Rising sea levels attributed to global groundwater extraction link

 

Large-scale groundwater extraction for irrigation, drinking water or industry results in an annual rise in sea levels of approximately 0.8 mm, accounting for about one-quarter of total annual sea-level rise (3.1 mm). According to hydrologists from Utrecht University and the research institute Deltares, the rise in sea levels can be attributed to the fact that most of the groundwater extracted ultimately winds up in the sea. The hydrologists explain their findings in an article to be published in the near future in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Groundwater extraction is more common in more arid regions of the world, where there is less available surface water. It is used for crop irrigation, drinking water or industrial purposes. Aquifer levels will decline if over a prolonged period more groundwater is extracted at more locations than can be replenished by means of rainwater recharge. As a consequence, rivers and wetlands will run dry and aquifer levels will fall to such a depth that pumping becomes impossible. Aquifer depletion can eventually spell ecological disaster or even lead to famine.

Rising sea levels

With the knowledge that most of the extracted groundwater eventually winds up in the sea, the researchers at Utrecht University and Deltares calculated the contribution groundwater extraction makes to rising sea levels. Researcher Marc Bierkens says, “We calculated it at eight-tenths of a millimetre per year. This is surprisingly large when compared to the current annual rise in sea levels, which the IPCC estimates at 3.1 mm.” About half of the current rise in sea levels can be attributed to thermal expansion, a little over one quarter to run off from glaciers and ice caps, and the remaining quarter to groundwater depletion. “Although the role of groundwater depletion in rising sea levels had already been acknowledged, it was not addressed in the most recent IPCC report due to a lack of reliable data to illustrate the severity of the situation. Our study confirms that groundwater depletion is, in fact, a significant factor.”

Groundwater depletion

The researchers looked at a combination of information to identify the areas in the world where groundwater extraction leads to groundwater depletion. An estimate of the amount of groundwater extracted annually in most of the world’s countries could be obtained from a database of the International Groundwater Resources Assessment Centre (IGRAC), which is affiliated with Deltares. Combining this information with the estimated demand for water, based on population density and data on irrigated areas, the researchers were able to produce a map of global groundwater extraction (map 1B). A water balance model was then used to map out global groundwater aquifer recharge (map 1A), i.e. precipitation that seeps through the soil to recharge groundwater aquifers. By subtracting the figures of the groundwater extraction map from the figures of the groundwater aquifer recharge map, the researchers were able to compile a map of global groundwater depletion (map 1C).

Depletion worst in certain countries

According to Bierkens, “The study reveals that depletion is the most acute in areas of India, Pakistan, the US and China, which are also the regions without sustainable levels of food production and water consumption and which are expected to experience major problems in the long run.” The hydrologists estimate that global groundwater extraction and depletion have increased by 312 km3 to 734 km3 and 126 km3 to 283 km3 per year, respectively, since 1960.

Publication

Y. Wada, L.P.H. van Beek, C.M. van Kempen, J.W.T.M. Reckman, S. Vasak, and M.F.P. Bierkens (2010), Global depletion of groundwater resources, Geophysical Research Letters, doi:10.1029/2010GL044571, in press.

Further information

Roy Keeris, Utrecht University Press Office, +31 (0)30 253 2411, R.B.Keeris@uu.nl.




Figure 1: The figure in the upper left-hand corner illustrates aquifer recharge (i.e. rainwater recharge), the figure in the upper right hand corner shows the severity of global groundwater extraction and the large figure below depicts global groundwater depletion. In this figure, “1000” denotes one cubic kilometre of water. The grey areas are regions for which there is no available data on groundwater extraction.




Figure 2: This graph demonstrates the estimated global increase in groundwater extraction and groundwater depletion (expressed in cubic kilometres per year) between 1960 and 2000. Vertical bars are used to indicate the uncertainty band.

 

As Western Civilization Lies Dyinglink

The Western commercial system exists to extract more from consumers than it supplies in products and services. Its goal is profit and has never been to improve the human condition but to exploit it. When governments institutionalize this system, they place their nations on suicidal paths, because as Jefferson recognized, "Merchants have no country." It is not terrorism that threatens the security of the Western World, it is the Western World's commercial system.

A man suffering from severe chest pains collapses. His wife calls 911. An ambulance arrives, the EMTs treat the patient, place him in the ambulance's bed, and start off to the hospital. Along the way, the engine stalls. The ambulance's staff begins arguing about how to get the motor restarted. One says more gasoline is needed, another says there's water in the tank, a third says the fuel filter is clogged. While they argue, the patient lies dying.

This situation is analogous to what's happening in America and parts of Europe. While economists and politicians argue, their nations are in the throes of death. These people are looking for the devil in the details, but he is not there. It's the system itself that’s diabolical.

The Western commercial system is extractive. It exists to extract more from consumers than it supplies in products and services. Its goal is profit, and profit literally means to make more (pro-ficere). Its goal has never been to improve the human condition but to exploit it. It works like this:

Consider two water tanks, initially each partially full, one above the other. One gallon of water is dumped from the upper tank into the lower one for each two gallons extracted from the lower tank and pumped into the upper tank. Over time, the lower tank ends up empty and the upper tank ends up full. The circulation of water between the tanks ends.

Essentially, this scenario describes all commercial systems based on profit. It is why the top 20 percent of Americans has 93 percent of the nation's financial wealth and the bottom 80 percent has a mere seven percent. It is why the bottom 40 percent of all income earners in the United States now collectively own less than one percent of the nation’s wealth. It is why the nation's poverty rate is now14.3 percent, about 43.6 million people or one in seven. It is also why the Wall Street Journal has reported that 70 percent of people in North America live paycheck to paycheck. It is also why, despite numerous pledges over decades, no progress has been made in reducing world-wide poverty. The system is a thief.

The economy has collapsed not because of misfeasance, deregulation, or political bungling (although all may have been proximate causes), it has collapsed because the pockets of the vast majority of Americans have been picked. The housing bubble didn't burst because home prices had risen, it burst because the pockets of consumers had been picked so clean they could no longer service their mortgages.

What the wealthiest 20 percent of Americans don't realize is that some in this group will begin to target the others in order to keep the extractive process working. In fact, it's already happening. "The brute force of the recession earlier this year turned back the clock on Americans' personal wealth to 2004 and wiped out a staggering $1.3 trillion as home values shrank and investments withered." Little of this loss from investments was suffered by the lower 80 percent of Americans. There is, after all, no goodwill within greed, and the market can be and often is manipulated.

The "system" has impoverished the people, the circulation between the two tanks has been reduced to a trickle, and our economists have convinced the government that the only way to get things flowing again is to pour more water into the upper tank, hoping that the spillover will settle in the lower tank. Better to pray for rain!

This impoverishment has numerous mathematically certain implications; two major ones follow.

First, the system can't be fixed by tinkering with the details. At best, tinkering with the details can merely slow down the depletion of consumer wealth. As long as the system is based on profit, more must be taken than is given. The rate of depletion can be changed, but the depletion cannot be stopped. This conclusion is as mathematically certain as subtraction. Why the geniuses in the American economics community, all who whom taut economics for its use of mathematical models, cannot understand this is a conundrum. They can tinker as much as they like. Some tinkering will produce apparent benefits, some won't. But one thing is certain—the system, unless it is fundamentally and essentially changed—will break down over and over again just as it has at fairly regularly intervals in the past. As long as maintaining the system is more important that the welfare of people, the people have no escape. They are eventually impoverished—both when the system works and when it doesn't! Two thousand years of history has produced not a single counterexample to this conclusion. Prosperity never results from exploitation.

Another implication that few seem to recognize concerns the national debt.

