5.8 billion to the U.S. Treasury and Export Development Canada, paying back its government loans in full.

The announcement went hand-in-hand with the company’s announcement of an investment of $257 million at its Fairfax Kansas and Detroit Hamtramck assembly plants. The investment will prepare the Fairfax plant to build the next-generation of the Chevrolet Malibu sedan and will make Detroit Hamtramck a second source for Malibu production.

“GM is able to repay the taxpayers in full, with interest, ahead of schedule, because more customers are buying vehicles like the Chevrolet Malibu and Buick LaCrosse we build here in Fairfax,” said Whitacre. “We are now building some of the best cars, trucks, and crossovers we have ever built, and customers are taking note. Our dealers are increasing their sales, we are investing in our plants, and we are restoring and creating jobs.”

The U.S., Canadian and Ontario government originally provided $8.4 billion of loan as a part of the new GM launch. Today’s payment of $5.8 billion completes the payback of these loans.

“GM’s ability to pay back the loans ahead of schedule is a sign that our plan is working, and that we are on the right track. It is also an important first step toward allowing our stockholders to reduce their equity investments in GM,” said Whitacre. “We still have much hard work ahead of us, but we are making progress toward our vision of designing, building, and selling the world’s best vehicles.

“We appreciate the support the taxpayers have given GM, and our great new products are tangible results of that support,” he said.

GM said that sales of its four core brands (Chevrolet, Buick, GMC and Cadillac) are up 36 percent through March versus the same period in 2009. It said that the Chevy Equinox, Camaro and Traverse; GMC Terrain and Acadia; Buick LaCrosse; and Cadillac SRX – remain in short supply at GM dealers due to high demand.

– By: Omar Rana

Later this week, Dante’s Inferno players will be able to download Trials of St. Lucia, a DLC pack that adds a second playable character to the game. Those who want a bit of an edge when the

From Green Right Now Reports

The Arbor Day Foundation will be honoring 17 individuals, organizations and corporations for their tree planting, nature education and conservation efforts.

The winners will receive their awards at Arbor Day’s annual banquet May 1 at the Lied Lodge & Conference Center at the Arbor Day Farm outside Lincoln, Nebraska.

The foundation pays tribute to the friends of trees every year, since 1972, to highlight the need to conserve and restore the nation’s urban and wild forests.

“The winners honored this year are doing their part to inspire the next generation of tree planters and conservationists across the United States,” said John Rosenow, chief executive and founder of the Arbor Day Foundation, in a statement. “The work done with their hands and with their hearts will have a significant impact on the world today and for years to come.”

The top award this year will go to David Nowak, project leader with the U.S. Forest Service’s Northern Research Station. Nowak will receive the J. Sterling Morton Award, named for the founder of Arbor Day, for his work saving urban forests.

Nowak led a team of researchers that helped show the benefits of urban forests, and by the early 1990s, he was the first and only person who had scientifically sampled and assessed the urban forests of Chicago and Oakland, Calif.

His work helped city leaders in both places to appreciate the value of trees and led to the quantify the benefits of urban forests. By the early 1990s, he was the first person to statistically sample and assess the urban forests of Chicago and Oakland, Calif. Because of his work, city understood the value of trees. The project led to the development of i-Tree, a collaborative program that helps communities measure the environmental services provided by trees, which evolved into an “i-Tree tool,” according to Arbor Day.

Nowak’s i-Tree tool is now being used by thousands of communities worldwide.

Nowak was among the scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change who were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize alongside Al Gore, Jr. in 2007.

The other 2010 award winners include several individuals and organizations and three corporations. Arbor Day’s list of honorees:

• Education at Big K of Macon, Ga., will be awarded The Good Steward Award, which recognizes landowners who practice sustainability on private lands from which others can learn. Education at Big K is owned by former Atlanta Braves baseball players Ryan Klesko and John Smoltz, and the tree farm is making a positive impact by teaching conservation and environmental stewardship to urban audiences of central Georgia. Klesko and Smoltz began purchasing land in 1998 with the goal to create a tree farm. Since 2002, they have used their farm to educate people about the need for trees and conservation.

• Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper and the Mile High Million Tree Initiative will receive the Public Awareness of Trees Award for bringing attention to the importance of planting trees. The City of Denver and Mayor Hickenlooper created the initiative to triple the metro area’s tree canopy to 18 percent by 2025, and the Denver Greenprint Council worked with many groups to spread the word. The Mile High Million group took advantage of local resources to inform the citizens of Denver about the need to plant trees. More than 1,000 delegates and dignitaries from the Democratic National Convention volunteered at 30 community-project sites around Denver. The delegation included Michelle Obama and former president Jimmy Carter. The group also worked with the NBA’s Denver Nuggets and Major League Baseball’s Colorado Rockies to draw attention to the initiative.

• Dave Mooter of Kennard, Neb., will receive the Frederick Law Olmsted Award for his lifelong commitment to tree planting and conservation in Nebraska. Mooter spent 25 years working at the Nebraska Forest Service to create healthier and more extensive community forests throughout the state. He worked to establish a tree-planting partnership with the State Department of Roads, which adds planting trees as part of highway renovation plans. This program was highly successful and replicated by communities across the U.S. He also played a key role in helping to recruit more than 100 communities in the state to earn Tree City USA recognition, which ranks Nebraska in the top 15 nationally.

• David Bragdon of Portland, Ore., will receive the Excellence in Urban Forest Leadership Award for his leadership in advancing sustainable community forestry. As president of the Metro Council, the elected regional government for three counties and 25 cities in the Portland area, Bragdon helped develop a major network of trails, parks and natural spaces. The project, called The Interwine, encourages recreation, connection to nature, and active transportation such as walking, running and cycling. Since he started his tenure as president of the Metro Council in 2002, Bragdon has protected more than 10,000 acres of natural spaces.

• Jim Schmitt of Gering, Neb., will receive the Forest Lands Leadership Award for advancing sustainable forestry efforts on public forest land. Schmitt has been providing a hands-on education experience for 1,200 young people each year since 1989 that highlights the importance of planting trees at Fort Robinson State Park in northwest Nebraska. He serves as chairman of the Fort Robinson Tree Plant, a project of the Boy Scouts of America’s Long Peaks Council. Each year, scouts gather to plant 15,000 trees at the park, learn about proper planting techniques and learn lessons in soil and water conservation and forestry. The project also worked with the staff at Fort Robinson State Park to create a natural trail and clean debris at the Spring Creek area. Scouts from Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, South Dakota and Minnesota have participated in the Tree Plant project, planting more than 400,000 trees on this important piece of public land.

• Casey Trees of Washington, D.C., and Green City Partnerships Program of the Seattle area will receive the Award for Excellence in Volunteer Management for their outstanding efforts to engage volunteers in tree-planting initiatives. Thousands of young trees are thriving throughout the District of Columbia thanks in large part to the hard work of volunteers from Casey Trees. Casey Trees, a nonprofit organization dedicated to restoring the tree canopy in Washington, D.C., set a goal to increase the city’s tree canopy to 40 percent coverage by 2035. Since 2001, Casey Trees has trained 700 Citizen Foresters to become volunteer leaders and educators. These foresters are required to learn how to plant, care for and identify trees, and tell others how trees benefit a community. They, in turn, teach other volunteers in the community the basics of tree planting and care. Last year, more than 1,600 adults and 600 young children participated in 54 tree-planting events. The Cascade Land Conservancy’s Green City Partnerships Program is raising a volunteer army in the Seattle area numbering in the thousands to help plant trees in public parks and natural areas. Conservation organizations from Seattle, Tacoma, Kirkland, Redmond, and Kent, Wash., make up the Green City Partnerships Program. Created to reverse a trend of decreasing tree canopy, the Green City Partnerships Program last year alone provided opportunities for more than 10,000 volunteers to participate first-hand in urban forestry restoration events. These volunteers donated a combined 87,000 hours of manpower in 2009. Since the program’s inception in 2004, the program has engaged nearly 20,000 people in the area.

