"I understand that these cuts are very painful and they affect real lives. This is the harsh reality and the reality that we face. Sacramento is not Washington -- we cannot print our own money. We can only spend what we have."

- Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger quoted in Time, May 22, 2009

Christmas comes early, Governor. You can print your own money. Fiscally solvent North Dakota is doing it...and so can California. Now!

"It was horrible. Horrible! Like lightning it struck. No one was prepared. The shelves in the grocery stores were empty.You could buy nothing with your paper money.

- Harvard University law professor Friedrich Kessler on on the Weimar Republic hyperinflation (1993 interview)

Some worried commentators are predicting a massive hyperinflation of the sort suffered by Weimar Germany in 1923, when a wheelbarrow full of paper money could barely buy a loaf of bread. An April 29 editorial in the San Francisco Examiner warned:

"With an unprecedented deficit that's approaching $2 trillion, [the President's 2010] budget proposal is a surefire prescription for hyperinflation. So every senator and representative who votes for this monster $3.6 trillion budget will be endorsing a spending spree that could very well turn America into the next Weimar Republic."1

Some 23 percent of Israelis would consider leaving the country if Iran obtains a nuclear weapon, according to a poll conducted on behalf of the Center for Iranian Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Some 85 percent of respondents said they feared the Islamic Republic would obtain an atomic bomb, 57 percent believed the new U.S. initiative to engage in dialogue with Tehran would fail and 41 percent believed Israel should strike Iran's nuclear installations without waiting to see whether or how the talks develop.

"The findings are worrying because they reflect an exaggerated and unnecessary fear," Prof. David Menashri, the head of the Center, said. "Iran's leadership is religiously extremist but calculated and it understands an unconventional attack on Israel is an act of madness that will destroy Iran. Sadly, the survey shows the Iranian threat works well even without a bomb and thousands of Israelis [already] live in fear and contemplate leaving the country."

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak cancels his trip to Washington following the death of his 12 year-old grandson.

Egyptian ambassador to the US, Sameh Shoukry, said that Mubarak will reschedule his visit to the US due to the sudden death of his grandson Mohammed.

Mubarak's grandson died due to health problems. Mubarak was not seen at Mohammed's funeral on Tuesday.

Eight years ago, in May 2009 MSNBC published a series of articles predicting what the world would look like in 2017. Their subheading was "Rapid pace of technology will mean wrenching changes in just a decade". 'Wrenching' changes have indeed occurred but the reality now is that the major changes our world has witnessed have been less due to technological change than to the Wars over diminishing food and water resources, the virus pandemic, cosmic bombardment and the global centralisation of economic conditions to solve the greater Depression.

In 2009 what seemed like relatively insignificant political and technological developments turned out to be the green shoots of today's Biological Environmental and Technological Convergence (BETC) Revolution. The development of Quantum nanotechnology storage systems enabled Governments to store massive amount of data on every type of communication between individuals. Every VMS (Voice Message System), call, video link, search, browse, in fact every single data transfer is stored, mined, assigned, matched and under the BETC Government control.

This author is one of many who managed to continue writing as the blogosphere removed the anonymity that citizens (now referred to as dissidents, militants, insurgents and terrorists) used to spread their warnings on the negative potential of the new revolution. Through biometric advances, having a unique CP (Citizen Protocol) address assigned to every individual regardless of the device they are interacting with, took time to get used to. I myself am one warning away from having my editing rights removed completely. Rather like the French 3 strikes law that saw the formation of initially a "new State agency [and later Global agency] that sent illegal file-sharers a warning e-mail, then a letter, and finally cut off their connection for a year if they were caught a third time."

How did we let it happen?

An MP who was involved in last month's G20 protests in London is to call for an investigation into whether the police used agents provocateurs to incite the crowds.

Liberal Democrat Tom Brake says he saw what he believed to be two plain-clothes police officers go through a police cordon after presenting their ID cards.

Brake, who along with hundreds of others was corralled behind police lines near Bank tube station in the City of London on the day of the protests, says he was informed by people in the crowd that the men had been seen to throw bottles at the police and had encouraged others to do the same shortly before they passed through the cordon.

Batten down the hatches, grab your flimsy face mask!

Just as Sott.net editors were putting the finishing touches to the April's edition of 'Connecting the Dots' (a fairly standard month as months go here on the BBM), within the last five days the world has been brought to the brink (of what we are not quite sure) by something called "Swine Flu". At least, that's the impression you get when reading recent headlines. But as Sott.net readers know, there is always more to these episodes of mass hysteria than meets the eye!

Look further back into the month and you will see enough clues to figure out the nature of what we may safely call a World Government. Pay attention to details in the United States, the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and you may distinguish manufactured social and political conflicts. Consider it all within the context of Mother Nature's mysteries. Indeed, there is much to comment about this month. But, in the spirit of traditional journalism, let's start with the major headlines...

"Smart." "Pompous." Clean-cut." "Creepy."

A high-achieving dentist's son from upstate New York, Philip Markoff is described in various ways, but everyone, even those who didn't like him, is shocked at the charges against him.

"He was smart. He carried himself well," said neighbor Michael Bernard.

"He seemed like the type that would have it all. It doesn't make sense."

Markoff grew up the son of a Syracuse dentist, with an older brother, Jon.

He graduated in 2004 from Vernon-Verona-Sherrill High School, where he was on the bowling and golf teams, and earned a biology degree from SUNY Albany four years later.

In high school, he was an honors student who hung out with the brains and also played a lot of poker, even mentioning his gaming skills on his yearbook page.

Iran has explained why it needs a nuclear program, stressing that all nations should have the right to use peaceful nuclear energy.

Mohammad Saeedi, the deputy director for international affairs of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), issued a statement on Iran's nuclear program in a conference in Beijing.

The International Ministerial Conference on Nuclear Energy in the 21st Century, organized by the IAEA, was hosted by Beijing, China from April 20 to 21.

Saeedi stressed that all countries should have the right to have nuclear power plants "without any discrimination."

The official number of the unemployed people in Russia currently stands at 2.26 million, the country's Health and Social Development Ministry said on Tuesday.

In the week of April 9-15, the highest increases in unemployment were registered in the Kaliningrad Region, Russia's exclave on the Baltic Sea, the central Russian Yaroslavl Region, the northwestern Novgorod Region, and Moscow, the ministry said in a statement.

Official figures record that a total of 329,016 people have been made redundant at 34,283 companies across Russia since October 2008. Of them, 103,725 have found new jobs.