We are told that the burden of paying off the debt will be borne by our progeny, our children, and their children. But unless the Western commercial system undergoes fundamental changes, the children and grand children of most Americans will never have to bear this burden. Why? Not even governments can pick empty pockets. So if the debt is to be paid by raising taxes, the children and grandchildren of that 20 percent of Americans who hold 93 percent of the nation's financial wealth will have to pay them. Most, if not all, of these people are also investors. Given the acrimonious debate about letting the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy expire, the chances of that ever happening are slim to none.

Will the debt then be paid by devaluing the dollar, by printing money? Many believe that the government will eventually take this alternative. Let's say it does. Then all the dollars held by anyone anywhere will be devalued equally, including the dollars held by that same 20 percent of Americans. Again the wealthy 20 percent of Americans, having the most, lose the most. The devalued dollars they collect on their investments are merely added to their other devalued dollars, and the more the dollar must be devalued to repay the debt, the more the wealthy lose.

And finally, will the government default? Most seem to believe this to be unlikely. Perhaps, but isn't it the best alternative? Investors will simply not be paid, but the rest of their money will retain its value unless other economic consequences reduce it. Even Morgan Stanley recognizes that "the sovereign debt crisis won't end till deeply indebted rich country governments give holders of their bonds a good soaking."

So relax, Americans, your children will never bear the burden of paying off the national debt. Just sit back and enjoy watching the wealthy squirm.

Some say that if the nation defaults, the government will be unable to borrow. But other governments have defaulted without losing their ability to borrow. Russia, Argentina, and Zimbabwe are but recent examples. Of course, there are severe economic consequences to defaulting, but there are severe consequences to each of these alternatives too. How much harder can life be for the 80 percent of Americans holding a mere seven percent of the nation's wealth? There are, after all, no degrees of broke; no broke, broker, and brokest.

Will investors refuse to lend? Doubtful. A wealthy person can do four things with money: give it away, spend it, stuff it under the mattress, or invest it. Those are the only alternatives, and it is unlikely that much of it can be spent or that many will have the inclination to give it away or save it. So the wealthy really lack a great deal of choice.

Finally, a hidden principle underlies this extractive system—It is okay for some to enrich themselves by making others poor. Even though this is exactly what thieves do, no one, to my knowledge, has ever pointed out that this principle is immoral. It appears to be accepted universally as economically acceptable. But consider these two similar principles: (1) It is okay for some to improve their health by making others unhealthy, and (2) It okay for some to avoid the consequences of their criminal acts by making others bear them. No one would consider the last of these right, yet all three are logically and materially identical.

Some may claim that without profit, no commercial system can function effectively. If true, the implications for humanity are horrific. It implies that mankind was made in Satin's image, that the Commandments, especially the tenth, are fraudulent, that all the philosophy and literature that defines Western Civilization are nugatory, that no essential distinction exists between so-called civilized and barbaric nations, that all governments are illegitimate, that words like justice and fairness are meaningless, that the law is lawless, that society disintegrates into nociety, and that nothing really matters. The economy is Bedlam, the Earth is the Universe's Insane Asylum, and the craziest are in charge. What kind of human mind would ever attempt to defend this abomination?

This Western commercial system exists merely to enrich vendors by exploiting consumers. When governments institutionalize this system, they place their nations on suicidal paths. Astute observers of history have long recognized what Thomas Jefferson made explicit—"Merchants have no country." Oh, yes! These merchants will object vehemently. Pay no attention. Just watch what they do.

They expect favorable treatment and services from governments but do everything possible to keep from paying for them in taxes and exhibit no concern whenever their native lands face bankruptcy. When their native lands face stress, as in times of war, the people are called upon to sacrifice while the merchants are allowed to profiteer. When John F. Kennedy said, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country," he was not speaking to corporate America. Does any reader of this piece really believe that the makers of Humvees, drones, and F16s would ever consider supplying them to our military at cost? Yet how great is the cost of the sacrifice parents are asked to make by sending their children off to fight hideous wars?

People, a merchant unwilling to sacrifice for his country has no country, he will support no country, defend no country, and if such people are given control of a nation, they will suck its blood dry and sell off the body parts to the highest bidder. Not even a recognizable corpse will remain. It is not terrorism that threatens the security of the Western World, it is the Western World's commercial system.  

Aurora Borealis hits a 100-year low point – sun blamed

Posted on September 29, 2010 by Anthony Watts

via Physorg.com with h/t to Dr. Leif Svalgaard and Indur Goklany

Aurora borealis in the vicinity of Anchorage, Alaska. Historic From the NOAA Photo Library Image: Wikimedia

The Northern Lights have petered out during the second half of this decade, becoming rarer than at any other time in more than a century, the Finnish Meteorological Institute said Tuesday.
The Northern Lights, or aurora borealis, generally follow an 11-year “solar cycle”, in which the frequency of the phenomena rises to a maximum and then tapers off into a minimum and then repeats the cycle.
“The solar minimum was officially in 2008, but this minimum has been going on and on and on,” researcher Noora Partamies told AFP.
“Only in the past half a year have we seen more activity, but we don’t really know whether we’re coming out of this minimum,” she added.
The Northern Lights, a blaze of coloured patterns in the northern skies, are triggered by solar winds crashing into the earth and being drawn to the magnetic poles, wreaking havoc on electrons in the parts of the atmosphere known as the ionosphere and magnetosphere.
So a dimming of the Northern Lights is a signal that activity on the sun which causes solar winds, such as solar flares and sun sports, is also quieting down.

CRACKLING SUNSPOT: During the past 24 hours, sunspot 1110 has increased in size more than 10-fold. A white-light camera onboard NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory took this picture during the early hours of Sept. 29th:

Although it is still small compared to behemoth sunspot 1109 right behind it, sunspot 1110 is much more active. Reconnection events in the sunspot's magnetic canopy have produced at least two C-class solar flares since yesterday (SDO movies: #1, #2). The eruptions were brief and did not hurl significant clouds of plasma toward Earth. If the sunspot continues to grow, however, future eruptions could become geoeffective.

One-fifth of world's plants at risk of extinction By David Shukman Environment correspondent, BBC News, Texas

Plants such as artemisia sweet wormwood provide valuable drugs - in this case, for malaria

One-fifth of the world's plants - the foundation of life on Earth - are at risk of extinction, a study concludes.

Researchers have sampled almost 4,000 species, and conclude that 22% should be classified as "threatened" - the same alarming rate as for mammals.
A further 33% of species were too poorly understood to be assessed.
The analysis comes from the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, the Natural History Museum and International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN).
There are an estimated 380,000 plant species in all, and many are victims of habitat loss - typically the clearing of forests for agriculture.
Species in tropical rainforests are found to be at greatest risk.
The study, known as the Sampled Red List Index for Plants, is an attempt to provide the most accurate assessment so far.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

Plants are the basis of all life on Earth, providing clean air, water, food and fuel”

End Quote Stephen Hopper RBG Kew

Previous studies have focused on the most threatened plants or particular regions.

This one instead sampled species from each of the five main groups of plants, and its authors argue that as a result, their conclusions are more credible.
The report comes ahead of the UN Biodiversity Conference in Nagoya in Japan next month where ministers are due to discuss why conservation targets keep being missed.
Launching the findings, Kew's director, Professor Stephen Hopper, said the study would provide a baseline from which to judge future losses.
"We cannot sit back and watch plant species disappear - plants are the basis of all life on Earth, providing clean air, water, food and fuel.
"Every breath we take involves interacting with plants. They're what we all depend on."
Medicinal properties The study investigated the key types of plants, including mosses, ferns, orchids and legumes like peas and beans.
The fear among botanists is that species are being wiped out before they can be researched, potentially losing valuable medicinal properties.
Plant-based remedies are the only source of healthcare in the world's poorest countries, and have proved essential in combating conditions including malaria and leukaemia.

