21 Mar 2012 - CS Monitor: Earthquake in Mexico: The magnitude 7.4 quake was the biggest since 1986, when at least 10,000 died. But improved construction and where this earthquake hit, say officials, has left Mexico with limited damage, and no fatalities.

09 Mar 2012 - Huff Post: Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have put out a new video to address false claims about the "Mayan apocalypse," a non-event that some people believe will bring the world to an end on Dec. 21.

08 Mar 2012 - USA Today: A solar storm struck Earth's magnetic field early Thursday morning, delivering "a pretty good shock" but not causing any of the geomagnetic disruptions that scientists feared.

07 Mar 2012 - Huffington Post: Earth's magnetic field is about to be shaken like a snow globe by the largest solar storm in five years.

07 Mar 2012 - BBC: The six world powers preparing for talks with Iran are trying to agree a unified stance in Vienna.

06 Mar 2012 - HuffPost: The Winter Solstice on December 21, 2012 is a symbolic day that was marked on the Mayan Calendar over 2,000 years ago! Many people around the world believe this could be the Apocalyptic date prophesied long ago.

06 Mar 2012 - Salon.com: While the day-to-day sideshow of the presidential primary and other sensational stories keep us distracted, the most important thing happening in the world today is scarcely getting any attention at all.

05 Mar 2012 - Space.com: An asteroid discovered last year has been gaining notoriety because of a chance that it could hit Earth in 28 years, but NASA scientists say the odds are extremely remote that it will pose any danger to us.

A major solar flare erupted from the sun late Sunday, sending out an explosion of plasma and charged particles.

The X1.1-class solar flare exploded from the surface of the sun at 11:13 p.m. ET, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center, operated by the National Weather Service.

X-class flares are the most powerful type of solar storm, with M-class eruptions falling within the midrange and C-class flares being the weakest.

The X-class flare unleashed a wave of plasma and charged particles, called a coronal mass ejection, or CME. Experts at the Space Weather Prediction Center said the CME will likely miss Earth, but they remain alert for minor geomagnetic storms beginning late Tuesday and lasting through Wednesday.

“According to analysts at the Goddard Space Weather Lab, the CME will probably miss Earth, although it will hit Mercury and Venus.” Spaceweather.com reported in an alert. “Even if this CME misses, high-latitude sky watchers should still be alert for auroras in the nights ahead.”

Several spacecraft, including NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory and the Solar Heliospheric Observatory, observed the extreme ultraviolet flash from the X-class flare.

This latest solar flare is the second X-class sun storm of 2012. The first event occurred on Jan. 27 and registered as an X1.7 on the space weather scale used by astronomers.
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When a powerful X-class flare is aimed directly at Earth, it can sometimes cause significant disruptions to satellites in space as well as to power grids and communications infrastructure on the ground. Strong flares and coronal mass ejections can also pose potential hazards to astronauts on the International Space Station.

These radiation storms can also amp up normal aurora displays (also called the northern and southern lights) for skywatchers at high latitudes.

More space news from msnbc.com
Image: Abell 520
NASA / ESA
Dark matter blob poses deeper mystery

Science editor Alan Boyle’s blog: Astronomers are mystified by a galaxy cluster in which concentrations of visible matter and dark matter have come unglued.
How to watch best Mars sky show of 2012
700 want to be astronauts — or eat like them
Europa’s ocean may be too acidic to support life

Sunday night’s solar flare burst from a big sunspot region called AR1429, which has been particularly active since it materialized on March 2. This same region produced an M2-class flare on Sunday, triggering a separate coronal mass ejection that is currently approaching Earth and could deliver a glancing blow at around 11:30 p.m. ET Monday night.

As a result, when the ejection from last night’s X-class flare sweeps past Earth over the next day or two, the planet might already be in the midst of a geomagnetic storm, according to SpaceWeather.com.

The sun’s activity ebbs and flows in an 11-year cycle. Currently, the sun is in the midst of Solar Cycle 24, and activity is expected to ramp up toward the solar maximum in 2013.

05 Mar 2012 - LA Times: The Bay Area was hit by two earthquakes moments apart on Monday morning, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

03 Mar 2012 - RT: vert a possible catastrophe – this time set for February 2013 – scientists suggest confronting asteroid 2012 DA14 with either paint or big guns.

02 Mar 2012 - Chicago Tribune: Ron went on to say sardonically that the Earth has been predicted to be destroyed in some kind of fiery apocalypse

An earthquake of magnitude 6.8 shook south-western Siberia on Sunday. It was the region’s second quake in two months.

­The earthquake hit about 100 kilometres east of Kyzyl, the capital of the Republic of Tuva. The tremors were felt across at least seven other Russian regions. Among them was Krasnoyarsk, home to Russia’s largest hydro-power plant. One of the plant’s turbines briefly stopped working because of the quake. But so far there are no reports of serious damage or casualties.

A quake of similar strength hit the same area in late December. It damaged dozens of buildings, including a bridge over the Yenisei River to Mongolia.

Despite the widespread hysteria over the potential of a nuclear-armed Iran, American intelligence agencies have still not found evidence that the Iranian regime is actually pursuing atomic weapons, according to recent government assessments cited in news reports and congressional testimony from top U.S. officials.

In fact — as the New York Times reported on its front page over the weekend — the consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community since at least 2007 has been that the Islamic Republic stopped seeking to build nuclear bombs almost a decade ago. And that remains the predominant assessment today.

“They are certainly moving on that path, but we don’t believe they have actually made the decision to go ahead with a nuclear weapon,” U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in late January.

More recently, Clapper offered the same testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on February 16. “I think they are keeping themselves in a position to make that decision,” he explained. “But there are certain things they have not yet done and have not done for some time.”

Plenty of other senior officials agree. CIA boss David Petraeus, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Martin Dempsey have all made similar public assertions recently.

