The Agenda Is Becoming Apparent
January 23, 2012 Leave a comment
January 18, 2012 1 Comment
…Butttttt here’s the catch, and it’s hilarious!
Instead of the original RQ-170 Sentinel drone, the Islamic Republic said Tuesday that it will send President Obama a tiny toy replica of the plane.
Yes, that’s right, you heard it! A tiny toy plane!
Iranian state radio said that the toy model will be 1/80th the size of the real thing. Iranian citizens can also buy their own toy copies of the drone, which will be available in stores for the equivalent of $4.
On Dec. 11, after President Obama said he had requested the return of the drone, an Iranian general said that it was not going to happen. The general also warned on Iranian television of a “bigger response” to the “hostile act” of crossing into Iranian airspace.
“No one returns the symbol of aggression to the party that sought secret and vital intelligence related to the national security of a country,” Iranian Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Lt. Commander Gen. Hossein Salami said, according to Iran’s Fars News Agency.
Iran claims they detected the drone well inside Iran’s border and then took control of the craft electronically and brought it down safely. The U.S. has denied that the craft came down for any reason other than technical malfunction.
RQ-170 Sentinel Drone In Iran's Possession
Greece Running Out of Time as Debt Talks Stumble: Euro Credit
January 17, 2012 1 Comment
source: businessweek.com
Greece is running out of time to avoid becoming the first euro nation to default after talks with lenders stalled ahead of a March 20 bond payment that will cost 14.5 billion euros ($18 billion) the country doesn’t have.
Prime Minister Lucas Papademos is due to meet with a group representing private Greek bondholders after a five-day break to discuss forgiving at least half of the nation’s debt in the euro area’s first sovereign restructuring. Greece’s official creditors begin talks Jan. 20 on spending curbs and budget cuts that will determine whether to disburse additional aid. Edward Parker, a managing director at Fitch Ratings in London, said today Greece is unlikely to make next month’s bond payment.
“The next few weeks will be the most difficult in the Greek program,” said Athanasios Vamvakidis, a foreign-exchange strategist at Bank of America Corp. in London. “All this needs to be completed by mid-March to avoid a disorderly default. Not an impossible task, but clearly very challenging with very much at stake.”
Until the debt swap and loan accord are in place, the country faces “acute economic risks,” Papademos said on Jan. 13. Greece sold 1.625 billion euros of 13-week Treasury bills today at a yield of 4.64 percent, with short-maturity debt sales the only source of market financing available for the nation. Bonds repayable in 2022 are worth about a third of their face value.
Tough Talking
Greece and its creditors are “running out of time,” Moritz Kraemer, the head of sovereign ratings at Standard & Poor’s Corp., said in an interview yesterday with Andrea Catherwood on Bloomberg Television’s “Last Word.” Kraemer said he can’t say “whether there will be a solution at the end of the current rocky negotiations. There’s a lot of brinkmanship going on right now.”
Concern that Papademos won’t have domestic backing to achieve spending cuts needed to win more funds or that they will further hamper growth helped drive Greek two-year yields to an all-time high of 185 percent on Jan. 10. The yield on Greek benchmark debt maturing in October 2022 fell 20 basis points to 33.81 percent today, after reaching a record 36.14 percent on Dec. 21.
Greece plans to pay lenders 50 cents for each euro the government borrowed under the terms of a bailout plan agreed on Oct. 26. Its 4 percent notes due in August 2013 trade at about 27 cents. Fitch says an agreement would amount to a “default event” once implemented, while the International Swaps and Derivatives Association says it won’t trigger credit-default swaps bought by investors as insurance against the country failing to meet its obligations.
IIF Bondholders
Frank Vogl, an IIF spokesman, blamed the breakdown in talks on disagreement over the coupon, or interest rate, to be paid on new bonds and on discord among different authorities involved in the talks. The IIF is representing bondholders in the talks with officials from the International Monetary Fund, the European Union and the Greek government.
