http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/global ... ical1.html

I read the paper at the link above a few months back. It is from the Millenium Group. These guys get together and write about various topics on their own time. They have a lot of things about ETs, UFOs...etc. They came to their own conclusion without having read the Dulce papers or anything like them that there was an invasion of earth being planned.

Just like BibliotecaPleyedes, this site and its companion blog are filled with things that all of you will enjoy. For right now, I strongly recommend their papers on what is happening on the earth vis-a-vis global warming etc.


http://tmgnow.com/repository/repository.html
This is the main link to their old writings.


http://tmgnow.com/repository/global/CREC.html
Another interesting topic


http://tmgnow.com/repository/secret/why.html
Why NASA hides the truth

Enjoy and let's use our combined brain power to figure out what is happening in the world right now.

MK
_________________
"...mankind will not merely survive, he will prevail...for alone among all animals, mankind has compassion." Faulkner, Nobel Prize Speech 1953

very interesting object, indeed!

Quoted:
It's velocity is pretty damn fast even for a planetoid, at roughly 1/32 the speed of light. It's not uncommon for regular asteroids to be going that fast or a little faster, but planetoids are pretty damn heavy, even for space. Speed is hard to estimate because as it gets closer, it WILL speed up with the maximum velocity it will ever attain as it slings around the sun for depature from the solar system.

The speed was verified by the guys at JPL, a fellow named Mr. Hart. He had the syncometer and computer. I asked nicely for verification. Sometimes those guys are pretty cool to amatuers, sometimes they aren't. I was merely lucky that night to get one who liked to talk and didn't mind firing up his station for me.

So, as for your questions per my old notes:

A: It's slightly less than half of Earth's mass. Verified at 9:22pm (05/11/0and the coords were RA 22h37m35.92s Dec -61degrees 28'40.07" <-- If you don't know those terms, write it down, those are sky coords to where it used to be if you want to look at that part of the sky using equipment.
end quoted
from a given link...

Broadway, Park Row, & Chambers Street

Manhattan

Acres: 8.80

Surrounded by centuries-old majestic government buildings that date back to 1812, this park provides a much-needed green spot in a bustling downtown area. At lunchtime each afternoon it springs to life when those working in the neighborhood come to relax, eat, and soak in sunshine on its grassy lawns.

For people-watching enthusiasts, the park provides a crosscut of New York life as government workers, jury members, and newlyweds visiting City Hall for their marriage licenses stroll through its grounds.

Its bike path, which leads directly to the Brooklyn Bridge, offers a different type of scenic view to cyclists pedaling through picturesque panoramas of some of the City's iconic public architecture.

The tropical waters that lap the jungle shores of southern Malaysia could not be described as a paradisical shimmering turquoise. They are more of a dark, soupy green. They also carry a suspicious smell. Not that this is of any concern to the lone Indian face that has just peeped anxiously down at me from the rusting deck of a towering container ship; he is more disturbed by the fact that I may be a pirate, which, right now, on top of everything else, is the last thing he needs.

His appearance, in a peaked cap and uniform, seems rather odd; an officer without a crew. But there is something slightly odder about the vast distance between my jolly boat and his lofty position, which I can't immediately put my finger on.

Then I have it - his 750ft-long merchant vessel is standing absurdly high in the water. The low waves don't even bother the lowest mark on its Plimsoll line. It's the same with all the ships parked here, and there are a lot of them. Close to 500. An armada of freighters with no cargo, no crew, and without a destination between them.



My ramshackle wooden fishing boat has floated perilously close to this giant sheet of steel. But the face is clearly more scared of me than I am of him. He shoos me away and scurries back into the vastness of his ship. His footsteps leave an echo behind them.

Navigating a precarious course around the hull of this Panama-registered hulk, I reach its bow and notice something else extraordinary. It is tied side by side to a container ship of almost the same size. The mighty sister ship sits empty, high in the water again, with apparently only the sailor and a few lengths of rope for company.

Nearby, as we meander in searing midday heat and dripping humidity between the hulls of the silent armada, a young European officer peers at us from the bridge of an oil tanker owned by the world's biggest container shipping line, Maersk. We circle and ask to go on board, but are waved away by two Indian crewmen who appear to be the only other people on the ship.

'They are telling us to go away,' the boat driver explains. 'No one is supposed to be here. They are very frightened of pirates.'

Here, on a sleepy stretch of shoreline at the far end of Asia, is surely the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history. Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined; their tonnage is far greater. Container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers - all should be steaming fully laden between China, Britain, Europe and the US, stocking camera shops, PC Worlds and Argos depots ahead of the retail pandemonium of 2009. But their water has been stolen.

They are a powerful and tangible representation of the hurricanes that have been wrought by the global economic crisis; an iron curtain drawn along the coastline of the southern edge of Malaysia's rural Johor state, 50 miles east of Singapore harbour.


