Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Breaking News Wed. Oct. 19, 2011

Check it out! Our own KathyPrepper on Peak Moment TV!
wonderful interview Kathy!!!
Thanks to our tireless friends,  RJ  at Global Glass Onion and  the Ozarker at Conflicted Doomer,  for their contributions and great links today! Be sure to check out their great blogs and visit the forums at the bottom of this post!

Also, here's a little something for fun. Full disclosure, I haven't taken the test yet. Good luck!
CSMonitor: Could you pass a US citizenship test?
Ok, I took it. LOL I'm a citizen! Yeah!

Japan
Reuters: Fukushima victims: homeless,desperate and angry - At last, victims of Japan's nuclear crisis can claim compensation. And they are angry.
Mineweb: Japan mulls the closure of its nuclear power stations - Japan is studying the closure of all its nuclear power stations as one option for the country's future energy policy, following the earthquake and tsunami that hit the Fukushima power plant in March.

Global Conflict
SHTFPlan/BeforeItsNews: United States Marine to NYPD Cops: “There is No Honor In This” *Video*
YahooNews: Questions linger over why CIA operative is at NYPD
Reuters: Anti-Wall Street protesters march against New York police 
* Prosecutors probing NYPD handling of incidents: source
* Worldwide arrests of protesters over 1770 - Twitter feed
* Movement numbers seen well short of Tea Party's in 2009
TPM: Charges Of Occupy Wall Street Anti-Semitism Find Audience On The Right
Is Occupy Wall Street anti-Semitic? Some groups on the political right really want you to think so.
If you've been watching cable news over the past couple of days, you've probably seen the ad that shows Democrats like Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama praising the Occupy Wall Street movement -- followed by the question "What is happening at the Occupy Wall Street protests?" and clips of protesters making anti-Semitic remarks. One man shouts "Jews control Wall Street" and holds a sign that says "Hitler's Bankers - Wall St."
"Why are our leaders turning a blind eye to anti-Semitic, anti-Israel attacks?" the ad asks. "Tell President Obama and leader Pelosi to stand up to the mob. Hate is not an American value."
The ad is put out by the Emergency Committee for Israel (ECI), whose board members include neoconservative columnist Bill Kristol and ultra-conservative former presidential candidate Gary Bauer.
Salon: Occupy Wall Street’s struggle for nonviolence
An image of a protester apparently tackling a cop goes national, despite the majority's commitment to nonviolence
RollingStone: Why Occupy Wall Street Is Bigger Than Left vs. Right - Matt Taibbi
NYT: Commander Who Pepper-Sprayed Protesters Faces Disciplinary Charge 
BBC: Greece unrest: Athens clashes amid general strike 
Reuters: Violent anti-austerity protests grip Greek capital - Greek police cleared the square in front of parliament on Wednesday after clashing with black-clad demonstrators during a mass anti-austerity rally called to coincide with a vote on a bitterly resented new round of belt-tightening.
ExtinctionProtocol: Greece inches closer to the abyss: austerity measures may be final ‘death-spiral’ - October 18, 2011 – ATHENS – One of the largest strikes in Greece’s history is looming. Greece risks sliding into a “death spiral” if the government continues to slash salaries and lay off workers instead of cracking down on tax evasion and raising money from the rich, the head of the biggest public sector union said Tuesday.
CNN: 24 soldiers killed in attack in Turkey 
VOA: Turkey Bombs Kurdish Rebels in Iraq After Deadly Attack
CNN: U.S. deportations reach historic levels
Washington (CNN) -- Nearly 400,000 people were deported from the United States in the past fiscal year, the largest number in the history of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, the government announced Tuesday.
ThinkProgress: Rush Limbaugh Endorses The Lord’s Resistance Army - Lord’s Resistance Army are Christians. They are fighting the Muslims in Sudan. And Obama has sent troops, United States troops to remove them from the battlefield, which means kill them. That’s what the lingo means, “to help regional forces remove from the battlefield,” meaning capture or kill. [...]This post is illustrated with a photo of a man who survived a Lord’s Resistance Army machete attack and has the gashes on his head to prove it. You can read more about it courtesy of Human Rights Watch:LRA forces attacked at least 10 villages, capturing, killing, and abducting hundreds of civilians, including women and children. The vast majority of those killed were adult men, whom LRA combatants first tied up and then hacked to death with machetes or crushed their skulls with axes and heavy wooden sticks. The dead include at least 13 women and 23 children, the youngest a 3-year-old girl who was burned to death. LRA combatants tied some of the victims to trees before crushing their skulls with axes. (thanks RJ, for this story)
GlobeAndMail: In pictures - Violence as British police evict Irish Travellers
GuardianUK: Dale Farm evictions: police fire Tasers at protesters - video - Police are seen firing Tasers during protests against the eviction of residents at Dale Farm, Basildon. Essex police later said two people were shot with a Taser after allegedly offering 'serious violence to a pair of officers'. They acknowledged that Tasers are not recommended as a public order tactic
YahooNews: Turkey launches incursion into Iraq - ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish soldiers, air force bombers and helicopter gunships launched an incursion into northern Iraq on Wednesday, hours after Kurdish rebels killed 24 soldiers and wounded 18 in attacks along the border.
CommonDreams: US Hawks Behind Iraq War Rally for Strikes Against Iran - WASHINGTON - Key neo-conservatives and other right-wing hawks who championed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq are calling for military strikes against Iran in retaliation for its purported murder-for-hire plot against the Saudi ambassador here.
SeattlePI: Iran's supreme leader ups fight with Ahmadinejad
Reuters: Arab Spring abuses show need for arms trade curb: Amnesty - Russia, the United States and European countries ignored fears over human rights abuses and sold large numbers of weapons to governments in the Middle East and North Africa in recent years, Amnesty International said in a report on Wednesday.