“There have been differences of views among the official parties to the negotiations, despite the best efforts of the Greek government’s leadership,” Vogl said yesterday. It’s important that the talks conclude “as soon as possible,” he said.
IIF Managing Director Charles Dallara and Jean Lemierre, special adviser to the Chairman of BNP Paribas, will return to Athens tomorrow to resume discussions “with a sense of urgency”, the IIF said in an e-mailed statement today.
Debt Burden
The proposed swap aims to slice 100 billion euros from the 205 billion euros of privately owned Greek debt, with the help of 30 billion euros in cash for incentives to reach a debt-to- gross domestic product ratio of 120 percent by the end of 2020. That will relieve Greece of some 4 billion euros in annual debt servicing costs. The ratio was 162 percent in 2011, according to IMF estimates.
The targeted ratio is a “realistic outcome” for the talks, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi said yesterday at the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Slower growth and a lack of progress on reforms since the Oct. 26 summit make it essential that the talks address how Greece will meet its debt obligations, Draghi said.
Greece’s public debt management agency head Petros Christodoulou and George Zanias, the chairman of the council of economic advisers, traveled to Washington yesterday to meet with members of the IMF in Washington to discuss the swap, a finance ministry official said, confirming an Imerisia newspaper report.
“I still hope that they come to a solution because it is absolutely crucial,” Deutsche Bank AG Chief Executive Officer Josef Ackermann, who is also the chairman of the IIF, said yesterday. “I think we are in a situation where everybody is trying to get the most out of it, but in the end we’ll come to an agreement.”
Deferred Rewards
European governments have been pushing for the Greek debt to carry a coupon of 4 percent, said a person with direct knowledge of the negotiations on Jan. 13. Private bondholders said they would accept those terms for a period of time if they were able to get a bigger payout later as Greece’s economy recovered, said the person, who declined to be identified.
The IMF had previously sought a lower coupon than the range offered by investors to ensure Greece meets its deficit targets as the economic outlook worsens.
After two years of wage cuts and tax increases, the IMF estimates the country’s 2011 deficit at about 9 percent of GDP, down from 10.6 percent in 2010. The economy was expected to shrink about 6 percent last year, according to the latest IMF estimates, compared with an estimate of 3.8 percent made in June.
An inability to implement reforms led the IMF to cut its forecasts for Greece three times in six months last year and delay the payment of loans under the May 2010 package, with an 8 billion-euro outlay originally due in September being paid last month. Failure to complete the voluntary swap threatens to further undermine confidence in the EU’s crisis leadership.
Ability to Pay
“The big problem remains that even if a deal is reached, the debt burden is still unsustainable,” said Martin Blum, co- head of asset management at Ithuba Capital in Vienna. “This isn’t only a big problem for Greece, it also makes it more difficult for creditors to reach a deal given they’ll still have Greek credit risk after the deal.”
Hedge funds holding Greek bonds may resist a deal, seeking to reap greater profit by getting paid in full, either by the Greek government or by triggering payouts from default-swap insurance contracts.
Finance Minister Evangelos Venizelos said Jan. 14 his country aims to present the outline of the plan at a meeting of euro-area finance ministers on Jan. 23, with a final agreement taking until early March. “It is one thing to have an agreement with creditors,” he said. “It is another to execute the agreement.”
Eking Out
The country is surviving on the 8 billion-euro loan paid last month by the IMF and the EU, and proceeds from treasury bill sales. Greece raised 2 billion euros in a sale of 26-week bills last week at a yield of 4.9 percent, compared with 4.95 percent at the previous such sale on Dec. 13.
The downgrade of European ratings by S&P last week suggests countries can fail to meet their debt obligations and Greece will prove to be the latest example, Bill Gross, who runs the world’s biggest bond fund at Pacific Investment Management Co., said in a Twitter posting yesterday.
France and Austria lost their top rankings in a series of downgrades Jan. 13 that left Germany with the euro area’s only stable AAA grade. S&P cut Greece’s grade to CC in July, meaning the nation’s debt is “highly vulnerable” to nonpayment, based on the company’s rating definitions.