'We don't understand why they are here. There are so many ships but no one seems to be on board,' said local fisherman Ah Wat

It is so far off the beaten track that nobody ever really comes close, which is why these ships are here. The world's ship owners and government economists would prefer you not to see this symbol of the depths of the plague still crippling the world's economies.

So they have been quietly retired to this equatorial backwater, to be maintained only by a handful of bored sailors. The skeleton crews are left alone to fend off the ever-present threats of piracy and collisions in the congested waters as the hulls gather rust and seaweed at what should be their busiest time of year.

Local fisherman Ah Wat, 42, who for more than 20 years has made a living fishing for prawns from his home in Sungai Rengit, says: 'Before, there was nothing out there - just sea. Then the big ships just suddenly came one day, and every day there are more of them.

'Some of them stay for a few weeks and then go away. But most of them just stay. You used to look Christmas from here straight over to Indonesia and see nothing but a few passing boats. Now you can no longer see the horizon.'

The size of the idle fleet becomes more palpable when the ships' lights are switched on after sunset. From the small fishing villages that dot the coastline, a seemingly endless blaze of light stretches from one end of the horizon to another. Standing in the darkness among the palm trees and bamboo huts, as calls to prayer ring out from mosques further inland, is a surreal and strangely disorientating experience. It makes you feel as if you are adrift on a dark sea, staring at a city of light.

Ah Wat says: 'We don't understand why they are here. There are so many ships but no one seems to be on board. When we sail past them in our fishing boats we never see anyone. They are like real ghost ships and some people are scared of them. They believe they may bring a curse with them and that there may be bad spirits on the ships.'


Two container ships tied together in southern Malaysia, waiting for the next charter

As daylight creeps across the waters, flags of convenience from destinations such as Panama and the Bahamas become visible. In reality, though, these vessels belong to some of the world's biggest Western shipping companies. And the sickness that has ravaged them began far away - in London, where the industry's heart beats, and where the plummeting profits and hugely reduced cargo prices are most keenly felt.

The Aframax-class oil tanker is the camel of the world's high seas. By definition, it is smaller than 132,000 tons deadweight and with a breadth above 106ft. It is used in the basins of the Black Sea, the North Sea, the Caribbean Sea, the China Sea and the Mediterranean - or anywhere where non-OPEC exporting countries have harbours and canals too small to accommodate very large crude carriers (VLCC) or ultra-large crude carriers (ULCCs). The term is based on the Average Freight Rate Assessment (AFRA) tanker rate system and is an industry standard.

A couple of years ago these ships would be steaming back and forth. Now 12 per cent are doing nothing

You may wish to know this because, if ever you had an irrational desire to charter one, now would be the time. This time last year, an Aframax tanker capable of carrying 80,000 tons of cargo would cost £31,000 a day ($50,000). Now it is about £3,400 ($5,500).

This is why the chilliest financial winds anywhere in the City of London are to be found blowing through its 400-plus shipping brokers.

Between them, they manage about half of the world's chartering business. The bonuses are long gone. The last to feel the tail of the economic whiplash, they - and their insurers and lawyers - await a wave of redundancies and business failures in the next six months. Commerce is contracting, fleets rust away - yet new ship-builds ordered years ago are still coming on stream.

Just 12 months ago these financiers and brokers were enjoying fat bonuses as they traded cargo space. But nobody wants the space any more, and those that still need to ship goods across the world are demanding vast reductions in price.

Do not tell these men and women about green shoots of recovery. As Briton Tim Huxley, one of Asia's leading ship brokers, says, if the world is really pulling itself out of recession, then all these idle ships should be back on the move.

'This is the time of year when everyone is doing all the Christmas stuff,' he points out.

'A couple of years ago those ships would have been steaming back and forth, going at full speed. But now you've got something like 12 per cent of the world's container ships doing nothing.'

Aframaxes are oil bearers. But the slump is industry-wide. The cost of sending a 40ft steel container of merchandise from China to the UK has fallen from £850 plus fuel charges last year to £180 this year. The cost of chartering an entire bulk freighter suitable for carrying raw materials has plunged even further, from close to £185,000 ($300,000) last summer to an incredible £6,100 ($10,000) earlier this year.

Business for bulk carriers has picked up slightly in recent months, largely because of China's rediscovered appetite for raw materials such as iron ore, says Huxley. But this is a small part of international trade, and the prospects for the container ships remain bleak.

Some experts believe the ratio of container ships sitting idle could rise to 25 per cent within two years in an extraordinary downturn that shipping giant Maersk has called a 'crisis of historic dimensions'. Last month the company reported its first half-year loss in its 105-year history.

Martin Stopford, managing director of Clarksons, London's biggest ship broker, says container shipping has been hit particularly hard: 'In 2006 and 2007 trade was growing at 11 per cent. In 2008 it slowed down by 4.7 per cent. This year we think it might go down by as much as eight per cent. If it costs £7,000 a day to put the ship to sea and if you only get £6,000 a day, than you have got a decision to make.

'Yet at the same time, the supply of container ships is growing. This year, supply could be up by around 12 per cent and demand is down by eight per cent. Twenty per cent spare is a lot of spare of anything - and it's come out of nowhere.'