Hacker News
 MSNBC: 'Son of Stuxnet' virus could be used to attack critical computers worldwideA powerful new computer virus that some are calling the "Son of Stuxnet" has been discovered, and researchers are concerned about its potential for attacking critical infrastructure computers around the world.
NYT: In Rift Between Murdochs, Heir Becomes Less Apparent
ExiledOnline: Wikileaks Expose: Kochs, Neocons And Covert Regime Change Ops


Financial News
Max Keiser: 'US bankers stole billions'  
GlobeAndMail: France, Germany to boost euro zone rescue fund to €2-trillion: paper

DailyBail: HOLY BAILOUT - Federal Reserve Now Backstopping $75 Trillion Of Bank Of America's Derivatives Trades
FT: Pressures grow on US regional lenders -- Large US regional banks will need to cut expenses by up to 40 per cent to cope with slower economic growth, lower revenues and high regulatory costs, and that will increase pressure to cut staff or merge with rivals, a new study says.
The report by Alvarez & Marsal turnround specialists said returns on equity at leading regional US lenders had fallen by about half from pre-crisis levels of about 15 per cent. Luring investors back to the sector would require more than routine cost-cutting, it said. Lenders face multiple challenges to increasing profits. Low interest rates are squeezing their net interest margins. A faltering economic recovery is reducing the demand for loans. Higher capital requirements and restrictions on products are eating into earnings.
BusinessInsider: This Is What You Need To Do To Stay On Top Of Your Credit Score
MyBudget360: The chastisement of the American saver – Federal Reserve offers a higher interest rate to banking reserves than too big to fail banks offer American savers.
Americans are facing a banking system that is largely designed to go against their best economic interest.  Even a decade ago people were able to find a savings account or a certificate of deposit that would keep up with the rate of inflation.  Today, most typical savings accounts at too big to fail banks offer essentially a zero percent interest rate.  Mattress savings.  And the true rate of inflation on items like food, education, and fuel is far outpacing in household gains.  This is the dilemma.  If you put your money into the banking system you will surely lose because of the erosion of money thanks to our central banking policies.  The Federal Reserve has purposely created a negative interest environment to get people to spend again and restart the economy.  The unfortunate point is that banks have plenty of excess reserves thanks to trillions of dollars in bailouts yet fail to lend it out largely because the public is seeing household incomes shrink.  The last decade growth was largely debt based.  The banking system essentially is punishing the American saver with whatever little amount they try to sock away.
WSJ: Next Generation of Homeowners Are Freaked Out - The younger you are, the more freaked out you are likely to be by the housing market crash. 
WashingtonPost: GOP: ‘Deregulate Wall Street!’: - In recent days, more than 900 cities have hosted protests under the Occupy Wall Street banner. But the enthusiasm for intervening in Goldman Sachs’s affairs hasn’t trickled up to the GOP presidential campaign. There, the candidates want to leave Wall Street alone. And this isn’t just a passive disinterest in the finance sector’s affairs. They want to deregulate -- actively and aggressively. “I introduced the bill to repeal Dodd-Frank,” bragged Rep. Rep. Michele Bachmann. Herman Cain was not to be outdone. “Repeal Dodd-Frank, and get rid of the capital gains tax,” he countered. Repealing the capital gains tax would make it vastly more profitable to earn a living through investment income rather than wage income. A hedge-fund manager, for instance, might escape income taxation entirely. It would give smart, young college students even more reason than they have now to go into the hedge fund game than, say, medicine. “Dodd-Frank obviously is a disaster,” agreed Rep. Ron Paul. “But Sarbanes-Oxley costs a trillion dollars, too. Let’s repeal that, too!” So three years after the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, the consensus in the Republican Primary is that we should deregulate Wall Street not just to where it was before the bubble burst, but to somewhere nearer to where it was before Enron crashed.