Seed and tissue banking is now a key conservation tool

Another concern is that we have become dependent on a narrow range of plants with a limited genetic base.
The report estimates that 80% of the calories consumed worldwide are derived from just 12 different species.
The findings add urgency to the work of Kew's Millennium Seed Bank at Wakehurst in Sussex, which has now gathered some 1.8 billion seeds from around the world.
The samples are catalogued and stored in underground cold rooms as a safeguard against future losses.
The collection includes seeds from plants that have already been judged extinct, including a species of tree from Pakistan and an orchid from Ecuador.
Another victim is a species of olive tree from the South Atlantic island of St Helena.
The only traces of its existence are a few dried pressings of its leaves, and a tiny sample of DNA kept in a plastic test-tube in a freezer.

 

Landslide buries 30 in north-western Colombialink

Rescuers say it could take a week to reach the bodies

As many as 30 people may have been buried by a landslide in north-western Colombia, government officials say.

Most of the victims were bus passengers who were walking across a road blocked by a previous landslide when a mountainside collapsed on top of them in the Antioquia province on Monday.
Local houses where some took shelter were also swept away.
Search and rescue efforts have now been suspended for the night, as people are buried under many tons of rock and mud.
"Tonight we've suspended the search for victims. Despite the huge effort, our work has gone unrewarded due to the enormous amount of earth that has fallen," Antioquia's Disaster Prevention and Assistance System chief John Rendon told the AFP news agency late on Tuesday.
The disaster triggered by heavy rain happened near Giraldo, 80km (50 miles) north of the city of Medellin.
"It was horrible because we heard a rumbling and looked out to see people running to the houses and then they were also swallowed by the earth," local resident Milena Ramirez told the Colombian newspaper El Tiempo.
Warnings 'ignored' Red Cross sniffer dogs have identified locations where the victims are buried, but officials say it could take several days to dig them out.
The rescue effort has also been hampered by the risk of further landslides.
President Juan Manuel Santos, who visited the scene, said people had ignored warnings to stay away from the site of the previous landslide.
"Sadly, the people who were moving from one bus to another did not pay attention to the authorities," he said. "We are doing everything we can to find them."
Mr Santos said Colombians should prepare for "a very tough winter".
Weeks of heavy rain across the country have caused floods and landslides that have killed more than 70 people.

Russian Crop Misery Spreads To World's Supermarkets ~ link ~The hulking green combine tractor clatters across a wheat field at the sprawling Maslovka farm, a typical autumn scene in Russia’s agricultural heartland. This year however, the machine is not harvesting wheat but ploughing dead crops back into the cracked, sun-scorched earth, a symbol of a land hit by an unprecedented summer drought and savage forest fires. “These are scary times,” says Karpa Osipova, 84, who lives on Lenin Street, a few blocks from the Maslovka farm. “The prices of crops are slowly rising, and my pension isn't big enough,” says Osipova. “I don’t even know how I am going to be able to afford bread.” The situation on Maslovka farm will affect not just whether Osipova gets her daily loaf of bread, but may also have a far-reaching impact on global bread supplies and food prices. “The situation is serious. Many farms this year have harvested half last year’s figures,” says Andrei Sizov, the executive director of SovEcon, an agricultural research firm in Russia. “They now face a choice: either not to sow winter wheat, or sow it in the dry earth.” Russia is one of the leading global grain exporters, accounting this year for 14 percent of global exports of wheat, flour and related products in the year to June 30, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Cassandra Says It Will Get Very Cold By Alan Carubalink

                      
  
21 Sep 10 - In the Greek myth about Cassandra, she could foresee the future, but no one believed her warnings. Her name is believed to be derived from the words for beauty and the sun.

Any number of solar scientists and others are warning that the Earth is on the brink of a new Ice Age at worst, a mini ice age at best. Dr. Achim Brauer of the German Research Center for Geosciences in Potsdam has concluded that the next Ice Age will come on so swiftly that in barely a year much of the northern hemisphere will be incased in ice and snow.

The Little Ice Age from around 1300 to 1850 lasted long enough to transform European society and have a profound affect on the histories of America and France. In England, they went from growing grapes to skating on a completely frozen Thames.

All the signs are in place and throughout the northern hemisphere nations, their leaders prattle on about global warming, clean energy, endangered species, and all the other environmental foolishness without once casting an eye toward the source of all climate on Earth, the Sun!

While the warmists were trying to stir up hysteria over an Earth whose temperature was suppose to rise dramatically, Nature had other plans. For the past decade the magnetic field that triggers sunspots, magnetic storms on the face of the Sun, has been steadily declining and, with it, so has the overall temperature of planet Earth.

No matter what august figure blathers about climate change these days, they are either an ignorant fool or a charlatan seeking to enrich himself by one scheme or another. The situation for the warmists has become so dire that even the science advisor to the President, Dr. John Holdren, wants to change the terminology of global warming to “global climate disruption”, admitting the former is “a dangerous misnomer.”

It’s worse than that. It is a huge fraud, a hoax, a crime intended to deceive millions.

Okay, let’s all forget the millions of words and millions of dollars spent to convince us that “global warming” was such a sure thing that any scientist or reasonably intelligent person disputing it was labeled a denier, but the truth was that the data generated by the computer models to justify the claim was rigged!

My friend, Robert Felix, author of “Not by Fire, but by Ice”, and editor of IceAgeNow.com, probably knows more about ice ages than anyone on the planet. In his book, he says “Ice ages begin and end abruptly every 11,500 years.” Guess what? We are now 11,500 years since the last Ice Age ended!

While idiots run about claiming that humans actually have any affect whatever on the climate and thus the fate of the Earth, Felix reminds us that “the Earth is a violent and dangerous place to live. We’re beginning to realize that mass extinctions have been the rule, rather than the exception, for the 3.5 billion years that life has existed on this planet.”

On June 14 in an article published in the New Scientist by Stuart Clark, he raised the question of why and where the sunspots of gone. Noting that they ebb and flow in cycles lasting about eleven years, Stuart said, “But for the last two years, the sunspots have mostly been missing. Their absence, the most prolonged in nearly 100 years, has taken even seasoned sun watchers by surprise.”

Not everyone, though. Felix believes we are on the cusp of the next Ice Age and, frankly, so do I. “This is not the calm before the storm,” says Felix. “This is the storm.”

If we’re lucky, it may just be a new Little Ice Age, but it could be a new Ice Age and, if that’s the case, a lot of life on planet Earth is going to be severely disrupted for a very long, long time.

Even a brief ice age of several hundred years will increase the demand for the generation of energy to keep us warm. All of a sudden everyone including the environmentalist liars will be crying out for more coal, more oil, and more natural gas.

 

Landslide buries 300 dozens of houses in south Mexicolink

Some 300 houses have been buried by a landslide in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca, local officials have said.

Heavy rain overnight had saturated the soil on a mountainside above the town of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, causing it to slip at about 0400 (0900 GMT).
It is not clear how many people have been affected, but officials fear that hundreds could have been buried.
Rescue teams have reportedly been delayed because of the bad weather, which has cut off several roads.
Tropical storms in the western Caribbean have caused high rainfall in the mountainous region during the past week.

 

Is Iceland Preparing To Blow Again?

link

It has been a while since Iceland's unpronounceable volcano shut down European airspace for a week. This could be about to change, because as FromTheOld demonstrates, the seismic activity at the base of Bárðarbunga stratovolcano, which also happens to be the highest mountain in Iceland, has picked up materially over the last 48 hours. As a reminder (courtesy of Wikipedia), Bárðarbunga “The largest lava flow in Iceland and the entire earth from a single eruption is originated from Bárðarbunga about 8500 years ago (causing mass extinctions)." Have we come down to this? A supervolcano demanding the sacrifice of a former FRBNY demagogue and current Napoleon Dynamite Ph.D. lookalike or threatening another, much more vicious, lock out of Europe?
More on FromTheOld:

Bárðarbunga is a powerful stratovolcano in Iceland and is located under the ice cap of Vatnajökull glacier. With a massive high of 6591 feet above sea level that makes it the highest mountain in Iceland it also makes for some powerful volanic activity when it erupts.

