ALERT... ALERT... KEEP YOUR EYES OPEN ON ALL ARTICLES...READ BETWEEN THE LINES AND TRACK WHAT IS GOING ON BEHIND THE SCENES!!!

Radionuclide Blankets United States; Authorities Insist Levels Are Harmless

Paul Joseph Watson

Infowars.com
March 22, 2011

Contradicting Barack Obama’s assertion last week that radiation from Japan’s stricken Fukushima nuclear plant would not even reach Hawaii, the mainland United States has been blanketed with radioactive Xenon 133 particles, while spent nuclear fuel pools at Fukushima have now reached boiling point and threaten to spew out more radioactive smoke.

Although health authorities insist that levels of the radionuclide Xenon 133 that have been measured are harmless, claims that such radiation would dissolve over the Pacific have been proven completely inaccurate. Indeed, the latest charts show that fallout from Fukushima will not just smother the United States, but most of the globe.

The chart below from the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) shows the spread of Xenon 133 emitted from the Fukushima plant.

Radionuclide Blankets United States; Authorities Insist Levels Are Harmless 20110321 fuku Xenon Simulation

CLICK TO ENLARGE.

The following chart, from the Norwegian Institute for Air Research, also shows the spread of Xenon 133 across the United States.

Although Xenon has been released globally, it is considered a far more inert and harmless form of radioactivity in comparison to the far more dangerous iodine-131, caesium-134 and caesium-137.

The next chart, produced by the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety and Meteo France, shows the dispersion of the more dangerous caesium-137 particles from Fukushima on a global scale.

It is important to stress that health authorities insist levels of all four of the radioactive isotopes being released from Fukushima, namely Xenon 133, iodine-131, caesium-134 and caesium-137 are harmless to people living outside of the Fukushima exclusion zone. However, those assurances were not adequate to prevent the U.S. military from preparing the, “Mandatory evacuation of thousands of American troops and their families in Japan out of concern over rising radiation levels,Despite its apparent harmlessness at current levels, the very fact that such radiation is currently smothering the entire United States completely contradicts assurances made last week by President Barack Obama that the radiation from Fukushima was set to dissipate before it reached Hawaii, never mind the mainland U.S.

“Obama told KDKA-TV of Pittsburgh that experts have assured him that a nuclear release from Japan will dissipate by the time it gets to Hawaii, much less the U.S. mainland,” USA

Today reported on March 15. Just days later, reports emerged of small amounts of radiation hitting California.

As we have documented, given the habitual nature of both the Japanese and the U.S. government in deceiving people as to the safety of the air we breathe, the fact that distrust has reigned amidst panic buying of potassium iodide and geiger counters is completely understandable.

Radiation from Fukushima has now been detected as far north-east as British Columbia in Canada and Iceland in Scandinavia, with mainland Europe set to be hit over the coming 24 hours.

Stock up with Fresh Food that lasts with eFoodsDirect (Ad)

Today the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that radiation was still being spewed from Fukushima and that they were unclear of its source. An obvious answer would be the pools holding deadly spent nuclear fuel rods, which according to the latest reports have begun to boil as efforts to cool them down continue to fail, despite Japanese authorities and the global mainstream media continuing to claim that the worst of the problem is over.

—

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.

Obama Looking For Ways Around Congress On Gun Policy With Reporting By Lucia Graves

WASHINGTON -- Faced with a Congress hostile to even slight restrictions of Second Amendment rights, the Obama administration is exploring potential changes to gun laws that can be secured strictly through executive action, administration officials say.

The Department of Justice held the first in what is expected to be a series of meetings on Tuesday afternoon with a group of stakeholders in the ongoing gun-policy debates. Before the meeting, officials said part of the discussion was expected to center around the White House's options for shaping policy on its own or through its adjoining agencies and departments -- on issues ranging from beefing up background checks to encouraging better data-sharing.

Administration officials said talk of executive orders or agency action are among a host of options that President Barack Obama and his advisers are considering. “The purpose of these discussions is to be a productive exchange of good ideas from folks across the spectrum,” one official said. “We think that’s a good place to start.”

Earlier in the day, House Democrats joined New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to offer another possible starting point, announcing legislation that would make fundamental changes to the nation’s gun background check system. Sponsored by Rep. Carolyn McCarthy (D-N.Y.), a longtime gun control advocate, the bill mirrors one introduced late last month by another New York Democrat, Sen. Chuck Schumer.

“Too often, any serious discussion about guns devolves into ideological arguments that have nothing to do with the real problem,” Bloomberg, a co-founder of the coalition Mayors Against Illegal Guns, told reporters at a press event outside the Capitol. “Our coalition strongly believes in the Second Amendment. We also know from experience that we can keep guns away from dangerous people without imposing burdens on law-abiding gun owners."

For gun control advocates, however, executive action remains a more promising -- albeit more limited -- vehicle for reform than Congress. On Monday, The Huffington Post first reported that the Justice Department was convening meetings with groups from across the ideological spectrum in an effort to chart potential policy changes to Second Amendment law.

The discussions were meant to build a broad coalition around the elements of reform Obama had outlined a day earlier in an op-ed for the Arizona Daily Star, including stronger state-to-state coordination, expedited background checks and greater enforcement of the laws already on the books, especially with regard to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System.

US Launches Missiles in Libya in 'First Phase' of Action

Published: Saturday, 19 Mar 2011 | 5:07 PM ET

By: CNBC.com with Reuters

The US began strikes inside Libya Saturday afternoon, to take out Muammar Gaddafi's integrated air and defense missile systems along the northern coast, NBC news reported.

Smoke billows after a Libyan jet bomber crashed after being shot down in Benghazi on March 19, 2011 as Libya's rebel stronghold came under attack, with at least two air strikes and sustained shelling of the city's south sending thick smoke into the sky.

Patrick Baz | AFP | Getty Images

The series of more than 110 cruise missile strikes on Libyan targets is only the first phase of a multiphase operation, a senior U.S. military official said on Saturday, quoted by Reuters.

Vice Admiral Bill Gortney, director of the U.S. military's Joint Staff, declined to discuss what the next phase of the operations would be. He said more than 20 sites had been targeted in coalition strikes so far.

The French air force destroyed Libyan tanks and armored vehicles earlier on Saturday, the first shots fired in a U.N.-mandated military intervention to protect civilians from attacks by Muammar Gaddafi's forces.

A French defense ministry official said "a number of tanks and armored vehicles" were destroyed in the region of Benghazi, with initial action focusing on stopping Gaddafi's forces from advancing on the rebels' eastern stronghold.

Ambulances were rushing to transport "civilian casualties" in Libya's capital Tripoli after Western forces bombarded areas of the city, Libya's state news agency Jana reported. The report could not be independently verified.

Gaddafi's troops on Saturday morning pushed into the outskirts of Benghazi, a city of 670,000 people, in an apparent attempt to pre-empt Western military intervention expected after a meeting of Western and Arab leaders in Paris.

But as the meeting ended, French President Nicolas Sarkozy announced that allied air forces had already gone into action.

"It's a grave decision we've had to take," Sarkozy said after meeting British Prime Minister David Cameron, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other leaders in Paris. "Along with our Arab, European and North American partners, France has decided to play its part before history."

Sarkozy said of the meeting: "Those taking part agreed to put in place all necessary means, especially military, to enforce the decisions of the United Nations Security Council.

"This is why, in agreement with our partners, our air forces will counter any aggression by Colonel Gaddafi's aircraft against the population of Benghazi," he said. "As of now, other French aircraft are ready to intervene against armored vehicles which threaten unarmed civilians." Military action could be halted at any time if Gaddafi stopped his forces attacking, Sarkozy said.

"Colonel Gaddafi has made this happen," British Prime Minister David Cameron told reporters after the meeting. "He has lied to the international community, he has promised a ceasefire, he has broken that ceasefire ... We cannot allow the slaughter of civilians to continue."

Russia said it regretted a decision by Western nations to take military action in Libya.

"Air force units from a host of countries began military actions in Libya on March 19," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said in a statement. "Moscow regrets this military action."

Gaddafi said Western powers had no right to intervene.

"This is injustice, this is clear aggression," government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim quoted Gaddafi as saying in a letter to France, Britain and the United Nations. "You will regret it if you take a step towards interfering in our internal affairs."

The Libyan government blamed the rebels, who it says are members of al Qaeda, for breaking the ceasefire around Benghazi. A large crowd of Gaddafi supporters waving green Libyan flags and portraits of the leader gathered outside his house in Tripoli, in an apparent move to discourage foreign airstrikes.

Thousands Flee Benghazi

A large plume of black smoke rose from the edge of Benghazi mid-afternoon, live television pictures showed, but it was not clear what was causing the fire. Residents set up make-shift barricades with furniture, benches, road signs and even a barbecue in one case at intervals along main streets.

Each barricade was manned by half a dozen rebels, but only about half of those were armed. Hundreds of cars full of refugees fled Benghazi towards the Egyptian border after the city came under a bombardment overnight. One family of 13 women from a grandmother to small children, rested at a roadside hotel.

"I'm here because when the bombing started last night my children were vomiting from fear," said one of them, a doctor. "All I want to do is get my family to a safe place and then get back to Benghazi to help. My husband is still there."

I. In the besieged western city of Misrata, residents said government forces shelled the rebel town again on Saturday and they were facing a humanitarian crisis as water supplies had been cut off for a third day.

"I am telling you, we are scared and we are alone," a Misrata resident, called Saadoun, told Reuters by telephone.

Plane Shot Down

As explosions shook Benghazi on Saturday morning, rebels said they were forced to retreat from the outskirts of the city, but later claimed victory after holding back the advance.

"We revolutionaries have taken control of four tanks inside Benghazi. Rebel forces have pushed Gaddafi's forces out of Benghazi," said Nasr al-Kikili, a lawyer who works for the rebel media center in Benghazi, as crowds celebrated by firing guns in the air and parading on top of a tank.

An unidentified warplane was shot down over Benghazi.

"I saw the plane circle around, come out of the clouds, head towards an apparent target, and then it was hit and went straight down in flames and a huge billow of black smoke went up," Reuters correspondent Angus MacSwan said. "It seems it was attacking the Benghazi military barracks."

Al Jazeera said there were 26 dead and more than 40 wounded in Jala hospital in Benghazi, without giving further details.

FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 2011

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency admitted that the disaster was a level 5

Officials admit they may have to bury reactors under concrete - as happened at Chernobyl

Government says it was overwhelmed by the scale of twin disasters

Japanese upgrade accident from level four to five - the same as Three Mile Island(This incident will far surpass Chernobyl)

We will rebuild from scratch says Japanese prime minister. (The entire island nation may need to be evacuated for decades due to the changing winds blowing the radioactive poisonous particles from the tons of spent fuel rods stored above each reactor. The food supply will become contaminated. The water supply will become contaminated. No items will be allowed to be imported to other counties due to contamination. Japanese industry will die. Japanese people will die. All humans will be affected by the fallout to varying degrees.)

(Poisonous) Particles spewed from wrecked Fukushima power station arrive in California (causing unimaginable health concerns to Americans)

Military trucks tackle reactors with tons of water for second day

Overwhelmed: Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri
cries as he leaves after a press conference in Fukushima Japan as his country
finally acknowledged the radiation spewing from the over-heating reactors
and fuel rods was enough to kill some citizens

Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency admitted that the disaster was a level 5, which is classified as a crisis causing 'several radiation deaths' by the UN International Atomic Energy.

Officials said the rating was raised after they realised the full extent of the radiation leaking from the plant. They also said that 3 per cent of the fuel in three of the reactors at the Fukushima plant had been severely damaged, suggesting those reactor cores have partially melted down.

After Tokyo Electric Power Company Managing Director Akio Komiri cried as he left a conference to brief journalists on the situation at Fukushima, a senior Japanese minister also admitted that the country was overwhelmed by the scale of the tsunami and nuclear crisis.

He said officials should have admitted earlier how serious the radiation leaks were.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said: 'The unprecedented scale of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan, frankly speaking, were among many things that happened that had not been anticipated under our disaster management contingency plans.

'In hindsight, we could have moved a little quicker in assessing the situation and coordinating all that information and provided it faster.'

Nuclear experts have been saying for days that Japan was underplaying the crisis' severity.

It is now officially on a par with the Three Mile Island accident in Pennsylvania in 1979. Only the explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 has topped the scale.

Deputy director general of the NISA, Hideohiko Nishiyama, also admitted that they do not know if the reactors are coming under control.

He said: 'With the water-spraying operations, we are fighting a fire we cannot see. That fire is not spreading, but we cannot say yet that it is under control.'

But prime minister Naoto Kan insisted that his country would overcome the catastrophe

'We will rebuild Japan from scratch,' he said in a televised speech: 'In our history, this small island nation has made miraculous economic growth thanks to the efforts of all Japanese citizens. That is how Japan was built.'

It comes after pictures emerged showing overheating fuel rods exposed to the elements through a huge hole in the wall of a reactor building at the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant.

Plutonium in troubled reactors, spent fuel pools

Published March 18, 2011

| Associated Press

The fuel rods at all six reactors at the stricken Fukushima Dai-ichi complex contain plutonium — better known as fuel for nuclear weapons. While plutonium is more toxic than uranium, other radioactive elements leaking out are likely to be of greater danger to the general public.

Only six percent of the fuel rods at the plant's Unit 3 were a mixture of plutonium-239 and uranium-235 when first put into operation. The fuel in other reactors is only uranium, but even there, plutonium is created during the fission process.

This means the fuel in all of the stricken reactors and spent fuel pools contain plutonium.

Plutonium is indeed nasty stuff, especially damaging to lungs and kidneys. It is also less stable than uranium and can more easily spark a dangerous nuclear chain reaction.

But plutonium, like uranium, is a heavy element that is not easily dispersed in the air. It is the other byproducts of nuclear power generation, such as radioactive forms of cesium and iodine, that are more prone to spread and cause widespread contamination.

Ed Lyman, a physicist at the activist group Union of Concerned Scientists, estimates the fuel in Unit 3 is 5 percent to 10 percent more dangerous than the fuel in the other crippled reactors.

Still, it is very unlikely to become packed tightly enough to reach what is known as critical mass and start a chain reaction. The plutonium would qualify as weapons grade only if a large quantity was packed together.

Here's how the uranium in a typical reactor turns into a mixture that includes plutonium:

When the pellets of uranium dioxide inside the thin fuel rods are split to create energy in the reactor, they release neutrons that, in turn, create highly radioactive plutonium-239. This is the same type of plutonium used to make nuclear weapons.

This plutonium also splits, creating even more energy. By the end of a uranium fuel cycle, 40 percent of the energy produced comes from the splitting of plutonium.

The spent fuel rod that remains at the end of the process contains uranium, plutonium, and a cocktail of other poisonous and radioactive byproducts.

The Fukushima Dai-ichi site has a considerable number of fuel rods on hand, according to information provided Thursday by Tokyo Electric Power Co., which owns the atomic complex: There are 3,400 tons of fuel in seven spent fuel pools within the six-reactor plant, including one joint pool storing very old fuel from units 3 and 4. There are 877 tons in five of the reactor cores. Officials have said that the fuel in Unit 4's reactor vessel was transferred to its spent fuel pool when the unit was temporarily shut in November.

If plutonium did get out, it wouldn't disappear quickly. Plutonium-239 has a half-life of 25,000 years, meaning it takes that long to lose half of its radioactive potency. Uranium-235 has a half-life of 700 million years. And cesium, which tends to go airborne much more easily, has a half-life of 30 years.

Japan has recently built a facility to remove the byproducts and reprocess the plutonium and uranium into a substance called MOX for reuse in its reactors.

This was done in part to reduce the amount of spent fuel that is kept onsite at nuclear plants.

Japan's reprocessing plant, in Rokkasho, a village 300 miles (500 kilometers) north of Fukushima, is only starting up, and hasn't yet begun full operation.

Japan started to use MOX in some of its reactors to learn how it affects plant operations. In general, MOX fuel runs hotter than uranium oxide while inside the reactor.

The United States does not reprocess fuel and encourages other countries not to do so because of fears that plutonium recovered in the process could be used to make nuclear weapons.

Japan suspends work at stricken nuclear plant

By ERIC TALMADGE and SHINO YUASA, Associated Press – 29 mins ago

March 15, 2011

"BEWARE THE IDES OF MARCH" Julius Ceasar

FUKUSHIMA, Japan – Japan suspended operations to keep its stricken nuclear plant from melting down Wednesday after surging radiation made it too dangerous to stay.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the workers dousing the reactors in a frantic effort to cool them needed to withdraw.

"The workers cannot carry out even minimal work at the plant now," Edano said. "Because of the radiation risk we are on standby."

The nuclear crisis has triggered international alarm and partly overshadowed the human tragedy caused by Friday's earthquake and tsunami, which pulverized Japan's northeastern coastline, killing an estimated 10,000 people and severely damaging the nuclear plant.

Since then, authorities have tried frantically to avert an environmental catastrophe at the Fukushima Dai-ichi complex in northeastern Japan, 140 miles (220 kilometers) north of Tokyo.

Edano said the government expects to ask the U.S. military for help. He did not elaborate. He said the government is still considering whether and how to take up the various offers of help from other countries.

The surge in radiation was apparently the result of a Tuesday fire in the complex's Unit 4 reactor, according to officials with Japan's nuclear safety agency. That blast is thought to have damaged the reactor's suppression chamber, a water-filled pipe outside the nuclear core that is part of the emergency cooling system.

Officials had originally planned use helicopters and fire trucks to spray water in a desperate effort to prevent further radiation leaks and to cool down the reactors.

"It's not so simple that everything will be resolved by pouring in water. We are trying to avoid creating other problems," Edano said.

"We are actually supplying water from the ground, but supplying water from above involves pumping lots of water and that involves risk. We also have to consider the safety of the helicopters above," he said.

A U.S. nuclear expert said he feared the worst.

"It's more of a surrender," said David Lochbaum, a nuclear engineer who now heads the nuclear safety program for the Union of Concerned Scientists, an activist group. "It's not like you wait 10 days and the radiation goes away. In that 10 days things are going to get worse."

"It's basically a sign that there's nothing left to do but throw in the towel," Lochbaum said.

The government has ordered some 140,000 people in the vicinity to stay indoors. A little radiation was also detected in Tokyo, triggering panic buying of food and water.

There are six reactors at the plant, and the three that were operating at the time have been rocked by explosions. The one still on fire was offline at the time of the magnitude 9.0 quake, Japan's most powerful on record.

Japan's nuclear safety agency estimated that 70 percent of the rods have been damaged at the No. 1 reactor.

Japan's national news agency, Kyodo, said that 33 percent of the fuel rods at the No. 2 reactor were damaged and that the cores of both reactors were believed to have partially melted.

"We don't know the nature of the damage," said Minoru Ohgoda, spokesman for Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, or NISA. "It could be either melting, or there might be some holes in them."

Meanwhile, the outer housing of the containment vessel at the No. 4 unit erupted in flames early Wednesday, said Hajimi Motujuku, a spokesman for the plant's operator, Tokyo Electric Power Co.

NISA said fire and smoke could no longer be seen at Unit 4, but that it was unable to confirm that the blaze had been put out.

___

Yuasa reported from Tokyo. Associated Press writers Elaine Kurtenbach in Tokyo and David Stringer in Ofunato contributed to this report.

EARTHQUAKE WARNING FROM RUSSIAN INSTITUTE of PHYSICS of the EARTH

Posted by Real News Reporter on March 12th, 2011

A new report released today in the Kremlin prepared for Prime Minister Putin by the Institute of Physics of the Earth, in Moscow, is warning that the America’s are in danger of suffering a mega-quake of catastrophic proportions during the next fortnight (14 days) with a specific emphasis being placed on the United States, Mexico, Central America and South American west coast regions along with the New Madrid Fault Zone region.