Of course, it is widely known that Iran is enriching uranium. The regime boasts about it. But nuclear missiles and weapons-grade material require enrichment of around 90 percent — a long way away from the less-than-20-percent purity the Iranian government is known to be working on.

The regime insists its program is solely for peaceful purposes — energy and medicine, for example — and that it will not be deterred by Western terrorism or threats. But advocates of military intervention from Europe to Israel and into the highest levels of the American political class insist otherwise.

Members of the immensely powerful clique known as the Council on Foreign Relations, for example, have been beating the war drums with increasing ferocity for years. And in the CFR’s most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, the organization’s flagship journal, Prof. Matthew Kroenig openly called for a U.S. war against Iran. More than a few top Western officials have issued similar battle cries.

Critics of the official U.S. intelligence assessments claim the 16 or so American spy agencies may be proceeding too cautiously — especially in the wake of their false claims regarding Iraq’s non-existent “Weapons of Mass Destruction” program used to drum up support for the invasion and occupation of that country. Some supposed experts cited in media reports even suggest that the lack of any evidence to show Iran is building a bomb simply means there is a “gap” in U.S. intelligence.

An unclassified summary of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate — the consensus view of America’s sprawling global espionage apparatus — concluded that Iran had abandoned its atomic bomb-making operations years earlier. “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,” the report stated.

And nothing has really changed since then except the hysterical rhetoric — at least not in terms of the official U.S. intelligence community’s views. According to officials cited in the Times piece, entitled “U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb,” the 2007 assessment “was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate” and “remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies.”

A report released late last week by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), meanwhile, was instantly seized upon by various interests. Israeli officials claimed the report offered “proof” that Israel’s analysis of Iranian nuclear ambitions was accurate and that Iran was pursuing nuclear ambitions “without let-up.” The Iranian regime, on the other hand, alleged that the report “proved” its nuclear enrichment program was solely for peaceful purposes.

In reality, it did neither. The most recent IAEA assessment simply showed what the Iranian dictatorship has acknowledged all along: That it is expanding its enrichment capabilities and enriching greater quantities of uranium up to 20 percent purity. The report also noted, however, that the UN nuclear agency had “serious concerns” about the potential military dimensions of the program — a fairly sharp contrast from U.S. assessments.

“Regarding the continuation of talks, we will continue negotiations to once again prove to the world that certain countries’ claims are unfounded and that all our nuclear activities are for peaceful purposes,” said Ali Asghar Soltanieh, the Iranian dictatorship’s Ambassador to the IAEA. “But we will never relinquish our inalienable rights to the peaceful use of nuclear energy.”

Russian strongman Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, suggested the West was hyping the nuclear non-issue to push for regime change in Tehran. “Under the guise of trying to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction … they are attempting something else entirely and setting different goals — regime change,” Putin was quoted as saying. “We have such suspicions.”

Of course, many honest analysts do indeed suspect Tehran is secretly hoping to build atomic weapons — especially after witnessing what the U.S. military did to Iran’s non-nuclear neighbors like Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade. But as Charles Scaliger explained in a recent cover story for The New American magazine, developing offensive nuclear weapons capabilities is an extraordinarily complicated endeavor.

And even if the regime was both willing and able to create atomic weapons, which at this point remains highly questionable, it would hardly represent a doomsday scenario as war advocates suggest. The likelihood of Iran’s tyrants actually using such weapons — other than as a deterrent, perhaps — is very slim.

“Nothing about the history of nuclear weapons suggests any likelihood of a nuclear Iran using such weapons for anything but a deterrent,” Scaliger explained in the piece. “Nothing about the history of U.S. involvement in the Middle East suggests that another pre-emptive war in that region would be anything other than an unmitigated catastrophe.”

As numerous top Israeli officials have noted, the Islamic dictatorship — even if it did have nuclear weapons — would hardly represent an existential threat to the Jewish state. Despite not being a member of the IAEA, Israel almost certainly possesses its own atomic arsenal. And its military forces are vastly superior to Iran’s.

Still, the war propaganda is likely to intensify in the coming months. But with the latest admission that there is no evidence of an Iranian nuclear-weapons program, a persuasive would-be selling point to build public support for yet another war in the Middle East remains even more elusive.

“Amid intense pressure from various Western foreign policy elites to wage war on Iran, perhaps to install an obedient regime, the intelligence has removed the one possible pretext: an Iranian nuclear weapon,” noted John Glaser with the popular liberty-minded website Antiwar.com, citing the Times article. “And even the mainstream news media [are] now reporting it.”

But even as the establishment is forced to grudgingly acknowledge that there is no real evidence of a nuclear-weapons program, Western governments continue to pressure the tyrants in Tehran with increasingly vicious sanctions — measures that devastate the civilian population and, according to many experts, represent an act of war. Incredibly, it is all being done under the guise of fighting a hypothetical program that even U.S. intelligence agencies do not believe exists.

So, while the Syrian dictatorship may be in the crosshairs right now following NATO’s devastating war on Libya, Iran could very well be the next target for regime change under false pretenses. And with the Iranian regime allied to the communist Chinese dictatorship and the Russian government, analysts say World War III could be right around the corner.

Are activities on the moon a part of an alien agenda associated with perpetuated war on Earth in general, and World War III specifically?

In the above video, Alex Collier elaborates on activities sponsored by alien artificial life forms and Earthbound elites on the far side of the moon. China released video [below] which confirms the appearance of artificial dome and other structures which are consistent with bases.

Alex Collier is a self-described contactee of an Ethical Extraterrestrial group.

The ancient Pagan Gnostics referred to these artificial life forms as ‘archons’.

Alex Collier suggests that regressive activities on the moon is an integral part of systematized problems on Earth which include perpetuated war. Ethical Extraterrestrial seek to “tow-away” the moon to enable the affirming of human sovereignty from a “false reality complex” which is apparently being orchestrated from the moon.