Iceland's Bárðarbunga volcano is said to erupt every 250-600 years if scientists are correct. What many dont know is that the most powerful volcano eruption on earth happened at Bárðarbunga some time ago.

For those that believe in evolution it could be around 8000 years ago but for those that believe in creation it could be around 3000 years ago, no one knows exactly when but the last time Bárðarbunga erupted it caused lava to cover an area of 950 square kilometers.

It is believed that Bárðarbunga will erupt sometime in the near future.

In the picture above you can see the activity rising in the last couple of days.

Jakarta. Following increased volcanic activity of Central Java’s Mount Merapi, the chief of the national park that surrounds it said on Sunday that routes to the summit had been closed.

The volcano, which also extends into Yogyakarta province, has displayed a significant increase in seismic activity over the past week, with multiphase earthquakes increasing from a normal average of five times per day to 38 times per day.

Volcanic earthquakes are also up from the normal average of once per day to 11 per day.

“I ordered my officers at guard posts at the foot of Mount Merapi to ban climbers from coming into the park. I shall issue a formal ban myself on Monday,” Tri Prasetyo, chief of Mount Merapi National Park, told the Jakarta Globe on Sunday.

Tri said the alert status had been increased on Friday from “normal” to “beware” by the Volcano Investigation and Technology Development Institution (BPPTK).

“Shortly after the authorities raised the alert status and issued the latest report on Mount Merapi’s activities, I stopped issuing permits for climbers,” Tri said. “Landslides and mudflows of volcanic material [remaining from previous eruptions] could easily kill someone.”

Three sand miners were killed and two others seriously injured on the volcano on Saturday morning after a landslide buried them at an illegal sand mining site near Balerante village, Klaten, Central Java.

“We are still investigating the cause of the landslide, but we have banned sand mining activities on the slopes of Mount Merapi. We suspect a landslide due to heavy rain,” said Adj. Comr. Agus Djaka Santosa, the Klaten Police chief.

On Friday, Sri Sumarti, Mount Merapi section head at BPPTK in Yogyakarta, said the status was raised to beware, just three rungs below full eruption status.

“We are appealing mainly to sand miners operating within sever kilometers of the crater,” she said.

“The rainfall is high enough to cause flash floods of [old] volcanic material that are very dangerous.”

Sri warned that material could be washed down the volcano’s slopes by heavy rain.

Agus urged people not to disturb wild animals descending following volcanic activity.

Apes and green peafowl were reported to have started to come down the mountain.
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/home/eru ... ers/398206

Global Cooling and the New World Order. Global Cooling on the Agenda of the Bilderbergslink

 

Bilderberg. Whether you believe it’s part of a sinister conspiracy which will lead inexorably to one world government or whether you think it’s just an innocent high-level talking shop, there’s one thing that can’t be denied: it knows which way the wind is blowing. (Hat tips: Will/NoIdea/Ozboy)

At its June meeting in Sitges, Spain (unreported and held in camera, as is Bilderberg’s way), some of the world’s most powerful CEOs rubbed shoulders with notable academics and leading politicians. They included: the chairman of Fiat, the Irish Attorney General Paul Gallagher, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke, Henry Kissinger, Bill Gates, Dick Perle, the Queen of the Netherlands, the editor of the Economist…. Definitely not Z-list, in other words.

Which is what makes one particular item on the group’s discussion agenda so tremendously significant. See if you can spot the one I mean:

The 58th Bilderberg Meeting will be held in Sitges, Spain 3 – 6 June 2010. The Conference will deal mainly with Financial Reform, Security, Cyber Technology, Energy, Pakistan, Afghanistan, World Food Problem, Global Cooling, Social Networking, Medical Science, EU-US relations.

Yep, that’s right. Global Cooling.

Which means one of two things.

Either it was a printing error.

Or the global elite is perfectly well aware that global cooling represents a far more serious and imminent threat to the world than global warming, but is so far unwilling to admit it except behind closed doors.

Let me explain briefly why this is a bombshell waiting to explode.

Almost every government in the Western world from the USA to Britain to all the other EU states to Australia and New Zealand is currently committed to a policy of “decarbonisation.” This in turn is justified to (increasingly sceptical) electorates on the grounds that man-made CO2 is a prime driver of dangerous global warming and must therefore be reduced drastically, at no matter what social, economic and environmental cost. In the Eighties and Nineties, the global elite had a nice run of hot weather to support their (scientifically dubious) claims. But now they don’t. Winters are getting colder. Fuel bills are rising (in the name of combating climate change, natch). The wheels are starting to come off the AGW bandwagon. Ordinary people, resisting two decades of concerted brainwashing, are starting to notice.

All this, of course, spells big trouble for the global power elite. As well as leading to food shortages (as, for example, it becomes harder to grow wheat in northerly latitudes; adding, of course, to such already-present disasters as biofuels and the rejection of GM), global cooling is going to find electorates increasingly angry that they have been sold a pup.

Our fuel bills have risen inexorably; our countryside, our views and our property values have been ravaged by hideous wind farms; our holidays have been made more expensive; our cost of living has been driven up by green taxes; our freedoms have been curtailed in any number of pettily irritating ways from what kind of light bulbs we are permitted to use to how we dispose of our rubbish. And to what end? If man-made global warming was really happening and really a problem we might possibly have carried on putting up with all these constraints on our liberty and assaults on our income. But if it turns out to have been a myth……

Well then, all bets are off.

The next few years are going to be very interesting. Watch the global power elite squirming to reposition itself as it slowly distances itself from Anthropogenic Global Warming (”Who? Us? No. We never thought of it as more than a quaint theory…”), and tries to find new ways of justifying green taxation and control. (Ocean acidification; biodiversity; et al). You’ll notice sly shifts in policy spin. In Britain, for example, Chris “Chicken Little” Huhne’s suicidal “dash for wind” will be re-invented as a vital step towards “energy security.” There will be less talk of “combatting climate change” and more talk of “mitigation”. You’ll hear enviro-Nazis like Obama’s Science Czar John Holdren avoid reference to “global warming” like the plague, preferring the more reliably vague phrase “global climate disruption.”

And you know what the worst thing is? If we allow them to, they’re going to get away with it.

Our duty as free citizens over the next few years is to make sure that they don’t.

Al Gore, George Soros, Bill Gates, Carol Browner, John Holdren, Barack Obama, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Tim Yeo, Michael Mann, Ted Turner, Robert Redford, Phil Jones, Chris Huhne, John Howard (yes really, he was supposed to be a conservative, but he was the man who kicked off Australia’s ETS), Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Yvo de Boer, Rajendra Pachauri….The list of the guilty goes on and on. Each in his own way – and whether through ignorance, naivety idealism or cynicism, it really doesn’t matter for the result has been the same – has done his bit to push the greatest con-trick in the history of science, forcing on global consumers the biggest bill in the history taxation, using “global warming” as an excuse to extend the reach of government further than it has ever gone before.

It is time we put a stop to this. In the US, the Tea Party movement is showing us the way. We need to punish these dodgy politicians at the ballot box. We need to ensure that those scientists guilty of malfeasance are, at the very least thrown out of the jobs which we taxpayers have been funding these last decades. We need to ensure that corporatist profiteers are no longer able to benefit from the distortion and corruption of the markets which result from green regulation.

We need a “Global Warming” Nuremberg.