This report further warns that catastrophic earthquakes in Asia and the sub-continent are, also, “more than likely to occur” with the 7.3 magnitude quake in Japan today being “one of at least 4 of this intensity” to occur during this same time period.

Raising the concerns of a mega-quake occurring, this report says, are the increasing subtle electromagnetic signals that are being detected in the Earth’s upper atmosphere over many regions of the World, with the most intense being over the US Western coastal and Midwest regions.

Important to note are that Russian and British scientists are at the forefront of predicting earthquakes based on these subtle electromagnetic signals and have joined in an effort to put satellites in space to detect more of them.

More ominously in this report are Russian scientists confirming the independent analysis of New Zealand mathematician and long-range weather forecaster, Ken Ring, who predicted the deadly Christchurch quake and this week issued another warning of a quake to hit on or about March 20th.

Ring explains his methodology for predicting earthquakes as follows:

“The planets very much affect the earth, indirectly, by having an effect on the Sun. Some planets are very large. If the Sun was a basketball the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn would be the size of grapefruits, and the Earth would be, on that scale, the size of a peppercorn.

Jupiter and Saturn cause extra tides on the Sun when they get on either side of the Sun (as with Moon – Earth-Sun when the moon is full) and when these gas giants get on the same side as the Sun, (as with Earth -Moon – Sun when the moon is new). These greater solar tides become sunspot activity and solar flares and can be understood as akin to the increase in tides caused by the Moon when it too gets alongside Earth or opposite Earth.

At the moment we have Jupiter and Saturn on either side of the Sun and creating a tug of war with Earth in the middle. That started last September and will continue until about May. In September the Earth was right in line with Jupiter, Saturn and the Sun too.

That’s why there were several 7+ earthquakes around, it wasn’t just us. For instance there was one in Pakistan on the same day as Christchurch. This Jupiter/Saturn alignment continues until about May, and the Earth comes back into line as well in March. It is why there may be an extreme event, perhaps a large earthquake, around 20 March, which is when the Moon may be again in a trigger position.”

According to this report, however, where Ring is correct in assessing blame for our Earth’s earthquakes on the Sun and Planets, his substituting of Perigean Spring Tides (also known as King Tides) for the low pressure systems associated with them may be incorrect.

The mention in this report of massive low pressure systems being associated with catastrophic earthquakes is especially dire to the United States Midwestern region, which even today is continuing to be pounded by horrific rainfall amounts, and most especially impacting the New Madrid Fault Zone State of Arkansas which has suffered over 800 earthquakes in the past 6 months alone.

Equally in danger, this report continues, is the South American Nation of Bolivia which has, likewise, suffered catastrophic low pressure system storms that in the past week have killed over 52 people.

Most ominous in this report, though, is its warning that the fault-riddled State of California may be about to suffer its most catastrophic earthquake in decades as new reports for this region show the mass death of millions of fish [photo bottom left] is now occurring, and just like the mass stranding of whales on New Zealand beaches days prior to the February 22nd destruction of Christchurch.

Making the situation for our Planet even grimmer are the reports that our Sun is continuing to spew forth massive solar flares, the latest warned to hit our Earth today or tomorrow thus prompting the Hermanus Space Weather Warning Centre (SWWC) to issue a Solar Flare warning for the Southern Hemisphere.

Interesting to note in all of these events is the United States Army announcing this week that it is holding a rare training event involving the US Military, the CIA, Canadian officers, US Treasury and State departments, the US Agency for International Development, the Defense Threat Readiness Agency and the International Red Cross between March 21-25 at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and which should the worst happen they will certainly be prepared for it.

As this report concludes, that as of yet, “no firmly reliable” method for predicting earthquakes has been scientifically recognized, it is well worth noting the too many to be ignored anomalous coincidences leading up to catastrophic mega-quakes are breaking out all over the World and should only be ignored at ones peril.

In other words, it is always best to be prepared should disaster strike, wherever the warning comes from.

101 Share

URGENT: Thousands Flee After Failures at Japan Nuclear Plants

LATEST UPDATE: Japan issues a state of emergency at a second nuclear power plant after its cooling system failed as thousands evacuate from the area near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant with radiation levels surging to 1,000 times their normal levels.

West Coast USA Danger IF Japan Nuclear Reactor Meltdown

[Translate]

“If they can’t restore power to the plant (and cool the reactor), then there’s the possibility of some sort of core meltdown”. An alarming statement made by James Acton, a physicist who examined Japan’s Kashiwazaki nuclear plant after a 2007 earthquake, who told CNN that Japanese authorities are in race to cool down the Fukushima reactor.

Following the fifth largest earthquake in recorded world history, a magnitude 8.9 earthquake, has resulted in the closure of all Japan’s nuclear power reactors, one of which, the Fukushima reactor, is overheating and in danger of a meltdown if coolant is not restored soon. It’s like a pressure cooker… when you have something generating heat and you don’t cool it off or release the steam…

Reported from abc NEWS, Scientists said that even though the reactor had stopped producing energy, its fuel continues to generate heat and needs steady levels of coolant to prevent it from overheating and triggering a dangerous cascade of events.

They go on to say, “Up to 100 percent of the volatile radioactive Cesium-137 content of the pools could go up in flames and smoke, to blow downwind over large distances,”

“Given the large quantity of irradiated nuclear fuel in the pool, the radioactivity release could be worse than the Chernobyl nuclear reactor catastrophe of 25 years ago.” said Kevin Kamps, a nuclear waste specialist.

Fukushima I (there are two plant locations) is one of the 25 largest nuclear power stations in the world.

How would a nuclear plant meltdown unfold?

Control rods are driven back down into the core upon emergency (if rods don’t make it all the way… trouble)
The coolant (water) could cease if backup systems fail (electricity, pumps, generators, batteries)
Reactor continues to produce heat
Numerous venting valve systems would release pressure above ~1,000 psi into containment vessel
Eventually the uranium fuel encasement metal will melt (2,200 deg F)
Radioactive contamination then released into the reactor vessel
Radiation escapes into an outer, concrete containment building
Radiation escapes into the environment.

Not only would such a disaster be horrible for the local region and Japan, but other countries, namely the U.S. would be effected next by airborne radiation particles, the magnitude of which is yet to be determined.

Why would the west coast USA be in danger?
The prevailing jet stream winds are blowing from Japan directly across the Pacific ocean to the west coast of the United States. Any airborne radiation would make its way across with the jet stream, reaching the U.S. in approximately 36 hours, depending on the actual speed of the jet.

Image of the Jet Stream from Japan to the U.S.
jet-stream-japan-to-usa

Update,
BBC News Asia-Pacific is now reporting that radiation levels inside the nuclear reactor are 1,000 times of normal, and there are now high levels (unspecified) ‘outside’ of the nuclear reactor plant. They report that people are being evacuated in an approximate 6-mile perimeter.

Map of Nuclear Power Plant Reactors in Japan

japan-nuclear-reactor-map

Fukushima Power Plant, Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) diagram

fukushima-boiling-water-reactor-bwr-basic-diagram

Update,
The Washington Post reports that a second nuclear reactor in the Fukushima power plant is also affected. The plant has a total of six reactors. Reports only a few hours left on battery power for cooling systems.

Update,
Clarification from NHK Wolrd News Japan… a second location, Fukushima II, not far from the Fukushima I nuclear power plant, is also experiencing cooling problems. The government’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said equipment failures have made it impossible to cool 3 of the plant’s 4 reactors. (Translation: ‘impossible’ is not a good word).

Update,
Reuters is now reporting that Tokyo Electric Power Company has lost ability to control pressure at some of the reactors at its Fukushima II (Daini) plant nearby the Daiichi power plant (Fukushima I), both suffering from core cooling problems. If battery power at Fukushima II is depleted before AC power is restored, the plant will stop supplying water to the core and the cooling water level in the reactor core will drop.

Update,
Kyodo news reports that the cooling system has now failed at three nuclear reactors at Fukushima II, and the coolant water temperature has reached boiling level.

Update,
Kyodo news reports, “the operator of the two plants in Fukushima Prefecture is set to release pressure in containers housing their reactors under an unprecedented government order, so as to avoid the plants sustaining damage and losing their critical containment function.” …”the action would involve the release of steam that would likely include radioactive materials”

A Boiling Water Reactor assembly (BWR)
bwr-reactor-assembly

A BWR Fuel Assemblies and Control Rod Module
bwr-fuel-and-rod-module

A BWR system
bwr-reactor-system

Hundreds Killed by Massive Tsunami After 8.9-Magnitude Quake Rocks Japan

Published March 11, 2011

| Associated Press

Print
Email
Share
Comments (1386)
Text Size

TOKYO – For more than two terrifying, seemingly endless minutes Friday, the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan shook apart homes and buildings, cracked open highways and unnerved even those who have learned to live with swaying skyscrapers. Then came a devastating tsunami that slammed into northeastern Japan and killed hundreds of people.

The violent wall of water swept away houses, cars and ships. Fires burned out of control. Power to a cooling system at a nuclear power plant was knocked out, forcing thousands to flee. A boat was caught in the vortex of a whirlpool at sea.

The death toll rose steadily throughout the day, but the true extent of the disaster was not known because roads to the worst-hit areas were washed away or blocked by debris and airports were closed.

After dawn Saturday, the scale of destruction became clearer.

Aerial scenes of the town of Ofunato showed homes and warehouses in ruins. Sludge and high water spread over acres of land, with people seeking refuge on roofs of partially submerged buildings. At one school, a large white "SOS" had been spelled out in English.

Related Interactive

Japan Earthquake: Major Tsunami Damage

Hundreds of bodies found after 23-foot tsunami strikes northern coast of Japan, washing away cars and damaging buildings, following a magnitude 8.9 earthquake. Tsunami waves hit Hawaii as coastal residents from SoCal to Oregon move to higher ground.

A million Libyans need aid; UK, France seek no-fly zone

By Mohammed Abbas – Mon Mar 7, 3:48 pm ET

RAS LANUF, Libya (Reuters) – Britain and France said they were seeking U.N. authority for a no-fly zone over Libya, as Muammar Gaddafi's warplanes counter-attacked against rebels and aid officials said a million people were in need.

Rebels swiftly rejected an olive branch offered by an associate of Gaddafi, and fighting escalated around a key oil port. The aging autocrat warned that if he fell thousands of refugees would "invade Europe."

With civilians surrounded by forces loyal to Gaddafi in two western towns, Misrata and Zawiyah, fears grew of a rising humanitarian crisis if the fighting continued.

U.N. aid coordinator Valerie Amos said more than a million people fleeing or inside the country needed humanitarian aid.

"Humanitarian organisations need urgent access now," she said. "People are injured and dying and need help immediately."

The U.N. appealed for financial support totaling $160 million to fund an operation over the next three months to get shelter, food and medicines ready.

MILITARY DEBATE

"We are working closely with partners on a contingency basis on elements of a resolution on a no-fly zone, making clear the need for regional support, a clear trigger for such a resolution and an appropriate legal basis," British Foreign Secretary William Hague said on Monday.

A French diplomatic source said France was "working with our partners in New York on a no-fly zone resolution." Gulf states called for a no-fly zone and for an urgent Arab League meeting.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, visiting Afghanistan where foreign forces have been fighting for a decade, cautioned any action in Libya "should be the result of international sanction." The White House said all options were on the table, including arming rebels.

Russia, a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council with veto powers, said it opposed foreign military intervention. "The Libyans have to solve their problems by themselves," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen stressed the need for UN authorization. "I can't imagine the international community and the United Nations would stand idly by if Gaddafi and his regime continue to attack their own people," he said.

"We have asked our military to conduct all necessary planning so that we stand ready at short notice," he added.

NATO has launched 24-hour air surveillance of Libya with AWACS reconnaissance aircraft, U.S. ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder said.

Daalder said NATO representatives were discussing other possible moves, including a no-fly zone and helping to enforce the U.N.-mandated arms embargo on Libya, ahead of a meeting of NATO defense ministers on Thursday.

Western leaders, however, are anxious to avoid another drawn-out military commitment after the Iraq and Afghan wars.

President Barack Obama said he wanted to "send a very clear message to the Libyan people that we will stand with them in the face of unwarranted violence and the continuing suppression of democratic ideals."

Swiss-based exile group Libyan Human Rights Solidarity said forces loyal to Gaddafi had launched a new attempt to capture Zawiyah, a rebel-held town 50 km (30 miles) west of the capital.

It was impossible to verify the report because residents in the town were no longer reachable by phone.

CITY UNDER SIEGE

In the rebel-held city of Misrata, the wounded were being treated on hospital floors because of a catastrophic shortage of medical facilities in the besieged city, a resident said.

Misrata is the biggest city in the west not under the control of Gaddafi, and its stand against a militia commanded by his own son has turned it into a symbol of defiance.

In the east, warplanes launched air strikes on the rebel-held oil terminal town of Ras Lanuf 600 km (400 miles) east of the capital Tripoli, witnesses said. One ripped through a car carrying a family.

Shipping sources said the fighting had closed the oil ports of Ras Lanuf and Brega. Brent crude prices rose above $118 a barrel on Monday and U.S. prices pushed to their highest level since September 2008.

The fighting has been erratic, with small groups engaging each other, guerrilla-style, in hit and run raids. Air attacks have been fitful and bombing often inaccurate.

The resilience of Gaddafi's troops and their ability to counter-attack has raised the prospect of prolonged bloodshed.

The United Nations and the European Union are dispatching fact-finding missions to the north African nation, where reports by residents of attacks on civilians by security forces have triggered a war crimes probe and provoked global outrage.

The rebels have called for U.N.-backed air strikes against what they say are African soldiers-for-hire used by Gaddafi to crush the uprising against his four-decade rule.

The Libyan government says it is fighting against al Qaeda terrorists and maintains that its security forces have targeted only armed individuals attacking state institutions and depots.

COUNTER-ATTACK

Government forces' advance on Ras Lanuf forced residents to flee and rebels to hide weapons in the desert.

One man complained of the rebels' inexperience, as a fighter lay on his back and fired an automatic weapon ineffectually at a warplane.

"Look at the way they're firing at the plane," he said. "They have no experience, no leadership and no strategy."

Jadallah Azous Al-Talhi, a former prime minister, appeared on state television reading an address to elders in Benghazi.

He asked them to "give a chance to national dialogue to resolve this crisis, to help stop the bloodshed, and not give a chance to foreigners to come and capture our country again."

Ahmed Jabreel, an aide to rebel leader Mustafa Abdel Jalil, said: "Any negotiations must be on the basis that Gaddafi will step down. There can be no other compromise."

One of Gaddafi's sons, Saadi, said Libya would descend into civil war if his father stepped down, Al Arabiya television reported, adding that Libya would turn into a new Somalia and that the country's tribes would fight each other.

In an interview with France 24 television, Gaddafi said Libya was an important partner for the West in containing al Qaeda and illegal migrants trying to reach Europe.

"There are millions of blacks who could come to the Mediterranean to cross to France and Italy, and Libya plays a role in security in the Mediterranean," he said.

So far tens of thousands of migrant workers have fled but few Libyans. "If we get a massive outflow of Libyans, this would create a refugee situation, so we appeal to all countries to keep their doors open and be ready to provide assistance as humanitarian law requires," United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres said.

A British team reported to include special forces left Benghazi on Sunday after rebels captured and then released them.

"It's clear there is a conspiracy to divide Libya," Libyan Foreign Minister Musa Kusa said.

(Additional reporting by Michael Georgy in Tripoli, Alexander Dziadosz in Ajdabiya, Mohammed Abbas in Ras Lanuf, Stefano Ambrogi in London, Nick Vinocur in Paris and Tom Pfeiffer in Benghazi; writing by Andrew Roche; editing by Myra MacDonald)

The world should NOT take military action against Gaddafi, says top Russian diplomat as he undermines Cameron's plan for no-fly zone

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 6:03 PM on 1st March 2011

World powers should focus on Libya sanctions, says top diplomat

Russia's top diplomat has today dismissed plans to create a no-fly zone over Libya as embattled leader Moammar Gaddafi unleashed bombing raids, special forces and army troops in a desperate bid to retain power.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov described the idea of imposing limits on Libyan air space as 'superfluous' and said world powers must instead focus on fully using the sanctions that the UN Security Council approved over the weekend.

David Cameron and his counterparts in the U.S. and Australia had hoped that the military tactic - used successfully for years in northern Iraq - would prevent Gaddafi from bombing his own people.

At a National Security Council meeting yesterday morning, Mr Cameron ordered military chiefs to draw up plans for the no-fly zone.

Sergey Lavrov. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov speaks to the media in Moscow, Sunday, Feb. 2

This file photo taken on November 20, 2010 shows British Prime Minister David Cameron speaking during a press conference in Lisbon. Cameron told Libya leader Moamer Kadhafi that it was

Difference: David Cameron has spoken of military action against Colonel Gaddafi but Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed the idea

Sergey Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Minister leaves No.10 Downing Street

Relations: Mr Lavrov visited Downing Street earlier this month during which time it is likely that the Middle East unrest would have been discussed

The dramatic move came as the Pentagon started moving warships in preparation to police a no-fly zone and world leaders imposed a raft of diplomatic and financial sanctions.

But before any military action, he would have to secure international agreement and Russia's consent is required as a veto-wielding member of the Security Council.

Russia's support looked likely when newswires quoted a Kremlin source today saying Gaddafi must step down because by using force against civilians he has become a 'political corpse.'

But Russia's NATO ambassador Dmitry Rogozin also cautioned against moving militarily against Gadhafi without UN authorisation.

'If someone in Washington is seeking a blitzkrieg in Libya, it is a serious mistake because any use of military force outside the NATO responsibility zone will be considered a violation of international law,' Rogozin told Russia's Interfax news agency in Brussels on Tuesday.

'A ban on the national air force or civil aviation to fly over their own territory is still a serious interference into the domestic affairs of another country, and at any rate it requires a resolution of the UN Security Council,' he said.

U.S. Navy ships of the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group and the Enterprise Carrier Strike Group are seen underway in close formation in the Red Sea in this February 16, 2011 handout photo provided by the U.S. Navy.

Poised: U.S. Navy ships of the Kearsarge Amphibious Ready Group and the Enterprise Carrier Strike Group sail in formation earlier this month

The council's sanctions so far include an arms embargo on Gaddafi, four of his sons and a daughter and leaders of revolutionary committees accused of much of the violence against opponents.

It urged 192 member nations to freeze Libyan assets and authorized an investigation into Gadhafi's regime for possible crimes against humanity.

The Europe Union added its own sanctions yesterday to force the dictator to stop attacks on civilians and step down after 42 years of iron-fisted rule.

It issued travel bans and an asset freeze against senior Libyan officials, and ordered an arms embargo on the country. Germany went further, proposing a 60-day economic embargo to prevent Gadhafi from using oil and other revenues to repress his people.

The EU action is significant because Europe has much more leverage over Libya than the United States.

85 per cent of Libyan oil goes to Europe, and Gaddafi and his family are thought to have significant assets in Britain, Switzerland and Italy. Switzerland and Britain already have frozen Libyan assets.

West moves to help Libya uprising, Gadhafi digs in

Email this Story

Feb 28, 12:36 PM (ET)

By MAGGIE MICHAEL

Google sponsored links

Asian Girls For Love - Pretty chinese girls for love Join for free&Win her heart today!
www.ChnLove.asia

Coffee Fool is the Fool -Grocery co's don't want you to know Buy some beans to find out why!
www.coffeefool.com

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) - The U.S. military deployed naval and air units near Libya, and the West moved to send its first concrete aid to Libya's rebellion in the east of the country, hoping to give it the momentum to oust Moammar Gadhafi. But the Libyan leader's regime clamped down in its stronghold in the capital and appeared to be maneuvering to strike opposition-held cities.