• Steve Koehn of Annapolis, Md., will receive the Champion of Trees Award for advancing public forestry policy. Koehn played a vital leadership role in the passage of the Maryland Sustainable Forestry Act of 2009. This historic act recognizes that an important way to clean Maryland’s vast Chesapeake Bay ecosystem is through healthy forests. This law could change the way many states view watershed restoration. It also encourages Maryland landowners to protect their forested areas and practice sound sustainable forestry and stewardship. Koehn has been a longtime champion of trees, with 26 years of experience in forest resource management. He has served as Maryland’s Department of Natural Resources Forest Service Director for nine years.

• Robert Sympson of Lynbrook, N.Y., will receive the Lawrence Enersen Award, which honors those who have had a positive impact on the environment through a lifelong commitment to tree planting and conservation at a community level. Since Sympson retired as a teacher in 1991, he has dedicated his life to environmental projects in the villages of East Rockaway and Lynbrook, N.Y. He helped create a tree board in East Rockaway, and as a result the village has been a Tree City USA community for 12 years. He also helped launch a shade tree planting partnership in the village, where homeowners put up matching funds and youth groups plant trees on the private property. Sympson also helped Lynbrook develop a community garden, and worked with the community’s school district to plan a community walking trail and arboretum at Lynbrook South Middle School. He also played a key role in the establishment of the New York State Urban and Community Forestry Council and the Nassau County Forest Management Plan.

• Mary Kay, Inc., of Dallas will receive the Rachel Carson Award for its dedication to teach young children the importance of nature. A year ago, Mary Kay found a way to strengthen its support of victims of domestic violence and its commitment to environmental sustainability. As a result, Mary Kay helped children of domestic violence make meaningful connections to the natural world by building Nature Explore Outdoor Classrooms at shelters for victims across the U.S. So far, the company has built Nature Explore Outdoor Classrooms in Chicago, Atlanta and Hackensack, N.J., and two more will be built in 2010 in Dallas and Los Angeles. These Classrooms are providing an opportunity for children to make a deep connection to the natural world in a peaceful environment.

• The Tree Commission Academy of Columbus, Ohio, will receive the Education Award for creating a conservation program that will have a long-lasting positive impact on communities. The commission is empowering people throughout the state to strengthen the forest in individual communities. Started under the leadership of the Ohio Urban Forestry Program staff, the Tree Commission Academy is training citizen volunteers who serve on local tree commissions to manage and care for their trees more effectively. Classes cover topics such as urban forestry, arboriculture, municipal government and human relations. Each student completes 50 hours of class time to graduate from the academy. Since it opened, nearly 200 students representing more than 70 Ohio communities have participated in the academy.

• Perkins County Conservation District of Bison, S.D., will receive the Excellence in Partnership Award for collaborative work to advance forestry efforts. The Northwest Area Cottonwood Re-Establishment Program, led by the Perkins County Conservation District, seeks to restore native cottonwood trees to private and public lands in the Grand, Moreau and Cheyenne watersheds in northwest South Dakota. This project is a partnership between six conservation districts, several state agencies, the U.S. Forest Service, South Dakota State University and numerous private landowners. As a result of their collaboration, more than 9,000 cottonwood trees on 65 acres of both public and private lands have been planted. These trees will grow to filter pollutants from adjacent agricultural lands, provide habitat and food for wildlife, reduce soil erosion and restore the beauty of the natural area.