Portuguese Yields
“Even if there is a so-called voluntary exchange we would still consider this a distressed debt exchange and a default under our criteria,” Kraemer of S&P said on a Jan. 14 conference call. “Important to keep in mind is not only the direct impact for the debt of Greece, but if you had a disorderly default, this may have worse implications for other sovereign debtors which are under market pressure.”
Portugal and Cyprus are the other two euro-area countries that lost their investment grade status last week at S&P. Portugal is already in an EU-sponsored bailout plan, like Greece, to shield the country from high borrowing costs. Cyprus, whose three biggest banks together hold more than 5 billion euros in Greek government debt, isn’t.
Portugal’s 10-year borrowing cost surged to a record 14.3 percent yesterday, climbing almost 1.9 percentage points in the wake of the rating downgrade. The yield is 13.58 percent today.
“Unless Greece implements the urgently needed reforms, no haircut can achieve debt sustainability,” said Vamvakidis. “I think there is more than 50 percent chance they will succeed. My concern is if they don’t, there is no clear Plan B. No PSI agreement and very low participation could increase market uncertainty about what could follow.”
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“The Ark” is the Structure of the Future
January 17, 2012 1 Comment
"The Ark"
Imagine a structure that can withstand any type of natural disaster?
Russian Architect Alexander Remizov started designing a structure that could do it.
It can be built on land or water, and could provide a refuge in the future incase we face a flood or earthquake of biblical proportions.
How does it work?
Here’s a breakdown of Remizov’s vision of “The Ark” :
The building would be made of lightweight materials (such as coating film). The foundation design would be light and there would be no insulation due to the buffer zone. It would also use very lightweight structures. Remizov explained that this would lead to a cheaper construction plan.
“The Ark” was designed without glass.
Instead, special recyclable plastic and very strong foil will be used that can withstand much worse weather conditions. These foils would also collect rain water which would be used for multiple purposes.
The power supply is fully natural and self-sufficient. It would use solar and wind energy sources, and thermal energy would power the heating system. This energy system would never be interrupted because of the use of alternative energy sources (Electronic and hydrogen accumulators will help transform thermal and electric energy).
"The Ark" has a self efficient energy system
The dome shape would help the formation of turbulances of air which would strengthen the wind generators. The inside of the Ark would consist of plants everywhere, circulating oxygen and picking up carbonic acid. It would reduce the amount of CO2 emission which positively influences the ozone layer. All wastes would be recycled with extremely explosive boiling methods.
The inside of "The Ark" would have a lot of plant life
Remizov has stated that this structure can be used for multiple purposes such as offices, hotels and housing. He estimated that it can be built in different sizes, ranging from a capacity of 100 to 10,000 people.
How long would it take to construct “The Ark”?
Remizov answered:
“The building of the hotel could be fast and simple. Prefabricated sections could be put together in three to four months. The versatile structure could be constructed in most corners of the earth, even in earthquake-prone areas. Constructing the Ark, which would include 14,000 square meters of living space would cost roughly the same as building an energy-efficient house.”
Its been more than a year since Remizov envisioned this idea, and it is still only on paper. He is still searching for investors to make this project possible.
If “The Ark” is created successfully, Remizov may be remembered as one of the saviors of the human race in the future.
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The Mathematical Answer to December 21, 2012
January 17, 2012 3 Comments
- Timewave Zero
This is a reblog from ZazenLife.com
Follow myself and the movement @dieselpokers @zazenlife & @tracking2012
Timewave zero is a numerological formula that purports to calculate the ebb and flow of “novelty”, defined as increase over time in the universe’s interconnectedness, or organized complexity.
Quite the mouthful, but in lighter terms timewave zero is basically what philosopher Terence McKenna believes to be the point in time where anything and everything imaginable will occur simultaneously.
He says that the “universe has a teleological attractor at the end of time that increases interconnectedness, eventually reaching a singularity of infinite complexity on December 21, 2012.”