The photo below is similar to many that I myself have seen. It appears that the Chinese who took the photo, have confirmed that aliens exist. The Chinese have probably been in contact with these aliens already.

That would explain why so many radio telescopes are searching for signals from aliens, and more being built as we speak, yet no reported signals from aliens were reported to the public.

This article is an adapted excerpt from the upcoming book “The Last Myth,” available in March from Prometheus Books.

Few of us can clearly make out the form of history until it is well behind us. That helps us understand why we still have not settled on a common name for the decade now receding behind us. How others will look back on this time is beyond our knowing or influence, of course, but future historians would do well to ascribe to our time a name that encapsulates not just the events of the past decade but the way in which we as Americans have come to view the world and our place within it. Such a name might be the Apocalyptic Decade or, perhaps, the Apocalyptic Era — for it is not over yet.

http://www.salon.com/2012/02/26/americas_endless_apocalypse/singleton/

When people ask me about investing in gold, I often reply that my two favorite sectors are canned food and ammunition.

When the young and unemployed ask me for career advice, I tell them to learn how to organize friends and neighbors into a militia and establish a perimeter.

Yes, I have been up late at night watching the National Geographic Channel, learning the many ways the world as we know it may soon end, from a global economic collapse to unfathomable horrors from outer space.

Nostradamus, the ancient Maya, the Book of Revelations — I’ve heard it all on cable TV. But this month, Nat Geo is out with a new show called “Doomsday Preppers,” featuring ordinary, everyday people who are actually doing something about it:

- Christopher Nyerges is prepping for an earthquake that might flatten Los Angeles. He’s learned to live off shrubs and weeds and carries a flint to build fires.

- Megan Hurwitt is expecting an unusually nasty oil crisis. The Houston party girl built an impressive survival cache in her tiny apartment, and she practices a night-time backpacking route to get out of a city she expects to find completely blacked out.

- Paul Range foresees a polar shift, or the entire earth doing a backflip on its axis. He’s constructed a home near San Antonio, Texas, using eight steel shipping containers, and he’s loaded it up with enough food and ammo to last 20 years.

- Dennis McClung, who lives in a suburb of Phoenix, is expecting a coronal mass ejection, a huge bubble of gas threaded with magnetic field lines that’s ejected from the sun, in 2012 that will take out the electrical grid and blast civilization back to the Stone Age. He’s got 1,000 tilapia fish in his swimming pool, chickens and goats roaming in his backyard, and a Mayan calendar on his flat-screen TV, counting down to the predicted doomsday of Dec. 21.

We used to call these people whack-jobs or survivalists. Now they are called preppers. This upgraded nomenclature, by itself, is a manifestation of our grim times.

After years of sluggish economic recovery, endless wars, and a skyrocketing national debt, the national zeitgeist has gone “Apocalypse Now.” Turn on the AM radio, or search the Internet, and you’ll find scores of companies peddling emergency food supplies and anything else you can imagine needing after the big one hits.

Nat Geo says nearly 4.3 million viewers tuned in when its new 10-part series premiered Feb. 7 at 9 p.m. EST. This was the biggest Tuesday night in the channel’s 11-year history, with two episodes titled “Bullets, Lots of Bullets” and “I Hope I Am Crazy.”

I hope I am crazy, too, because this show has me singing a jingle: “I’m a prepper, he’s a prepper, she’s a prepper, we’re a prepper. Wouldn’t you like to be a prepper, too?”

(The National Geographic Channel is a joint venture between National Geographic Ventures and FOX Cable Networks, a unit of News Corp. (NWSA: 19.49, -0.07, -0.36%), which owns Dow Jones Newswires, The Wall Street Journal and the FOX Business Network.)

Nat Geo also paired up with Kelton Research to survey more than 1,000 people about the nation’s growing doomsday hysteria. Among the results:

- 71% foresee a major disaster in their lifetime as an act of God, not man. (Yes, but doesn’t God have to do this because of man?)

- 62% expect a global catastrophe in less than 20 years. And in the next 25 years, they expect the U.S. to experience: nuclear fallout (14%), a pandemic (29%), a significant blackout (37%), a financial collapse (51%), terrorism (55%), hurricanes (63%), earthquakes (64%). (Yes, but hasn’t most of this stuff happened already?)

- 52% believe that if a Republican wins the White House, a man-made catastrophe is more likely. (Yes, but didn’t George W. Bush already prove this? Why rub it in?)

- 40% say “to hell with a 401(k),” save money for catastrophes instead. (Yes, but why not stay in cash until the world ends, and then invest? The market always bounces back.)

- 27% think the Mayan calendar’s prediction will be at least “somewhat true.” (Yes, but isn’t it “somewhat true” that Dec. 21 will be on a Friday?)

Despite all this anxiety, 85% say they are not ready for a devastating event. And of those who are prepping, 39% said they would not be able to survive more than two weeks with the supplies they’ve stored. (Yes, these are the people whom more advanced preppers may one day call slaves.)

The scariest results, however, come from a question about which movie most accurately predicts what will happen in the next 25 years: “The Day After Tomorrow” (37%), “Armageddon” (31%), “Water World” (9%) and “Planet of the Apes” (7%).

I go with “Planet of the Apes.” After seeing who is most prepared to survive, I realize that evolution is a funny thing.

(Al’s Emporium, written by Dow Jones Newswires columnist Al Lewis, offers commentary and analysis on a wide range of business subjects through an unconventional perspective. Contact Al at al.lewis@dowjones.com or tellittoal.com)

Read more: http://www.foxbusiness.com/industries/2012/02/22/want-to-survive-2012-be-prepper/#ixzz1ndvSlFVw

(AP) ST. LOUIS – Just days after the 200th anniversary of a series of massive earthquakes in southeast Missouri, residents woke up Tuesday to a rumbling reminder that they live in one of the continent’s most active seismic areas.