• Sheila Flint and the Strathcona County Recreation Department of Sherwood Park, Alberta, will receive the Celebration Award, which honors Arbor Day celebrations that best represent the spirit of the tree-planters’ holiday. More than 1,000 first-grade students participated in Strathcona’s Arbor Day celebration in 2009 thanks to the work of Flint, the urban forester and horticulturalist for the county. Students enjoyed a day filled with planting trees, inspired learning and fun events as they discovered the benefits of trees. The day-long celebration also includes a nature walk, a storytelling session geared to connect students with nature, “Nature-cise” activities that teach students how to play and be active outdoors, making tree cookies and a tree-planting demonstration. Each student receives a free seedling and learns how to plant and care for their new tree.

• Laurence Wiseman of Potomac, Md., will receive the Legacy Award for his lifetime work on conservation issues as president of the American Forest Foundation. Through Wiseman’s leadership, the American Forest Foundation set the bar for excellence in forest conservation, wildlife and watershed protection and environmental education. The Foundation’s Project Learning Tree is a highly respected and widely used environmental education program throughout the country. More than 25,000 educators attend workshops every year to discover new ways to help young people think critically about environmental issues. The Foundation also began the American Tree Farm System, which is the largest internationally recognized certification system for small forests. Today, Wiseman continues to support conservation issues as chairman of the U.S. Forest Service’s National Urban and Community Forestry Advisory Council.

• The Progressive Group of Insurance Companies and T-Mobile USA will receive the 2010 Promise to the Earth Award, which recognizes sustained commitment and leadership by a corporation that partners with the Arbor Day Foundation on special projects. Progressive has teamed up with the Arbor Day Foundation since 2007 to plant trees in our nation’s forests. To raise awareness of its paperless program, Progressive offered to plant a tree for every customer who opted to receive policy information electronically. Progressive contributed $1 to the Foundation to plant a tree in the customer’s honor. The results were tremendous, with 1.5 million customers making the switch resulting in 1.5 million trees being planted in forests that were in urgent need of replanting. While Progressive’s tree planting campaign has wrapped up, it continues to offer discounts where available to customers who choose to go paperless. In addition, Progressive celebrated its 70th anniversary by planting 70 trees in each of the six cities that serve as home to one of the company’s call centers. Progressive employees took part in the tree-planting events, which were held in city parks. In 2009, T-Mobile raised its commitment to the Earth to a new level by planting more than 1 million trees through a partnership with the Arbor Day Foundation. Through the company’s “T-Mobile Plant-A-Tree Project, T-Mobile has encouraged customers to switch to electronic statements. For each customer who made the switch, T-Mobile made a donation to the Foundation to plant a tree. During the last year, T-Mobile funded more than 1 million trees, which were distributed to residents in areas that were devastated by Hurricane Katrina and planted in Tiger Bay and John M. Bethea State Forests in Florida, Hiawatha National Forest in Michigan and the San Bernardino National Forest in California.

Past winners of Arbor Day Awards include Wangari Maathai, who also won a Nobel Peace Prize; Chicago Mayor Richard Daley; Stewart Udall, former U.S. Secretary of the Interior; veteran journalist Bill Kurtis; Enterprise Rent-A-Car; and the Walt Disney Company.

The U.S. House Urban Caucus’ Urban Parks Taskforce organized a briefing on urban parks and their role in creating green spaces which can revitalize neighborhoods, improve health, and create jobs. Parks also play a major role in fighting childhood obesity, providing safe and healthy places to play. Caucus members heard from Joe Hughes, Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology; Susan Wachter, Professor of Financial Management, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania; Eddie George, former NFL player and landscape architect; and Salin Geevarghese, Senior Advisor, Office of Sustainable Housing & Communities, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA) and ASLA played key roles in putting the panel together.

Introducing the briefing, Representative Chaka Fattah, Democrat from Philadelphia, who is chair of the caucus, said a new consensus is forming among the administration and legislative branch: urban parks can’t be separated from broader urban revitalization efforts.