Terence is said to have conceived this idea over several years of study in the early to mid-1970s while under the influence of psilocybin mushrooms and DMT (dimethyltryptamine).
McKenna expressed “novelty” in a computer program which purportedly produces a waveform known as “timewave zero” or the “timewave.” Based on McKenna’s interpretation of the King Wen sequence of the I Ching, the graph appears to show great periods of novelty corresponding with major shifts in humanity’s biological and sociocultural evolution. He believed that the events of any given time are recursively related to the events of other times, and chose the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as the basis for calculating his end date in December of 2012.
McKenna is quoted as saying, “Using techniques that I developed for the problem I was able to mathematically collapse the hexagram construct into a self-similar fractal curve that can be used to map the unfolding of temporal variables and their resonances on all levels of duration.”
Timewave Zero Happens Late 2012
McKenna’s whole idea was in essence a mathematical program that measured the creative advance and decline in different periods of time in the human race.
McKenna describes this whole process as an Archaic Revival in the human race.
“What the Archaic Revival means is shamanism, ecstacy, orgiastic sexuality, and the defeat of the three enemies of the people. And the three enemies of the people are hegemony, monogamy and monotony! And if you get them on the run you have the dominators sweating folks, because that means your getting it all reconnected, and getting it all reconnected means putting aside the idea of separateness and self-definition through thing-fetish. Getting it all connected means tapping into the Gaian mind, and the Gaian mind is what we’re calling the psychedelic experience. Its an experience of the living fact of the entelechy of the planet. And without that experience we wander in a desert of bogus ideologies. But with that experience the compass of the self can be set, and that’s the idea; figuring out how to reset the compass of the self through community, through ecstatic dance, through psychedelics, sexuality, intelligence, INTELLIGENCE. This is what we have to have to make the forward escape into hyperspace.”
McKenna has trouble describing the coincidence that his date for the timewave zero also coincides with the Mayan Calendar and the Mayan prediction of the apocalypse. Terence calls this “the eschanton” a “something” that has been pulling mankind toward itself since the beginning, like a great attractor.
Terence is quite the interesting man.
Terence Mckenna
What I find most fascinating is how someone could conceive these ideas on psychedelics. Maybe it is because we haven’t really studied them as much as we should and we should be focusing on researching these strange substances and their true effect on the human brain. It is another big question mark why substances like these aren’t legal if ideas like these can be conceived on them.
McKenna is an absolute genius, and I don’t think he was using psychedelics to get high. He was using them to crack all levels of understanding and reason and formulate his own hypothesis based on massive amounts of data and mathematical predictions.
Quite the trip if you ask me! 
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The End of the World AS WE KNOW IT
January 17, 2012 2 Comments
Goodbye illusion of power.
Goodbye war.
Goodbye hate.
Goodbye insecurity
Goodbye money.
Hello peace.
Hello security.
Hello freedom
Hello happiness.
Hello December 21, 2012!
In due time there will be pure truth. With no boundaries for expression.
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Russia Spills The Equivalent of The Deepwater Horizon Disaster Every Two Months
January 17, 2012 3 Comments
This is the face of Russia’s oil country, an inhospitable zone that experts say represents the world’s worst ecological oil catastrophe. The source: a decommissioned well whose rusty screws ooze with oil.
Environmentalists estimate at least 1 percent of Russia’s annual oil production, or 5 million tons, is spilled every year.
That is equivalent to one Deepwater Horizon-scale leak about every two months.
The poor condition of it’s infrastructure and a harsh climate combine to cause catastrophe in the world’s largest oil producing country, responsible for 13 percent of global output.
Russian oil spills go undetected because most happen in the unpopulated areas in the cold Russian tundra, caused either by ruptured pipes or leakage from decommissioned wells.
Weather conditions in most oil provinces are brutal, with temperatures routinely dropping below minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 Fahrenheit) in winter. That makes pipelines brittle and prone to rupture unless they are regularly replaced and their condition monitored.