The U.S. Geological Survey said the epicenter of a magnitude 4.0 earthquake at 3:58 a.m. was located near the town of East Prairie, Mo., roughly midway between St. Louis and Memphis. Several people in five states — Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Kentucky and Tennessee — felt the quake, along with scattered people in four others, as far away as North Carolina and Georgia, according to responses to the U.S. Geological Survey website.

Only minor damage was reported, such as items falling from shelves, broken windows, minor cracks in walls and sidewalks, said Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist for the Geological Survey office in Golden, Colo. No injuries were reported.

East Prairie City Administrator Lonnie Thurmond said the quake lasted perhaps seven seconds.

“It seemed like everybody I’ve talked to, it woke `em up,” Thurmond said.

The earthquakes on Dec. 16, 1811, and Jan. 23 and Feb. 7, 1812, were among the strongest ever in the U.S., their magnitudes estimated to have ranged from 7.7 to 8.1. Shockwaves spread as far as New York and the force of the temblors reportedly rang church bells in Boston. The Mississippi River reversed flow for a time.

Those quakes, like the one on Tuesday, occurred in the New Madrid Seismic Zone, a 150-mile stretch between Memphis and St. Louis that crosses parts of Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Tennessee.

Read More: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57382066/missouri-earthquake-shakes-9-states/

When the young and unemployed ask me for career advice, I tell them to learn how to organize friends and neighbors into a militia and establish a perimeter.

Yes, I have been up late at night watching the National Geographic Channel, learning the many ways the world as we know it may soon end, from a global economic collapse to unfathomable horrors from outer space.

Nostradamus, the ancient Maya, the Book of Revelations — I’ve heard it all on cable TV. But this month, Nat Geo is out with a new show called “Doomsday Preppers,” featuring ordinary, everyday people who are actually doing something about it:

• Christopher Nyerges is prepping for an earthquake that might flatten Los Angeles. He’s learned to live off shrubs and weeds and carries a flint to build fires.

• Megan Hurwitt is expecting an unusually nasty oil crisis. The Houston party girl built an impressive survival cache in her tiny apartment, and she practices a night-time backpacking route to get out of a city she expects to find completely blacked out.

Read more: Lewis: Want to survive 2012? Be a ‘prepper’ – The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_20011537#ixzz1n3nHMRWv
Read The Denver Post’s Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse

If every image made and every word written from the earliest stirring of civilization to the year 2003 were converted to digital information, the total would come to five exabytes. An exabyte is one quintillion bytes, or one billion gigabytes—or just think of it as the number one followed by 18 zeros. That’s a lot of digital data, but it’s nothing compared with what happened from 2003 through 2010: We created five exabytes of digital information every two days. Get ready for what’s coming: By next year, we’ll be producing five exabytes every 10 minutes. How much information is that? The total for 2010 of 912 exabytes is the equivalent of 18 times the amount of information contained in all the books ever written. The world is not just changing, and the change is not just accelerating; the rate of the acceleration of change is itself accelerating.

The exabyte story and many other examples of accelerating returns are chronicled in “Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think” by Peter H. Diamandis and Steven Kotler. Mr. Diamandis is the chairman and chief executive of the X Prize Foundation and the founder of more than a dozen high-tech companies. With his journalist co-author, he has produced a manifesto for the future that is grounded in practical solutions addressing the world’s most pressing concerns: overpopulation, food, water, energy, education, health care and freedom. The authors suggest that “humanity is now entering a period of radical transformation where technology has the potential to significantly raise the basic standard of living for every man, woman, and child on the planet.”

Read More:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213203698503484.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The end of the world is once again nigh.

Or so claim interpreters of the so-called Mayan calendar.

But Catholics are advised to ignore this year’s end-times fantasy, just as they did regarding last year’s Bible-inspired prediction promoted by Protestant radio-show host Harold Camping.

Regis Martin, professor of theology at Franciscan University at Steubenville, Ohio, and author of The Last Things: Death, Judgment, Hell, Heaven, told the Register that “The surest thing we know about the end of the world is what Jesus said about it: ‘No one knows about that day or hour, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.’”

Given that Jesus, “in his divine humanity,” did not know when the end would be, Martin warns Catholics to be wary of anyone who claims such knowledge.

Catholics and other Christians agree that the end of the world will come and that it will include the physical return of Jesus and the Last Judgment. Beyond that, however, disagreement reigns supreme — and not least on the subject of the event’s timing.

Nor does the Mayan calendar actually predict the end of the world, according to Jimmy Akin, a radio commentator, apologist with California-based Catholic Answers and NCRegister.com blogger. “The Mayan calendar is not coming to an end in 2012. It’s coming to the end of a cycle, like our own calendar did in 2000. Its cycles are called ‘long counts,’ and one of these is ending in 2012.”

Read more: http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/the-mayan-calendar-2012-end-timing-is-inot-i-everything/#ixzz1n3lFCvlE

You may have heard that the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, and that it might be the end of the world. Just for your information, the Mayan calendar ends like ours ends, on Dec. 31. As the song goes, “don’t worry, be happy.”

There is another thing to put on your calendar this year. It is the second annual “Ag Outlook Seminar for Farmers and Ranchers.” Last year, the event was well attended, the food was good, and it didn’t cost the attendees a cent.

There were a lot of positive comments from last year’s seminar. I have received a lot of requests to do it again this year. With all of the changes in agriculture, I’m sure that you will not want to miss this.

The military build-up and economic sanctions against Iran are designed to unleash a global war from the Mediterranean to China with unpredictable consequences, warns Michel Chossudovsky, Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

­Tensions between Iran and the West are close to crisis level. With massive help from the western media, Iran has firmly become embedded as the root of all evil in the minds of many westerners.

The author of the book Towards a World War Three Scenario, The Dangers of Nuclear War told RT that “The issue of Iran’s nuclear weapons is a red herring, but this red herring could lead us to a WWIII scenario.” He also recalled all the American military bases with nuclear weapons close to Iran’s borders.

