Inflation Group Says U.S. Cities Will Be Like Egypt in Four Years

February 5, 2011 Comments off

The National Inflation Association has issued a chilling new advisory in which it warns that the inflationary time bomb being created by the policies of the Federal Reserve will lead to American cities experiencing similar chaos currently unfolding in Egypt by 2015.

Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak has been in power for three decades and in that time has managed to handle all manner of threats to the stability of his regime. But it was the huge unrest sparked by soaring food prices that finally led the Egyptian people to launch a revolution which is likely to see Mubarak forced out of office for good.

“Food inflation in Egypt has reached 20% and citizens in the nation already spend about 40% of their monthly expenditures on food. Americans for decades have been Read more…

HOW BANKS AND INVESTORS ARE STARVING THE THIRD WORLD

February 5, 2011 Comments off

Ellen Brown

“What for a poor man is a crust, for a rich man is a securitized asset class.”
–Futures trader Ann Berg, quoted in the UK Guardian

Underlying the sudden, volatile uprising in Egypt and Tunisia is a growing global crisis sparked by soaring food prices and unemployment. The Associated Press reports that roughly 40 percent of Egyptians struggle along at the World Bank-set poverty level of under $2 per day. Analysts estimate that food price inflation in Egypt is currently at an unsustainable 17 percent yearly. In poorer countries, as much as 60 to 80 percent of people’s incomes go for food, compared to just 10 to 20 percent in industrial countries. An increase of a dollar or so in the cost of a gallon of milk or a loaf of bread for Americans can mean starvation for people in Egypt and other poor countries.

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The cause of the recent jump in global food prices remains a matter of debate. Some analysts blame the Federal Reserve’s “quantitative easing” program (increasing the money supply with credit created with accounting entries), which they warn is sparking hyperinflation. Too much money chasing too few goods is the classic explanation for Read more…

Magnetic Polar Shifts Causing Massive Global Superstorms

February 5, 2011 Comments off

Superstorms can also cause certain societies, cultures or whole countries to collapse. Others may go to war with each other.

Superstorm
Courtesy: Weather Snob

(CHICAGO) – NASA has been warning about it…scientific papers have been written about it…geologists have seen its traces in rock strata and ice core samples…

 

 

Now “it” is here: an unstoppable magnetic pole shift that has sped up and is causing life-threatening havoc with the world’s weather.

Forget about global warming—man-made or natural—what drives planetary weather patterns is the climate and what drives the climate is the sun’s magnetosphere and its electromagnetic interaction with a planet’s own magnetic field.

When the field shifts, when it fluctuates, when it goes into flux and begins to become unstable anything can happen. And what normally happens is that all hell breaks loose.

Magnetic polar shifts have occurred many times in Earth’s history. It’s happening again now to every planet in the solar system including Earth.

The magnetic field drives weather to a significant degree and when that field starts migrating superstorms start erupting.

The superstorms have arrived

The first evidence we have that the dangerous superstorm cycle has started is the Read more…

Stocks Up, Houses Down, And What This Means for Most Americans

February 5, 2011 1 comment

Put your ear to the ground and you can almost hear the bulls stampeding. The Dow closed above 12,000 Tuesday for the first time since June 2008. The Dow is up 4 percent this year after increasing 11 percent in 2010. The Standard & Poor 500 is also up 4 percent this year, and the Nasdaq index, up 3.7 percent.

“The U.S. economy is back!” says a prominent Wall Streeter.

Ummm. Not quite.

Corporate earnings remain strong (better-than-expected reports from UPS and Pfizer fueled Tuesday’s rally). The Fed’s continuing slush pump of money into the financial system is also lifting the animal spirits of Wall Street. Traders like nothing more than speculating with almost-free money. And tumult in the Middle East is pushing more foreign money into the relatively safe and reliable American equities market.

It’s simply wonderful, especially if you’re among the richest 1 percent of Americans who own more than half of all the shares of stock traded on Wall Street. Hey, you might feel chipper even if you’re among the next richest 9 percent, who own 40 percent.

But most Americans own a tiny sliver of Read more…

Employment Report: IT SUCKS

February 5, 2011 Comments off

Wow…. if you remember on the ADP and Claims numbers, I said I was expecting +100k.

That was way off – we really got +36k.

 

The unemployment rate fell by 0.4 percentage point to 9.0 percent in January, while nonfarm payroll employment changed little (+36,000), the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment rose in manufacturing and in retail trade but was down in construction and in transportation and warehousing. Employment in most other major industries changed little over the month.

Youch.

There’s no love in here.  Worse, the benchmark revisions are out, and they show about 300,000 supposedly-reported jobs that didn’t really happen. No, really?  How come that number seems to always be in this direction?  That is, why is it that the BLS always seems to over-report reality in the establishment survey?

That inconvenient truth, incidentally, is why I always use the household numbers.  They’re at least a real survey without BS “adjustments” applied and while they’re subject to Read more…

Archaeologists May Have Found Tomb of Prophet Zechariah

February 5, 2011 Comments off

Archaeologists in Israel believe they may have stumbled upon the tomb of the biblical Prophet Zechariah in a newly discovered church.

The church, which is more than 1,300 years old, contains massive marble columns as well as exquisite mosaics, the Israel Antiquities Authority said in a statement.

Archaeologists believe that the church, uncovered in Hirbet Madras in central Israel, is the location marked on the Madaba Map as the tomb of Zechariah, according to Haaertz.