These empty ships should be carrying Christmas over to the West. All retailers will have already ordered their stock for the festive season long ago. With more than 92 per cent of all goods coming into the UK by sea, much of it should be on its way here if it is going to make it to the shelves before Christmas.


Lights from the fleet of ships illuminate the night-time horizon

But retailers are running on very low stock levels, not only because they expect consumer spending to be down, but also because they simply do not have the same levels of credit that they had in the past and so are unable to keep big stockpiles.
Stopford explains: 'Globalisation and shipping go hand in hand. Worldwide, we ship about 8.2 billion tons of cargo a year. That's more than one ton per person and probably two to three tons for richer people like us in the West. If the total goes down by five per cent or so, that's a lot of cargo that isn't moving.'
The knock-on effect of so many ships sitting idle rather than moving consumer goods between Asia and Europe could become apparent in Britain in the months ahead.
'We will find out at Christmas whether there are enough PlayStations in the shops or not. There will certainly be fewer goods coming in to Britain during the run-up to Christmas.'
Three thousand miles north-east of the ghost fleet of Johor, the shipbuilding capital of the world rocks to an unpunctuated chorus of hammer-guns blasting rivets the size of dustbin lids into shining steel panels that are then lowered onto the decks of massive new vessels.
As the shipping industry teeters on the brink of collapse, the activity at boatyards like Mokpo and Ulsan in South Korea all looks like a sick joke. But the workers in these bustling shipyards, who teem around giant tankers and mega-vessels the length of several football pitches and capable of carrying 10,000 or more containers each, have no choice; they are trapped in a cruel time warp.

There have hardly been any new orders. In 2011 the shipyards will simply run out of ships to build.

A decade ago, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung (who died last month) issued a decree to his industrial captains: he wished to make his nation the market leader in shipbuilding. He knew the market intimately. Before entering politics, he studied economics and worked for a Japanese-owned freight-shipping business. Within a few years he was heading his own business, starting out with a fleet of nine ships.

Thus, by 2004, Kim Dae-jung's presidential vision was made real. His country's low-cost yards were winning 40 per cent of world orders, with Japan second with 24 per cent and China way behind on 14 per cent.
But shipbuilding is a horrendously hard market to plan. There is a three-year lag between the placing of an order and the delivery of a ship. With contracts signed, down-payments made and work under way, stopping work on a new ship is the economic equivalent of trying to change direction in an ocean liner travelling at full speed towards an iceberg.
Thus the labours of today's Korean shipbuilders merely represent the completion of contracts ordered in the fat years of 2006 and 2007. Those ships will now sail out into a global economy that no longer wants them.
Maersk announced last week that it was renegotiating terms and prices with Asian shipyards for 39 ordered tankers and gas carriers. One of the company's executives, Kristian Morch, said the shipping industry was in uncharted waters.

As he told the global shipping newspaper Lloyd's List only last week: 'You have a contraction of oil demand, you have a falling world economy and you have a contraction of financing capabilities - and at the same time as a lot of new ships are being delivered.'

Demand peaked in 2005 when, with surplus tonnage worldwide standing at just 0.7 per cent, ship owners raced to order, fearing docks and berths at major shipyards would soon be fully booked. That spell of 'panic buying' has heightened today's alarming mismatch between supply and demand.

Keith Wallis, East Asia editor of Lloyd's List, says, 'There was an ordering frenzy on all types of vessel, particularly container ships, because of the booming trade between Asia and Europe and the United States. It was fuelled in particular by consumer demand in the UK, Europe and North America, as well as the demand for raw materials from China.'


Cranes at Singapore Dock stand idle, waiting for work

Orders for most existing ships to be delivered within the next six to nine months would be honoured, he predicted, and the ships would go into service at the expense of older vessels in the fleet, which would be scrapped or end up anchored off places like southern Malaysia.

But, says Wallis, 'some ship owners won't be able to pay their final instalments when the vessels are completed. Normally, they pay ten per cent down when they order the ship and there are three or four stages of payment. But 50 to 60 per cent is paid on delivery.'

South Korean shipyard Hanjin Heavy Industries last week said it had been forced to put up for sale three container ships ordered at a cost of £60 million ($100 million) by the Iranian state shipping line after the Iranians said they could not pay the bill.

'The prospects for shipyards are bleak, particularly for the South Koreans, where they have a high proportion of foreign orders. Whole communities in places like Mokpo and Ulsan are involved in shipbuilding and there is a lot of sub-contracting to local companies,' Wallis says.

'So far the shipyards are continuing to work, but the problems will start to emerge next year and certainly in 2011, because that is when the current orders will have been delivered. There have hardly been any new orders in the past year. In 2011, the shipyards will simply run out of ships to build.'

Christopher Palsson, a senior consultant at London-based Lloyd's Register-Fairplay Research, believes the situation will worsen before it gets better.
'Some ships will be sold for demolition but the net balance will be even further pressure on the freight rates and the market itself. A lot of ship owners and operators are going to find themselves in a very difficult situation.'