Michel Chossudovsky recalled that a couple of weeks ago, America’s Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta quite categorically stated to CBS that Iran neither possesses, nor is developing nuclear weapons. Panetta did not rule out that there are still diplomatic means to cut Iran’s Gordian knot.

But considering the US military preparations around Iran, this statement rather looks like a deceptive maneuver.

Last week, EU nations adopted an unprecedented set of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

These include a complete embargo on oil supplies from Iran, and are expected to come into force in July.

“What we are witnessing here is a build-up towards a military confrontation. These sanctions constitute the staging of a military agenda,” feels Michel Chossudovsky. “In turn, we have massive deployment of US military hardware, troops going to Israel to be stationed in Israel, more troops go to Kuwait, [American] naval forces are entering the Persian Gulf.”

Michel Chossudovsky believes that “What the United States wants now, including its allies, is some kind of a green light which will give a human face to a war.”

On Monday, the UN nuclear inspectors started a three-day mission to examine Iran’s atomic activities.

Tehran says the talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency, the first in more than three years, will prove its nuclear program is purely peaceful.

With the visit of the IAEA inspectors, Iran is playing a diplomatic card, believes Chossudovsky. The IAEA is not politically controlled, so once it confirms Iran’s nuclear program has peaceful purposes, this should undermine the aggressive intentions of the West.

The US needs a contrary statement from the IAEA to use this for transition to a new – military – stage in the Iran drama.

“This war has already started. There are drone attacks, there are special [American] forces inside Iran and there is financial warfare,” considers Michel Chossudovsky.

Plans to invade Iran emerged immediately after the invasion of Iraq, Chossudovsky informs, with military preparations begun around 2005, so by now everything should be ready and in place for a full-scale military conflict.

“The WWIII scenario is unthinkable. This war would extend from the Meditarranean to the Chinese border. It could possibly include Russia and China,” Michel Chossudovsky concluded. “We could find ourselves at a very critical crossroads.”

Source: rt.com

As the party noise dies down, so we face a brand new year.

Not just any old year – this is 2012; perhaps the most anticipated year in recorded history.

From the pyramids and texts of the ancient Mayans, to the prophesies of Nostradamus and the predictions of modern day scientists; all agree that this is the year of change, the great shift of the ages.
Hollywood

Read more…

LIMA — A powerful earthquake injured scores of people, buckled buildings and caused power outages on the coast of Peru south of Lima, with no immediate reports of fatalities, officials said.

The epicenter of the magnitude 6.3 quake, which struck 11 minutes after midnight Sunday (0511 GMT Monday), was 23 kilometers (15 miles) southeast of the city of Ica, the US Geological Survey said.

Memories are still fresh of the powerful 8.0 magnitude earthquake that struck the Ica region on August 15, 2007, killing more than 500 people and injuring about 200,000.

While residents remain jittery, there were no known fatalities on Monday, Civil Defense officials said.

However at 145 people were injured and most were taken to hospitals, though the injuries were mostly minor, the Health Ministry said.

The quake also destroyed 125 homes and damaged 581 buildings, said the Civil Defense Institute (INDECI) in its latest report.

Most people were injured when they fled their homes in panic, or when they were struck by collapsing walls, said Raul Huaman with the Ica Regional Hospital.

Among the damaged buildings was the Cathedral of Ica, which had already been damaged in a 2007 earthquake.

The jolt caused people to flee their homes in Ica, the port of Pisco, and the towns of Palpa, Nasca and Canete. Dozens of Ica residents spent the night in parks and gardens fearing aftershocks.

The quake epicenter depth was 39 kilometers (24 miles), according to the USGS.

The reading was based on the open-ended Moment Magnitude scale used by US seismologists, which measures the area of the fault that ruptured and the total energy released.

Peru is in the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” which is the site of 85 percent of global seismic activity.

Thousands of visitors are flocking to catch a glimpse of the rare and beautiful Northern Lights, the Aurora Borealis in Donegal but early on Thursday morning the county had another encounter with Mother Nature in the form of an earthquake.

According to the British Geological Survey (BGS), the rumblings of a 2.2 earthquake were reported in the northern part of the county. The earthquake took place just after 1am and was recorded at a depth of three kilometers, on the Fanad peninsula.

Assistant seismologist with the BGS, Julian Bukits, said the window frames shook and some people were woken up.

She told the Irish Independent “It happens naturally in the north of Ireland but not as often, say, as northern Scotland or the south of Wales. No one can really explain it for Ireland, it’s just a geological phenomenon.”

Read more: http://www.irishcentral.com/news/Northern-Lights-and-earthquakes-cause-ructions-in-County-Donegal–VIDEO-138190599.html#ixzz1kfQIBwQT

27 Jan 2012 - USA Today/AP: An earthquake with preliminary 5.2-magnitude shook Greece's southern Aegean Sea islands Friday, the second in two days, Greek authorities said.

To bomb or not to bomb? That is the question. Whether ’tis wiser for America to suffer the bluster of a nuclear-armed Iran or to take up arms in the Persian Gulf and by doing so, end the standoff. That, with apologies to the bard, is the dilemma of the United States and its allies in r elation to Iran and its controversial nuclear program.

A nuclear-armed Iran is anathema to the United States, Israel and their Western allies. If Iran is not deterred by sanctions from pursuing its nuclear program, there may be no alternative but military action. But to cripple that program with a military attack could incur immense economic and political costs that they are not willing to bear — unless Iran’s behavior forces their hand.

Read more …

Fiji has declared a state of disaster over flooding and landslides that have killed at least six people and displaced thousands.

Officials say that at least 3,500 people are now in temporary shelters.

The state of disaster has been declared in the western regions of Fiji’s largest island of Viti Levu, where the flooding impact is worst.

The rains, which started last weekend, inundated roads and cut water and power supplies to some communities.

ATHENS, Greece — Greek authorities say an earthquake with preliminary 5.3-magnitude has shaken the southern Aegean Sea islands, but no injuries or damage have been reported.