Los Angeles laughs at recent “invisible summer” AP articlelink

Downtown Los Angeles scorches with temperatures 110+ F … NWS Current temp at USC
[UPDATE: For a look at the USC station see this WUWT post. -Anthony]

Quick flashback 5-days ago:  USA Today / AP:  California’s ‘invisible summer’ slips away and the obligatory image of the hooded sweatshirt jogger…

LOS ANGELES — No need to root around the closet for sweaters and jackets: Californians never really put them away this year.

“The invisible summer, seamless from spring to fall,” said Bill Patzert, a scientist at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory who studies the role of oceans in the global climate.
In Los Angeles, the last full day of summer passed Tuesday under the gloom of a deep marine layer — the low clouds and fog that put a damper on many beach excursions and made a dip in the surf bracing.

“The ocean never warmed,” Patzert said.

As if on cue, the beginning of fall heralds a brief but impressive heat wave with temperatures well above 100F in locations that saw a below-average, somewhat gloomy summer 2010.
Today:  USA Today / AP reports:  Scorching heat raises wildfire fears in California

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It’s been a scorching start for fall in California and it only looks to be getting hotter.

Summer-like temperatures were expected through Monday, with downtown Los Angeles predicted to reach a high of 107 degrees. That would break a record for the day of 106 degrees that was set in 1963.

Comment ideas:  how can these extreme temperatures be related to global warming / climate change and “consistent” with what climate models “have shown/predicted” would happen?  Please forget everything about the article 5-days ago and focus on today’s record heat.

 

Nanodiamonds in Greenland Ice -
Evidence of Explosions in the Sky at a Magnetic Reversallink

15 Sep 10 — A layer of trillions of nanosize diamonds discovered in the Greenland ice sheet "adds credence to the hypothesis that fragments of a comet struck across North America and Europe about 12,900 years ago," says this article in Science Daily. "There is a layer in the ice with a great abundance of diamonds," said James Kennett, professor emeritus in the Department of Earth Science at UC Santa Barbara. "The diamonds	Image of nanodiamonds from Greenland Ice Sheet. (Credit: James C. Weaver UCSB)
are so tiny that they can only be observed with special, highly magnifying microscopes. They number in the trillions."

I don't agree with Kennett's assessment. I think the Greenland nanodiamonds lend credence to my hypothesis that giant explosions in the sky during the Gothenburg magnetic reversal created vast amounts of carbon - including the nanodiamonds - which then rained onto our planet. (See "Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps.")

University of California Santa Barbara Campus

This discovery supports earlier published evidence for a cosmic impact event about 12,900 years ago, Kennett explained.

Previously, Kennett and his son, Douglas J. Kennett, of the University of Oregon, had reported the discovery of nanosize diamonds in a layer of sediment found on Santa Rosa Island, off the coast of Santa Barbara, Calif.

The Santa Rosa layer corresponds with the disappearance of the Clovis culture, and with the extinction of many large animals across North America, including mammoths, camels, horses, and the saber tooth cat.

Brutal Winters Ahead, says Meteorologist Major La Ninalink

 

10 Sep 10 - The Pacific Ocean has been in its warm cycle since the late 1970s, says meteorologist Joe Bastardi. But we're now switching back to the cold phase and a major La Nina.

The Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) is the major driver of global climate, says Bastardi, and the winters ahead are going to be brutal.

Back in 1998 we had a super El Niño, which brought on - by satellite standards - the warmest year on record. Then came the nasty winter of 01-02.

This time will be different, says Bastardi. The wild card is that we were at a peak of solar activity at that time, whereas now solar activity is "feeble at best."

"Yeah, sunspots are more than they than they were last year," says Bastardi. "But the overall number of sunspots is down. And if we were measuring it the way we were in the 1800s, it wouldn't be near as high as it is now. Now we have this revisionist way of doing things."

Major La Nina

Now we’re headed into a major La Nina that’s going to last for the next couple of years. When we come out of that, there’s really good reason to believe the winter of 2012-13, and perhaps beyond, is going to be quite cold.

Then there are the wild cards such as Arctic volcanoes, says Joe, and the fact that the current La Nina has come on faster and harder than anything he can remember.

More rain forecast for flooded West Coastlink

Residents of B.C.'s Central Coast and northern Vancouver Island are bracing for more flooding as forecasters predict 40 to 70 millimetres of rain could fall across the region by Tuesday.
A weekend deluge washed out roads and cut off several communities near Bella Coola and Port Hardy after more than 200 millimetres of rain fell on some coastal areas north of Vancouver, creating some of the worst flooding on record.
At least 120 people were still out of their homes on Monday morning and as many as 600 remained stranded by the floodwaters, said Steven Waugh with the Emergency Operations Centre in Bella Coola.

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"We had a bit of a reprieve yesterday because the rain stopped and the waters went down yesterday. And we did as much as we could to secure people and make sure they were in a safe spot, because we knew there was another fairly strong event coming and it's now happening," said Waugh on Monday.
"So our intent right now is to continue doing as much as we can as our transportation links are a little bit more open in the valley, but by this afternoon we expect to be cut off again," he said.
There's been major damage to highways and infrastructure on the Central Coast, leaving boats and helicopters as the only way in and out of the region. A 100-kilometre stretch of Highway 20 was closed between Bella Coola and Anahim Lake, and the local airport runway is flooded.
"Our airport is also out. The dike broke above the airport and the runway is out of service. So we're pretty much cut off … right now," said Waugh.

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The villages of Firvale and Hagensborg on the Central Coast were hardest hit, and residents have gathered at a local emergency operations centre, said Theresa Hood, who works at the band office of the Nuxalk First Nation.
"They've asked us to stay home, just to go out when there's an emergency, because it's so bad. But Highway 20 is washed out and it's going to take a lot of time to get that repaired. We're looking at four to eight weeks to get it repaired so our supplies are going to run out pretty quick," she said.
Waugh said they had expected heavy rains, but the flooding took them by surprise.
"We had no snow in the mountains whatsoever and our rivers were low. They're very empty because it's been so dry. So I believe that there may well be a factor in that the forest fires and the mountain pine beetles have dropped the water-holding capacity of the soils, reduced that in the upper slopes. So we're getting more water down in the valley than we have in the past," he said.

Vancouver Island communities affected

There was also major flooding on the northern end of Vancouver Island in and around the communities of Port Hardy, Port Alice and Holberg over the weekend, but the flood waters there appeared to be receding by Monday morning.
RCMP Sgt. Phil Lue said the region is no longer being pelted by rain and flood water has started to recede. Residents of Port Alice and Kingcome have been told they can return home.

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About 70 trailers and a dozen homes were evacuated after a mudslide Friday washed out the main road in the village of Port Alice, and boats were being used to ferry people in and out of Holberg over the weekend.
In nearby Kingcome Inlet on the mainland, approximately 70 people were airlifted to safety Saturday after flood waters continued to rise.
Port Hardy Mayor Bev Parnham declared a state of local emergency on Saturday. She plans to meet with the provincial officials on Monday to ask for help for residents whose homes were damaged by floodwaters but who are not covered by private insurance.
While Port Hardy was not cut off, residents there suffered the most flood damage, said Lue.
"Nobody was evacuated from Port Hardy," he said. "Some people drove from their homes to the community centre and reported that 'My house is flooded and damaged,' but nobody was really displaced from their homes."
On Monday morning, emergency co-ordinators dispatched equipment to clean up the mudslide that closed the road to Port Alice and repair the route to Port McNeill, Zeballos and Holberg.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2010/09/27/bc-west-coast-flooding-more-rain.html#ixzz10lVlg1Kx

 

The American people are afraid, they see disaster coming. Everyone is waiting to see what city is chosen to be sacrificed. Will it be Phoenix or Sacramento or perhaps Atlanta? This is the real fear, the “not so secret” fear in the heart of every American.

By Gordon Dufflink

For years, America’s military has been divided, competent military professionals and patriots on one side and Christian Zionists, loyal to Israel and addicted to a propaganda “dreamworld” on the other.