The current downturn is the worst in living memory and more severe even than the slump of the early Eighties, Palsson believes.
'Back then the majority of the crash was for tankers carrying crude oil. Today we have almost every aspect of shipping affected - bulk carriers, tankers, container carriers... the lot.

'It is a much wider-spread situation that we have today. China was not a major player in the world economy at that time. Neither was India. We had the Soviet Union. We had shipbuilding in the United Kingdom and Europe.

'But then, back in those days the world was a very different place.'

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive ... z0SjLSFJVA

Can hard times bring communities together? Sherry Wachter of Milton-Freewater, Oregon, contacted HuffPost to bear witness to how she and her neighbors are helping each other more and more as the money gets tighter.

Wachter and her 6,000 neighbors are part of a small agricultural community that's taken a big hit from the economic downturn. But over the past year, she wrote, she's noticed people finding alternate ways to afford the things they want, and in the process reigniting their sense of community. People are trading one good or service for another: some bricks for a fence, some flower bulbs for seeds, this shirt for that jacket. Wachter herself has been letting an old friend who's down on his luck sleep on her couch for the past three years in exchange for remodeling the house and doing yard work. It's win-win, she said.

"I dont think anybody would think of it as 'bartering'," she said in a phone interview. "It kind of is a community thing... Out of all this awfulness we might actually be able to capture a part of our national identity that's worth recapturing. That whole idea that we have to watch out for each other. None of us can make it just on our own."

"This recession has changed me," she added, "and it's changed the people in my town. It's made us turn every nickel twice. It's made us re-think how we spend our leisure time. For some of us it's stripped us of the safety nets many have taken for granted -- savings accounts, health insurance, retirement accounts. And that's not good. But what I'm seeing is that in my town, at least, we are starting to come out of our houses, and look around, and build new safety nets not of money, but of relationships. And I think that's very good indeed."


Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/01/huffpost-reader-sees-loca_n_306882.html

Major quakes and Planet X - Will Alaska and California be next?
by Cristian Negureanu

http://www.ufodigest.com/news/1009/major-quakes.php

Posted: 12:00 October 1, 2009

National Geographic (November 19, 2008): Dark Matter Proof Found Over Antarctica?:

"High-energy electrons captured over Antarctica could reveal the presence of a nearby but MYSTERIOUS ASTROPHYSICAL OBJECT that's bombarding Earth with cosmic rays, researchers say":



- Immanuel Velikovsky, Worlds in Collision (3600 years ago): "Two celestial bodies (The Earth and Planet X - A/N) have been attracted one to each other. The inner masses of the Earth were pushed to the periphery.The Earth with its rotation movement disturbed, started to warm."

- Strong earthquakes may weaken distant fault lines (Reuters, Sep 30,2009):

Huge earthquakes can weaken seismic faults on the other side of the world, scientists in California said on Wednesday.

Their study coincided with a major 8.0-magnitude quake in the Pacific, unleashing a tsunami that killed scores of people in the Samoan islands and Tonga.



Seismologists led by Taka'aki Taira of the University of California at Berkeley found that the 9.1 monster that struck west of Sumatra in December 2004 weakened a closely-monitored segment on California's San Andreas fault, 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles) distant. Full story:
www.reuters.com

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/ ... OC20090930


- Will Alaska and California be next in the chain of Massive Quakes around the Ring of Fire?:
www.doomdaily.com

http://www.doomdaily.com/2009/will-alas ... g-of-fire/


* National Geographic: Dark Matter Proof Found Over Antarctica?... LiveScience: Antarctic Ice Causes Glacial 'Earthquakes':
cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/

http://cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/2 ... would.html

* Mysterious Tremors Along San Andreas Fault... New Land is Forming in Alaska... ECOLOGICAL EVIDENCE FROM PREVIOUS PLANET X PASSAGES:
cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/

http://cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/2 ... dreas.html

* "Planet X confirmed" - cosmonaut and pilot Marina Popovich... Russian Television Reports on Nibiru:
cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/

http://cristiannegureanu.blogspot.com/2 ... pilot.html

Cristian Negureanu

http://naturalplane.blogspot.com/2009/10/nasaharvard-teams-discovery-of-real.html


Thursday, October 01, 2009




NASA/Harvard Teams: Discovery of Real Earth-Like Planet Imminent

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/20 ... e-now.html

dailygalaxy.com - by Luke McKinney - To date, Planet hunters have spotted more than 300 planets beyond our solar system, but the vast majority are hot, Jupiter-sized planets that would dwarf the Earth and are almost certainly lifeless.

A few weeks ago, the first rocky planet was found outside solar system, but the surface temperature is far too hot to sustain life. The planet, called CoRoT-7b, is the first planet beyond our solar system with a proven density similar to Earth's, astronomers say. Most known exoplanets are large gas giants like Jupiter.