In Washington, Defense Department spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said the naval and air forces were deployed to have flexibility as Pentagon planners worked on contingency plans, but did not elaborate. The U.S. has a regular military presence in the Mediterranean Sea.

The European Union slapped an arms embargo, visa ban and other sanctions on Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's regime, as British Prime Minister David Cameron told British lawmakers Monday he is working with allies on a plan to establish a military no-fly zone over Libya, since "we do not in any way rule out the use of military assets" to deal with Gadhafi's embattled regime.

In the most direct U.S. demand for Gadhafi to step down, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the Libyan leader must leave power "now, without further violence or delay."

France was sending two planes with humanitarian aid, including medicine and doctors, to Benghazi, the opposition stronghold in eastern Libya, French Prime Minister Francois Fillon said. That would be the first direct Western aid to the uprising that has taken control of the entire eastern half of Libya. Fillon said it was the start of a "massive operation of humanitarian support" for the east and that Paris was studying "all solutions" - including military options.

The two sides in Libya's crisis appeared entrenched in their positions, and the direction the uprising takes next could depend on which can hold out longest. Gadhafi is dug in in Tripoli and nearby cities, backed by security forces and militiamen who are generally better armed than the military. His opponents, holding the east and much of the country's oil infrastructure, also have pockets in western Libya near Tripoli. They are backed by mutinous army units, but those forces appear to have limited supplies of ammunition and weapons.

In the two opposition-held cities closest to Tripoli - Zawiya and Misrata - rebel forces were locked in standoffs with Gadhafi loyalists.

An Associated Press reporter saw a large pro-Gadhafi force massed on the western edge of Zawiya, some 30 miles (50 kilometers) west of Tripoli, with about a dozen armored vehicles and tanks and jeeps mounted with anti-aircraft guns. An officer said they were from the elite Khamis Brigade, named after the Gadhafi son who commands it. U.S. diplomats have said the brigade is the best equipped force in Libya.

Residents inside the city said they were anticipating a possible attack.

"Our people are waiting for them to come and, God willing, we will defeat them," one resident who only wanted to be quoted by his first name, Alaa, told AP in Cairo by telephone.

In Misrata, Libya's third largest city 125 miles (200 kilometers) east of Tripoli, Gadhafi troops who control part of an air base on the city's outskirts tried to advance Monday. But they were repelled by opposition forces, who include residents armed with automatic weapons and army unites allied with them, one of the opposition fighters said.

He said there were no casualties reported in the clashes and claimed that his side had captured eight soldiers, including a senior officer.

The opposition controls most of the air base, and the fighter said dozens of anti-Gadhafi gunmen have arrived from further east in recent days as reinforcements.

Several residents of the eastern city of Ajdabiya said Gadhafi's air force also bombed an ammunition depot nearby held by the opposition. One, 17-year-old Abdel-Bari Zwei, reported intermittent explosions and a fire, and another, Faraj al-Maghrabi, said the facility was partially damaged. The site contains bombs, missiles and ammunition - key for the undersupplied opposition military forces.

State TV carried a statement by Libya's Defense Ministry denying any attempt to bomb the depot. Ajdabiya lies about 450 miles (750 kilometers) east of Tripoli along the Mediterranean coast.

Gadhafi opponents have moved to consolidate their hold in the east, centered on Benghazi - Libya's second largest city, where the uprising began. Politicians there on Sunday set up their first leadership council to manage day-to-day affairs, taking a step toward forming what could be an alternative to Gadhafi's regime.

The opposition is backed by numerous units of the military in the east that joined the uprising, and they hold several bases and Benghazi's airport. But so far, the units do not appear to have melded into a unified fighting force. Gadhafi long kept the military weak, fearing a challenge to his rule, so many units are plagued by shortages of supplies and ammunition.

Gadhafi supporters said Monday that they were in control of the city of Sabratha, west of Tripoli, which has seemed to go back and forth between the two camps the past week. Several residents told The Associated Press that protesters set fire to a police station, but then were dispersed. Anti-Gadhafi graffiti - "Down with the enemy of freedom" and "Libya is free, Gadhafi must leave" - were scrawled on some walls, but residents were painting them over.

In the capital, several hundred protesters started a march in the eastern district of Tajoura, which has been the scene of frequent clashes. After the burial of a person killed in gunfire last week, mourners began to march down a main street, chanting against the Libyan leader and waving the flag of Libya's pre-Gadhafi monarchy, which has become a symbol of the uprising, a witness said.

But they quickly dispersed once a brigade of pro-Gadhafi fighters rushed to the scene, scattering before the gunmen could fire a shot, the witness said. He and other residents in the capital spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

There were attempts to restore aspects of normalcy in the capital, residents said. Many stores downtown reopened, and traffic in the streets increased.

Tripoli was in turmoil on Friday, when residents said gunmen opened fire indiscriminately on protesters holding new marches. But since then, the capital has been quiet - especially since foreign journalists invited by Gadhafi's regime to view the situation arrived Friday.

Long lines formed outside banks in the capital by Libyans wanting to receive the equivalent of $400 per family that Gadhafi pledged in a bid to shore up public loyalty.

One resident said pro-Gadhafi security forces man checkpoints around the city of 2 million and prowl the city for any sign of unrest. She told The Associated Press that the price of rice, a main staple, has gone up 500 percent amid the crisis, reaching the equivalent of $40 for a five-kilogram (10-pound) bag.

Bakeries are limited to selling five loaves of bread per family, and most butcher shops are closed, she said.

Some schools reopened, but only for a half day and attendance was low. "My kids are too afraid to leave home and they even sleep next to me at night," said Sidiq al-Damjah, 41 and father of three. "I feel like I'm living a nightmare."

Gadhafi has launched by far the bloodiest crackdown in a wave of anti-government uprisings sweeping the Arab world, the most serious challenge to his four decades in power. The United States, Britain and the U.N. Security Council all slapped sanctions on Libya this weekend.

In Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was meeting Monday with foreign ministers from Britain, France, Germany and Italy, pressing for tough sanctions on the Libyan government. A day earlier, Clinton kept up pressure for Gadhafi to step down and "call off the mercenaries" and other troops that remain loyal to him.

"We've been reaching out to many different Libyans who are attempting to organize in the east and as the revolution moves westward there as well," Clinton said. "I think it's way too soon to tell how this is going to play out, but we're going to be ready and prepared to offer any kind of assistance that anyone wishes to have from the United States."

Two U.S. senators said Washington should recognize and arm a provisional government in rebel-held areas of eastern Libya and impose a no-fly zone over the area - enforced by U.S. warplanes - to stop attacks by the regime. But Fillon said a no-fly zone needed U.N. support "which is far from being obtained today."

Sabratha, 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Tripoli - a city known for nearby Roman ruins - showed signs of the tug-of-war between the two camps. On Monday, when the journalists invited to Libya by the government visited, many people were lined up at banks to collect their $400. When they saw journalists, they chanted, "God, Moammar and Libya."

Ali Mohammed, a leader from the Alalqa tribe, the main tribe in the area, said in previous days Gadhafi opponents burned the main police station, an Internal Security office and the People's Hall, where the local administration meets. "I then held a meeting with the protesters to stop these acts the people said they will control their children and since then there has been no problems," he said.

"The thugs and rats were roaming the streets and they attacked the police station and then they disappeared," said resident Taher Ali, who was collecting his $400. "They are rats and thugs. We are all with Moammar."

An anti-Gadhafi activist in Sabratha told The Associated Press in Cairo by telephone that the opposition raided the police station and security offices last week for weapons, and had dominated parts of city. But then on Sunday, a large force of pro-Gadhafi troops deployed in the city, "so we withdrew," he said.

"The city is not controlled by us or them. There are still skirmishes going on," he said.

In Tripoli, a government spokesman blamed the West and Islamic militants for the upheaval, saying they had hijacked and escalated what he said began as "genuine" but small protests demanding "legitimate aand much needed political improvements."

"On one hand, Islamists love to see chaos ... this is paradise for them," he said. "The West wants chaos to give them reason to intervene militarily to control the oil."

"The Islamists want Libya to be their Afghanistan ... to complete their crescent of terror," he said. "This is not the first time the Islamic militants and the west find common cause."

---

AP correspondents Hamza Hendawi, Bassem Mroue and Ben Hubbard in Cairo, and Angela Charlton in Paris contributed to this report.

Providence plans to pink slip all teachers

09:25 AM EST on Thursday, February 24, 2011

By Linda Borg

Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE — The school district plans to send out dismissal notices to every one of its 1,926 teachers, an unprecedented move that has union leaders up in arms.

In a letter sent to all teachers Tuesday, Supt. Tom Brady wrote that the Providence School Board on Thursday will vote on a resolution to dismiss every teacher, effective the last day of school.

In an e-mail sent to all teachers and School Department staff, Brady said, “We are forced to take this precautionary action by the March 1 deadline given the dire budget outline for the 2011-2012 school year in which we are projecting a near $40 million deficit for the district,” Brady wrote. “Since the full extent of the potential cuts to the school budget have yet to be determined, issuing a dismissal letter to all teachers was necessary to give the mayor, the School Board and the district maximum flexibility to consider every cost savings option, including reductions in staff.” State law requires that teachers be notified about potential changes to their employment status by March 1.

“To be clear about what this means,” Brady wrote, “this action gives the School Board the right to dismiss teachers as necessary, but not all teachers will actually be dismissed at the end of the school year.”

“This is beyond insane,” Providence Teachers Union President Steve Smith said Tuesday night. “Let’s create the most chaos and the highest level of anxiety in a district where teachers are already under unbelievable stress. Now I know how the United States State Department felt on Dec. 7 , 1941.” That was the day the Japanese government bombed Pearl Harbor.

Smith, who has forged a groundbreaking collaboration with Brady that has received national recognition, said he believes this move comes directly from Mayor Angel Taveras, not the School Department. In a conversation with Taveras earlier Tuesday, Smith said the mayor also hinted at school closings but didn’t elaborate.

Taveras, in a statement issued Tuesday night, said the uncertainty around the city’s finances, combined with the March 1 deadline, led to this decision. Because it is too early to be certain of all possible changes to the school budget, Taveras said, issuing dismissal notices to all teachers “provides maximum flexibility” going forward.

“As a Providence public school graduate, I understand how great teachers can change lives,” he wrote. “I am sensitive to the uncertainty and anxiety that many teachers felt when they received this notice. My administration will do all it can to support our committed, hardworking teachers during this difficult time.”

Providence is facing a daunting budget crisis. The city had a $57-million deficit last year and expects a higher figure for the year ending June 30. In addition, the city, under then- Mayor David N. Cicilline, nearly depleted its reserves to cover day-to-day expenses. Taveras is currently awaiting completion of a report by an independent panel, which he commissioned to get a better handle on the city’s financial situation.

Meanwhile, Smith said he was caught completely off-guard by the planned dismissals, adding that Brady didn’t inform him of the decision until 5:30 p.m. Tuesday although he had heard rumors over the weekend.

He said it makes no sense to send out dismissal notices to every teacher because the district has a legal obligation to educate all of its students, regardless of budget considerations. “You have so many students,” he said. “You need so many teachers. You have a student-teacher ratio of 26 to 1. Do the math.”

Last year, only about 100 teachers received layoff notices, but in years past, as many as 500 have.

Smith said the dismissals couldn’t come at a worse time. The union is getting close to resolving a lawsuit over seniority-based hiring. The teachers’ contract expires June 30. And both Smith and Brady have staked their careers on a first-ever partnership in which both sides have agreed to make deep reforms in four of the district’s lowest-performing schools.

“We’re at the table with our best ideas,” Smith said. “To take this approach is unconscionable.”

lborg@projo.com

Earth dodges geomagnetic storm: scientist

by Jim Mannion Jim Mannion – Thu Feb 17, 1:20 pm ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A wave of charged plasma particles from a huge solar eruption has glanced off the Earth's northern pole, lighting up auroras and disrupting some radio communications, a NASA scientist said.

But the Earth appears to have escaped a widespread geomagnetic storm, with the effects confined to the northern latitudes, possibly reaching down into Norway and Canada.

"There can be sporadic outages based on particular small-scale events," said Dean Persnell, project scientist at NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory at Goddard Space Flight Center.

He told AFP the official forecast is "for generally quiet conditions today, perhaps some minor storming tomorrow, but nothing extraordinary."

The event began Tuesday at 0156 GMT with a spectacular solar eruption in a sunspot the size of Jupiter that produced a Class X flash -- the most powerful of all solar events.

The eruption blasted a torrent of charged plasma particles called a coronal mass ejection (CME) toward Earth at about 560 miles per second (900 kilometers per second), the Solar Dynamics Observatory reported.

A direct hit from a CME could trigger a huge geomagnetic storm as incoming particles bounce off the Earth's geomagnetic field, blacking out radio communications, interfering with GPS navigational systems, in theory even causing power outages.

The China Meteorological Administration reported that the solar flare caused "sudden ionospheric disturbances" in the atmosphere above China and jammed shortwave radio communications in the southern part of the country.

Anticipating the worst, the US National Weather Service's Space Weather Prediction Service warned it was "the calm before the storm."

"Three CMEs are enroute, all a part of the Radio Blackout events on February 13, 14, and 15 (UTC). The last of the three seems to be the fastest and may catch both of the forerunners about mid to late ... February 17."

But Persnell said the spiraling beam of solar particles from Tuesday's eruption was passing behind the Earth without making a direct hit.

"In this case, it appears it will curve around and not hit us," he said.

He said satellite data "shows that the CME is quieting down and so there is not a whole lot left to it. So it's moved well behind us by now," he said.

But he said solar activity is on the upswing, and more CMEs will follow.

"We are seeing more and more sunspots as what we call solar cycle 24 is turning on," he said. "At the peak we might see several of these CMEs a day coming off the sun."

"But they have only a five to ten percent chance of hitting us. We have to be in exactly the right place for that piece of spiral to come hit us. We'll see many more coming off the sun than we have hitting us here on Earth."

The British Geological Survey (BGS) said, meanwhile, that the solar storm would result in spectacular Northern Lights displays starting Thursday.

One CME reached Earth on February 14, "sparking Valentine's Day displays of the Northern Lights (aurora borealis) further south than usual."

The office published geomagnetic records dating back to the Victorian era which it hopes will help in planning for future storms.

"Life increasingly depends on technologies that didn't exist when the magnetic recordings began," said Alan Thomson, BGS head of geomagnetism.

"Studying the records will tell us what we have to plan and prepare for to make sure systems can resist solar storms," he said.

A 2009 report by a panel of scientists assembled by NASA said that a sustained and powerful solar flare outbreak could overwhelm high-voltage transformers with electrical currents and short-circuit energy grids.

The report, titled "Severe Space Weather Events -- Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts" warned that such a catastrophic event could cost the United States alone up to two trillion dollars in repairs in the first year -- and it could take up to 10 years to fully recover

Ark. cities feel unexplained surge in earthquakes

By SARAH EDDINGTON, Associated Press Sarah Eddington, Associated Press – Thu Feb 17, 9:45 am ET

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. – Jim Sutterfield was briefly puzzled by a thumping sound that seemed to slam the back of his office chair. But when the small-town Arkansas fire chief turned and saw no one was around, he quickly realized it was just an earthquake — again.

"That was only my second time to feel one, but others here have felt them for three or four months now," Greenbrier chief Jim Sutterfield said after feeling the latest tremor on Wednesday. "Now when it happens, people say, 'Well, there's another one.'"

Several small earthquakes ranging in magnitude from 1.8 to 3.8 have rattled the north-central Arkansas cities of Greenbrier and Guy this week, and the cause is unknown.

The U.S. Geological Survey has reported more than 30 earthquakes in the area since Sunday, including a magnitude 3.8 quake Thursday morning and at least 16 others occurring Wednesday, two of which were magnitude 3.2 and 3.5. More than 700 quakes have occurred in the region over the past six months.

Scott Ausbrooks, geohazards supervisor for the Arkansas Geological Survey, said the quakes are part of what is now called the Guy earthquake swarm — a series of mild earthquakes that have been occurring periodically since 2009. A similar swarm occurred in the early 1980s when a series of quakes hit Enola, Ark.

Ausbrooks said geologists are still trying to discover the exact cause of the recent seismic activity but have identified two possibilities.

"It could just be a naturally occurring swarm like the Enola swarm, or it could be related to ongoing natural gas exploration in the area," he said.

A major source of natural gas in Arkansas is the Fayetteville Shale, an organically-rich rock formation in north-central Arkansas. Drillers free up the gas by using hydraulic fracturing or "fracking" — injecting pressurized water to create fractures deep in the ground.

Ausbrooks said geologists don't believe the production wells are the problem, but rather the injection wells that are used to dispose of "frack" water when it can no longer be re-used. The wastewater is pressurized and injected into the ground.

"We see no correlation between natural gas production wells and earthquakes, but we haven't ruled out injection wells," he said, adding that if production wells were the cause, the earthquakes would be scattered all over the region underlain by the Fayetteville Shale formation and not in just one area.

Ausbrooks said the earthquakes are occurring in the vicinity of several injection wells.

Guy Police Chief Dave Martini said the locals continue to blame the gas companies for the quakes.

"We have a disposal well here just outside of the city," Martini said. "People are suspecting that to be causing it, even though there isn't any proof of that."

Martini said the earthquakes started increasing in frequency over the past week and that the disposal well has seen an increase in use recently.

Lawrence Bengal, director of the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission, said a six-month moratorium was established in January on new injection wells in the area. He said four companies are operating already-drilled injection wells: SEECO Inc., Chesapeake Operating Inc., Clarita Operating LLC and Deep-Six Water Disposal Services LLC.

The moratorium, which is expected to end in July, is intended to allow time to study the relationship — if any — between the injection wells and earthquakes in the area.

The largest quake of the Guy Earthquake Swarm was a magnitude 4.0, which occurred in October, Ausbrooks said. The region could possibly see quakes reaching as high as 5.0, but he said anything above 6.0 is unlikely.

The magnitude scale for earthquakes is logarithmic, meaning a magnitude 3 earthquake would produce waves with amplitudes 10 times greater than a magnitude 2 and 100 times greater than a magnitude 1. Geologists say quakes of magnitude 2.5 to 3.0 are generally the smallest felt by humans.

"These periods of high activity are not uncommon. I don't think it's anything to be overly concerned about," Ausbrooks said. "We always encourage people to keep tuned in to what's going on and to always have an all-hazards disaster preparedness kit."

Mubarak's Failed Bait And Switch
By Stephen Lendman
2-12-11

On February 10, indications were he'd step down. He didn't, but now it's official, vice president Suleiman saying he resigned, handing power to Egypt's military. A New York Times alert said "a historic popular uprising transformed politics in Egypt and around the Arab world."

Times rhetoric way overstated reality as resolution remains very much in doubt, though odds strongly favor continuity, not populist change. More on that below.

For the moment, however, huge Tahrir Square crowds erupted in celebratory euphoria, perhaps forgetting their liberating struggle just began. It didn't end with Mubarak's resignation. That was a baby step, removing an aging dinosaur Washington and Egypt's military wanted out. Now he's gone. Focus must follow through on what's next, requiring sustained popular protests. Otherwise, everything gained will be lost.

Behind the scenes, Washington and Egyptian military maneuvers were involved. They're always crucial, not visible orchestrated events. As a result, discerning reality is crucial. Hopefully, Egyptians understand, knowing the folly of letting up now and losing out.

Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen believes Obama waffled to buy time for CIA operatives to secure and purge Egypt's torture and rendition files, dating from when Attorney General Eric Holder was Clinton's Deputy Attorney General in the 1990s.