Americans sat, on 9/11, with their military “asleep at the switch,” their president in a daze and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, perhaps out of confusion, we may never know, talking about airliners being shot down and the Pentagon being attacked by missiles. Yes, he said these things, things he couldn’t “unsay” but things the press showed once and quickly buried. Something terribly wrong happened, something years in planning, but not planned in a cave in Afghanistan. Everywhere investigators look, one thing pops up, Israel. The moment that door is opened, it is slammed shut, often with threats, often with more than threats.

We may never know the full extent of the brutality used against those who have spoken up. We know that Arab leaders can be assassinated anywhere, any time. America will remain silent and the news will always support Israel. Israel owns the news.

What about the “suicided” British scientist Dr. David Kelly, the man responsible for moving the Israeli nukes out of South Africa? Reliable sources tell us he was ready to come forward with the facts about a massive political scandal, a cover-up of lost nuclear weapons, blackmail and bribery.

Do we really believe that there are so many unlucky United States senators? Crashes of small aircraft has done more to control the US Senate than any election, control used to set the stage for a generation of wars. With AIPAC capable of buying any election, capable, willing and doing it, not an American organization at all but a lobby for a foreign government, one that likes America “not so much” as we are led to believe, is representative government in the United States dead? When someone swears an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, is it meaningless when the government itself is no longer “American?”

Control of America, or, more appropriately, control of America’s vast military, tired and worn as it is, represents the key to ruling the world. Fooling the people, buying the government and duping America’s military through infiltrating every level of critical decision making and communications is a task, not only attempted but one long since accomplished. Problem is, even with, not only control of the press, but powerful news organizations directly under foreign control like Fox News, word is getting out.

The American people are afraid, they see disaster coming. Everyone is waiting to see what city is chosen to be sacrificed. Will it be Phoenix or Sacramento or perhaps Atlanta? This is the real fear, the “not so secret” fear in the heart of every American.

When and if it happens, Americans are not so willing to believe a few goatherds in a cave 8,000 miles away planned it, not anymore.

Why do you think Senator Lieberman has demanded a “kill switch” on the internet? Why do you think “censorship czar” Cass Sunstein has asked to have accusations of Israeli complicity in 9/11 made a criminal act and openly advocated infiltration of groups pushing for an honest investigation. Who is the real “conspiracy theorist” now?

With thousands of of military and intelligence officials, retirees openly, others hiding their rage, aware of the decades of Israeli spying and the 9/11 cover-up, this divide has never been so strong. What we don’t know is how many serving today have the personal courage to speak out openly. Now the threat is nuclear weapons, not just a “shoebox dirty bomb” but full sized nukes, the weapons we have been hunting for years, claiming Saddam was prepared to use them “at 45 minutes notice,” the same nukes “sent to Syria by ambulance.” They could be anywhere and anyone could be ready to use one. There is only one possible culprit capable of doing this, however, only one country with something to gain and the willingness to act.

“We have hundreds of nuclear warheads and missiles that can reach different targets in the heart of the European continent, including beyond the borders of Rome, the Italian capital . . . our armed forces, however, are not the thirtieth strongest in the world, but rather the second or third. We have the capability to take the world down with us.” (Israeli military historian, Martin van Creveld)

Today, America may be facing the nuclear holocaust Creveld describes and there is no reason to trust that our military, intelligence and law enforcement, the dozens of agencies, bureaus and commands tasked with defending America are willing to do so if the attack comes from Israel. In fact, some leaders, even a former head of the Department of Homeland Security, could be on a list of those that might be one of the America’s greatest terrorist threats. How can perceptions differ so much? If perceptions are based on information and that information is pure propaganda, consistent, continual and skillfully presented, not only in news format but reinforced in movies, television series and anyone publicly questioning the “message “is attacked and destroyed, and they are, perceptions can be assumed to be false.

Thus, the general basis for the public’s ideas about who Israel is, what Zionism advocates and what Islam is really about will be unreliable. When you add control of universities, all academic publishing and even total disruption of free speech, the most extreme ideas can be accepted as fact. They have been.

A substantial evidentiary trail exists that places Israel’s possible involvement in 9/11 on the table, with dozens of suspects questioned and more and more of the “facts” about 9/11 now proving, as with the Kennedy assassinations, to be lies.

Real theories, not “conspiracy,” tell us that 9/11 was planned to get America to attack Iraq, part of Israel’s long term strategy for the region, leaving them, not only the only nuclear power, but an armed aggressor afloat in a sea of broken nations occupied by American troops, troops who take orders from politicians who take orders from Israel. However, after the massive Bush administration blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan and the virtual destruction of a military incapable of sustaining a decade long war, the planned Israeli attack using American troops, again, isn’t moving forward as we all know it was planned to.

This time, after America was so badly burned, pushed by the Bush security team, almost all Israeli citizens, many of them still around, running America for Obama, into two insane “Vietnams” it will take more than 3000 murders. With the “duping of America” over 9/11 coming unraveled, something horrendous is in the planning. There is an obvious next step and it has to be nuclear. Anything less would bring an outcry against Israel immediately. Only the “unthinkable” combined with a strong public relations campaign and a cover story with a “do it yourself” terrorist group, like so many of the “just add water” terrorist organizations the Mossad has organized for just such an occasion, will sell the lie, this and the press, not just in America but the other real voice of Israel, the BBC.

The stories about the mobile labs, the “yellow cake” uranium were lies, pap fed to a willing and complicit press. However, the threats are real but how does America protect herself when those tasked with that duty turn a blind eye to the biggest threat. In 1967, Israel was allowed to kill or wound 201 of 296 Americans on the USS Liberty. Surviving crewmen are still threatened by Israeli security for speaking up, as Philip Tourney and his wife will gladly tell you. Captain McGonagle, who won the Medal of Honor working to save his crew from hours of brutal attacks, cried out for justice to his dying day. The American military stood silent as it did on 9/11, as it did on that day in 1967 and as it may have done many times since.

Those among America’s military in 1967, those willing to send the planes from the carriers America and Saratoga to bomb Egypt on behalf of Israel received the thanks of a grateful nation. Too bad that nation was not the United States of America. Only when Israel informed Washington that it had failed to both sink the USS Liberty and effect a takeover of the ship, killing the entire crew, did Admiral McCain order planes headed toward Egypt to return. It had been previously believed these planes were meant to help the USS Liberty.

We have since been reliably informed by sources within the Navy that the planes were armed for ground attack. Thus, as early as 1967, America was willing to see its own troops butchered “for the good of Greater Israel.” Proof of this is incontrovertible and witnesses on both the Liberty and Saratoga have come forward.

We will never know for sure, what secrets are stolen, what weapons given, what enemies aided, what American interests betrayed. With dozens of organizations demanding 9/11 be investigated and the lowest estimate of those who no longer believe the cover story at 30 percent, not a single active duty military officer, not one member of congress nor a single member of the mainstream press has said a word about it. How can thousands of prominent Americans demand that their country begin defending itself and it be covered up? Who has that power?

America has lost at least six nuclear weapons since 1990, maybe more, not Russia or some “breakaway republic,” once part of the Soviet Union. Three were American hydrogen bombs off Somalia, no longer usable but with enough plutonium in them to build many fission weapons. Three more were part of 9 produced by Israel in South Africa back in the 80s, all supposedly sent to America for dismantling. Three of the containers were filled with concrete blocks. They had been consigned to “friends of Israel” for shipment and were stolen from an unguarded facility in Oman after having been abandoned for months. This would be a wild claim if we hadn’t interviewed those involved in the project and been made privy to a well documented and detailed history of the operation.

These “unattributable” nukes have only one purpose, to be used in a terrorist attack on the United States, a “false flag” attack, to drive America to attack Iran and Pakistan.