The Athens Geodynamic Institute says the undersea earthquake occurred Thursday between the popular tourist resort islands of Santorini and Crete, some 244 kilometers (150 miles) southeast of Athens.

Delta Air Lines Inc. said Tuesday that it was rerouting some transpolar flights between Asia and the U.S. to avoid the impact of the largest solar storm in almost a decade.

The Atlanta-based carrier said some flights to Detroit from Hong Kong, Shanghai and Seoul took a more southerly routing on overnight flights, though a spokesman said planes flew faster to keep schedules intact. Tuesday departures from the U.S. were expected to follow similar routes.

A rare solar flare erupted late Sunday night resulting in a solar radiation storm today, according to NASA. It’s the strongest such storm since September 2005, according to NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center. (Photo/Video: NASA)

Airlines occasionally reroute transpolar flights as a precautionary measure during big solar storms, with radiation levels heightened near the poles because of the relatively thin ozone layer. The region is also more prone to the disturbance of navigation and communication systems because of the convergence of magnetic field lines at the poles.

A huge solar storm on the sun Monday spewed out a stream of charged particles that hit the Earth earlier Tuesday. The Space Weather Prediction Center of the U.S. National Weather Service said it was the largest solar storm since October 2003.

The biggest issue is radiation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado.

The radiation is mostly a concern for satellite disruptions and astronauts in space. It can cause communication problems for polar-traveling airplanes, said space weather center physicist Doug Biesecker.

Radiation from Sunday’s flare arrived at Earth an hour later and will likely continue through Wednesday. Levels are considered strong but other storms have been more severe. There are two higher levels of radiation on NOAA’s storm scale — severe and extreme — Biesecker said. Still, this storm is the strongest for radiation since May 2005.

Transpolar routes provide the shortest flights between the U.S. and some parts of north-east Asia.

United Continental Holdings Inc., which operates a number of transpolar flights from Chicago and Newark airports, said there had been no operational impact from the storm on Asian flights. However, a flight from Washington, D.C., to Dubai was rerouted to a more southerly course.

Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd., another regular on the routes, was not immediately available for comment.

—The Associated Press contributed to this article.

For the second time in just three months, people in the Chicago area have a shot at seeing the northern lights this evening.

That’s because the biggest solar flare in seven years reached the Earth’s atmosphere on Tuesday, releasing a surge of energy that will feed the red-green glow of the northern lights, more formally known as the aurora borealis.

WASHINGTON – The sun is bombarding Earth with radiation from the biggest solar storm in more than six years with more to come from the fast-moving eruption.

The solar flare occurred at about 11 p.m. EST (0400 GMT) Sunday and will hit Earth with three different effects at three different times. The biggest issue is radiation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center in Colorado.

You can track the storm via a map put out Tuesday morning by the National Weather Service’s Space Weather Prediction Center showing the solar radiation storm touching the upper atmosphere in the Earth’s poles.

The radiation is mostly a concern for satellite disruptions and astronauts in space. It can cause communication problems for polar-traveling airplanes, said space weather center physicist Doug Biesecker.

Radiation from Sunday’s flare arrived at Earth an hour later and will likely continue through Wednesday. Levels are considered strong but other storms have been more severe. There are two higher levels of radiation on NOAA’s storm scale – severe and extreme – Biesecker said. Still, this storm is the strongest for radiation since May 2005.

Read more …

Last night the sun unleashed a flash of radiation called a solar flare, along with a generous belch of ionized matter that is now racing toward Earth at thousands of kilometers a second. The solar storm front from the ionized blast, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), should arrive tomorrow morning, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC). The forecasters called the event the strongest solar storm since 2005.*

When a solar storm hits Earth, the impact can have a number of consequences, especially in Earth orbit and at high latitudes, where the planet’s geomagnetic shielding is thin. Solar storms can knock out satellites, cause blackouts, and force aircraft to avoid polar routes. Storms can also bring the aurora borealis, a.k.a. the northern lights, down to unusually low latitudes. (You can see a slideshow of recent low-latitude auroras here.)

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(UKPA) The Tokyo region of Japan has a 70% chance of being hit by a powerful earthquake within four years, a new study has warned.

University of Tokyo seismologists based their estimate on an increase in earthquake activity in the region since last year’s March 11 disaster, when a magnitude nine quake and subsequent tsunami about 140 miles (230km) north-east of the capital left nearly 20,000 people dead or missing.

The group at the university’s earthquake research institute said the number of moderate quakes in the capital region measuring magnitude three or bigger surged to 343 in the six-month period after the March quake, up from 47 in the previous six months.

Based on a theory that the probability of bigger earthquakes rises in proportion to an increase in smaller quakes, the team calculated a 98% likelihood of a magnitude 6.7 to 7.2 earthquake striking Tokyo over the next 30 years.

“When we ask when a probability of such a quake reaches 70%, then we get a 70% chance over the next four years,” said Shinichi Sakai, a seismologist on the team.

A separate government study estimates that the chance of a magnitude seven quake striking Tokyo is 70% over the next 30 years.

Mr Sakai said the two studies use different methods to calculate earthquake probability.

While the university study factored in the recent increase in moderate seismic activity, the government estimate only looked at the pattern of magnitude 6.7-7.2 quakes over the past 150 years. Since no quake that big has occurred in the Tokyo area since March, there is no change in the government estimate, Mr Sakai said.

Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world. Tokyo’s last major quake was the Great Kanto earthquake in 1923 in which 140,000 people were killed.

Copyright © 2012 The Press Association. All rights reserved.

23 Jan 2012 - ABC News/AP: A 5.4 earthquake struck Monday in the northern Dominican Republic but there were no reports of damage or injuries.

23 Jan 2012 - Scientific American: As a specialist in the study of time, I occasionally get asked about what I think of the so-called Mayan prophecy that the world will end in 2012. I

23 Jan 2012 - CNN: There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries after a 5.8-magnitude earthquake struck central Chile Monday afternoon, authorities there said.