He also said Secretary of State Clinton wanted her husband protected, and former White House chief of staff (now CIA head) Leon Panetta had the same aim. Doing so, of course, requires keeping Washington-favorites in power, permitting no uncertain alternatives, people Egyptians need for real change.

Besides short-lived confrontations, orchestrated street violence was avoided. Whether it continues, however, is unknown as Egypt's military is notoriously brutal, a different reality than most on Cairo streets believe. Among them were hundreds, perhaps thousands experiencing its harshness, for the moment at least lost in a sea of celebratory humanity.

Behind the Scenes Washington Maneuvering

Notably on January 31, Obama sent former US diplomat Frank Wisner (son of WW II era intelligence chief Frank Wisner) to Cairo ahead of Mubarak's February 1 address. His mission: tell him not to resign until after September elections.

Publicly, Wisner confirmed what White House officials claimed reflected his position, not US policy. In fact, diplomats, past or present, convey only the latter.

Wisner noteworthy credentials include:

-- Career Ambassador (the highest foreign service rank) after serving as Under Secretary of State for International Security Affairs, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, and ambassador to India, the Philippines, Zambia and Egypt (1986 - 1991) when he and Mubarak became good friends;
-- numerous corporate boards, past and present, including Enron, AIG, Ethan Allen Interiors, eogresources, Commercial International Bank (a leading Egyptian bank), Pharaomic American Life Insurance Company (ALICO, Egypt), Pangea3, and the American University in Cairo; and

-- currently an international affairs advisor to Patton Boggs, an influential Washington-based lobbying firm.

High-level and well-connected, his Cairo mission showed Washington behind-the-scenes maneuvering to replace Mubarak, delay transition, and install new faces under old policies, publicly portraying change - the old bait and switch con on a world stage, though whether it works remains highly uncertain. Expect months before clarity, maybe longer.

Obama's Public Statement on Egypt

Rhetoric always conceals policies, Obama's February 10 statement Exhibit A, saying:

"As we have said from the beginning of this unrest, the future of Egypt will be determined by the Egyptian people. But the United States (stands for) core principles. We believe that the universal rights of the Egyptian people must be respected, and their aspirations must be met. We believe that this transition must immediately demonstrate irreversible political change, and a negotiated path to democracy (with) a roadmap to elections that are free and fair."

Note:

-- no transition timeline was mentioned, nor did Obama call for Mubarak's immediate resignation with his entire regime popular outrage wants out;

-- political change masks business as usual;

-- universal rights weren't specified nor were free and fair elections defined; Washington won't tolerate either anywhere, including at home; and

-- vague sentiments were enunciated, masking Washington's real agenda for new regime faces under old policies - no compromises, no alternatives, no dissent, just hardline Realpolitik for unchallengeable imperial control; not just in Egypt; everywhere.

Obama's Real Agenda

As part of Washington's Greater Middle East Project, it includes neutralizing opponents, securing unchallengeable imperial control, preventing democracy, rigging elections to assure it, militarizing the region strategically, exploiting its resources and populations, orchestrating events covertly, and deciding how and when they play out.

In Egypt and throughout the region, they look similar to US-orchestrated color revolutions in Serbia (the 1990s prototype), Georgia (Rose), Ukraine (Orange), Myanmar (Saffron), Tibet (Crimson), Iran (Green), and currently perhaps Tunisia (Jasmine), and elsewhere in the Middle East, color-coded or not.

They all have a common thread: what the Pentagon calls "full spectrum dominance" for total global, space, sub-surface and information control. Whether it succeeds, however, remains uncertain given America's declining world influence and stature, including on Cairo streets.

A previous article discussed past color revolutions, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/06/color-revolutions-old-and-new.html

Egypt: What's Ahead

For sure, Washington, the Pentagon and Egypt's military will decide, not Mubarak (an aging, now ousted dinosaur), Suleiman or other hated regime figures. Stratfor's George Friedman believes Egypt's military aims to save the regime, not Mubarak, suggesting three possible outcomes before he resigned:

-- continuing standing aside, letting crowds assemble and march peacefully to the presidential palace and elsewhere on Cairo streets;

-- blocking more protesters from entering Tahrir Square, containing those already there; or

-- replacing Mubarak with temporary military rule.

Egypt's military coup ousted him. He didn't resign. He was pushed, the heavy shoving from Washington. It's not clear if Suleiman will stay on. Hopefully public anger won't tolerate him or other regime figures, given how much they're hated.

So far, confrontations have been avoided. Doing so now "would undermine the military's desire to preserve the regime" and its people-friendly perception. Friedman believes options one and two were unacceptable. "That means military action" unseating him. Only the timing wasn't known until now.

On February 11 Friedman's Red Alert update said:

"Egypt is returning to the 1952 model of ruling the state via a council of army officers. The question now is to what extent the military elite will share power with its civilian counterparts."

"The fate of Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP)" remains unknown. Without it, "the regime will have effectively collapsed and the military could run into greater difficulty in running the country," ahead of elections whenever they're held.

For now, Egypt's military council comprises provisional rule. Very likely it'll want retained NDP elements and opposition parties help in managing transition. It's biggest challenge is "avoid(ing) regime change while also dealing with a potential constitutional crisis."

Popular pressure, however, must demand regime change, a clean sweep, ending emergency law powers immediately, and democratic constitutional changes.

Al Jazeera: "Hosni Mubarak Resigns as President"

On February 11, Al Jazeera reported massive crowds in Tahrir Square, a day called "Farewell Friday." Cairo and Alexandria images showed wall-to-wall humanity as far as the eye could see, by far the largest demonstrations so far after protesters called for millions to come out for "a last and final stage."

Despite mass public anger, tensions between army forces and crowds were absent, restraint very much shown, but how long will depend on unfolding events under the new military rule.

Earlier, AP said Mubarak flew to Sharm el-Sheik, the Red Sea resort 250 miles from Cairo.

The New York Times also reported a "Western official (saying) that Mr. Mubarak had left the capital, (and that) the Supreme Council of the Egyptian Armed Forces issued a statement over state television and radio indicating that the military, not Mr. Mubarak, was in effective control of the country."

In fact, a coup d'etat replaced him, but what follows or its timeline isn't known. What is known is that mass public anger and nationwide strikes effectively shut down the country beyond what any force could control.

The reaction following Mubarak's address, followed by Suleiman's, showed two officials disengaged from reality. As a result, Mohamed ElBaradei, now an opposition figure, responded bluntly, saying:

"I ask the army to intervene immediately to save Egypt. The credibility of the army is being put to the test."

In a top-featured February 11 New York Times op-ed, he said:

"Egypt will not wait forever on this caricature of a leader we witnessed on television yesterday evening, deaf to the voice of the people, hanging on obsessively to power that is no longer his to keep....We are at the dawn of a new Egypt....We have nothing to fear but the shadow of a repressive past."

Al Jazeera reported him saying Egypt "will explode" unless military forces intervene. They did but haven't explained what's ahead beyond commonplace boilerplate rhetoric - for sure no democracy according to Reuters quoting a National Security Council participant saying:

"What the US isn't saying publicly is that it's putting its power behind (Egypt's) generals. The goal is to stack the deck in favor of the status quo - a scenario that removes Mubarak, yet is otherwise more about continuity than change."

In other words, Obama's "orderly transition democracy," substitutes rhetoric for constructive change neither he nor others in Washington will tolerate. As a result, people power faces imperial Washington and Egypt's military, united against populist change. However, what develops regionally remains unknown. Resolution can go either way or some unacceptable middle-ground compromise. Avoiding it is crucial, but doing so means continuing daily protests until all essential demands are met.

A Final Comment

According to Human Right Watch (HRW) and London Guardian reports, the professed neutrality and public persona of Egypt's military belie its harshness.

On February 9, Guardian writer Chris McGreal headlined, "Egypt's army 'involved in detentions and torture,' " saying:

Military forces "secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass (anti-Mubarak) protests began, (and) at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the Guardian."

Moreover, HRW and other human rights organizations cited years of army involvement in disappearances and torture. Former detainees confirmed "extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organized campaign of intimidation." Electric shocks, Taser guns, threatened rapes, beatings, disappearances, and perhaps killings left families grieving for loved ones.

HRW researcher Heba Morayef said, "I think it's become pretty obvious by now that the military is not a neutral party. The military doesn't want and doesn't believe in the protests and this is even at the lower level, based on the interrogations."

Allied with Washington, the Pentagon and US intelligence, it supports power, not populist change, a dark reality street protesters better grasp to know what's coming from a post-Mubarak regime. Unless challenged, promised reforms will leave entrenched policies in place, enforcing predatory capitalism with police state harshness, what Americans also endure under friendly-face leaders.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

Hillary Clinton calls historic meeting of ambassadors

Hillary Clinton will meet with top envoys from all U.S. embassies at the State Department. | AP PhotoClose

By JENNIFER EPSTEIN & LAURA ROZEN | 1/31/11 6:23 AM EST Updated: 1/31/11 12:24 PM EST

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called top envoys from U.S. embassies to gather in Washington on Monday for a wide-ranging foreign policy meeting.

Ambassadors from almost all 260 U.S. embassies, consulates and other posts in more than 180 countries are expected to convene at the State Department for what’s being billed as the first meeting of its kind.

Officials say the meeting will include discussion of foreign policy priorities for 2011, The Associated Press reported, as well as an assessment of the fallout from the release of secret diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks. Clinton will meet individually with diplomats working in unstable countries.

The meeting comes as protests continue in Egypt, where longtime President Hosni Mubarak could soon be pushed out of power. On Sunday, Clinton appeared in taped appearances on all five major TV talk shows to discuss what she called the need for “real democracy” in Egypt, while trying to avoid committing to siding with any one party in the conflict.

Clinton returned early Monday from a one-day trip to Haiti, where she met with the country’s presidential candidates. She insisted that though the U.S. government has political differences with Haiti, it will continue to support its rebuilding in the wake of last January’s devastating earthquake.

“We have a deep commitment to the Haitian people,” she said Sunday. “That goes to humanitarian aid, that goes to governance and democracy programs, that will be going to a cholera treatment center.”

The ambassadors hold meetings with their regional bureaus Monday and Tuesday. Clinton is set to address the ambassadors Wednesday about “leading through civilian power,” after a welcome from her chief of staff and counselor, Cheryl Mills. U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice will then forecast the year ahead at the United Nations, and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns will do the same for the year ahead in foreign policy.

The ambassadors will also hear from Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen on civilian-military operations in the 21st century, and USAID chief Raj Shah will speak on results-based development.

New Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Budget Thomas Nides will discuss the budget for 2011 and beyond.

But on that point, one official questioned why “every ambassador in the world was required to come back to the States for a group of lectures when this could have been done virtually,” noting that almost every ambassador flies business class, so costs could quickly add up.

The diplomatic powwow wraps up Friday, when the ambassadors fly back to their missions.

Just as the CIA is behing Al Qaeda it is also behing the Muslim Brotherhood and the events in Egypt.

The Obama administration and prominent members of Congress have begun pushing the idea that an intelligence failure prevented the US government from predicting massive civil unrest in Egypt and the Arab world.

This new “debate” over the gathering of intelligence fills the mainstream media with red herrings, obscuring the fact (leaked by WikiLeaks and the Daily Telegraph) that the US government has secretly backed leading figures behind Arab opposition for at least three years. Strong evidence suggests that an Egyptian regime change has been planned for years. Leading opposition groups, civil society organizations and dissidents---including the Muslim Brotherhood---have been co-opted by front groups backed by the CIA, the Pentagon and the State Department, and wooed in earnest by members of both the Bush/Cheney and Obama administrations. The US government and its allies already have enduring ties to key figures on all sides of the Arab revolts, with the goal of controlling the process and preserving Anglo-American geostrategy.

It is true that the Arab revolutions are real, and their depth and scope, and the speed at which they have ignited have unprecedented and extensive power does lie in the hands of mobilized peoples (if genuine and untainted dissidents grasp the specifics of the larger dynamic). It is also true that not all of the various political players were “in the loop”. But the idea of a general US “intelligence failure” is ludicrous, given years of ongoing US manipulation and intelligence penetration.

What the Obama administration, Washington politicos and the US corporate media wish to create is the same deception as the one resulting from 9/11. That false flag operation was also not an “intelligence failure” but an intelligence “success” resulting from many years of preparation, and unmatched CIA power and penetration worldwide. Now, as then, there is an extensive history (that eliminates the “lack of foreknowledge” argument), specific warnings.

Even if the “intelligence failure” idea, and the myth that both the CIA and Obama administration as a whole have been completely blind, are accepted at face value, what would an “informed” Obama administration have done about Egypt? The same thing it has already done: use whatever means necessary to protect vital US oil and military interests.

The “failure” debate is a new tempest in a familiar old teapot: official scapegoats and cover-your-ass games, and new propaganda excuses to further justify even more covert operations and “improvements”.

Copyright: arcticle: Larry Chin, Global Research

Original article from: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=23101

'US working on plan for immediate Mubarak departure'
By JPOST.COM STAFF
02/04/2011 04:25

New York Times' reports White House in negotiations with officials surrounding Egyptian president on plan to install transitional government run by Suleiman, supported by Egyptian military.

The White House was discussing a plan in which Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak would resign immediately with Egyptian officials, The New York Times reported Thursday evening.

The plan would place newly-appointed Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman in charge of a transitional government with the support of the country's military establishment, according to the report.

RELATED:
Mubarak: I'd resign, but Egypt would descend into chaos

Senior Obama administration officials told the Times that the plan was being discussed with "high-level Egyptian officials around Mr. Mubarak," but not with the president himself. Washington has made several recent statements calling on the Egyptian president to step down immediately, although tempering their language.

The reported proposal calls for a widely inclusive transitional government, with representation coming from "a broad range of opposition groups, including the banned Muslim Brotherhood."

Click here for full Jpost coverage of unrest in Egypt

Another White House official, however, disputed the New York Times' suggestion that the two countries were close to reaching a deal, telling CNN that "It's simply wrong to report that there's a single US plan that's being negotiated with the Egyptians."

US National Security Countil spokesman Tommy Vietor told the cable news network that in addition to the proposal outlined in the Times, Washington was discussing "a variety of different ways" for bringing an Egyptian transition to democracy. He emphasized, however, that "all of those decisions must be made by the Egyptian people."

Officials quoted in the report, in an attempt to lower expectations, pointed out that there was have not been any signs that either Suleiman or Egypt's army were willing to participate in such a plan as long as Mubarak opposed it.

Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, told the Timesthat Mubarak fears that even if he steps down that he will be subject to further demands, pointing out that "he's not dealing with a legal entity, but a mob."

US officials have reportedly been putting forth several scenarios to Egyptians in the past days, but clarified that their preferred outcome was a plan that saw Omar Suleiman heading a transitional government.

Also on Thursday, US Vice President Joe Biden spoke with Suleiman, calling for restraint and that "credible, inclusive negotiations begin immediately in order for Egypt to transition to a democratic government that addresses the aspirations of the Egyptian people."

According to the report, the phone call was placed after Mubarak refused to meet with US President Barack Obama's private envoy to Egypt for the second time. The Egyptian president was apparently irked by the strong language used by the US president in his speech on Tuesday.

Earlier Thursday, Mubarak struck a defiant tone, telling ABC News’s Christiane Amanpour that he would “never run away” and would “die on the soil of Egypt.”

The embattled president said in the interview that he was ready to leave office, but could not, for fear his country would sink deeper into chaos.

Is the Egyptian Government Using Agents Provocateur to Justify a Crack Down On the Protesters?

Al Jazeera reported today:

[Al Jazeera reporter] Ayman Mohyeldin reports that eyewitnesses have said "party thugs" associated with the Egyptian regime's Central Security Services - in plainclothes but bearing government-issued weapons - have been looting in Cairo. Ayman says the reports started off as isolated accounts but are now growing in number.

The Telegraph reports:

"Thugs" going around on motorcycles looting shops and houses, according to Al Jazeera. They say they are getting more and more reports of looting. More worryingly, one group of looters who were captured by citizens in the upmarket Cairo district of Heliopolis turned out to have ID cards identifying them as members of the regime security forces.

Similarly, Egyptian newspaper Al MasryAlyoum provides several eyewitness accounts of agents provacateur:

Thugs looting residential neighborhoods and intimidating civilians are government-hires, say eyewitnesses.

In Nasr City, an Eastern Cairo neighborhood, residents attempting to restore security told Al-Masry Al-Youm that looters were caught yesterday.

“They were sent by the government. The government got them out of prison and told them to rob us,” says Nameer Nashaat, a resident working alongside other youths to preserve order in the district. “When we caught them, they said that the Ministry of Interior has sent them.”

In Masr al-Qadeema, another district, scrap metal dealer Khaled Barouma, confirmed the same account. “The government let loose convicts. They let them out of prisons. We all know them in this neighborhood,” he said, adding that the neighborhood’s youth is trying to put the place in order by patrolling its streets with batons.

“The government wants people to believe that this is an uprising of convicts, which is not the case. The government is the one that is a criminal,” Khalil Fathy, a local journalist covering the events closely, said.

In Rehab City, a wealthy gated community in New Cairo, masked thugs broke through a civilian barricade in a truck and were caught by a neighborhood watch that has been guarding the city this evening.

"Even though we caught the ones we saw, now that they're in, we know that more will be coming and we're all running to protect our families and houses," said Karim el-Dib, one of the men guarding the community.
Meanwhile, protestors caught two police informants attempting to rob a bank in the Mediterranean city of Alexandria.

Ayman Nour, opposition leader and head of the Ghad Party, told Al-Masry Al-Youm that his fellow party members have caught several thugs who work forthe Interior Ministry. After capturing them in downtown Cairo and Heliopolis, Nour's followers found ministry of interior IDs on them, Nour said.

“The regime is trying to project the worst image possible to make it clear to people that they have only one of two alternatives: either the existing order or chaos,” he said.

Scores of looting incidents have been reported since yesterday. Many residential neighborhoods have been attacked by thugs and ex-convicts, despite military presence.

Bikyamasr reports:

Eyewitnesses reported that one plain clothed man attempted to loot and destroy private property, and when confronted he was shot. Bystanders then took his identification out and revealed that he was a police officer, leaving a number of demonstrators to argue that the government has told police to instigate looting and unrest.

And American intelligence service Stratfor provides the following unconfirmed report today:

Security forces in plainclothes are engaged in destroying public property in order to give the impression that many protesters represent a public menace.

As I noted in 2008:

When agents provocateur commit violence or destroy property at peaceful protests, they are carrying out false flag terrorism.

Wikipedia defines false flag terror as follows:
False flag operations are covert operations conducted bygovernments, corporations, or other organizations, which aredesigned to appear as if they are being carried out by other entities. The name is derived from the military concept of flying false colors; that is, flying the flag of a country other than one's own. False flag operations are not limited to war and counter-insurgency operations, and have been used in peace-time; for example, during Italy's strategy of tension.
If intelligence agencies or federal, state or local police themselves commit acts of violence against people or property, and then blame it on peaceful protesters, that is - by definition - false flag terror.

***

Read this to see how eagerly the mainstream media are to pin acts of violence on peaceful protesters, instead of the thugs who actually committed them.

And if you don't know about agents provocateur, read this statement about Burma:
"They’ve ordered some soldiers in the military to shave their heads, so that they could pose as monks, and then those fake monks would attack soldiers to incite a military crackdown. The regime has done this before in Burma, and we believe they would do so again."
And see this news from Canada, and this Wikipedia discussion.

And as I pointed out last year:

United Press International reported in June 2005:
U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.

Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers

At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament sawplain clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence

Similarly, an Indonesian fact-finding team investigated violent riots which occurred in 1998, and determined that "elements of the military had been involved in the riots, some of which were deliberately provoked".