How many loyal Americans, FBI, Homeland Security and other agencies are searching the nation, warehouses, ports, looking for the blue 20 foot shipping containers? How many “dual citizens” are tasked with some other purpose? Are our “protectors” really “ours” or do they work for the same pack that bought our congress? Will we find out when a mushroom cloud appears over one of our cities?

Today, America is facing the biggest threat since World War 2. Nothing will be in the news, nothing will ever be in the news, not the truth anyway. When it happens, the news will be ready, like on 9/11 when it was called on to talk Arabs and box cutters, a childish conspiracy theory millions still believe. It was ready to talk weapons of mass destruction and when that turned out to be a lie, it was ready to sit silent for its complicity in war crimes. “War crimes” seems like a harsh term but the definition fits. Invading Iraq on, not a whim, but a series of lies orchestrated by a criminal conspiracy is a war crime. Less obvious to many, the takeover of Afghanistan as a drug production facility or a base for destabilizing Pakistan or an operation center for gas pipelines, whichever reason you choose, was justified by lies as serious as those used to justify Iraq.

For those who follow such things, real leaks are proving two things:

1. Osama bin Laden never stopped working for the Central Intelligence Agency and their “regional affiliates.”
2. Bin Laden was murdered to silence him after 9/11 just as Benzir Bhutto was murdered to silence her.

Real news never reaches America, news that shows terrorism, corporate banditry and the biggest drug cartel in history, tied to American allies, some Muslim but one worse than all combined, Israel. Even today, the mythology of “threatened” Israel and the rockets raining down on their cities, all imagination, is still believed by many in our military. When 9/11 came, be it radio controlled planes, missiles, controlled demolition, our military was on “stand down,” ordered to let the attacks move forward and then roll across the Middle East, an Army hijacked by Israel to help them start their long planned world conquest. Today, America basks in defeat and humiliation and Israel laughs.

We have continual debates about religion in the military. Should Christian sects be able to force troops to prayer? Is America a Christian nation, is this what the founding fathers meant? What if, lets say, these sects were not loyal to the United States but rather constituted a national threat? Is an officer belonging to a Christian Zionist church likely to pass secrets on to Israel? Will they obey orders from the Mossad above their own commanders? Will an Christian Zionist with nuclear access follow his religious calling and cause a nuclear war to bring about Armageddon?

What if their power in the military was that great, part of a systematic infiltration of the military through an extremist take-over of the chaplain’s services and eventually admissions and curriculum of the service academies themselves? What else could explain the total silence we have seen when torture, kidnapping, illegal invasions and “stand downs” to allow terrorist attacks are the norm. How many officers have violated the Geneva Convention, their oaths and the Uniform Code of Military Justice because they felt obliged to a “higher power” to exhibit extreme cruelty, cleansing the world of “infidels?”

Those in the military that feel, as Christians, they are tied to Israel, have lost their minds. Islam and Judaism are much closer than Christianity and Judaism. With the advent of the trinity, both Jews and Muslims see Christians as, not only polytheistic, worshiping 3 gods, not one, but idolaters as well. To both Jews and Muslims, these issues alone are enough to make Christianity an enemy. Islam, a religion totally based on Judaism, an Abrahamic faith, built on the foundation of the books of Moses, sees itself as a reform movement stressing moral values as outlined in the Koran and the teachings of the prophet, Mohammad (peace be on him).

To a Christian with a real education, the struggle between the Jews and Muslims is a “family matter.” Jews are the beloved children of Islam who have yet to accept the reforms that defined the true religion. We must remember, without Judaism and g-d’s covenant with Israel, there would be no Islam. Christianity is seen as a Hellenistic bastardization of biblical teachings watered down to sell to the pagan Roman empire. You won’t hear it, not publicly, but it is exactly what is taught to every student, Jew, Muslim — this is their belief.

Muslims have “jihad” and Jews were chosen by g-d to rule the world. Ninety percent of the most serious accusations each makes of the other are, actually, part of the religion of both, only Jews are much better at public relations. After all, they own 90 percent of the world’s media, print, broadcast, even much of the Internet. How do we trust military leaders who don’t know that “goyim” means “cattle?” If you are “cattle” and you believe those who see you as such are your best friends, you are not dealing with reality. Perhaps we should teach The Scorpion and the Toad at West Point. This should be the start of the first day’s lecture on America’s Strategic Security in the 21st Century:

The scorpion, in the course of a long journey, encounters a river. The scorpion cannot swim and so he is momentarily stymied until he spies the toad, on the opposite river bank. “Toad!” the scorpion calls out, “will you please let me ride on your back to the other side of the river because, you see, I cannot swim.” “No way,” replied the toad, “if I let you ride on my back you will sting me!” To which the scorpion replied, “But if I am riding on your back and I sting you then we will both die because I cannot swim.” After thinking on it for a moment or two the toad agrees, swims over to the opposite bank of the river where the scorpion jumps onto his back and he turns to swim to the other side. When the toad, with the scorpion riding on his back, gets to the middle of the river, the scorpion stings him. “Scorpion!” Exclaimed the toad, “Why did you sting me? Now we both die.”

“Because it is in my nature.” Was the scorpion’s response.

Should we be sick of watching our troops walk through poppy fields, knowing the heroin being produced is destroying the United States, filling our prisons but, at the same time, filling the pockets of, well who? Who is getting a cut of the $65 billion dollars a year earned from the partnership in Afghanistan? Israel is the money end, the CIA does transportation, the Afghan government runs production, but who does distribution? Do the planes really land on military bases? We have already found bales of cash leaving Afghanistan heading for Dubai.

This is only a small part of the money involved. It is this money, combined with the billions we give Israel, the billions they take out of the American economy through control of the Federal Reserve System (a quasi-governmental scheme of banks with Rothschild lineage that control America) that makes it impossible to get honest news, elect honest politicians and even trust our own military.

In fact, a large majority of Americans openly admit, on every opinion poll, that they don’t trust our congress, our president or any American institution. Nobody asks them why. Would they know? Is it because a foreign country controls our banks, our news, our congress, our military, our foreign policy? Is it because the only reason politics exist in America is so the greedy can line up at the trough, not caring who is pouring the slop, as long as they get theirs first?

No American has a clue where President Obama came from. Many believe he is foreign born, many more think he is Muslim and some believe he is a space alien. In 250 years, documents will be declassified that will either prove or disprove that former President Bush belonged in prison, not the White House, guilty of not AWOL (absent without leave) but desertion during wartime. There is no reasonable doubt of his guilt, only that he used his power to prevent arrest and prosecution. After 9/11, no more questions were asked, and no more witnesses had to receive new homes, fat government jobs or have mysterious heart attacks.

For the Bush years, it was made clear that a military career had to be built on loyalty to Israel, even though their nuclear arsenal and their ethnic cleansing of Palestine are the root of every conflict confronting America today. There is no military alliance with Israel. America has no potential enemies. In fact, every nation in the region is either controlled by the United States, occupied or frightened to death. Iran trying to stand against America is the equivalent of Denmark standing against Hitler’s blitzkrieg.

The view of the state of affairs taught our military is childishly stupid. How many of our military leaders are childishly stupid also?

China Buys Euros as Fear of World Depression Growslink

TARPLEY.net

The US Treasury has just announced that China’s official holdings of U.S. Treasury securities declined by about $30 billion between April and May of this year, from about $900 billion to some $868 billion. According to the US authorities, this means that Chinese holdings of US government paper are now at the lowest level in the past year. A 2% to 3% decline in a month does not qualify as massive dumping, but simply means that China is in the process of diversification. It is also very likely that China has more U.S. Treasury bonds than this official count would indicate, quite possibly through proxy purchases via Hong Kong and other places.