David Rosenberg of Gluskin SheffOut of options. Even unprecedented central bank intervention can’t save the global economy now - PDF - IF THERE IS any kind of consensus that has emerged in the past year about the global economy and financial markets, it is that there is too much debt in the system. The last recession unfortunately never did expunge all the imbalances, especially when it comes to the level of overall debt the global economy can truly support. Governments around the world protected their banks, and in so doing issued tremendous amounts of triple-A-rated debt that in many cases is either no longer ranked that pristinely nor being treated that way. In this symbiotic relationship, the banks that were saved by the governments ended up buying a whole lot of the debt of these sovereigns as they issued more and more to save the financial system and the economy. And the end result was that over the past three years, total OECD net government debt relative to GDP soared 30 percentage points to more than 100%.
Mish: Leveraged Poison; Jackasses Never Give Up; More Fog Rolls In
FederalReserve: The Great Recession's Impact on Central Bank Practice - Ben Bernanke Speech at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston 56th Economic Conference
MSNBC: How to break up with your bank in seven steps - Tired of rising fees? Take action, but have a strategy
NakedCapitalism: Bank of America Deathwatch: Moves Risky Derivatives from Holding Company to Taxpayer-Backstopped Depositors

EconIntersect: Fraud Robbing Unemployment Programs? - Thirteen states are seeing high levels of fraud in their unemployment compensation programs with more than 14% of their money going to improper payments.

MSNBC: With 5 weeks to go, no consensus on deficit super committee
Panel stuck on basic questions about negotiations, people involved in the work say
NPR: Housing Starts Rise; Consumer Prices Go Up Slightly 
GlobeAndMail: Great Recession may not yet be even half over, study says  
SFGate: Moody's downgrades Spanish government debt ratings 
CNNMoney: Social Security payments to see first increase since 2009 
MSNBC: Older Americans' challenge: No time to recover from recession


Peak oil and Energy News
RigZone: ExxonMobil, BP, Eni Investing $100B to Develop 3 Iraqi Fields-Official - ExxonMobil, BP and Italy's Eni will spend around $100 billion to upgrade three oilfields in southern Iraq, the top energy advisor to the Iraqi Prime Minister said Wednesday.
BBCUK: Rising energy bills causing fuel poverty deaths
TreeHugger: Gadget and Appliance Energy Use up 600% in 40 Years
TreeHugger: Windstalk Concept Removes Blades from Wind Power!
TransitionVoice: A peak oil movie you can skip
“Do they lie,” asks a middle-aged man in a suit with a vaguely Middle Eastern accent about everyone from Presidents Obama and Bush to green activists who have called for America to kick its addiction to oil. “Or do they believe in their own wishful thinking? Either way, it’s not very pretty.”
And he’s just one of the industry hacks you’d see if you were going to waste your time watching spOILed: The Movie, released this summer by New Mexico-based filmmaker Mark Mathis. Here’s another paid shill from the film:
    If use of energy is an addiction, then is it any surprise that we have the foolish policies that we do or that many Americans come to not trust the energy industry…We can’t drill off of the East Coast. We can’t drill off of the West Coast. We can’t drill off of the West Coast of the Gulf of Mexico. Why is that?