The tiny planet was discovered orbiting a star slightly smaller and cooler than our sun, about 500 light-years away. As the planet passed in front of its star, it eclipsed a small portion of the star's light, causing a dip in brightness.

Astronomers may be on the brink of discovering a second Earth-like planet, a find that would add fresh impetus to the search for extraterrestrial life. Astronomers from six major centers, including NASA, Harvard and the University of Colorado, agreed at a conference last year that advances in technology suggest scientists are on the verge of being able to detect the presence of small, rocky planets, much like our own, around distant stars for the first time. The planets are considered the most likely habitats for extraterrestrial life.

Finding a rocky planet with an Earth-like density brings us one step closer to discovering another planet similar to our own. A twin-Earth beyond the solar system could provide the best chance of finding life elsewhere in the universe.

The majority of the atoms in our bodies were created in the Big Bang 15 billion years ago. Most of the mass in our bodies are oxygen atoms that were created by generations of stars that preceded the formation of our Sun. We are a subset of the physical universe. And through astronomy this negligible subset is slowly acquiring -however limited- an awareness of the total universe that created it.

The great thing about outer space? It's absolutely full of fantastic stuff just waiting for us to be able to see it: every time we improve our observations, either the equipment or analysis, something new and brilliant jumps out of the universe saying "Here I am!" Now fans of interplanetary ideas have been rewarded with the very first rocky planet outside the Solar System.
Everything we've seen previously has been some Jupiter-like gas giant, a huge ball of not-solid-stuff-like-Earth that's still interesting but - since we don't imagine meeting alien clouds very much - not as exciting. But it isn't the case that space only features balls of gas, it's just that our technology couldn't see anything smaller. Until now.

A collaboration between the COROT and HARPS systems has detected a rocky expolanet five hundred light years away, a small stone ball less than twice the diameter and about five times the mass of Earth - giving it the same density as our place. Don't imagine any aliens just yet though (or if you do, make them pretty heat resistant) - it orbits only 2.5 million kilometers from its star, sixteen times closer than even Mercury gets. The expolanet's "year" is thus shorter than our day - meaning that even if there is an asbestos-based civilization their economy is utterly devastated by birthdays.

COROT is the COnvection ROtation and planetary Transit satellite, scanning thousands of stars to see the tiny dips in brightness caused by planets. HARPS is the High Accuracy Radial Velocity Planet Searcher, a super-sensitive spectrograph installed on a Chilean telescope to accurately identify how fast a wavelength source moves. Between them, they were able to identify the location of the planet and work out it's orbital radius and speed, thereby working out the mass and size. And with names like that, they probably combine to form Voltron's big brother.

It's awesome stuff for scientists. Yet another example of how we'll never be bored, how the universe is simply stuffed with things waiting for us to detect them.

U.S. troops call Afghan region 'Vietnam without napalm'
Published on 10-01-2009 Email To Friend Print Version



Source: McClatchy
http://www.roguegovernment.com/index.php?news_id=17508

The men of Bravo Company have a bitter description for the irrigated swath of land along the Arghandab River where 10 members of their battalion have been killed and 30 have been wounded since the beginning of August.

"Like Vietnam without the napalm," said Spc. Nicholas Gojekian, 21, of Katy, Texas.

A prime agricultural area of vineyards and pomegranate orchards, the 18-miles of valley that the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment patrols includes Taliban insurgents, booby traps and buried explosives. The troops call the area the "green zone," but unlike Iraq, where it's a fortified area in the heart of Baghdad, this green zone can be a hellish place.

The soldiers have one of the toughest tasks in Afghanistan: improving security and winning the support of villagers in an area where the Taliban have been gaining power.

The battalion arrived in southern Afghanistan this summer as part of a brigade of more than 3,800 soldiers from Fort Lewis, Wash. The unit took its heaviest losses in August, when it had the highest casualties in what was the deadliest month so far in America's eight-year war here.

So far, the Army mission here has been an uneasy mix of trying to woo elders with offers of generators, roads and other improvements while fighting a nasty war with an often-unseen enemy.

Bravo Company arrived in Afghanistan with 24 Strykers, the first of the eight-wheeled combat vehicles outfitted with high-tech communications and surveillance gear to arrive in Afghanistan. A third of the vehicles are now out of service due to bomb attacks or maintenance.

The bomb threats are so pervasive that Stryker drivers have abandoned some stretches of road in favor of driving through the deserts on different routes. The road to one smaller outpost has so many homemade bombs that the soldiers usually arrive on foot, a treacherous hike due to buried land mines.

"We have had enemy contact almost every day," said Lt. Col. Jon Neumann, the commander of the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment. "Until we do clearing, we can't hold or build here right now," a reference to the U.S. counter-insurgency tactic of "clear, hold and build."

Neumann said that a "perfect storm" of factors has bolstered the Taliban in the Arghandab. They include a successful spring insurgency campaign, the death of a strong tribal leader who supported the U.S.-backed Afghan government and the wounding of a charismatic police chief.