With the sales of existing homes in the United States falling by 27% this morning, together with disastrous statistics regarding unemployment and foreclosures, it ought to be obvious that the US economy is in depression. Even experts interviewed on CNBC are beginning to wake up to this obvious fact.

World Bond Bubble

On August 24, the Treasury’s two-year note reached its highest price in recorded history, meaning that the yield was at a record low. The entire world is piling into short-term U.S. Treasury paper, and many buyers cannot get enough. This makes a mockery out of the right wing reactionary refrain that the US equals Greece and soon will be unable to borrow. If, according to the crackpot Austrian theory, markets know things that individual humans cannot know, then surely the market is signaling a great desire for T
Treasury bills and Treasury notes at the short end. The main reason for this demand is of course fear and panic – coming from the growing awareness that the world is indeed experiencing the second wave of a world economic depression of colossal proportions.

There is now a large-scale international bond bubble involving, among others, US treasuries and German Bunds. Since the flash crash of May 6, many investors have fled the stock markets entirely. It is still too soon to sound the alarm on deflation ahead, but deflation has now appeared over the horizon as a concrete possibility – partly because so many major financial players are now convinced that deflation is the wave of the future. If this were to come about, it would mean a depression looking much more like 1929-1933 than the relatively more mild situation we have experienced over the last two years. The depression may be taking a turn toward something far more excruciating for the masses of the population. One by-product of that would be vastly decreased popular gullibility for the anti-government recipes of the libertarian Austrian school, which are tailored for those who have money, and which have very little appeal to people who are unemployed, homeless, and starving.

Also on August 24, the Japanese yen hit a 15-year high compared to the dollar, and a nine-year high compared to the euro. This kind of currency championship is a Pyrrhic victory which nobody wants, since it means the Japanese exports are in the process of being strangled. This is true currency chaos and world depression at the same time, pointing once again towards the urgent need to restore the fixed rate system of Bretton Woods, which was destroyed 39 years ago this month by Nixon and Kissinger, urged on by Milton Friedman and other snake oil economists.

For the past year, the main thrust of the London and New York financial centers has been the effort to export the Depression into Europe by means of a speculative attack on the government bonds of Greece, Spain, Portugal, and some other countries, all designed to provoke a panicked flight out of the euro, which would in turn allow the Anglo-Americans to loot and asset strip the accumulated wealth of the old continent. This was not a market event, but it orchestrated strategic attack, inspired by such figures as Soros, Einhorn, and Paulson. During July and the first half of August, it became apparent that this Blitzkrieg as originally planned had failed to reach its objectives. But the Anglo-Americans, one-trick ponies as always, maybe persisting in the assault.

China Blocks US-UK Attack On Euro

The Anglo-American hedge fund attack, as we have documented here, employed credit default swaps as the primary weapon against Greek, Portuguese, and Spanish government bonds. The failure of London and New York to induce a panic flight out of the euro during the May-June timeframe was partly results of the German self-defense measures, involving bans on naked credit default swaps and bans on naked shorting of German equities. In addition to this, Chinese support for the euro has played a decisive role.

There is every indication that the Chinese made a decision not to allow the destruction of the euro during the late spring and early summer. That decision was technical, commercial, and political at the same time. The technical part was the China sought to re-balance the basket of currencies it uses to maintain the international stability of the renminbi. As the euro looms larger in Chinese trade, purchases of euros and Eurobonds are in order. It is also worth pointing out that the Chinese have not delivered on their promise to radically raise the international value of the renminbi, as hysterically demanded by Tiny Tim Geithner and others.

The commercial and political sides of Chinese support for the euro were reflected in the June visit of the Chinese vice prime minister to Greece, notably to the port of Piraeus. This Chinese envoy signed more than a dozen important economic cooperation deals, including shipping and shipbuilding, telecom, and container ports. The deputy Greek finance minister, Theodoros Pangalos, was quoted as saying: “The Chinese want a gateway into Europe. They are not like these Wall Street [blankety-blanks], pushing financial investments on paper. The Chinese deal in real things, in merchandise. And they will help the real economy in Greece.”¹ The emphasis on the production of tangible physical commodities by the Chinese, in contrast to Wall Street’s reliance on a mass of toxic and kited derivatives, points to the real basis of Chinese economic ascendancy. If the Chinese are wise, they will not go overboard with short-term greed, but rather be ready for generous concessions to the Greek labor movement, so as to get the unions on their side. In any case, these euro-denominated Greek purchases are one obvious reason why Beijing is holding fewer greenbacks and more euros.

Will Hungary, Ireland, or Budget Austerity Sink The Euro?

The Anglo Americans are still beside themselves with rage and consternation over the fact that their original attack on the euro has not worked. But since about the middle of August, the euro has fallen from over $1.30 to about $1.26 or thereabouts. Part of this is due to the decline of the New York Stock market, given the long-standing dollar-Dow trade-off. Another negative factor for the euro is doubtless the cruel and stupid deflationary policies introduced by many EU governments in a craven attempt to ward off further speculative attacks. In a depression, government spending is the main thing that supports the entire economy, so cutting the government budget is a recipe for economic disaster, as some EU countries are now being reminded. Another factor is simply the month of August, when Catholic Europe, including France, Italy, Spain, and Bavaria, tends to shut down.

Where Will The Next Panic Break Out?

The world is now in a time of mixed signals and cross-currents. The forces of depression, in the form of $1.5 quadrillion of toxic and kited derivatives, are most emphatically still lurking, and since they have not been shredded, canceled, deleted, outlawed or abrogated, they will soon find a way to explode once again. Serious financial observers are now waiting to see where the next currency or banking panic will come. Over the last day or two, there have been reports of heavy selling of the Hungarian forint, which is inside the EU but not part of Euroland. Late on August 24, Standard & Poor’s announced a major downgrade of Irish debt, switching to a negative outlook. If the panic comes in Hungary or Ireland, then the euro could indeed go down. CNBC traders, in response to the question of how to make money off the crisis of the Hungarian currency, immediately replied that the way to do that was to short the stocks of Austrian banks, who hold much Hungarian debt. From here, the crisis would move on to Germany, and soon the entire continent would be back in the soup. The British pound sterling also has massive vulnerabilities to being the next monetary unit to crash.

But the most likely victim remains Wall Street itself. A glance at the stock chart of Bank of America over the past three months shows what any technical analyst would regard as a very ugly picture. There are rumblings that Citibank may be heading towards liquidity trouble in September and October. For those who like to read the tea leaves, CNBC’s Jim Cramer today responded to a question about Citigroup by emphatically declaiming “Stick with Citi,” and “Stick with Pandit.” Citigroup, he affirmed, remained his “favorite speculation.” For contrarians who have learned something over the past two years, this may already be enough to head for the hills. In any case, if the banking panic breaks out in New York, then the dollar may turn out to be the victim.

Bernanke and QE2

Today also brought the publication of the August 10 minutes of the Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee. These minutes reveal a serious split in the management committee of the US financier oligarchy. Bernanke and his majority are afraid of deflation, and want a new round of quantitative easing – already dubbed QE2 by the Street. But there is also a significant Austro-monetarist reactionary minority who regard inflation as the greater evil, and to whom a deflationary crash would not be unwelcome, as libertarian rantings over many decades have made plain. These tensions may well be on display at the Federal Reserve’s annual conference at Jackson Hole, Wyoming at the end of this week.

Another CNBC analyst has ventured to predict a ragged decline of the Dow to about 5,000 over the months ahead. If that begins to happen, then the danger of deflation will be enhanced, and in such a scenario the dollar would actually tend to increase in value compared to other currencies. On the other hand, Helicopter Ben Bernanke’s trademark is his strategy for flooding the system with bailouts and other liquidity if deflation looms. Bernanke is the captain of that ship of fools known as the QE2. The one certainty is that there is no recovery, and that the second wave of a world economic depression dominates the world.