South Sudan chooses to secede: official results

Sunday, January 30 07:50 pm

Peter Martell

Almost 99 percent of south Sudanese chose to secede from the north and create a new country in a January 9-15 referendum, according to the first complete preliminary results announced on Sunday.Skip related content

RELATED PHOTOS / VIDEOS

Salva KiirEnlarge photo

Earlier partial results had already put the outcome of the vote beyond doubt but official figures were announced publicly for the first time during a ceremony attended by president Salva Kiir in the southern capital Juba.

The discreet leader, who is to steer southern Sudan to statehood in July after overseeing a six-year transition period, said the more than two million victims of the 22-year civil war with the north had not died in vain.

Chan Reec, chairman of the Southern Sudan Referendum Bureau in charge of polling in the south, said a whopping 99.57 percent of those who voted there chose secession.

Turnout in the south stood at 99 percent, with only 16,129 people voting for Africa's largest country to remain united, said Reec, whose announcement was met by cheers from the crowd.

Mohamed Khalil Ibrahim, who chairs the overall referendum commission, said 58 percent of southerners residing in the north and 99 percent of overseas voters chose to break away.

"The results just announced are decisive," he said.

Updated figures published on the Southern Sudan Referendum Commission's website and accounting for 100 percent of ballots cast in both the north and the south gave secession an overwhelming 98.83 percent of the vote.

Kiir paid homage to the victims of the war.

"I want to assure them and their families that these people did not die in vain," he said in front of diplomats and officials at former rebel leader John Garang's mausoleum.

The revered Garang died in a plane crash shortly after signing the January 2005 peace agreement that ended more than two decades of conflict between the black Christian-dominated south and the mainly Arab Muslim north.

The emotional week-long referendum, which saw huge lines of dancing and praying voters form outside polling stations long before dawn on the first day of voting, was the centrepiece of the peace deal.

The ceremony in Juba on Sunday ended in wild dancing to songs celebrating "the promised land."

"We have shown them in the north that we want to be free. We stand a whisker away from independence, so today we dance for our better futures," said James Mut, a student and one of the revellers.

In Khartoum, Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, who spearheaded the north's efforts to quash the rebellion during much of the 1983-2005 civil war, has already recognised the prospect of partition.

Earlier this month, he described the south's decision to become the world's 193rd state as "a new beginning" and expressed hope the two countries would enjoy "brotherly" relations, in comments that drew rare praise from Washington.

Kiir reciprocated his "brother" Bashir's declaration of goodwill and said in his speech: "We must stand with him."

Khartoum on Sunday faced demonstrations inspired by the popular revolt that has rattled the 30-year-old regime in neighbouring Egypt and the uprising earlier this month in Tunisia.

The opposition Umma party condemned police repression of the protests and charged it was Bashir's policies that had driven the youth to the streets and caused the partition of the country.

As southerners in contrast basked in a moment of national unanimity, Kiir again cautioned against premature celebrations.

"What did you think I would do here? Declare the independence of southern Sudan? We cannot do that. Let us respect the agreement," Kiir said.

British Foreign Secretary William Hague, whose country is a member of a Sudan peace troika, welcomed the announcement of the preliminary results but warned of the bumpy road ahead.

"There remains a huge amount for the Sudanese parties to do before the conclusion of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, and independence of Southern Sudan, on 9 July 2011," he said in a statement.

Khartoum and Juba have only six months to agree on the demarcation of their border, oil revenue sharing, citizenship and the future of the disputed region of Abyei, among other issues unresolved issues.

Britain, Norway and the United States are the three main Western brokers of the Sudanese peace process.

Mubarak Orders Crackdown, With Revolt Sweeping Egypt

Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press

Antigovernment protesters climbed atop Egyptian Army vehicles near Tahrir Square in Cairo on Friday, defying efforts to quell their uprising. More Photos »

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: January 28, 2011

REPRINTS

CAIRO — With police stations and the governing party’s headquarters in flames, and much of this crucial Middle Eastern nation in open revolt, President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt deployed the nation’s military and imposed a near-total blackout on communications to save his authoritarian government of nearly 30 years.

Protesters continued to defy a nationwide curfew in the early hours of Saturday, as Mr. Mubarak, 82, breaking days of silence, appeared on national television, promising to replace the ministers in his government, but calling popular protests “part of bigger plot to shake the stability” of Egypt. He refused calls, shouted by huge, angry crowds in the central squares of Cairo, the northern port of Alexandria and the canal city of Suez, for him to resign.

“I will not shy away from taking any decision that maintains the security of every Egyptian,” he vowed, as gunfire rang out around Cairo.

Whether his infamously efficient security apparatus and well-financed but politicized military could enforce that order — and whether it would stay loyal to him even if it came to shedding blood — was the main question for many Egyptians.

It was also a pressing concern for the White House, wherePresident Obama called Mr. Mubarak and then, in his own Friday television appearance, urged him to take “concrete steps” toward the political and economic reform that the stalwart American ally had repeatedly failed to deliver.

Whatever the fallout from the protests — be it change that comes suddenly or unfolds over years — the upheaval at the heart of the Arab world has vast repercussions for the status quo in the region, including tolerance for secular dictators by a new generation of frustrated youth, the viability of opposition that had been kept mute or locked up for years and the orientation of regional governments toward the United States and Israel, which had long counted Egypt as its most important friend in the region.

Many regional experts were still predicting that the wily Mr. Mubarak, who has outmaneuvered domestic political rivals and Egypt’s Islamic movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, for decades, would find a way to suppress dissent and restore control. But the apparently spontaneous, nonideological and youthful protesters also posed a new kind of challenge to a state security system focused on more traditional threats from organized religious groups and terrorists.

Friday’s protests were the largest and most diverse yet, including young and old, women with Louis Vuitton bags and men in galabeyas, factory workers and film stars. All came surging out of mosques after midday prayers headed for Tahrir Square, and their clashes with the police left clouds of tear gas wafting through empty streets.

For the first time since the 1980s, Mr. Mubarak felt compelled to call the military into the streets of the major cities to restore order and enforce a national 6 p.m. curfew. He also ordered that Egypt be essentially severed from the global Internet and telecommunications systems. Even so, videos from Cairo and other major cities showed protesters openly defying the curfew and few efforts being made to enforce it.

Street battles unfolded throughout the day Friday, as hundreds of thousands of people streamed out of mosques after noon prayers on Friday in Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and other cities around the country.

By nightfall, the protesters had burned down the ruling party’s headquarters in Cairo, and looters marched away with computers, briefcases and other equipment emblazoned with the party’s logo. Other groups assaulted the Interior Ministry and the state television headquarters, until after dark when the military occupied both buildings and regained control. At one point, the American Embassy came under attack.

Six Cairo police stations and several police cars were in flames, and stations in Suez and other cities were burning as well. Office equipment and police vehicles burned, and the police seemed to have retreated from Cairo’s main streets. Brigades of riot police officers deployed at mosques, bridges and intersections, and they battered the protesters with tear gas, water, rubber-coated bullets and, by day’s end, live ammunition.

With the help of five armored trucks and at least two fire trucks, more than a thousand riot police officers fought most of the day to hold the central Kasr al-Nil bridge. But, after hours of advances and retreats, by nightfall a crowd of at least twice as many protesters broke through. The Interior Ministry said nearly 900 were injured there and in the neighboring Giza area, with more than 400 hospitalized with critical injuries. State television said 13 were killed in Suez and 75 injured; a total of at least six were dead in Cairo and Giza.
Enlarge This Image
Scott Nelson for The New York Times
Protesters in Cairo paused for prayers on Friday as Egyptian security vehicles burned in the background. Street battles unfolded across the city and elsewhere throughout the day. More Photos »
Multimedia
INTERACTIVE MAP
Locating the Protests in Cairo
Photographs
Violent Clashes on the Streets of Cairo
David Kirkpatrick talks about the close call he had while with Nobel laureate, Mohamed ElBaradei, the kinds of police on the streets in Egypt and the possible prospects for the Mubarak government.
Related
The Lede Blog: Latest Updates From the Lede Blog (January 28, 2011)
In Alexandria, Protesters Rout the Police, for Now (January 29, 2011)
Waves of Unrest Spread to Yemen, Shaking a Region(January 28, 2011)
The Lede Blog: Interview With an Egyptian Blogger (January 27, 2011)
Related in Opinion
Opinionator | The Thread: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Mubarak? (January 28, 2011)
Editorial: Washington and Mr. Mubarak (January 29, 2011)
Related in Opinion
ROOM FOR DEBATE
What Can the Protests in Egypt Achieve?
Will the uprisings change the country’s future?
Post a Comment
The New York Times
More Photos »
Readers' Comments
Readers shared their thoughts on this article.
Read All Comments (434) »
The uprising here was also the biggest outbreak yet in a wave of youth-led revolts around the region since the Jan. 14 ouster of President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali ofTunisia — a country with just half Cairo’s population of 20 million. “Tunis, Tunis, Tunis,” protesters chanted outside the Tunisian Embassy here.
“Egyptians right now are not afraid at all,” said Walid Rachid, a student taking refuge from tear gas inside a Giza mosque. “It may take time, but our goal will come, an end to this regime. I want to say to this regime: 30 years is more than enough. Our country is going down and down because of your policies.”
Mr. Mubarak, in his televised address, said he was working to open up democracy and to fight “corruption,” and he said he understood the hardships facing the Egyptian people. But, he said, “a very thin line separates freedom from chaos.”
His offer to replace his cabinet is unlikely to be viewed as a major concession; Mr. Mubarak often changes ministers without undertaking fundamental reforms.
A crowd of young men who had gathered around car radios on a bridge in downtown Cairo to listen to the speech said they were enraged by it, saying that they had heard it before and wanted him to go. “Leave, leave,” they chanted, vowing to return to the streets the next day. “Down, down with Mubarak.”
A bonfire of office furniture from the ruling party headquarters was burning nearby, and the carcasses of police vehicles were still smoldering. The police appeared to have retreated from large parts of the city.
Protesters throughout the day spoke of the military’s eventual deployment as a foregone conclusion, given the scale of the uprising and Egyptian history. The military remains one of Egypt’s most esteemed institutions, a source of nationalist pride.
It was military officers who led the coup that toppled the British-backed monarch here in 1952, and all three Egypt’s presidents, including Mr. Mubarak, a former air force commander, have risen to power through the ranks of the military. It has historically been a decisive factor in Egyptian politics and has become a major player — a business owner — in the economy as well.
Some protesters seemed to welcome the soldiers, even expressing hopes that the military would somehow take over and potentially oust Mr. Mubarak. Others said they despaired that, unlike the relatively small and apolitical army in Tunisia, the Egyptian military was loyal first of all to its own institutions and alumni, including Mr. Mubarak.
“Will they stage a coup?” asked Hosam Sowilan, a retired general and a former director of a military research center here. “This will never happen.” He added: “The army in Tunisia put pressure on Ben Ali to leave. We are not going to do that here. The army here is loyal to this country and to the regime.”
One of the protesters leaving a mosque near Cairo wasMohamed ElBaradei, an Egyptian who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work with the International Atomic Energy Agency and has since emerged as a leading critic of the government.
“This is the work of a barbaric regime that is in my view doomed,” he said after being sprayed by a water cannon.
Now, he said, “it is the people versus the thugs.”
The Muslim Brotherhood, for decades Egypt’s only viable opposition movement, had taken a backseat to the youth protest on Tuesday. But, perhaps stunned at the scale of that uprising, it called its supporters to the streets in full force on Friday.
Many protesters shouted religious slogans that were absent on Tuesday, though not the Brotherhood’s trademark “Islam is the solution.” Instead, the crowds seemed so large and diverse that it was impossible to gauge what proportion might have subscribed to the Brotherhood’s Islamist ideology.
“We decided to participate in full force today because we felt that the people were starting to respond,” said Gamal Tag Eddin, a middle-aged lawyer and a member of the Brotherhood. “We could not participate alone because the government uses us to scare people here and abroad. Now that the people have moved, the Brotherhood are in with all their members in order to bring down this oppressive regime.”
Several others said they felt shame that their homeland — the cradle of civilization and a onetime leader of the Arab world — had slipped toward backwardness and irrelevance, eclipsed by the rise of the Persian Gulf states. Some said they felt outdone by tiny Tunisia.
Mohamed Fouad, sitting near the Ramses Hilton nursing a wound from a rubber-coated bullet in the middle of his forehead, wondered how long it would take to dislodge Mr. Mubarak. “In Tunis, they protested for a month,” he said. “But they have 11 million people. We have 85 million.”1
2

Reporting was contributed by Kareem Fahim, Mona El-Naggar, Liam Stack and Dawlat Magdy from Cairo, Anthony Shadid from Beirut, Lebanon, Alan Cowell from Paris, and Maria Newman and Christine Hauser from New York.

DNA Molecules Can 'Teleport,' Nobel Winner Says

By John E Dunn, Techworld.com Jan 16, 2011 10:45 am

A Nobel Prize winning biologist has ignited controversy after publishing details of an experiment in which a fragment of DNA appeared to 'teleport' or imprint itself between test tubes.

According to a team headed by Luc Montagnier, previously known for his work on HIV and AIDS, two test tubes, one of which contained a tiny piece of bacterial DNA, the other pure water, were surrounded by a weak electromagnetic field of 7Hz.

Eighteen hours later, after DNA amplification using a polymerase chain reaction, as if by magic the DNA was detectable in the test tube containing pure water.

Oddly, the original DNA sample had to be diluted many times over for the experiment to work, which might explain why the phenomenon has not been detected before, assuming that this is what has happened.

The phenomenon might be very loosely described as 'teleportation' except that the bases project or imprint themselves across space rather than simply moving from one place to another.

To be on the safe side, Montagnier then compared the results with controls in which the time limit was lowered, no electromagnetic field was present or was present but at lower frequencies, and in which both tubes contained pure water. On every one of these, he drew a blank.

The quantum effect - the imprinting of the DNA on the water - is not in itself the most contentious element of the experiment, so much as the relatively long timescales over which it appears to manifest itself. Quantum phenomena are assumed to show their faces in imperceptible fractions of a second and not seconds minutes and hours, and usually at very low temperatures approaching absolute zero.

Revealing a process through which biology might display the underlying 'quantumness' of nature at room temperature would be startling.

Montagnier's experiment will have to be repeated by others to have any hope of being taken seriously. So far, some scientists have been publically incredulous.

"It is hard to understand how the information can be stored within water over a timescale longer than picoseconds," said the Ruhr University in Bochum's Klaus Gerwert, quoted by New Scientist magazine, which broke the story (requires registration).

What does all of this mean? It could be that the propagation of life is able to make use of the quantum nature of reality to project itself in subtle ways, as has been hinted at in previous experiments. Alternatively, it could be that life itself is a complex projection of these quantum phenomena and utterly depends on them in ways not yet understood because they are incredibly hard to detect.

Speculatively, (and Montagnier doesn't directly suggest anything so unsubstantiated), it could also be the little-understood quantum properties of the water molecule and not just its more obvious chemical bonding properties that gives it such a central role in the bio-engineering of life-forms. Water might be a good medium in which DNA can copy itself using processes that hint at quantum entanglement and 'teleportation' (our term).

Montagnier's paper goes on to discuss the phenomenon he claims to have uncovered using 'quantum field theory' within the context of his personal interest, disease propagation.

Brazil to build ‘underwater cities’ to drill for oil

By Daniel Tencer
Wednesday, December 29th, 2010 -- 7:55 pm

284Share

239diggsdigg

petrobrascommons Brazil to build underwater cities to drill for
oil

Brazil's state oil company is planning to do away with offshore oil drilling platforms and replace them with automated "underwater cities" that extract oil.

In what could prove to be one of the most ambitious industrial projects ever undertaken, Petrobras is drawing up plans to place giant machinery and robots 6,000 feet under the sea floor, with humans controlling the oil-drilling "city" remotely, the Telegraph reports.

The underwater city would be capable of separating oil from sand and water, and even generating its own energy.

“Our target is that we won’t need platforms ten years from now,” Carlos Tadeu Fraga of the Petrobras Research Center told the Telegraph.

Petrobras' move comes as conventional oil rigs suffer from a damaged reputation in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. But it is not clear whether the new "underwater cities" would reduce the risk of oil spills, and the prospect of entire oil-drilling operations being controlled remotely will likely alarm environmental activists.

With oil prices trending upwards for years and many analysts warning of peak oil -- the day when oil production begins shrinking -- energy firms are turning to ever-larger, more unconventional methods for extracting oil.

Canada's oil sands, for example, have been described as an unprecedented industrial project, with dozens of companies investing more than $100 billion into extracting oil from sands in the north of Alberta. The project -- which involves the construction of some of the world's largest dams and the use of enormous land-stripping equipment -- has been described as an ecological nightmare.

Brazil was catapulted to the status of major oil producer in 2006, when a massive deposit of oil was discovered off the country's Atlantic coast. This week, Petrobras estimated the oil field to contain 8.3 billion barrel of recoverable oil and natural gas.

In all, Brazil has 12.6 billion barrels of recoverable oil, making it the second-largest South American producer after Venezuela.

The Telegraph reports the company will take the first experimental step in making its underwater cities a reality when it installs machines in its Campos Basin oil field that will be able to separate oil from water.

No estimate of the project's cost was available.

Riots, Strike in Greece Over Austerity Cuts

Photo Courtesy - Aris Messinis/AFP/Getty Images(ATHENS, Greece) -- Riots broke out in Athens Wednesday, as thousands of Greeks took to the streets to protest Parliament's approval of new austerity cuts.

Demonstrators squared off with riot squads outside of Parliament, facing rounds of tear gas, while firing back at police with rocks. The anti-austerity marchers are against the new labor reforms and say the cuts will force people to lose their jobs.

The spending cuts are required under the 110-billion-euro bailout agreement Greece made with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund to be saved from going bankrupt.

Along with the protest, Greece is also facing a general strike that is causing flights to be grounded, factories to be closed and disruptions to schools and mass-transit systems.

WATCH: Strangely, Bill Clinton Takes Over White House Podium

December 10, 2010 3:50 PM

Former President Bill Clinton held a remarkable, spur-of-the-moment news conference at a White House podium on Friday to announce his backing for the tax compromise President Obama reached with Republicans this week.

President Obama with former President Bill Clinton during a news conference at the White House on Friday.

Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama turned up in the White House briefing room after meeting privately together in the Oval Office. Mr. Obama introduced the 42nd president and then stood by as the one-time occupant of the White House offered his thoughts.

"I have reviewed this agreement that the president reached with the republican leaders," Mr. Clinton told reporters who assembled quickly for the hastily called remarks. "The agreement taken as a whole is, I believe, the best bipartisan agreement we can reach to help the most Americans."

The president stood by Mr. Clinton's side for several minutes as Mr. Clinton held court in front of the White House logo that often hovered behind him a decade ago.

But after Mr. Clinton began taking questions, the current president excused himself, saying that the first lady, Michelle, expected Mr. Obama's presence at one of the many holiday parties that presidents host during the month of December.

"I've been keeping the first lady waiting," Mr. Obama said, excusing himself.

"I don't want to make her mad," Mr. Clinton said. "Please go."

And with that, Mr. Obama departed, leaving Mr. Clinton to continue his extended conversation with the media. The image on the television screen – of Mr. Clinton at the White House, behind the official podium – had a time-warp quality to it.

The decision to ask Mr. Clinton to the White House, and then to have him make a public statement, reflects the desire by the White House to counterthe anger among liberal Democrats, who have accused Mr. Obama of caving too quickly on the tax deal.

For the past several days, the White House has been touting the support of numerous Democrats, from the mayor of Kokomo, Ind., to numerous governors and senators. But Mr. Clinton is clearly the biggest gun in that arsenal that Mr. Obama could deploy.