The Americans are up against a foe who's adept at creating unforeseen hazards. Often the Taliban fill large yellow water jugs with explosives — packing some underneath road culverts and burying others in the sandy desert soil.

Some battalion solders perished when their Strykers hit roadside bombs — known as IED's or improvised explosive devices — and others were killed by bombs that exploded while they patrolled on foot. On a single deadly day in August, a Bravo Company 1st lieutenant on a patrol had both his legs blown off by a mine, and explosions killed two soldiers temporarily attached to the unit as they walked through the green zone.

Civilian casualties also have climbed. IED's set by insurgents have blown up many. Villagers claim that other civilians have died or been injured in crossfires when U.S. forces and their Afghan allies fight insurgents.

Bravo Company is responsible for an area that's considered a key staging point for Taliban as they organize forays into Kandahar, a major southern city where the insurgents rule by night and set off bombs by day.

The Arghandab valley is starkly divided between a flat, barren desert and the fertile stretch of irrigated orchards, vineyards and cornfields along the river. In the 1980s, Soviet troops spent more than a month in an unsuccessful attempt to defeat U.S.-backed mujahedeen forces that took refuge in the orchards.

From the green zone, the Taliban fan out to villages, which consist largely of mud brick homes inside mud-walled compounds that sprout out of the ground in the same dun colors of the surrounding desert.

The Taliban presence is strong enough in some areas that children are afraid to go to school, even abandoning a large school built in 2004 with the aid of Japanese funds. "If we send our children to school during the day, then the Taliban will come kill the parents at night," said one elder in a meeting with Bravo Company soldiers in the village of Adirah. McClatchy isn't using the elder's name to protect his security.

In the nearby village of Jelawur, the U.N. was able to complete a rebuilding project a few years after the fall of Taliban, an effort marked with a plaque on a wall. Seven years later, however, several dozen Bravo Company soldiers found a walk down the main street to be a tense one this week.

The soldiers were in full battle gear, scanning culverts for IED's and checked their gun sights to search the surrounding fields for signs of a Taliban attack. Some soldiers stripped off their shoulder patches to make themselves less of a target.

Villagers warily monitored their passage. A soldier threw out a piece of candy, and a shopkeeper quickly admonished a young boy to leave it alone.

The company had 152 soldiers when it arrived, which was more than a dozen short of its authorized strength. Since then, some platoons have been depleted by injuries, including concussions from bomb blasts.

"I don't have enough troops for everything they want me to do here," said Capt. Jamie Pope, the company commander, a West Point graduate from Sherrills Ford, N.C.

One platoon authorized to have more than 40 soldiers is now trying to get by with fewer than 32 soldiers. After guard duty is assigned, a platoon may be at less than full strength for patrols.

"We may go with 10 to 11 guys, when we like to have 14 to 21," said Sgt. 1st Class Anthony Dimico, a 1st platoon soldier from Yakima, Wash. Another platoon that arrived with 39 soldiers was operating this week with 22, according to Sgt. 1st Class Zalman Dass from Renton, Wash..

The tempo was set on one of the first patrols back on Aug. 10 as Bravo Company soldiers trekked through a cornfield and were attacked at close range by nearly a dozen fighters who fired from the edge of some orchards.

Spc. Richard Thiebault was one of the lead soldiers. He heard the slam of a rifle bolt, and then went down with a bullet in his chest from an RPK machinegun about 60 feet away. His ballistic vest probably saved his life: The bullet left a half-dollar sized dent in the armor, but it didn't penetrate.

"I'm still shook up to this day," said Thiebault. "I don't like going near the orchards."

Philippines looks to God as super typhoon looms

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/ar ... RSCy4S__Kg

By Mynardo Macaraig (AFP) – 7 hours ago

MANILA — Millions of terrified Philippine flood survivors hunkered down Friday as a super typhoon approached, with officials pleading for God to save the disaster-struck Southeast Asian country from more devastation.

Typhoon Parma, packing gusts of 230 kilometres (145 miles) an hour, was forecast to hit rural areas in the north of the Philippines' main island of Luzon before dawn on Saturday.

The government warned Parma would tear down houses in its direct path, while likely bringing more heavy rain and high winds to the nation's capital, Manila, and nearby areas still recovering from record floods last weekend.

"I am more worried about the wind, the damage it can do, breaking window glass, and blowing the roof off the house. Floods are easier to face," said Annette Kawilan, whose Manila house was flooded in Saturday's deluge.

"Basically you want to remain where you are because you want to save your things, your family. We want to be together. We don't know where to go."

Kawilan was among the more than three million people affected by tropical storm Ketsana, which killed at least 293 people as it pounded Manila and surrounding areas with the heaviest rains in four decades.

Nearly 400,000 people remain in under-prepared schools, gymnasiums and other makeshift evacuation centres.

The rains from Parma threaten to worsen already squalid conditions and further hamper relief supplies for the survivors in those shelters.

Many parts of Manila and neighbouring regions also remain under water -- with mud, debris and trash still blocking drains -- so any more rain could lead to another surge in flood waters.