Israeli Archaeologist with the Israeli Antiquity Authority Amir Ganor, shows a Byzantine period church decorated with an impressive mosaic floor after it was discovered following excavations. 

Menahem Kahana, AFP / Getty Images
Israeli archaeologist Amir Ganor shows the mosaic floor of a Byzantine-period church, which was discovered following excavations in Hirbet Madras, near the Israeli town of Beit Shemesh, on Wednesday. Some scholars believe it may be the residence and tomb of the Prophet Zechariah.

The Madaba map is an ancient mosaic map of the region that includes modern Israel. It was found in a sixth-century church in Jordan.

“The researchers believe that in light of an analysis of the Christian sources, including the Madaba Map, the church at Hirbet Madras is a memorial church designed to mark the tomb of the prophet Zechariah,” the IAA said.

The agency stressed that this is just a theory and requires more research for confirmation.

“This issue will be examined and studied in the near future,” the IAA said.

Zechariah is believed to have lived around 500 B.C., according to the website of the Vatican Museums. The book of Zechariah speaks of the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon as well as the coming of the Messiah.

The archaeologists began excavating the site following a robbery there, Haaertz said. It was the first dig at the site, even though a piece of a doorway had been spotted poking out of the ground there in the 1980s.

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Months of diggings led to the church, which is about the size of a basketball court.

To the archaeologists’ surprise, they found that the church sits on what looks like a structure from the Roman era, as well as a large complex of caves and tunnels used by Jewish rebels fighting the Romans during the Bar Kokhba revolt of A.D. 132.

Besides the ancient church, archaeologists found coins, stone vessels, lamps and ancient pottery.

“There is no doubt the discovery is extraordinary and of great importance in terms of research, religion and tourism,” the IAA said, according to Agence France-Presse.

How Cyclone Yasi compares in size to countries

February 5, 2011 Comments off
TC Yasi superimposed on USA

Date/Time: 2011:02:02 13:29:18 Source: news.com.au

IF you’re struggling to grasp the magnitude of Tropical Cyclone Yasi, consider this: it is so large it would almost cover the United States, most of Asia and large parts of Europe.

Most of the coverage about the scale of Yasi has tried to compare it with storms of the past – it’s bigger than Larry, more powerful than Tracy.

But just as powerful is this comparison, showing this storm is continental in size.  The main bloc of the cyclone is 500km wide, while its associated activity, shown above in a colour-coding to match intensity, stretches over 2000km.

The storm’s scale of destruction is as shocking as it is inevitable.  In the map above, the United States from Pennsylvania in the east to Nevada in the west, from Georgia in the south to Canada in the north and well into Mexico would be battered with 300km/h winds and up to one metre of rain.

The economic impact would be felt around the world.

Scroll down to see a close-up comparison of the heart of Yasi over New Orleans and other centers. Read more…

Russia Working on Mysterious Space Plane of Its Own

February 5, 2011 Comments off

It’s official: the space race is on again.

54 years after the Soviet Union launched its Sputnik I satellite, sparking the original space race — and 20 years after the USSR’s collapse left America as the sole space superpower — the Russians are back on track. The Kremlin’s military space chief Oleg Ostapenko just announced that Russia is developing a small, maneuverable, reusable space plane to match the U.S. Air Force’s mysterious X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle.

Russian industry has already outlined the craft’s design, Ostapenko said. “As to whether we will use it, only time will tell,” he added coyly.

But it seems unlikely Russia would forgo the opportunity to Read more…

Egypt VP Targeted in Assassination Attempt That Killed Two Bodyguards, Sources Tell Fox News

February 4, 2011 1 comment

An assassination attempt on the Egyptian vice president left two of his bodyguards dead, sources told Fox News Channel on Friday.

The unsuccessful attempt to kill Omar Suleiman reportedly came in the past couple of days as violent unrest rocked the capital Cairo.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs would not comment on the matter when asked Friday.

Fox News Channel said it had not been able to independently confirm the story on the ground in Cairo.

Meantime, an AFP correspondent reported that gunshots erupted Friday for a few minutes at Cairo’s central Tahrir Square at the epicenter of protests against President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year grip on power.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs declined to address the assassination reports when asked by Fox News.

“I’m not going to … get into that question,” Gibbs said.

Categories: Egypt Tags: ,

Map shows most of Northern Hemisphere is covered in snow and ice

February 4, 2011 Comments off



At first glance it looks like a graphic from a Discovery Channel program about a distant ice age. But this astonishing picture shows the world as it is today – with half the Northern Hemisphere covered with snow and ice.

The image was released by the National Oceanic And Atmospheric Association (NOAA) on the day half of North America was in the grip of a severe winter storm.

The map was created using multiple satellites from government agencies and the US Air Force.

That Antarctica, the Arctic, Greenland and the frozen wastes of Siberia are covered in white comes as no surprise. But it is the extent to which the line dips down over the Northern Hemisphere that is so remarkable about the image.

A new satellite map by the government agency NOAA shows the extent of the snow blanketing a vast area from the west coast of Canada to eastern China

The shroud of white stretches down from Alaska and sweeps through the Midwest and along to the Eastern seaboard. The bitter cold has reached as far as Texas and northern Mexico where in Ciudad Juarez temperatures today were expected to dip to minus 15C.

In the U.S. tens of millions of people chose to stay at home rather than venture out. In Chicago, 20in of snow fell leading to authorities closing schools for the first time in 12 years. The newspaper for Tulsa, Okalahoma, was unable to publish its print edition for the first time in Read more…