Representative Albio Sires, Democrat from New Jersey, sponsor of the Urban Revitalization and Livable Communities Act (HR 3734), which now has 114 House co-sponsors, said when he arrived from Cuba in his youth, local parks were his refuge. In his community, parks provide a crucial space for working class families and a foundation for ”important social structures.”

Sires said parks need both to enable both ”passive” activities (sun-bathing, dog walking, or sitting and reading the newspaper) and “active” activities (frisbee-throwing, jogging, touch football). “What’s active, what’s passive — we need to plan these out and integrate into park design.” In addition to the health benefits, he argued that parks are crucial to economic revitalization. ”If you fix up a park, you’ll see the houses nearby get fixed up. Businesses come back.”  

However, Sires said small city mayors still need to continually hunt for funds wherever they can get them, “pulling a little from here and a little from there,” to get their local park projects off the ground. To increase the federal funds that can be used for park investment, he led the development of the Urban Revitalization and Livable Communities Act.

The panelists made arguments for increasing investment in urban parks:

Joe Hughes, Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology: After studying the role parks can play in resolving the real estate crisis, Hughes found that under-performing commercial real estate in urban areas could be transformed into urban parks. Vacant properties, if turned into parks, become productive assets, instead of economic drains on local communities. “Parks play a role in market restoration, value creation, job creation, green space development, and neighborhood stabilization.”

In the case of Atlanta, which has had a high rate of bank failures, a five billion investment in transforming underperforming real estate into urban parks could create 100,000 new jobs. Additionally, the plan could yield higher property values (and, therefore, higher tax revenue). To make his case, Hughes pointed to a study that shows homes less than 1,000 feet from a park are worth 11 percent more than other homes. “Parks are critical drivers of economic development. We should be thinking at a big scale about how to transform our urban core.”

Susan Wachter, Professor of Financial Management, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania: “Parks help create communities of lasting value,” which Wachter says is the true measure of neighborhood sustainability. “Parks bring nature to the city, create safe spaces, enable social interaction, sequester carbon.” Most importantly, Wachter added, parks can create environmentally and economically resilient communities.

She cited a “before and after event” study done in Philadelphia that isolated the effects of investments in various forms of green infrastructure. The return on investment (ROI) was high for homes near the improvements. Planting trees raised nearby property’s value by 10 percent. Improved streetscapes yielded up to 28 percent gains. While residing next to a vacant lot dropped property values by 20 percent, stabilizing the empty lot led to a 17 percent increase. Being located within a business improvement district (BID) improved property values by 30 percent. “Planting trees alone can help create a virtous cycle of reinvestment.”

Eddie George, former NFL player and landscape architect: “I am all about healthy people and healthy spaces.” George said parks are linked to economic development, combat the urban heat island effect, and provide critical stormwater management services. In Columbus, Ohio, George’s firm is revitalizing the downtown, pulling down a vacant 9-acre shopping mall. “The City Center Mall outlived its usefulness. It was designed as a fortress and cut off connectivity. The demise of the mall led to increased disinvestment in the area.”

The new 9-acre park George is designing in the mall’s place, Columbus Commons, will tranform the space into a sort of Millennium Park for the city. The park, which will open in 2011, will offer mixed-use spaces and ground-level retail. There will be green roofs on parking garages.

George argued that maintaining parks will cost local governments. “Many cities can’t afford this, but we need to invest.”

Salin Geevarghese, Senior Advisor, Office of Sustainable Housing & Communities, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD): Geevarghese said the issues were all interconnected. “People don’t see these things as separate and don’t live these things separately.” As a result, EPA, HUD, and the Department of Transportation forged a partnership on sustainable communities (see earlier post) to deal with the cross-cutting issues related to transportation, green space, and housing. 

Echoing arguments made by Ron Sims, Deputy Secretary of HUD (see earlier post), Geevarghese said where you live, “your zip code,” can predict how healthy you are, how educated you are. “How can we disentangle that?” He thinks that community ownership is intimately linked with community safety, and that requires investment in community infrastructure, including parks.