23 Jan 2012 - CBS News: A magnitude-4.7 earthquake and several small aftershocks shook Hawaii's Big Island on Sunday, but there were no reports of injury or damage.

23 Jan 2012 - Space.com: A powerful solar eruption is expected to blast a stream of charged particles toward Earth tomorrow (Jan. 24), as the strongest radiation storm since 2005 rages on the sun.

21 Jan 2012 - BBC: A 6.2-magnitude earthquake has hit the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, shattering windows and sending frightened residents into the streets.

A Guide to Celebrations in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras

INTERNATIONAL. Dr. Marc Faber the Swiss fund manager and Gloom Boom & Doom editor has taken ultra bearishness to a new level. He remains negative about the outlook for the world because policy makers in Europe and the US are trying to solve the crisis created by too much debt and leverage with even more credit and leverage. Eventually when interest rates go up, he says, the cost of financing the failed monetary policies will become burdensome and will ultimately bring a big bust.

End game

He sees a shift in economic and military power from West to East and is increasingly convinced that the end game will be war. But, so far, he had avoided giving a time frame to the war scenario. Not any longer.

Dr. Faber was amongst 10 investment experts assembled by Barron’s last week at the Harvard Club of New York for the Barron’s 2012 Roundtable. The members of the Roundtable discussed the economy, China, Europe, market volatility, investment picks and World War III.

“On an optimistic note, World War III will occur in the next five years,” Faber announced to the other members of the Roundtable, in his characteristic contrarian manner.

“That means the Middle East will blow up,” he said, without providing any details about specific countries.

When this happens, “new regimes there will be less Western-friendly,” he reckons.

“The West has figured out it can’t contain China, which is rising rapidly and will have more military and naval power in Southeast Asia,” he explains.

The only way for the West to contain China is to control the oil tap in the Middle East, Faber argued.

The prelude to war will be a “big bust that will see the end of credit expansion,” he said in a recent interview. But before this happens, “governments will continue printing money which in time will lead to a very high inflation rate, and the economy will not respond to stimulus”.

Cyber war?

“This war will be different from World War I where troops faced each other in trenches or World War II where tank divisions faced each other, he said. This will be Cyber War. A war where you can turn a switch and turn the London electricity supply off. This will be a war where you can stop airplanes from flying and bring the whole financial system of a country to a halt,” Faber said in an August 2011 interview.

And during war times, “commodities go up strongly,” he argued.

“If you want to hedge against war, you don’t want to own derivatives in UBS and AIG, but you have to own them physically, like farmland and agricultural commodities. That is something to consider for you as a personal safety and hedge. You have to own some commodities,” he stressed.

Containing oil flows to China

Tensions have been escalating in the Gulf, with Iran threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 35% of seaborne crude and 20% of the world’s traded oil passes daily, while the US and Europe seek help from Arab and Asian allies to reduce Iran’s oil revenues in the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme,

Saudi Arabia has reportedly told a senior US lawmaker it stands ready to increase its current oil output of 10 million barrels per day should new sanctions curb Iranian oil exports.

Saudi oil minister, Ali al-Naimi, said in Sunday’s edition of his country’s al-Watan newspaper that “Saudi Arabia is able to produce 12.5 million barrels per day to meet the needs of the world market and satisfy any increase in demand from consumer countries.”

For its part, China, Iran’s biggest oil customer, has rejected new US sanctions that seek to block Iran’s central bank from clearing oil payments. However Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was this week visiting his country’s prime supplier, Saudi Arabia, as part of a Middle East tour of oil-producing nations.

“I believe that China is not the only country to buy oil from Iran… Legitimate trade has to be protected if global economic chaos is to be avoided,” Wen said while visiting Qatar yesterday, according to a Chinese foreign ministry transcript.

A game of chess

The Iranians already have a “nuclear option,” namely, the prospect of blockading the Strait of Hormuz. Doing so would hurt them, too, of course, George Friedman wrote this week in a Stratfor report.

“Each side is seeking to magnify its power for psychological effect without crossing a red line that prompts the other to take extreme measures,” reckons the provider of global intelligence.

“Iran signals its willingness to attempt to close Hormuz and its development of nuclear weapons, but it doesn’t cross the line to actually closing the strait or detonating a nuclear device. The United States pressures Iran and moves forces around, but it doesn’t cross the red line of commencing military actions.”

Thus, each avoids triggering unacceptable actions by the other, said Friedman, adding that in that game of chess, “the possibilities of miscalculation, of a bluff that the other side mistakes for an action, are very real.”

Relax, stocks will not collapse

Asked if war will be positive for stocks, Faber told the Baron’s Roundtable it would be very positive for stocks and negative for bonds, “because debt will grow dramatically. There will be massive monetization of debt.”

“When the U.S. entered World War II total credit equaled 140% of GDP, and there were no unfunded liabilities. Now total credit-market debt is 380% of GDP, and unfunded liabilities make that 800%,” he added.

Speaking to CNBC Thursday Faber went further: “Relax. I don’t think that equities will collapse. I think we have major support going back to August 2010 when the S&P was at 1010,” he said.

“We have a lot of support around 1100, and if the S&P drops 200 points, I guarantee you the Fed will come in with QE3 and QE4 and so forth,” he added, referring to a next round of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve.

“If we look at U.S. government debt, it reached US$1 trillion in 1980 and in the year 2000 we were at US$5 trillion. So between 2000 and 2011 we’ve grown three times and the expansion of the debt will continue”

“The day interest rates go up for whatever reason, the cost of financing will also become burdensome,” Faber predicted.

Volatility may continue for five or 10 years

Back to the Baron’s Roundtable, Faber said market volatility had little to do with the problems in Europe and everything to do with excessive liquidity that is being created in the system.