“In my opinion, this is a good bill and I hope that my fellow Democrats will support it,” Mr. Clinton said. “We all see this differently. But I really believe this will be a significant net plus for the country.”

Mr. Clinton went on for at least 20 minutes, moving at one point beyond the tax debate and offering his opinion on the administration’s new arms control treaty with Russia and the ongoing crisis in Haiti.

Russian Armed Forces on High Alert Over North Korea

Photo Courtesy - Yonhap News Agency(MOSCOW) -- Russia announced Tuesday that its armed forces in the east are on high alert. This comes in light of what it calls an "inadequate situation" on the Korean peninsula as tensions have increased in recent weeks between the North and South.

The head of Russia's military said they continue to follow what is happening and have taken measures to raise the forces' combat readiness.

On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov welcomed his North Korean counterpart to Moscow. In the meeting, Lavrov expressed concern with North Korea's ongoing uranium enrichment activities. He also condemned North Korea's attack on the South's Yeonpyeong Island, which has been the source of the recent increased tension.

South Korea's top nuclear official is on his way to Moscow to discuss the disclosure of North Korea's newest uranium enrichment facility and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island.

Russia joined the U.S. and others in condemning the November attack, which killed four people and brought about the highest tension on the peninsula in years.

China, North Korea reach consensus over crisis-Xinhua

10 hours 27 mins ago

Jeremy Laurence and Paul Eckert

China and its ally North Korea reached a consensus on the Korean peninsula crisis after "candid" talks in Pyongyang between Beijing's top diplomat and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Chinese state media reported.Skip related content

State Councilor Dai Bingguo met the isolated North's ailing leader in the capital Pyongyang for talks and "the two sides reached consensus on bilateral relations and the situation on the Korean Peninsula after candid and in-depth talks," Xinhua news agency said.

North Korea's KCNA news agency said the talks were "held over the issue of boosting the friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries and a series of issues of mutual concern."

Neither gave any further details.

But the United States has repeatedly called on Beijing to bring its ally to heel after the North bombarded a South Korean island last month, killing four people, and revealed advances to its nuclear programme opening another route to make an atomic bomb.

"Much of that volatility is owed to the reckless behaviour of the North Korean regime, enabled by their friends in China," Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a news conference in Tokyo.

The South has vowed to hit back hard against its neighbour if Pyongyang orders a repeat of last month's attack, bolstering its defences in the disputed West Sea area and amending military rules of engagement to permit the use of fighter jets and bombs.

"I actually believe that because these provocations continue, and seemingly at a more frequent interval, that the danger is going up and that steps must be taken to ensure that they stop," Mullen said

Last month's attack on Yeonpyeong island, the first of its kind against civilians on South Korean soil since the end of the 1950-53 war, coupled with the North's revelations of nuclear advances, have boosted tension on the divided peninsula.

Mullen also said that the United States wants sustainable military ties with China, instead of on-and-off contact. At the same time, Beijing said it had sent General Ma Xiaotian, deputy chief of general staff of the People's Liberation Army, to the United States for military-to-military talks.

Mullen justified staging joint military exercises with South Korea off the west coast of the peninsula, saying the Yellow Sea is free waters where the U.S. military has operated and will continue to do so.

A U.S. military official said Washington was encouraging Seoul to think strategically and in the long-term rather than focussing on tit-for-tat retaliation.

"Any actions that are taken -- actions, reactions -- have to be done very carefully to make sure that we don't escalate, that they are proportional, and at the same time send a very strong signal that the provocations must cease," Mullen said.

Analysts say Pyongyang will likely stage further, possibly bigger incidents, in the future to cement a leadership transition from ailing leader Kim Jong-il to his son. They say the North, which has a military-first policy, also stages what they call "provocations" to extract concessions at multilateral talks.

(Editing by Jonathan Thatcher)

N. Korea defends attack on S. Korean island, points blame at US AFP

Last Updated: 10:19 PM, December 8, 2010

Posted: 10:19 PM, December 8, 2010

North Korea Thursday defended its deadly attack last month on a South Korean border island, saying the South's "puppet warmongers" provoked the incident to try to spark a wider conflict.

Pyongyang repeated claims it was merely retaliating for a South Korean military drill which had dropped "thousands of shells" into the North's waters.

The November 23 attack on Yeonpyeong island was the first on civilian-populated areas since the 1950-53 war. It killed two civilians and two marines, destroyed 29 homes and triggered a regional crisis.

The island is just south of the Yellow Sea border known as the Northern Limit Line, which was drawn by United Nations forces after the war.

The North does not recognize the line and says it should run further to the south.

Pyongyang said the island lies "deep inside" its territorial waters.

"The puppet warmongers fired as many as thousands of shells into the territorial waters of the DPRK [North] side," it said in the report carried by the official news agency.

"This reckless act was obviously a deliberate provocation to prompt the DPRK to take a military counter-action."

The South has said its troops were merely conducting a routine drill. But the North said the United States had engineered the incident.

"Since the above-said shelling incident the US has massively supplied the latest weapons to the puppet group while zealously egging it on to carry out what it called 'retaliation plan,'" it said.

"This fact goes to clearly prove that the US was the arch criminal who orchestrated and wire-pulled the incident behind the scene."

The US and South Korean navies last week staged their biggest-ever naval exercise, and have said they will respond to any further attacks.

With US-South Korea war games, a signal to North Korea

US naval exercises Sunday off the Korean peninsula take on added significance, after North Korean attack on a South Korean island. Pyongyang rails against the US-South Korea war games.

By Anna Mulrine, Staff writer / November 26, 2010

The Nimitz-class USS George Washington at the Busan port in Busan, on July 25. On the heels of North Korea's attack on Yeonpyeong island the Obama administration has sent the aircraft carrier to take part in war games set for Sunday.

Lee Jin-man/AP/File

Enlarge

WashingtonBy Anna Mulrine, Staff writer / November 26, 2010 Christian Science

The joint military exercises the US will conduct with South Korea's navy on Sunday, off the Korean peninsula in the Yellow Sea, are taking on added significance as a message-bearer to North Korea, following Pyongyang's shelling of the South Korean island of Yeonpyeong on Tuesday.

South Korea push to build 'military fortresses'

President Lee Myung-bak vows to turn five islands along North Korea border into 'military fortresses' with jobs for civilians

Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 7 December 2010 09.15 GMT
Article history

The president of South Korea vowed today to turn five islands along the tense border with North Korea into "military fortresses", with jobs for permanent civilian communities, including those destroyed in a North Korean artillery attack.

Lee Myung-bak's comments came as the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff flew to Seoul to give reassurances of the US commitment to the country's defence, and as the top diplomats from the US, Japan and South Korea gathered in Washington in a show of unity. North Korea was warned to stop its "provocative and belligerent" behaviour and abandon its nuclear arms programme.

Tensions are still high on the Korean peninsula after the 23 November North Korean shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, a tiny enclave of military bases and fishing communities along the Koreas' disputed western sea border. The attack killed two South Korean Marines and two civilians, and reduced many homes and shops to charred rubble.

In comments posted on his presidential website, Lee said he wanted to "gradually push to make (the five frontline Yellow Sea islands) military fortresses" and to create jobs so local residents can continue to live on all of the islands.

Most of the 1,300 civilians on Yeonpyeong Island have fled, with many now living in a public bathhouse that has been converted into a refugee centre in the port city of Incheon.

Lee has been criticised for a military response to the shelling that was deemed too slow and too weak. He has ordered reinforcements for the thousands of South Korean troops stationed on Yeonpyeong and the four other border islands, as well as top-level weaponry and upgraded rules of engagement.

Even while promising more fortifications on the islands, the South Korean government has worked to show worried citizens that it will also help the islanders. Many Yeonpyeong residents have said in emotional interviews that they are uncertain about whether to go back to their villages.

Seoul has announced 30bn won ($27m) to help rebuild Yeonpyeong. The city of Incheon, which has jurisdiction over the island, has requested money from the central government to modernise shelters and buy equipment, including new boats for fishermen.

South Korea continued previously scheduled, week-long artillery exercises. However, no drills were happening along the disputed sea border because of bad weather, military officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity, according to internal rules.

North Korea has blamed South Korean military drills conducted on Yeonpyeong on 23 November for its artillery fire. The North disputes the maritime border, drawn in 1953 by UN forces, and considers the waters around Yeonpyeong, which lies just seven miles from its shores, its territory.

The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, meanwhile, inspected an iron and steel complex and a coalmining machine complex, North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency said yesterday. Kim has made a series of trips to factories since the island attack, according to the South Korean Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs.

In Washington, the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, met the Japanese foreign minister, Seiji Maehara, and the South Korean foreign minister, Kim Sung-hwan, to discuss the shelling of Yeonpyeong and Pyongyang's announced expansion of a uranium enrichment capability, whhich the US and others see as a defiant and dangerous step.

North Korea has said it wants to restart international talks on receiving aid in return for dismantling its nuclear programme, but Clinton made clear that Washington, Tokyo and Seoul view a resumption of talks as tantamount to rewarding North Korea for behaving badly.

"All agree that North Korea's provocative and belligerent behaviour jeopardises peace and stability in Asia," Clinton said.

The South Korean chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Han Min-koo, will meet tomorrow with his US counterpart, Admiral Mike Mullen.

The US defence secretary, Robert Gates, speaking to sailors on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, warned yesterday that provocative actions by North Korea signal potentially dangerous times ahead. Gates said no one wanted to see another war, so the US needed to "figure out the way ahead with North Korea".

Also yesterday, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, opened a preliminary investigation on whether the shelling of Yeonpyeong and the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship in March constitute war crimes.

North Korea bombardment: US to send nuclear aircraft carrier to South Korea

A US aircraft carrier is to deploy to the Yellow Sea off the coast of South Korea after the two countries agreed to conduct further war games in a show force against North Korea.

By Peter Foster in Beijing 8:00AM GMT 24 Nov 2010

The decision to send the nuclear-powered USS Washington comes less than 24 hours after North Korea shelled a South Korean island, killing two marines and attracting a wave of international condemnation for what the White House described as an “outrageous act” of provocation.

President Barack Obama and his South Korean counterpart Lee Myung-bak agreed to hold the joint military exercises on Sunday following a telephone conversation in which the US reiterated its security guarantees to Seoul.

The Yellow Sea exercises, which are controversial and have already been postponed once after objections from China last August, could raise the stakes further on an already-tense Korean peninsula.

A statement from US Forces Korea (USFK) said the exercise had been planned well before the North's "unprovoked artillery attack" but was designed to demonstrate the US' "commitment to regional stability through deterrence".

North Korea said it had carried out Tuesday’s bombardment in response to a South Korean live-fire exercise and has threatened further action if the South intrudes “even 0.001 millimetres” across the two countries’ disputed maritime border.

The news of the USS Washington’s deployment, reported by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, is unlikely to please China which reacted furiously in August to a similar plan, with one Chinese general describing the move as “flagrant provocation.”

As North Korea’s only international ally and important economic donor, China has refused to issue an outright condemnation of Tuesday’s attack, but was coming under increasing pressure from the US and Japan to be more pro-active in helping deal with Pyongyang’s belligerence. Stephen Bosworth, the US special envoy on North Korea, left Beijing on Wednesday morning after further talks with his Chinese counterparts which he described as “useful”.

However in a statement before departing, Mr Bosworth made little attempt to hide US differences with China over how to handle North Korea, calling on Beijing to condemn Pyongyang’s actions.

“We call on all members of the international community to condemn the DPRK’s acts and to make clear that they expect the DPRK to cease all provocations and implement its denuclearization commitments,” said Mr Bosworth, using the acronym for North Korea's official name.

Japan also publicly echoed the US’s private calls for China to be more forceful in using its potential economic and political leverage to make North Korea adhere to the norms of international behavior.

“We should ask China, which has significant influence over North Korea, to make efforts to jointly restrain North Korean actions," said Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan at the opening session of a cabinet task force set up in response to Tuesday's attack.

The mood remained tense and angry in South Korea on Wednesday, although no further violence was reported overnight following South Korea’s threat to take “enormous retaliation”, including missile strikes, if North Korea made any further attacks.

South Korea’s media reacted furiously to the North Korea bombardment which was the first of its kind since the end of the Korean War hostilities in 1953, with pictures of the burning South Korean village on Yeonpyeong Island stirring painful memories.

“A club is the only medicine for a mad dog,” said Dong-A Ilbo, calling the shelling a “war crime” and demanding a strong military riposte against the rogue state, even though that appeared to have been ruled out by officials.

“North Korea is putting a dagger to our throat," added the Chosun Ilbo daily, “Let's retaliate against North Korea's illegal attacks immediately, sternly and precisely.”

South Korea financial markets, which have grown used to North Korean sabre-rattling, appeared to take a more sanguine view with officials saying they expected the impact on markets to be temporary.

Korean stocks opened down 2.3 percent in early trading and the Korean won sank 3.2 percent, but both later started to recover.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

THIS IS A VIOLATION OF PRIVACY...........MAKE A DECISION TO NEVER FLY AGAIN.......TAKE THE BUS, TAKE AMTRAK, DRIVE!!!!

TSA Warns Travelers May Be Arrested, Detained, and Fined for Refusing Search

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
November 20, 2010




You will not be allowed to leave an airport until the government forces you to answer questions about why you refuse to have your genitalia groped.

In response to growing outrage over naked body scanners and intrusive pat down searches of the private parts of air travelers, the TSA is warning Americans that they may be arrested and fined $11,000 if they refuse to cooperate with the agency’s invasive and humiliating techniques.

The TSA warns that any “would-be commercial airline passenger” who enters an airport checkpoint and refuses to be subjected to “the method of inspection designated by the TSA will not be allowed to fly and also will not be permitted to simply leave the airport” (emphasis added).

The TSA will work with local police in order to make sure the person remains on the premises and answers questions. “Anyone refusing faces fines up to $11,000 and possible arrest,” reports the Palm Beach Post.

“Once a person submits to the screening process, they can not just decide to leave that process,” Sari Koshetz, regional TSA spokesperson, told the Florida newspaper. The policy includes people who decide not to fly.Teri Barbera, a spokesperson for the Palm Beach Sheriff’s office, said local police would assist the TSA in preventing people from leaving the airport. “We will handle each incident on a case-by-case basis,” said Barbera. “The deputies will do it at the airport just as they would do it anywhere else.”

On Wednesday, TSA boss John S. Pistole testified before Congress on the controversy brewing over the fact airports have become areas where the Bill of Rights no longer applies. Pistole said the TSA will enforce the new policies despite complaints that the search methods are too invasive and a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Senator John Ensign, a Nevada Republican, asked Pistole about groups that objected to all forms of bodily search on religious grounds. “While we respect that person’s beliefs, that person’s not going to get on an airplane,” said the TSA boss.

Now the TSA has announced it will also enlist local police to detain people who refuse dangerous naked body scans and molestation of their private parts.

More On SoCal Missile From A Missile Tech
By George Freund

11-13-10

"Finally there is something that has occurred, in which I am actually an expert and qualified to give a real answer about. I am a retired U.S. Navy FireControl Technician, who is platform certified in the gun and missile systems on board Adams class guided missile destroyers, I have also worked with the Navy's Harpoon, Tomahawk and ASROC missile systems. (FireControl Techs operate, maintain and repair the computer, radar and periphial systems used to launch and guide the various naval weapon systems, we are the guys who "PUSH THE BUTTON").

Anyway, what I saw in the recent video concerning the object 30 miles off the coast of CA. Is blatantly a foreign made, Large Cruise or ICBM missile, being launched by a sub-surface aquatic platform.

First, I know it's a large missile because it did not exhibit the typical "corkscrewing" trajectory of a beam riding missile as it trys to aquire the targeting beam. This tells me its a Big Boy with a complete guidence system installed in it, what is nicknamed a "fire and forget" missile, as once its launched its internal guidance system takes over and there is no real need for external guidance.

Second, I'm fairly confident it's not one of ours, as the vapor trail appears "dirty" it looks brownish.

I have personally been involved in (5) SM2 missile launches, and (2) ASROC missile launches, and have been on safety observation for at least 15 more launches of Harpoons, Tomahawks and other missiles. We put alot of sweat and money into our "birds" and part of that is the fuel cells, they burn very clean, a whitish-blue infact, not a dirty blackish brown. That missile had rather crude fuel cells, which tells me its not one of ours.

I bet the brass in Washington is freaked out big time, because of what I know of our "defenses" they should really have had a pretty good idea this thing was sitting there, and they should have been watching it, not only that the moment it broke the surface of the water and ignited our early warning dopplar should have picked it up, and relayed the info to NORAD, and the CAP units flying patrol over the country... Any high ranking expert who believes this is a condensation trail off of a commercial airliner is lying or stupid. I hope you hear from other Fire Control Techs who saw the same thing I did."


georgefreund@hotmail.com

China Fired Missile Seen In Southern California – Wayne Madsen

Posted by sakerfa on November 12th, 2010

Pentagon and its embedded media covering up Chinese show of force off LA

(MadsenReport) – China flexed its military muscle Monday evening in the skies west of Los Angeles when a Chinese Navy Jin class ballistic missile nuclear submarine, deployed secretly from its underground home base on the south coast of Hainan island, launched an intercontinental ballistic missile from international waters off the southern California coast. WMR’s intelligence sources in Asia, including Japan, say the belief by the military commands in Asia and the intelligence services is that the Chinese decided to demonstrate to the United States its capabilities on the eve of the G-20 Summit in Seoul and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Tokyo, where President Obama is scheduled to attend during his ten-day trip to Asia.

The reported Chinese missile test off Los Angeles came as a double blow to Obama. The day after the missile firing, China’s leading credit rating agency, Dagong Global Credit Rating, downgraded sovereign debt rating of the United States to A-plus from AA. The missile demonstration coupled with the downgrading of the United States financial grade represents a military and financial show of force by Beijing to Washington.

The Pentagon spin machine, backed by the media reporters who regularly cover the Defense Department, as well as officials of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and the U.S. Northern Command, is now spinning various conspiracy theories, including describing the missile plume videotaped by KCBS news helicopter cameraman Gil Leyvas at around 5:00 pm Pacific Standard Time, during the height of evening rush hour, as the condensation trail from a jet aircraft. Other Pentagon-inspired cover stories are that the missile was actually an amateur rocket or an optical illusion.

Experts agree that this was a ballistic missile being fired off of Los Angeles. Pentagon insists it was a jet aircraft or model rocket.

There are no records of a plane in the area having taken off from Los Angeles International Airport or from other airports in the region. The Navy and Air Force have said that they were not conducting any missile tests from submarines, ships, or Vandenberg Air Force Base. The Navy has also ruled out an accidental firing from one of its own submarines.

Missile experts, including those from Jane’s in London, say the plume was definitely from a missile, possibly launched from a submarine. WMR has learned that the missile was likely a JL-2 ICBM, which has a range of 7,000 miles, and was fired in a northwesterly direction over the Pacific and away from U.S. territory from a Jin class submarine. The Jin class can carry up to twelve such missiles.

Navy sources have revealed that the missile may have impacted on Chinese territory and that the National Security Agency (NSA) likely posseses intercepts of Chinese telemtry signals during the missile firing and subsequent testing operations.

Japanese and other Asian intelligence agencies believe that a Chinese Jin-class SSBN submarine conducted missile “show of force” in skies west of Los Angeles.

Asian intelligence sources believe the submarine transited from its base on Hainan through South Pacific waters, where U.S. anti-submarine warfare detection capabilities are not as effective as they are in the northern and mid-Pacific, and then transited north to waters off of Los Angeles. The Pentagon, which has spent billions on ballistic missile defense systems, a pet project of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is clearly embarrassed over the Chinese show of strength.