Also, Geevarghese thinks the concept of green jobs need to be reformulated to include parks and recreation, or “conservation,” jobs. 

The panelists agreed on a range of other points:

• The federal government should be involved in local urban parks because urban parks are just another form of infrastructure. Historically, the federal government has invested in infrastructure to get the country out of severe economic downturns.
• Green infrastructure is not just about environmental sustainability, but also about creating communities of value, and reversing disinvestment in urban cores.
• The private sector needs to be more involved in urban park financing and development.
• Non-profits also need to be at the table. Representative Chaka Fattah said that foundations have played a “energizing role” in revitalizing parts of Philadelphia.
• At the regional and even local levels, the transaction costs involved in getting everyone to the table are high.
• Local leaders need to understand that parks have economic benefits. George said “it’s not just about spending more money. Park projects are investment.”

Learn more about the legislation

Image credit: Columbus Commons / Eddie George, EDGE

The Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Studies Program, which is affiliated with Harvard University, organized a lecture on the restoration of two of the most important Mughal empire landscapes — Humayun’s Tomb in New Delhi, and the Bagh-e Babur in Kabul, both UNESCO World Heritage sites. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture, an Islamic philanthropy, has spent the last few years undoing the damage caused by colonization and, more recently, urbanization. Natish Nanda, an Indian architect, who organized the restoration work, said the threats to cultural heritage are real. “Right now, no historically relevant Mughal Garden exists in Pakistan today.” Restoring Mughal landscapes means creating a plan for sustainability and addressing the economic and social factors that support cultural landscapes.

Aga Khan’s Cultural Trust believes gardens are a part of modern life, and need to better integrated into contemporary society. In India, Mali, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, there are key examples of Mughal garden art that need to be preserved. One park that was recently restored in Egypt now “brings more visitors than the Great Pyramids.”

Mughal landscapes originated in Persepolis, Iran, in 7BC. Inspired by Koranic descriptions of paradise, the gardens attempted to offer visual representations of heaven.

Humayun’s Tomb, New Delhi: The tomb of Humayun, one of the Mughal emperors, predates the Taj Mahal by two centuries. This site in New Delhi is one of the densest set of Muslim buildings in the world. During the era when the tomb was built, it was auspicious to be buried near saints. Given a Sufi saint is buried in the area, Humayun decided to create his tomb there as well.

The site is imbued with colonial history. After the failed Indian Uprising in the mid 180o’s, the last Mughal emperor and his sons fled to Humayun’s Tomb. Once the British had put down the uprising, which Indians view as the first critical step in the independence movement, they executed the emperor’s sons and exiled him to Rangoon, Burma.

With British coming over to view the site of Mughal’s final defeat, the local colonial administration decided to turn Humayun’s Tomb into a tourist site. To demonstrate their mastery over the Mughals, the British intervened in the landscape design, replacing the Islamic landscape design with English country gardens. Since then, there have been four efforts to restore the gardens to their original Mughal design, yet each successive effort ended up doing more damage by moving water channels and altering the original design.

In 1999, Aga Khan’s philanthropy completed an MOU with the Indian government to restore the site to its original design. Nanda said the site “had been beautified, but not restored.” Excavating the site, the trust found the early fountains. They recreated almost 180 groundwater recharge pits, dug out wells, and restored the rainwater system. Lemon, lime, and hibiscus plants were brought back. All sandstone used was hand-chiseled.

Bagh-e Babur, Kabul: In Kabul, the tomb of the Babur, the original emperor of the Mughal empire, was created in 1508. It’s been the site of numerous battles in contemporary Afghan history. Nanda said when he first visited the site in a few years ago, he was dismayed at the degradation of the place Babur wished to be buried. Recently, the garden had been the site of a battle between two warlords. “It looked like a madman has shot bullets into every wall and every tree.”