And because of Ketsana, much soil across Luzon cannot absorb too much more rain, meaning storms do not have to be as heavy as normal for floods to occur, the government weather station warned.

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometres to the north in the rural provinces of Isabela and Aurora, people were preparing for the full onslaught of Parma, which the government has termed a "super typhoon".

"These gusts are strong enough to destroy houses, to rip the roofs off houses," Nathaniel Cruz, head of the weather forecasting unit, said in a radio interview.

"The best thing we can do for the lives of our countrymen is to look for the strongest building where our countrymen can take refuge while the storm is passing."

Cruz warned people in Aurora and Isabela not to be fooled into thinking the typhoon would not wreak havoc, just because the winds had yet to be be felt.

"They might think it isn't something to worry about but from our radar and satellite image, we can see it is an incredibly strong typhoon," he said.

The governor of Aurora, Bella Angara, said officials were preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.

"The prediction is that this typhoon is very strong. Our prayers are that no lives will be lost. God answered our prayers (during tropical storm Ketsana) and we are hopeful we will be spared again," Angara said on radio.

Most of the Philippines' population of 92 million is devoutly Catholic.

Aurora is a mainly rural province of mountains and rice plains, with a population of about 187,000 people. Isabela is another fertile farming region but much bigger and has a population of about 1.4 million.

The Philippines is normally battered by about 20 typhoons annually, but the pattern has changed in recent years and the ferocity of some has increased.

Some weather experts have blamed the changing nature and pattern of the typhoons on climate change.

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http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/10/photogalleries/oldest-human-skeleton-ardi-missing-link-chimps-pictures/index.html

PHOTOS: Oldest "Human" Skeleton Refutes "Missing Link"



October 1, 2009--In 1994 a research team led by Tim White of the University of California, Berkeley; Berhane Asfaw, former director of the National Museum of Ethiopia; and Giday WoldeGabriel of the Los Alamos National Laboratory announced the discovery of the first fossils of a new human ancestor, Ardipithecus ramidus. The researchers presented tantalizing evidence that the species was a biped living in woodland conditions more than a million years before the famous "Lucy" fossil of the species Australopithecus afarensis.

The research, to be published in an October 2, 2009, special issue of the journal Science, reveals that our earliest ancestors underwent a previously unknown phase of evolution, shedding new light on the nature of the last common ancestor of chimpanzees and humans.

An artist's reconstruction of the face of Ardipithecus ramidus was made possible by a digital reconstruction of skull parts from two individuals. The face of "Ardi" did not project as much as those of modern apes, but was not as flat and massive as the later australopithecines. Researchers who studied the species suggest this difference is related to the small size of the species' incisor teeth compared to those of chimps. Based on the relatively small size of its brow ridge and canine teeth, scientists suggest this fossil is of a female.

Read more about Ardi >>

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news ... index.html

http://cryptogon.com/?p=11376

Is the U.S. Economy Headed for a “Sudden Stop” Event?
October 2nd, 2009

Must read.

(Full text below.)

Via: Reuters:
http://blogs.reuters.com/rolfe-winkler/ ... he-threat/

October 2nd, 2009

Why gold if deflation is the threat?

Posted by: Rolfe Winkler

Alice Schroeder wrote a great column for Bloomberg yesterday that I’m just getting to. The best stuff comes at the end, where she describes why some people are buying gold even though inflation doesn’t seem to be a big risk. (Apologies in advance for block-quoting lots of stuff in this post, but I think it’s worth it…)

[Gold bugs] aren’t just betting on inflation, as is the conventional wisdom. Gold has a wicked history of being an unreliable inflation hedge. It has, though, at times been a haven against sudden currency depreciation.

In all the talk of inflation because the Treasury is printing so much money versus deflation because it may not print enough, there is one type of inflation that is rarely discussed. This is the mega-inflation caused by a sudden currency devaluation. Currency is like any financial innovation, an obligation secured by assets. When the obligation is perceived to have increased far beyond the level justifiable by the assets, which in this case make up a country’s economy, a bubble has formed.

Schroeder is describing, in much simpler terms, what economist William Buiter has called a “sudden stop” event. (I’m having trouble logging on to FT to find the right link, but the guys at Baseline Scenario have a good one here.) Let’s take a quick detour to Buiter then, writing early this year:

But as the recession deepens, and as discretionary fiscal measures in the US produce 12% to 14% of GDP general government financial deficits – figures associated historically not even with most emerging markets, but just with the basket cases among them, and with banana republics – I expect that US sovereign bond yields will begin to reflect expected inflation premia (if the markets believe that the Fed will be forced to inflate the sovereign’s way out of an unsustainable debt burden) or default risk premia….

The US is helped by the absence of ‘original sin’ – its ability to borrow abroad in securities denominated in its own currency – and the closely related status of the US dollar as the world’s leading reserve currency. But this elastic cannot be stretched indefinitely….