Likely route of Jin-class submarine from Hainan base.

The White House also wants to donwplay the missile story before Presidnet Obama meets with his Chinese counterpart in Seoul and Tokyo. According to Japanese intelligence sources, Beijing has been angry over United States and allied naval exercises in the South China and Yellow Seas, in what China considers its sphere of influence, and the missile firing within the view of people in Southern California was a demonstration that China’s navy can also play in waters off the American coast.

For the U.S. Navy, the Chinese show of force is a huge embarassment, especially for the Navy’s Pacific Command in Pearl Harbor, where Japan’s December 7, 1941 attack on the fleet at Pearl Harbor remains a sore subject.

In 2002, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice reportedly scolded visiting Chinese General Xiong Guankai, the deputy chief of staff for intelligence of the People’s Liberation Army, for remarks he allegedly made in 1995 that China would use nuclear weapons on Los Angeles. Xiong denied he made any such comments but the “spin” on the story helped convince Congress to sink billions of additional dollars into ballistic missile defense, sometimes referred to at “Star Wars II.”

CONFIRMED!!! - Missile Launch was US

Quote

This was published by the Dept of Defense and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

Coordinates below are in the same area as Monday's mystery missile!

Only question is... why didn't they just admit it?

[link to 164.214.12.45]

No. 45
6 NOVEMBER 2010
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Published Weekly by the
National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Prepared Jointly with the
National Ocean Service and U.S. Coast Guard

On Page 55

434/10(18).
EASTERN NORTH PACIFIC.
CALIFORNIA.
MISSILES.

1. INTERMITTENT MISSILE FIRING OPERATIONS 0001Z TO 2359Z
DAILY MONDAY THRU SUNDAY IN THE NAVAL AIR WARFARE CENTER
SEA RANGE. THE MAJORITY OF MISSILE FIRINGS TAKE PLACE
1400Z TO 2359Z AND 0001Z TO 0200Z DAILY MONDAY THRU FRIDAY
IN AREA BOUND BY

34-02N 119-04W, 33-52N 119-06W, 33-29N 118-37W,
33-20N 118-37W, 32-11N 120-16W, 31-54N 121-35W,
35-09N 123-39W, 35-29N 123-00W, 35-57N 121-32W,
34-04N 119-04W.

2. VESSELS MAY BE REQUESTED TO ALTER COURSE WITHIN THE ABOVE
AREA DUE TO FIRING OPERATIONS AND ARE REQUESTED TO CONTACT
PLEAD CONTROL ON 5081.5 MHZ (5080 KHZ) OR 3238.5 KHZ (3237 KHZ) SECONDARY OR 156.8 MHZ (CH 16) OR 127.55 MHZ BEFORE ENTERING THE ABOVE BOUNDARIES AND MAINTAIN CONTINUOUS GUARD WHILE WITHIN THE RANGE.

3. VESSELS INBOUND AND OUTBOUND FOR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PORTS WILL CREATE THE LEAST INTERFERENCE TO FIRING OPERATIONS DURING THE SPECIFIC PERIODS, AS WELL AS ENHANCE THE VESSEL'S SAFETY WHEN PASSING THROUGH THE VICINITY OF THE SEA RANGE IF THEY WILL TRANSIT VIA THE SANTA BARBARA CHANNEL AND WITHIN NINE MILES OFFSHORE VICINITY OF POINT MUGU OR CROSS THE AREA SOUTHWEST OF SAN NICOLAS ISLAND BETWEEN SUNSET AND SUNRISE.

Modern ICBMs typically carry multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), each of which carries a separatenuclear warhead, allowing a single missile to hit multiple targets. MIRV was an outgrowth of the rapidly shrinking size and weight of modern warheads and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties which imposed limitations on the number of launch vehicles (SALT I and SALT II). It has also proved to be an "easy answer" to proposed deployments of ABM systems—it is far less expensive to add more warheads to an existing missile system than to build an ABM system capable of shooting down the additional warheads; hence, most ABM system proposals have been judged to be impractical. The first operational ABM systems were deployed in the U.S. during 1970s. Safeguard ABM facility was located in North Dakota and was operational from 1975–1976. The USSR deployed its Galosh ABM system around Moscow in the 1970s, which remains in service. Israel deployed a national ABM system based on the Arrow missile in 1998, but it is mainly designed to intercept shorter-ranged theater ballistic missiles, not ICBMs. The U.S. Alaska-based National missile defense system attained initial operational capability in 2004.
ICBMs can be deployed from multiple platforms:

in missile silos, which offer some protection from military attack (including, the designers hope, some protection from a nuclear first strike)
on submarines: submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs); most or all SLBMs have the long range of ICBMs (as opposed to IRBMs)
on heavy trucks; this applies to one version of the RT-2UTTH Topol M which may be deployed from a self-propelledmobile launcher, capable of moving through roadless terrain, and launching a missile from any point along its route
mobile launchers on rails; this applies, for example, to РТ-23УТТХ "Молодец" (RT-23UTTH "Molodets"—SS-24 "Sсаlреl")

Missile Launch in California, Missile Launch California Mystery, Mystery Missle Launch Off California

Posted by liveyou 20 hours ago (Editorial)

Without warning, a missile just goes off in the sky over California? What makes a missile just let itself go like that? Some people are saying it's a jet. But I know better. Admittedly, I'm no missile expert, but I did watch "American Beauty," so I have my theory as to how this went down.

So you're a missile. You go to your daily work of non-proliferating in your special, secure briefcase. You sit there with the other missiles, Fat Man and Little Boy, talking about your Cuban friend's mid-life crisis. "Embarrassing," you mutter, "almost going off like that."

You never go off. You aren't that kind. You aren't excited for your annual inspection -- missile inspections, for missiles, are about what colonoscopies are for people -- but you tough it out. You try to encourage yourself to develop a longer half-life by staying fit and in shape -- well, missile-shaped, anyway.

Sure, being a missile is like being an American -- not nearly so exciting as it was during the Cold War era. You used to feel big and important and only scared of the Soviets. Now you hardly feel special at all. "All the jobs are going to India," you mutter. "Or maybe Pakistan and Iran."

You sigh. "Am I rusting?" you ask your wife, Little Fat Woman, when you get back home to your silo. "Of course not, dear," she responds. She used to be Attractive Girl, but that was back in the Soviet Era, when things were different and you felt like your work had real meaning. "Are you a fully armed nuclear warhead, or are you just happy to see me?" she asks. "Neither," you respond.

"I'm going to the pub," you say. "Don't wait up." You get to the pub and regale the other missiles there with that story of the time you all showed up at a mixer for Catholic prayer books. "That was awkward," you murmur.

"Things aren't good now like they used to be," you say. Everyone agrees. "Did you read the new George W. Bush autobiography?" someone asks. "Not yet," you say. "I miss him, though. He appreciated a good missile."

"Did you see that Barbara Bush showed him her miscarried fetus in a jar when he was in his teens?" Large Dominant Male asks.

"What?" you respond. "That--I--I think my head is going to explode."

Lacking any better way of dealing with this information, you start taking shots. You and the other missiles decide to compare who has more launch capacity. Large Dominant Male starts aiming pointedly at North Korea. Your friends subdue him. You take more shots, this time injuring a womp rat who happens to be passing. You call up missile command and yell excitedly that they are not the boss of you now, and, furthermore, they have never been! "Missile command is a misnomer!" you yell. "And I demand my share of the proceeds from The Spy Who Loved Me!"

"Sure," Missile command says. You sense that they are tired of your antics and are sending people over to break it up.

"I'm a mystery missile!" you yell. You have become very excited. You run outside and get onto a launch pad.

Missile command shows up. "You're fired, Jeff," they tell you.

"Yes, I am!" you reply, launching yourself off into the night over California. "I hope you all get SMD

An 'Unprecedented' Bat Die-Off Could Devastate U.S. Agriculture

See full article from DailyFinance:http://srph.it/cTI6pF

An 'Unprecedented' Bat Die-Off Could Devastate U.S. Agriculture

ByBRUCE KENNEDYPosted 9:45 AM 10/12/10

Most people don't love bats, but like good health, you'll realize that you miss them after they're gone. Experts believe many species of bats may vanish pretty soon, and their disappearance could bring profound and long-term changes not only to the environment but also to agriculture, landscaping and gardening across North America.

For several years now, scientists have been sounding alarms about a devastating fungus, White-Nose Syndrome (WNS), that has literally decimated bat populations in the Northeastern U.S. The fungus leaves a white substance on the bat's nose, wings and body, and disrupts the bat's hibernation patterns, forcing it to burn through its fat reserves, which quickly leads to starvation. Earlier this year, a survey of thebat population in New Jerseyestimated that 90% of that state's bats had been killed off.

"This is on a level unprecedented, certainly in mammals," says Rick Adams, a biology professor at the University of Northern Colorado and a renowned bat expert. "A mass extinction event, a thousand times higher than anything we've seen. It's going through [bat colonies] like wildfire, with 80% to 100% mortality."

"The disease is absolutely devastating, it's unprecedented," says Mylea Bayless, a biologist with Austin, Texas-basedBat Conservation International. "It's causing population declines in wildlife that we haven't seen since the passenger pigeon."

Bayless notes that bats have slow reproductive rates, usually giving birth to just one pup a year. So bat populations, she says, are going to be very slow to recover, "if they ever do recover." The disease, adds Bayless, "is moving at a pace that's astonishing, about 450 miles per year. In four short years, it's now closer to the Pacific Ocean than it is to its point of origination in Albany, N.Y."

Your Billion-Dollar Bug Eaters

You might be saying good riddance, but think again. Bats are the primary predator of night-flying insects. That not only includes pests like mosquitoes but also insects like corn earworm moths and cotton bollworms. In their caterpillar forms, those insects can destroy crops. A2006 studyof several counties in South-Central Texas concluded that the local bat population had an annual value of over $740,000 a year as a pest control -- or up to 29% of the value of the local cotton crop.

See full article from DailyFinance:http://srph.it/cTI6pF

A bat eats 60% to 100% of its body-weight in insects every day. Adams says one colony of Mexican free-tailed bats in Colorado's San Luis Valley, an important agricultural region, "pulls about 100 metric tons of insects out of the air in a year." And having bats in agricultural areas, he says, tends to move insects out of those areas, creating less need for dangerous and expensive pesticides.

And like honey bee colonies -- which have also been facing massive die-offs in recent years -- some bats are important pollinators and seed-distributors. Adams says bats are crucial to the reproduction of tropical fruits like mangos, papayas, figs and wild bananas. And in Arizona, bats are the primary pollinators for three large cactus species that support much of the region's ecosystem.

Government and Researchers Fight Back

The fungus associated with WNS is widespread in Europe, but it doesn't affect bats there. No one is sure yet how it became so lethal to North America's bat population -- but there's a possible human element. Scientists says WNS spores have been found on the clothing and gear of people exploring caves containing bat colonies. The pattern of its spread is also inconsistent with bat migration. "It went from Tennessee to Missouri and then to Western Oklahoma," says Adams, "and it doesn't seem like it would be moving like that if it was just bats."

In the meantime, humans are fighting back. Adams is hosting a conference on the crisis later this month in Denver. The event is expected to draw hundreds of bat experts from around the world. TheForest Service is banning visitorsto the thousands of caves and abandoned mines that dot the landscape in at least five Rocky Mountain and Great Plains states. And the Fish and Wildlife Service has awarded$1.6 million in grants for WNS research and control.

"But we all know that's a drop in the bucket for a disease that's sweeping the country and killing 95% of an entire group of animals," says Bayless. "For some people, that may seem like money. . .not well-spent, but [what are] the economic and ecological consequences of losing an entire species? A little bit of money spent now will save us in the long term."

See full article from DailyFinance:http://srph.it/cTI6pF

Could 'Goldilocks' planet be just right for life?

AP Photo/Zina Deretsky, National Science Foundation

An artist rendering by Lynette Cook, National Science Foundation, shows the new planet on the right. More photos »

235 votes

By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer – Wed Sep 29, 7:19 pm ET

WASHINGTON – Astronomers say they have for the first time spotted a planet beyond our own in what is sometimes called the Goldilockszone for life: Not too hot, not too cold. Juuuust right.

Not too far from its star, not too close. So it could contain liquid water. The planet itself is neither too big nor too small for the proper surface, gravity and atmosphere.

It's just right. Just like Earth.

"This really is the first Goldilocks planet," said co-discoverer R. Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution of Washington.

The new planet sits smack in the middle of what astronomers refer to as the habitable zone, unlike any of the nearly 500 other planets astronomers have found outside our solar system. And it is in our galactic neighborhood, suggesting that plenty of Earth-like planets circle other stars.

Finding a planet that could potentially support life is a major step toward answering the timeless question: Are we alone?

Scientists have jumped the gun before on proclaiming that planets outside our solar system were habitable only to have them turn out to be not quite so conducive to life. But this one is so clearly in the right zone that five outside astronomers told The Associated Press it seems to be the real thing.

"This is the first one I'm truly excited about," said Penn State University's Jim Kasting. He said this planet is a "pretty prime candidate" for harboring life.

Life on other planets doesn't mean E.T. Even a simple single-cell bacteria or the equivalent of shower mold would shake perceptions about the uniqueness of life on Earth.

But there are still many unanswered questions about this strange planet. It is about three times the mass of Earth, slightly larger in width and much closer to its star — 14 million miles away versus 93 million. It's so close to its version of the sun that it orbits every 37 days. And it doesn't rotate much, so one side is almost always bright, the other dark.

Temperatures can be as hot as 160 degrees or as frigid as 25 degrees below zero, but in between — in the land of constant sunrise — it would be "shirt-sleeve weather," said co-discoverer Steven Vogt of the University of California at Santa Cruz.

It's unknown whether water actually exists on the planet, and what kind of atmosphere it has. But because conditions are ideal for liquid water, and because there always seems to be life on Earth where there is water, Vogt believes "that chances for life on this planet are 100 percent."

The astronomers' findings are being published in Astrophysical Journal and were announced by the National Science Foundation on Wednesday.

The planet circles a star called Gliese 581. It's about 120 trillion miles away, so it would take several generations for a spaceship to get there. It may seem like a long distance, but in the scheme of the vast universe, this planet is "like right in our face, right next door to us," Vogt said in an interview.

That close proximity and the way it was found so early in astronomers' search for habitable planets hints to scientists that planets like Earth are probably not that rare.

Vogt and Butler ran some calculations, with giant fudge factors built in, and figured that as much as one out of five to 10 stars in the universe have planets that are Earth-sized and in the habitable zone.

With an estimated 200 billion stars in the universe, that means maybe 40 billion planets that have the potential for life, Vogt said. However, Ohio State University's Scott Gaudi cautioned that is too speculative about how common these planets are.

Vogt and Butler used ground-based telescopes to track the star's precise movements over 11 years and watch for wobbles that indicate planets are circling it. The newly discovered planet is actually the sixth found circling Gliese 581. Two looked promising for habitability for a while, another turned out to be too hot and the fifth is likely too cold. This sixth one bracketed right in the sweet spot in between, Vogt said.

With the star designated "a," its sixth planet is called Gliese 581g.

"It's not a very interesting name and it's a beautiful planet," Vogt said. Unofficially, he's named it after his wife: "I call it Zarmina's World."

The star Gliese 581 is a dwarf, about one-third the strength of our sun. Because of that, it can't be seen without a telescope from Earth, although it is in the Libra constellation, Vogt said.

But if you were standing on this new planet, you could easily see our sun, Butler said.

The low-energy dwarf star will live on for billions of years, much longer than our sun, he said. And that just increases the likelihood of life developing on the planet, the discoverers said.

"It's pretty hard to stop life once you give it the right conditions," Vogt said.

Homes on fire after explosion reported in Calif.

By TREVOR HUNNICUTT, Associated Press Writer – 33 mins ago

SAN BRUNO, Calif. – A massive fire burned homes as it roared through a mostly residential neighborhood in the hills south of San Francisco following a loud explosion that shot a fireball more than 1,000 feet into the air and sent frightened residents fleeing for safety Thursday.

A local fire chief said a gas line explosion likely caused the blast that sent flames tearing through the streets, incinerating possibly more than a dozen homes just after 6 p.m.

"We believe it's a high-pressure gas line that's blown," San Bruno Fire Chief Dennis Haag told KPIX-TV.

Pacific Gas and Electric, the utility company that serves the San Francisco Bay area, had crews in the area investigating the possibility of a natural gas explosion but had no additional information, said spokesman J.D. Guidi.

Following the initial blast, flames reached as high as 60 feet in the air as the fire fueled itself on burning homes. Planes and helicopters flew over the neighborhood dumping water in an effort to stanch the flames.

Witnesses said the blaze was preceded by a loud explosion and huge fireball. They described seeing residents fleeing for safety and rushing to get belongings out of their burning homes.

Connie Bushman returned home to find her block was on fire. She said she ran into her house looking for her 80-year-old father but could not find him. A firefighter told her he had left, but she had not been able to track him down.

"I don't know where my father is, I don't know where my husband is, I don't know where to go," Bushman said.

Victims suffering from serious burns began arriving at San Francisco Bay area hospitals shortly after the blast. An estimate of the number of injured was not immediately available. Hospitals reported receiving at least four victims in critical condition but anticipated more.

Jane Porcelli, 62, said she lives on a hill above where the fire is centered. She said she thought she heard a plane overhead with a struggling engine.

"And then you heard this bang. And everything shook except the floor, so we knew it wasn't an earthquake," Porcelli said.

"I feel helpless that I can't do anything. I just gotta sit by and watch."

Stephanie Mullen, Associated Press news editor for photos based in San Francisco, was attending children's soccer practice with her two children and husband at Crestmoor High School when she saw the blast at 6:14 p.m.

"First, it was a low deep roar and everybody looked up, and we all knew something big was happening," she said. "Then there was a huge explosion with a ball of fire that went up behind the high school several thousand feet into the sky.

"Everybody grabbed their children and ran and put their children in their cars," Mullen said. "It was very clear something awful had happened."

Several minutes later, Mullen was near the fire scene, about a half-mile away in a middle-class neighborhood of 1960s-era homes in hills overlooking San Francisco, the bay and the airport. She said she could feel the heat of the fire on her face although she was three or four blocks away from the blaze. It appeared the fireball was big enough to have engulfed at least several homes.

"I could see families in the backyards of the homes next to where the fire was, bundling their children and trying to get them out of the backyards," she recounted.

She said people in the neighborhood were yelling, "This is awful," "I live down there," and "My family is down there."

Judy and Frank Serrsseque were walking down a hill away from the flames with a makeshift wagon carrying important documents, medication and three cats.

Judy Serrsseque said she heard an explosion, saw that fire was headed toward their home and knew they had to leave. As they fled, they said they saw people burned and people struggling to get their things out of burning houses.

"We got everything together, and we just got out," Judy Serrsseque. "Mostly we're wondering if we have a house to go back to."

Nearly 250 North Texas homes damaged by tornadoes, flooding

September 8, 2010

DALLAS — Nearly 250 homes across North Texas were damaged by tornadoes and flooding on Wednesday.

The American Red Cross said its surveys showed that four homes were destroyed; 86 homes suffered major damage; and another 156 homes suffered minor damage in the storms triggered by the remnants of Tropical Storm Hermine.

Gov. Rick Perry declared a disaster in 40 Texas counties that were impacted by the high winds and high waters.

In Dallas, the heaviest tornado damage was in an industrial area northwest of downtown.

Officials are keeping employees out of a building at West Mockingbird Lane and Irving Boulevard because the structure remains unstable.

The National Weather Service rated the funnel cloud that struck this location as an F2, with winds up to 115 mph.

A truck driver received a minor neck injury when his 18-wheeler was slammed against a building by the force of the tornado. He was released from a hospital on Thursday after receiving treatment.