Commodities/Metals
Mineweb: India's gold demand to rise in festive quarter
India's demand for gold is expected to peak in the October-December quarter, a time for festivals and weddings, despite the high inflation that has hovered around double digits for over a year.
Mineweb: Tanzania to raise gold royalties by year end
East Africa's second-largest economy Tanzania plans to raise royalty payments on gold exports by year end as it continues to restructure its mining sector. 

Environmental News
WBIR: Poultry farmer pleads guilty in poisoning
USAToday: Preserve owner kills himself after freeing exotic animals
Below is another great piece by Matt Cardin.
TheTeemingBrain: Technology, ecology, and the real sin of Dr. Frankenstein

ExtinctionProtocol: Shallow earthquake jolts Adelaide in SE Australia
BBC: Bangkok threatened by worst flood in decades 
Thavisa: Flooding near Bangkok has taken about 25 percent of the world’s hard disk manufacturing capacity offline  
MSNBC: Homes damaged as likely tornado hits Florida - 'It sounded like a train heading into ... the side of the house,' one resident says 


Statesman: Texas, already short of water, grapples with long-term fix
ExtinctionProtocol: Over 700 dead in Southeast Asia floods: UN


America in Decline
ThinkProgress: Supreme Court To Hear The Mother of All Corporate Immunity Cases - The Roberts Court is rightly mocked for its seemingly single-minded willingness to immunize corporations from the laws intended to protect ordinary Americans, but the question presented in a corporate immunity case the justices just agreed to hear is so stark that a decision granting such immunity would verge on self-parody. Or, at least, it would if the consequences of such a decision wouldn’t be so tragic and far-reaching. 

CharlesHughSmith: Debt-Serfdom Is Now the New American Norm
USAToday: Fear in Ala. towns over tough immigration law
McClatchy: Commentary: Eastman is the new general in gay marriage war
After failing to get elected California attorney general last year, John Eastman, a conservative law professor, has emerged as a different sort of general, one taking a lead in the cultural war over marriage.
YahooNews: What’s the CIA doing at NYPD? Depends whom you ask -  Three months ago, one of the CIA's most experienced clandestine operatives started work inside the New York Police Department. His title is special assistant to the deputy commissioner of intelligence. On that much, everyone agrees. Exactly what he's doing there, however, is much less clear.
ActivistPost/BeforeItsNews: Corporate-Funded Think Tanks To Host GOP Debate; Seeking Best Rep. For Debate's Corporate Sponsors


Food and Water
WBIR: Tennessee waters get drug test
Traces of chemicals that may disrupt hormonal and immune systems, including several personal care products, have shown up in the drinking water of six of 11 utilities tested across the state, according to a new report.
PopSci: $500,000 USDA Grant Could Help Genetically Modified Salmon Company Stay Afloat
Genetically Engineered Salmon Transgenic Atlantic salmon called AquAdvantage grow at twice the rate of their natural counterparts. These fish are the same age. AquaBounty
Multiplier-Effect: How Much Food Will a Week’s Earnings Buy? (Fall Edition) - Signs of serious inflation in broad price indices such as the consumer price index (CPI) have been rare over the past few years, confounding many critics of the stimulus bill and the Fed’s efforts to reduce interest rates.  However, as I reported in a blog entry last spring, most food-commodity prices were rising at that time and had reached levels rivaling those last seen in 2008, when unusually severe food shortages caused serious problems in many parts of the world.
Caspinet.Org: General Mills Facing Class Action Lawsuit Over “Fruit Snacks” Full of Sugars, Partially Hydrogenated Oil, & Dyes Center for Science in the Public Interest 