The only element of a classical emerging market crisis that is missing from the US and UK experiences since August 2007 is the ’sudden stop’ – the cessation of capital inflows to both the private and public sectors. . . . But that should not be taken for granted, even for the US with its extra protection layer from the status of the US dollar as the world’s leading reserve currency. A large fiscal stimulus from a government without fiscal credibility could be the trigger for a ’sudden stop’.

Most economists, using their conventional models, are looking at things like “output gaps” to rationalize additional borrowing to stimulate the economy. So long as people and capital are unemployed, cost-push inflation isn’t seen as a threat so stimulus is believed to be cost-free. The risk, of course, is that we can’t borrow to infinity. At a certain point — tough to say when — we’ll tap out the national credit line. Where economists get in trouble, IMHO, is they envision this nebulous period in the “medium term” when the economy will be growing again and debt can be paid back. As I argued in my column yesterday, this ignores the fact that growth, which is to say growth in spending, is no longer possible without incremental borrowing. We’ve gotten ourselves into a cycle of perpetual borrowing to, in Schroeder’s words, “pump the economy back to a high-water mark that was phony to begin with.”

To Schroeder’s conclusion:

As in any bubble, those who recognize this need to act well in advance. Historically, governments have taken action to prevent currency flight when the owners of a severely overvalued medium of exchange start selling so much that it adds to the pressure on its price. They make private purchases of gold illegal, or tax the exchange of currency.

Right now, the American economy is worth less than the value implied by the market value of its obligations. How much less, no one knows. But gold bugs will tell you, privately, that this is why they are buyers. Might as well stock up, they say, before gold becomes a controlled substance.

The bolded section is why I haven’t touched stocks in two years and don’t plan to for some time: The U.S. economy is underwater. The value of our obligations is greater than the value of our assets, which is to say the equity value of the economy is negative. The best proxy for that is the stock market.

Stocks aren’t going to zero. They have option value. But a 90% fall from the peak is what I see happening eventually. Over what time frame, I haven’t a clue.

But that’s what happened during the Depression. Today we’re far more leveraged…

Shady's Commentary:

Blasphemy on my part? NO! This being we call God didn't give a darn about 45 million that died in World War I didn't give a darn about 40 million that died in World War II. Didn't give a darn about estimated 100 million that died because of Communism. Doesn't give a damn apparently that ever 1.25 minutes a innocent person dies in this world due to war, murder, famine, in justice.

This God is a complete and total NO SHOW on this earth for 2000 years (if your a christian) yet demands we worship it or if not we spend eternity in a pit of molten sulfer and brimstone?!? Wait I thought he loved us?

Sometimes you have to have courage to ask the really tough theological questions. Does God even exist?

An if asking that Logical and Rational Question based on evidence is blasphemy then so be it!


Shady

Former Catholic

"Planet x confirmed", cosmonaut and pilot Marina Popovich

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0vxhvhCeFc

2006 Conference.. (I believe thats Mr.Collins of crop circle research and fame next to her)

New Research Shows the Bard as Spy/Alchemist ( from Vincent Bridges )

In a lecture on “Shakespeare and Dr. Dee,” American independent scholar and esoteric historian Vincent Bridges will reveal William Shakespeare’s secret identity during his so-called Lost Years. The result of five years of research by Bridges and his co-author Teresa Burns, the identification of William Shakespeare with the previously unidentified “Francis Garland” of Dr. John Dee’s diaries reveals a completely new perspective on the Bard’s life and work. Not only was he an intimate of occultists and spies, but also he may have witnessed an alchemical transmutation.

[/i]

Speakeasy The Latest VoIP Provider To Block Certain Calls
from the this-is-going-to-get-messy dept

A few weeks back, we noted that VoIP provider MagicJack had begun blocking calls to certain numbers it didn't like -- specifically free conference numbers that were using a regulatory arbitrage loophole that required the networks of incoming calls to certain rural telcos to pay huge connection fees, creating incentives for those telcos to develop cheap or free services that brought in lots of calls. Then, a few weeks ago, it came out that Google was blocking similar calls via its Google Voice offering. I still believe that offering a telephone service that connects to POTS requires that you complete all non-fee-based (i.e., 900 number) calls, according to an FCC order in 2007 on this particular subject. Google and MagicJack disagree.

However, with more and more people switching to VoIP services, combined with more and more VoIP providers going down this route, it's becoming a big issue, quickly. Harold Feld notes that Speakeasy is the latest VoIP provider to go down this route, blocking similar calls. To Speakeasy's credit, however, unlike both MagicJack and Google, it at least clearly alerted customers to this change, and also publicly lists out the blocked numbers. It's amazing that Google and MagicJack did not do either of these things.

Still, as Feld notes, this is becoming a big deal. It's likely that more and more VoIP providers are going to quickly go down this same path, and the phone system will start to splinter. This is bad. For a phone system to work, you shouldn't have a situation where the service you use can arbitrarily refuse to complete certain phone calls. The real answer is to get rid of the arbitrage loopholes. The rural telcos are clearly abusing the rules. Yes, this could seriously curtail various free conference calling solutions, but that's better than the alternative.