The twister peeled off the roofs of several buildings and knocked down some walls. Parking lots are filled with debris and cinder blocks.

The Dallas tornado was one of seven that touched down across North Texas in the past two days. Six of those twisters came down in a span of little more than two hours on Wednesday.

Opinion: President Obama Plans to Cut Social Security Next

Published: Thursday, 2 Sep 2010 | 11:02 AM ET

By: Lawrence A. Hunter, President, Social Security Institute

Digg

Lawrence A. Hunter,
Ph.D, President,
Social Security Institute

President Obama is playing “Watch the Birdie” with Americans over the age of 50, diverting their attention with handouts and scare tactics to hide in plain sight the enormous damage his policies are doing to the retirement safety net.

First it was Medicare. The ObamaCare legislation drops a few free goodies like breadcrumbs in front of Medicare recipients (such as free diagnostics and annual checkups) to draw their attention away from the enormous cuts in Medicare being used to help pay the freight for the new national healthcare system. Additionally, the White House has engineered a full-blown propaganda campaign, coordinated with the AARP, to deceive Medicare recipients and baby boomers about the magnitude and the implications of the $575 billion in Medicare cuts being used to help pay for ObamaCare. Even more deceitfully, using TV icon Andy Griffith in a taxpayer-funded TV ad to talk about how happy days are here again, the Obama Administration and its mouthpiece AARP are attempting to hoodwink people over the age of 50 about the inherent healthcare rationing sown into the very fabric of ObamaCare.

Medicare’s own Chief Actuary has already publicly reported that the Medicare payment rates for the doctors and hospitals serving retirees will be cut by 30 percent during the next three years. The details buried in the Medicare Trustees report reveal that still further Medicare cuts adopted in the ObamaCare legislation add up altogether to $818 billion during the first 10 years of full implementation, and $3.223 trillion during the first 20 years, just for Medicare’s hospital program (Part A, HI). Counting the cuts for Medicare physician reimbursement under the Part-B program brings the grand total in Medicare cuts to $1.048 trillion during the first full 10 years, and $4.95 trillion during the first 20 years.

Photo by: Pete Souza

President Barack Obama

Now the president is coming after Social Security.

In his Saturday radio address on August 14,President Obama revealed he is already moving on to cut Social Security.

But again, he is playing "Watch the Birdie," this time using scare tactics rather than sweeteners.

In that address, he denounced the idea of solving Social Security’s problems by allowing young workers the freedom to voluntarily choose to save and invest some of their taxes in their own personal retirement accounts, an option federal employees already enjoy. The president rejects fixing the Bernie-Madoff Ponzi scheme currently used to finance Social Security with some form of personal accounts to begin pre-funding Social Security with real saving and investment. Instead, he rails about “privatization,” an incendiary (and false) characterization of voluntary personal retirement accounts intended to scare the bejeebers out of the American people.

"President Obama thinks Americans over the age of 50 are stupid and can be demagogued with false claims about their benefits."

Lawrence A. Hunter, Ph.D
President, Social Security Institute

President Obama knows that all these account proposals affect only younger workers and do not touch the benefits of today’s retirees or the baby boom generation soon to retire. Moreover, congressional proposals for voluntary personal accounts have maintained the safety net of Social Security, guaranteeing that workers would get at least as much as Social Security promises now.

But President Obama thinks Americans over the age of 50 are stupid and can be demagogued with false claims about their benefits. The far-left faction in the Democratic Party just can’t stand the idea of workers and retirees supporting themselves more through the private sector. They call that “privatization,” which means too much filthy capitalism for their tastes.

So the question remains: What is the president up to?

How does he propose to solve Social Security’s long-term financial crisis, which even his own Presidential Debt Commission realizes is real? Without some form of real saving and investment for workers to begin prefunding their retirement, the only alternatives remaining are to raise payroll taxes or cut benefits—and that is precisely what President Obama’s Debt Commission is planning.

US Said Preparing New Laws To Seize Americans Retirement Accounts

Posted by EU Times on Aug 22nd, 2010 // 20 Comments

First They Destroy Private Healthcare in America – Yes, the socialist Democrats won their first battle to destroy the private healthcare system in the US but the automatic IRA bill now in Congress is their next attack to also control, confiscate and destroy the private retirement system. Ultimately, nationalizing healthcare is designed to create a major new government revenue stream by replacing private health insurance with a nationalized, mandatory, government program and their goal is identical with your retirement plan.

Washington will decide the annual forced healthcare premiums on all Americans with the middle and upper wage earners paying far higher premiums than the subsidized voting constituencies who will be the primary beneficiaries of the program. Their goal is to allow Washington to steal much of the annual health premiums (taxes) for current revenue needs and to bailout and subsidize with your premiums the health programs for the voting blocks of poor and underemployed, illegals, unions and the millions of city, county, state and federalgovernment employees. Eventually there will be no private competition available except for the very wealthy and Washington will constantly increase premiums just as they raise taxes today.

Next They Steal Your Private Retirement Benefits – Just as with the Obama Administration plans eventual nationalization of healthcare, the tremendous amount of funds in private retirement plans and IRA accounts are also being targeted to meet future revenue needs. Bills have just been introduced in both the House and Senate to create the new Auto IRA accounts which will at first be voluntary but later will become mandatory like Social Security and I expect the early 3% employee after tax contribution levels to eventually rise to 10 to 15% of compensation rising even more than Social Security has increased over the years. Read this August 17th article in Investment News at for more information.

Just Robbery Pure & Simple – The Auto IRA is the first step to grab and control your retirement assets and replace our private system with a forced, government controlled Social Security type program. In addition they will force much of your retirement funds into buying junk treasury bonds along with the Federal Reserve when the dollar/national debt crisis hits as billions of retirement funds become the buyer of last resort when the rest of the world are dumping dollars and treasury securities. Americans with substantial private retirement benefits will also likely be “means tested” out of their promised Social Security benefits and discover their private retirement benefits will be subject to confiscatory levels of taxes and penalties which will even target previously taxed Roth IRA accounts.

Bipartisan Theft – But don’t think a GOP victory in the fall elections or 2012 will safeguard your retirement assets as Washington’s need for new wealth is a bipartisan effort by both political parties. Note that the leading “Washington based” conservative think tank disagrees with my analysis of the threat to your retirement assets. I take exception to the views of David John, The Heritage Foundation’s leading analyst on issues relating to pensions, financial institutions, asset building, and Social Security reform but read his The Automatic IRAs: A Conservative Way to Build Retirement Security and you will see how even some traditional conservatives are supporting the latest Washington retirement wealth and power grab.

Read More About the Retirement Threat & Protection Solutions – I have already covered the proposals in detail in two lengthy online reports: Get Ready For the Obama Retirement Trap at published on 1/28/2010 and The 10 Step Countdown To Retirement Plan Nationalization at published on 3/22/2010.

Please take the time to review both reports in detail which covered the threats when the Obama Administration first proposed this new program back in January 2010 and also read David John’s glowing support for the new Washington retirement scheme. Then decide for yourself if Washington is here to help you for a change or out to steal you blind as usual. Together, the reports above provide a confiscation timeline and actions you can take now to defend your retirement security and benefits.

Two Films That Blew Bilderberg Wide Open

Fidel Castro’s spotlight on the Bilderberg clique is part of a global awakening to the new world order

Two Films That Blew Bilderberg Wide Open 200810top4

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Friday, August 20, 2010

The Bilderberg Group is receiving fresh and timely attention after Cuban president Fidel Castro published an article warning of the fact that the globalist clique, “has become a kind of global government, controlling not only international politics and economics, but even culture,” prompting the term “Bilderberg” to shoot to the top of the Google Trends rankings.

This is part of a global awakening to the new world order in which millions of people around the globe are finally discovering where the true power lies and why the world is being driven headlong towards serfdom and dictatorship,

Castro quoted almost verbatim from Daniel Estulin’s 2006 book The Secrets of the Bilderberg Club in his regular newspaper column, sparking a fresh round of international media coverage some four months after the Bilderbergers last met in Spain, something the publicity-shunning gaggle of globalists were completely unprepared for.

Castro drew attention to Bilderberg’s plan to “install a world government that knows no borders and is not accountable to anyone but its own self,” reported the Associated Press. The Cuban leader went into further detail, quoting Estulin on his research about how the “Frankfurt School of socialist academics worked with members of the Rockefeller family in the 1950s to pave the way for rock music to “control the masses” by diverting attention from civil rights and social injustice.”

Castro’s decision to put the spotlight on Bilderberg, knowing that the international media would take the bait, produced a familiar outcome, with the corporate press repeating Bilderberg’s talking point that it represents nothing more than a casual get-together and has no power to set policy.

In reality, as we reported in June, Bilderberg attendees are mandated to implement decisions that are formulated during the annual conference of power brokers. As Willy Claes, former Secretary General of NATO revealed during a Belgian radio interview, members are required by Bilderberg to set the agreed upon policy within the environments they have influence over. This is why when a consensus is reached on certain issues at Bilderberg, such as the Euro single currency, the invasion of Iraq, and which politicians will run for major offices, it routinely then plays out in the real world.

Bilderberg is now an open conspiracy, with the agenda for world government an undeniable reality and no longer the fodder for sophomoric jibes about conspiracy theories.

Two key Bilderberg films that contributed to this unraveling of Bilderberg’s cloak of secrecy were Alex Jones’ Endgame and The Obama Deception. In Endgame, Alex Jones bullhorns the 2006 Bilderberg meeting in Ottawa Canada, garnering front page coverage in major newspapers as for the first time Bilderberg’s efforts to preserve their low profile agenda were blown wide open.

The films revealed how traitorous government officials go to Bilderberg to get their marching orders, which is especially relevant this year because during the last Bilderberg meeting in Spain, the majority of attendees expressed their support for an attack on Iran, which is seemingly imminent.

Collectively, The Obama Deception and Endgame have received millions of views as Bilderberg’s open conspiracy is laid bare. But these Bilderberg films need to reach millions more Americans before we can communicate the understanding that the system is rigged and that both parties are managed by elitists who control both sides of the political spectrum.

Just because you know that doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone else does, and so it’s up to you to get these Bilderberg films out to the people and help us reach critical mass on exposing the agenda for world government. This has already been advanced through decades of hard work from people like Jim Tucker, and more recently Daniel Estulin – now it’s your turn to contribute to the awakening.

A ruling elite can only continue to operate successfully in the shadows – only once their treachery sees the light of day will we begin to see true change, and it’s already happening with Bilderberg kingpin Zbigniew Brzezinski admitting recently that a “global political awakening” was derailing the agenda for a new world order.

Now is the perfect opportunity to use these Bilderberg films to get the message to people about what Bilderberg truly represents, and how they are shaping the globe in their own image from behind the scenes while the majority of Americans still continue to obsess about political partisanship and meaningless party labels.

Northern Lights Move South

Usually, the Northern Lights can only be seen by folks who live far to the north. But this week, the Aurora Borealis is making an appearance in lower Canada, some of the United States, Norway and other countries around the globe.

The reason has to do with solar storms. On Sunday, an eruption on the sun's surface blasted plasma toward the Earth. That plasma is helping to give millions of people a peek at something they'd never seen.

Fortunately for us, these lucky ducks are taking pictures and posting them on Flickr. You can check out several of our absolute favorites here. Enjoy!

by Mike Krumboltz of The Buzz Log

Aurora Borealis by Bjørnli Foto - www.bjornlifoto.no

Northern light over Grimstad by Christian Augustin

Star Trails and Northern Lights by Bryan Hansel

This was not the glow I was looking for! by Robert Snache - Spirithands.net

Watching the Northern Lights by Robert Snache - Spirithands.net

Northern Lights Outside of Winnipeg by MiguelYetman

GENETICALLY ENGINEERED MOSQUITOS TO BE RELEASED

Scientists in the US have managed to genetically engineer a malaria-resistant mosquito. The tremendous event has been hailed as the first of its kind and a breakthrough in the scientific community, but is all the speculation true? Is it a good idea to introduce these genetically engineered mosquitoes into the environment? Now, your first impression is probably yes because scientist claim the mosquitoes could help eliminate malaria throughout the world. Why wouldn't you want to stand for such a cause? This is the type of heated rhetoric used during such a debate. Well, in this particular instance, only the good news has been reported as far as I have witnessed. Every story related to the creation of the genetically engineered mosquito is shed in a positive light. News columnist and scientist all over the world have hailed the find as a cure for malaria; currently bloggers and writers continue to do the same, yet no one has mentioned the possibility of negative side effects/scenarios.

story continued below

Genetically engineered mosquito larva (Image: Michael Riehle, University if Arizona)

A few points of interest:

1. The genetically engineered mosquitoes lifespan is 20% less when compared to natural mosquitoes. They claim the 20% decrease is modest when compared to a 50% decrease in malaria.

2. The GM mosquitoes do not enter a reproductive cycle or produce eggs when exposed to sugar.

3. They plan to release these mosquitoes into the environment in hopes of replacing the natural mosquito population.

4. The mosquitoes have no competitive advantage over natural mosquitoes.

Ok, this doesn't sound so bad, right? Well, lets talk about a few more issues first. For this to be successful,genetically engineered mosquitoes would have to "take over" the naturally occurring, disease-spreading mosquitoes. This means giving the GM insects a competitive advantage, something that has not yet been achieved. Researchers have been experimenting with genetic tricks. "Genetic Tricks," what is this? In this particular instance they are discussing the idea of boosting the mosquitoes genes to make them resistant to toxins which could be used against unmodified mosquitoes. Yea, this sounds like a good idea, create agenetically engineered mosquito which is resistant to toxins, then kill all the natural mosquitoes by releasing toxins into the environment. My friends, this is an ethical issue. How do we know what damage could occur to the environment from this 10-20-50 years down the road. I don't know about you, but I am against living in a world of man made mosquitoes. What if it mutates? What if the decrease in lifespan causes issues? (mosquitoes do play a role in our environment) What if this genetically modified mosquito becomes the carrier of something far worse? This study hasn't even been carried out on the Anopheles gambiae mosquito. "This is the major vector of malaria in Africa where the disease is most prevalent."

Bottom line: Contrary to what we have heard, not enough research has been conducted to release a genetically modified mosquito into the environment. Who are we, as a species, to question the planets inhabitants and try to genetically modify them with our science? This exact type of science has even led some people to believe humans were once genetically modified. If you enjoyed the article, share it, subscribe and follow The Real News Now on twitter or google. They are trying to do a good thing, but this does not mean it will turn out well. These genetically modified mosquitoes could end up causing more harm than good in the long run.

Public release date: 30-Jul-2010

Contact: John Heys
jheys@idsociety.org
703-299-0412
Infectious Diseases Society of America

Emerging E. coli strain causes many antimicrobial-resistant infections in US

The new strain, ST131, was a major cause of serious antimicrobial-resistant E. coli infections in the United States in 2007, researchers found. This strain has been reported in multiple countries and encountered all over the United States. In the study, researchers analyzed resistant E. coli isolates collected during 2007 from hospitalized patients across the country. They identified 54 ST131 isolates, which accounted for 67 percent to 69 percent of E. coli isolates exhibiting fluoroquinolone or extended-spectrum cephalosporin resistance.

"If we could discover the sources of this strain, the transmission pathways that allow it to spread so effectively, and the factors that have led to its rapid emergence, we could find ways to intervene and possibly slow or halt this strain's emergence," said study author James Johnson, MD, of the VA Medical Center in Minneapolis.

In the past, highly virulent E. coli strains usually have been susceptible to antibiotics, while highly resistant strains have been fairly weak in terms of their ability to cause disease. The susceptible strains were easily treated even though they caused serious infections, while the resistant ones tended mostly to affect only weakened or vulnerable individuals. Now, the study's findings suggest, the ST131 strain has appeared with a high level of virulence and antimicrobial resistance.

"If this strain gains one additional resistance gene," Dr. Johnson added, "it will become almost untreatable and will be a true superbug, which is a very concerning scenario."

###

Founded in 1979, Clinical Infectious Diseases publishes clinical articles twice monthly in a variety of areas of infectious disease, and is one of the most highly regarded journals in this specialty. It is published under the auspices of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). Based in Arlington, Va., IDSA is a professional society representing more than 9,000 physicians and scientists who specialize in infectious diseases. For more information, visit www.idsociety.org.

Japan suspends work at stricken nuclear plant

EARTHQUAKE WARNING FROM RUSSIAN INSTITUTE of PHYSICS of the EARTH

West Coast USA Danger IF Japan Nuclear Reactor Meltdown

Map of Nuclear Power Plant Reactors in Japan

Fukushima Power Plant, Boiling Water Reactor (BWR) diagram

Hundreds Killed by Massive Tsunami After 8.9-Magnitude Quake Rocks Japan

Related Video

Related Interactive

Related Video

Related Video

A million Libyans need aid; UK, France seek no-fly zone

The world should NOT take military action against Gaddafi, says top Russian diplomat as he undermines Cameron's plan for no-fly zone

Providence plans to pink slip all teachers

09:25 AM EST on Thursday, February 24, 2011

Earth dodges geomagnetic storm: scientist

Ark. cities feel unexplained surge in earthquakes

Hillary Clinton calls historic meeting of ambassadors

'US working on plan for immediate Mubarak departure'By JPOST.COM STAFF 02/04/2011 04:25

'US working on plan for immediate Mubarak departure'

New York Times' reports White House in negotiations with officials surrounding Egyptian president on plan to install transitional government run by Suleiman, supported by Egyptian military.

South Sudan chooses to secede: official results

RELATED PHOTOS / VIDEOS

Mubarak Orders Crackdown, With Revolt Sweeping Egypt

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: January 28, 2011

Scott Nelson for The New York Times

Multimedia

INTERACTIVE MAP

Related

The Lede Blog: Latest Updates From the Lede Blog (January 28, 2011)

In Alexandria, Protesters Rout the Police, for Now (January 29, 2011)

Waves of Unrest Spread to Yemen, Shaking a Region(January 28, 2011)

The Lede Blog: Interview With an Egyptian Blogger (January 27, 2011)

Related in Opinion

Opinionator | The Thread: How Do You Solve a Problem Like Mubarak? (January 28, 2011)

Editorial: Washington and Mr. Mubarak (January 29, 2011)

Related in Opinion

ROOM FOR DEBATE

The New York Times

Readers' Comments

DNA Molecules Can 'Teleport,' Nobel Winner Says

Brazil to build ‘underwater cities’ to drill for oil

Riots, Strike in Greece Over Austerity Cuts

WATCH: Strangely, Bill Clinton Takes Over White House Podium

Russian Armed Forces on High Alert Over North Korea

China, North Korea reach consensus over crisis-Xinhua

With US-South Korea war games, a signal to North Korea

US naval exercises Sunday off the Korean peninsula take on added significance, after North Korean attack on a South Korean island. Pyongyang rails against the US-South Korea war games.

Related Stories

South Korea push to build 'military fortresses'

North Korea bombardment: US to send nuclear aircraft carrier to South Korea

A US aircraft carrier is to deploy to the Yellow Sea off the coast of South Korea after the two countries agreed to conduct further war games in a show force against North Korea.

An 'Unprecedented' Bat Die-Off Could Devastate U.S. Agriculture

Could 'Goldilocks' planet be just right for life?

Homes on fire after explosion reported in Calif.

Nearly 250 North Texas homes damaged by tornadoes, flooding

Opinion: President Obama Plans to Cut Social Security Next

RELATED LINKS

Beck says US has `wandered in darkness' too long

Northern Lights Move South

Emerging E. coli strain causes many antimicrobial-resistant infections in US

'US working on plan for immediate Mubarak departure'
By JPOST.COM STAFF
02/04/2011 04:25