Science and Technology
PopSci: Smartphone Accelerometers Could Be Used To Eavesdrop On Nearby Devices
PopSci: Video: MIT's X-Ray Vision System Can See Straight Through Concrete Walls
ScientificAmerican: Dead German Satellite Will Fall to Earth This Week - The exact timing and location of ROSAT's atmospheric reentry are uncertain
PopSci: Germany's ROSAT Satellite Could Come Crashing Down Somewhere On Earth As Soon As Friday
MeteoriteHunters: Billion Tonne Comet May Have Missed Earth By A Few Hundred Kilometres in 1883
TechReview: Billion-Ton Comet May Have Missed Earth by a Few Hundred Kilometers in 1883
A reanalysis of historical observations suggest Earth narrowly avoided an extinction event just over a hundred years ago.
WashingtonPost: Climate scientists grapple with uncertainty (though not the kind you think) 
MSNBC: Future spaceflight goes virtual

Medical and Health
Cnn: Death toll from tainted cantaloupes climbs to 25
ScientificAmerican: Vacuum Tube: Kids under 2 Should Not Watch Television
The new statement from the American Academy of Pediatrics warns of possible language delays. Instead, unstructured play is better for linguistic development
LAT: 3,000 in line for free medical care at Sports Arena
ExtinctionProtocol: Drug-resistant staph infections in Europe could mark beginning of a new epidemic
CNN: Breakthrough malaria vaccine tantalizingly close

Doomsteading, Gardening, Urban Farming
UrbanFarmingGuys: How to grow Shiitake Mushrooms
SHTFPlan: Time To Stock Up: The Price Of Peanut Butter Is Set to Soar 40% In the Next Two Weeks
TreeHugger: How to Start a Tool Library: Just Do It
ModernSurvivalBlog: Expect This in a Neighborhood Near You
TreeHugger: Michael Jantzen's Amazing 1981 Modular Steel Dome House (Slideshow)
TreeHugger: Are Pallets Unpalletable As A Building Material? (Survey)
ContainerGardening: Barrelponics (Aquaponics and Earth)

Other News
WBIR: Monroe Co. churches pray around Sequoyah High School
(here's how ridiculous we are in TN.)
Thousands (? didn't look like it) of church members in Monroe County spent Sunday afternoon holding hands to make a circle around Sequoyah High School to pray for healing.
(they are protesting gay straight alliance. God forbid there should be a decrease in gay bashing in TN!)
CNN: Mother, nation struggle along with Chinese toddler in hit-and-run video
Gruesome security camera footage of the accidents and the girl, lying in her own blood, ignored by more than a dozen passers-by in a busy market has outraged the nation, stirring an emotional debate on the state of morality in a fast-changing society.
ArchaeologyNewsNetwork: Traces of ancient civilisation found in Chinese desert

Politics
WashingtonPost: Jon Huntsman, the reasonable Republican
"A system that rejects a Jon Huntsman in favor of a Herman Cain isn’t a primary process. It is a primal scream."
Cain’s 9-9-9 Plan Would Cut Taxes for the Rich, Raise Taxes for Almost Everyone Else
SeattleTimes: Study: Cain tax plan raises taxes on 84 percent
Herman Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan would raise taxes on 84 percent of U.S. households, according to an independent analysis released Tuesday, contradicting claims by the Republican presidential candidate that most Americans would see a tax cut.
LAT: Recapping the GOP debate: Mitt's snit, Cain's crash, Perry's push

The Forums
TinfoilPalace:Catholics Stole 300K Babies From Mothers
TinfoilPalace:"Elite" Motivational Conferences
TheOilAge:Europe news all over the place
TheOilAge:1984 
Hubberts-Arms:New radar technology provides real-time video of what's going on behind walls 
Hubberts-Arms:Ten Vanishing American Restaurant Chains 
SilentCountry:Climate change poses "an immediate, growing and grave threat"
SilentCountry:Kathy Harrison on Peak Moment TV

2 comments:

  1. Hi Pamela, Loved the video of Kathyprepper, she is wonderful, I bought Kathy's book when it first came out it is a fantastic book. Thanks Kathy.

    Kiwi
    New Zealand

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Kiwi and thanks for commenting. I agree, Kathy is just great. She is a wonderful example of a way of thinking about things, and doing things, that may help a lot of people navigate the coming hard times.
    What a nice lady.

    ReplyDelete