Restoring the tomb and gardens created opportunities for employment. “The great thing about conservation work is that it involves lots of jobs.” They first rebuilt the walls surrounding the site — this involved creating almost a mile of mud walls by hand.

The gardens were then restored to their original design. Nanda said this is “cutting-edge restoration,” and won the approval of UNESCO. While the restoration doesn’t represent the original tomb and garden, “it represents the original intent.”

Like other orchards in the region, the garden is broken into a grid and features zones with different types of fruit plants — cherries, apricots and quinces now grow in the gardens, drawing some 15-20 thousand people for picnics each Friday.

Nanda said the restoration work on both sites is incomplete. Aga Khan believes the sites need to be integrated into the communities through education, training and job programs, so they can stand on their own and survive long-term. There are plans to make Humayun’s Tomb in New Delhi accessible to more New Delhi residents, particularly students. The Bagh-e Babur now has events spaces and a pool nearby that earn revenue to pay for the garden’s upkeep. Every business associated with the gardens must be included in economic sustainabilty plans if the restoration is to take hold, Nanda argues.

Additionally, plans are underway to turn a New Delhi British tree nursery into a national, 70-acre publicly-accessible arboretum. “Right now, it’s still a government tree nursery, and there’s no public access.” The goal is to turn it into an educational park. A landscape master planning process underway will restore the original New Delhi habitat.

Read more about Humayun’s Tomb and Bagh-e Babur.

Image credit: Mitesh Vasa Blog

Article Tags: Book, Roy Spencer

Today (April 20) is the official release date of my new book entitled: [Amazon Link] “The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists“, published by Encounter Books.

About one-half of Blunder is a non-technical description of our new peer reviewed and soon-to-be-published research which supports the opinion that a majority of Americans already hold: that warming in recent decades is mostly due to a natural cycle in the climate system — not to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning.

Believe it or not, this potential natural explanation for recent warming has never been seriously researched by climate scientists. The main reason they have ignored this possibility is that they cannot think of what might have caused it.

You see, climate researchers are rather myopic. They think that the only way for global-average temperatures to change is for the climate system to be forced ‘externally’…by a change in the output of the sun, or by a large volcanic eruption. These are events which occur external to the normal, internal operation of the climate system.

Source: drroyspencer.com

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SOS Rally Day is our opportunity to display our collective strength and to voice our concerns about the issues we care about directly to our legislators.  Tell your legislators to support comprehensive tax reform and a revenue increase to support school funding.

Square Enix seems to be bolstering its stable of releases even further with something called “Chocobo’s Crystal Tower”. The company has recently filed a trademark for it over in Europe.

Article Tags: Alan Caruba

It is no accident that April 22, Earth Day, is also the birth date of Vladimir Lenin, an acolyte of Karl Marx, the lunatic who invented communism as an alternative to capitalism.

Earth Day is naked communism.

To begin, it substitutes a worship of the Earth, Gaia, for the worship of God, creator of the universe and the instructor of moral behavior for mankind.

The Earth does not demand a moral code of personal behavior. Indeed, the lesson it teaches is “the survival of the fittest “and an indifference to suffering. The “natural events” mankind fears most all involve the potential for significant loss of life and for injury.

The Earth is a beautiful place, but it is utterly merciless. Man has learned to adapt to it and, by adapt, I mean to use its resources to build shelter and protection from it, to plant and harvest crops from it, and to domesticate some of its species while hunting and fishing for others for food.

Source: factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com

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Here’s a little teaser video for your enjoyment, and a quick reminder that Monday’s special offer will be ending in 24 hours (10 am PST, Thursday, Apr. 22). Pre-order your copy of The Primal Blueprint Cookbook today and get 20% of the regular cover price, a free Primal Blueprint Poster ($14.95 value) and free S&H for U.S. orders (reduced S&H for international orders).

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