“Unless there is a general collapse of liquidity — in other words, a credit-market collapse — the volatility will continue, perhaps for five or 10 years, he warned.

The average person’s economy will go downhill but stocks and corporate profits will go uphill

Returning to one of his favourite topics, he said governments around the world will print massively.

“The worse the news gets, the more the U.S. and the European Central Bank and China will print money. Then the average person’s economy will go downhill but stocks and corporate profits will go uphill. When we talk about the economy, remember that the economy of Aspen and the economy of Detroit are two different things.”

“When assets become like cash, it may be safer to hold your money in the bank. If asset prices collapse, you’ll be better off in Treasury bills with zero yields. Then the central banks will print money and bail you out. At least you’ll get your principal back.”

“With money-printing, you never know what sector of the economy will be inflated. Maybe we have had profit inflation and there will be a severe correction. I don’t expect corporate profits in the U.S. to collapse by more than 20% in the next 12 months,” he reckons.

Investors should opt for asset diversification

Faber said he prefers asset diversification given the current uncertainty. “We don’t know how much money governments will print, the size of fiscal deficits and so forth.”

The biggest uncertainty is also what will happen to the Chinese economy, he added.

“I am the most bearish person you can imagine on earth, which is why I recommend putting, say, 25% of your money in equities, 25% in precious metals, 25% in cash and bonds and 25% in real estate. These assets won’t go up substantially this year, but they could preserve your wealth.”

About Dr. Marc Faber

Dr. Marc Faber was born in Zurich, Switzerland. He went to school in Geneva and Zurich and finished high school with the Matura. He studied Economics at the University of Zurich and, at the age of 24, obtained a PhD in Economics. Between 1970 and 1978, Dr Faber worked for White Weld & Co in New York, Zurich and Hong Kong.

Since 1973, he has lived in Asia. From 1978 to February 1990, he was the Managing Director of Drexel Burnham Lambert (HK). In June 1990, he set up his own business which acts as an investment advisor and fund manager.

In 2000 Faber decided to spend more time writing his newsletters as well as growing his advisory business. He moved back to his home in Chiang Mai, Thailand, maintaining only a small administrative office in Hong Kong.

Dr. Faber publishes a widely read monthly investment newsletter ‘The Gloom Boom & Doom Report’ which highlights unusual investment opportunities, and is the author of several books.

The magnitude 9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake and a smaller earlier quake may have been caused by a phenomenon known as “slow slips,” according to research by the University of Tokyo’s Earthquake Research Institute.

In the past, seismologists have had to rely on information provided by just a few sensors in the vicinity of an earthquake to get information about it, and then afterwards, on anecdotal evidence provided by people that had experienced the quake first hand.

(Reuters) – About 100 people were injured when an earthquake measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale hit northeastern Iran on Thursday, state television reported.

MISSOULA, Mont. — A 3.4 magnitude earthquake shook an area 24 miles southeast of Missoula just after 12 a.m.The U.S. Geological Survey reports that the earthquake was centered south of I-90 in a remote wooded area of the Sapphire mountains.There are no reports of damage from this earthquake.This is another in a series of small earthquakes 3.0 magnitude or greater that have rattled western Montana in the last several months.NBC Montana will continue to update this story as more information becomes available.

London (CNN) — The year 2012 is a significant one in the Maya calendar.

SLIDESHOW: Maya sites in Central America

The ancient long count calendar of the Maya, a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished across Central America from 2000 BC to the time of the Spanish Conquistadores, states that on the 12th December, 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in approximately 26,000 years.

And 21 December, 2012, is said to mark the end of the 13th Maya Calendar, a 144,000-day cycle or “b’ak’tun” since the mythical Maya day of creation 5,200 years ago.

Though popularly interpreted as signifying the “end of the world as we know it,” scholars stress that the end of the “b’ak’tun” does not mean apocalypse.

While few Maya people still follow the long count calendar, the Global Heritage Fund is celebrating the event by naming 2012 “The Year of the Maya,” with members of the Fund greeting the winter solstice on top of La Danta pyramid at the El Mirador site in Guatemala.

“Experiencing the Winter Solstice on the summit of La Danta is thought to be one of the greatest opportunities to experience the end of the 13th Maya calendar and dawn of a new age,” said Jeff Morgan, Executive Director of the Global Heritage Fund.

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How to Read the Maps

The maps displayed below show how earthquake hazards vary across the United States. Hazards are measured as the likelihood of experiencing earthquake shaking of various intensities.

The colors in the maps denote “seismic design categories” (SDCs), which reflect the likelihood of experiencing earthquake shaking of various intensities. (Building design and construction professionals use SDCs specified in building codes to determine the level of seismic resistance required for new buildings.)

The following table describes the hazard level associated with each SDC, and the associated levels of shaking. Although stronger shaking is possible in each SDC, it is less probable than the shaking described.

SDCs take into account the type of soil at the site, as poor soils can significantly increase earthquake shaking. These maps have simplified this by assuming normal Site Class “D” soils, which are the most commonly found.

When viewing the maps, it is important to remember that areas with high earthquake hazards do not necessarily face high seismic risks. Defined as the losses that are likely to result from exposure to earthquake hazards, seismic risks are determined not only by hazard levels but also by the amount of people and property that are exposed to the hazards, and by how vulnerable people and property are to the hazards. This is explained in more detail in Your Earthquake Risk.

Maps

SDC map of the Eastern United States for low-rise Occupancy Category I and II structures located on sites with average alluvial soil conditions.

SDC map of the Western United States for low-rise Occupancy Category I and II structures located on sites with average alluvial soil conditions.

SDC map of Alaska for low-rise Occupancy Category I and II structures located on sites with average alluvial soil conditions.

SDC map of Hawaii for low-rise Occupancy Category I and II structures located on sites with average alluvial soil conditions.

SDC map of Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands, and Tortola for low-rise Occupancy Category I and II structures located on sites with average alluvial soil conditions.