Oil seeping through rusty pipelines and old wells, contaminates soil, kills all plants that grow on it and destroys habitats for mammals and birds. Half a million tons every year get into rivers that flow into the Arctic Ocean, the government says, upsetting the delicate environmental balance in those waters.
Ever since the Soviet Empire, Russia has been plagued with environmental disasters. From the nuclear horrors of Chernobyl in Ukraine to lethal chemical waste in the Russian city of Dzerzhinsk and paper mill pollution seeping into Siberia’s Lake Baikal, which holds one-fifth of the world’s supply of fresh water.
Unlike the Golf Coast, the spills in Russia are more the result of a drip of leaked crude than a sudden explosion. But they’re more numerous than in any other oil producing nation including Nigeria. Combined they spill far more than anywhere else in the world.
No hard figures on the scope of oil spills in Russia are available, but Greenpeace estimates that at least 5 million tons leak every year in a country producing about 500 million tons a year.
Valery Bratenkov works as a foreman at oil fields outside Usinsk.
After hours, he is with a local environmental group. Bratenkov used to point out to his bosses that oil spills often happen under their noses and asked them to repair the pipelines. “They were offended and said that costs too much money.”
Ivan Blokov, campaign director at Greenpeace Russia, who studies oil spills, said the situation in Komi is replicated across Russia’s oil-producing regions, which stretch from the Black Sea in the southwest to the Chinese border in Russia’s Far East.
At least 400 tons leaked from a new pipeline in two separate accidents in Russia’s Far East last year, according to media reports and oil companies. Transneft’s pipeline that brings Russian oil from Eastern Siberia to China was put into operation just months before the two spills happened.
It’s sickening to see that the companies responsible for these spills do not even care. We all live on this planet together, we have to take care of it. If everyone is inconsiderate and only worries about the dollar, you can bet your ass we wont be part of existence for that much longer.
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Yet Another NDAA Post
January 17, 2012 2 Comments
I still cannot come to grips with the fact that ALL Americans are not up in arms over the passage of NDAA 2012, or as it will come to be known in the future, the American Enabling Act.
We just passed the point of no return. Our corrupt, bought and paid for government now has the broad power to arrest and detain anyone it even THINKS may be involved in ambiguously named “belligerent acts”, without the right to trial or counsel.
Does everyone reading this article comprehend this?
The Bill of Rights NO LONGER EXISTS.
America is now on the same playing field as Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and numerous other brutal dictatorships throughout history.
“But wait,” you say, “this isn’t a dictatorship. We have elections.”
One need look no further than the election of 2008 to see how little our elections mean. We went right from one incompetent boob in GWB to another corporate/military-industrial complex stooge in Obama.
Look at their policies, there is literally no difference between them. They both expanded the size and reach of the federal government to insane proportions, all the while systematically eroding the rights of American citizens.
The populace has been conditioned to expect and accept random searches, state-sponsored assassination of American citizens, and endless regulations about what people can put into their own bodies. If the GOP nominee in 2012 is not Ron Paul, and sadly, it looks like the state-sponsored media has all but assured that he will not, then we are doomed to continue the same cycle of war, debt, and increasing dependence on the federal government by an increasing number of people.
Our electoral choices are so poor, South Park (the single best place for social satire in America) made an aptly entitled episode about it called “Douche and Turd.”
You can watch the full episode, legally, here.
Another issue happening concurrently, which again, perilously few people are concerned about, is the increasing militarization of our police forces. Why are police forces all over the country being provided, with federal dollars, military grade weaponry?
I’ll give you a hint: it won’t be used against a foreign enemy.
The transformation from democratic republic to all-out police state is all but complete. Will the American people, who have been collectively dumbed down by brainwashing in public schools, sedated with scads of anti-depressants and reality TV, and fattened with processed “food” be able to wake up and shake the chains off of their oppressors?
I am somewhat heartened by the youth of the country, including the main contributors to this site, appear to be able to see through the “Matrix” and realize whats going on around them.
I realize some of you may be rolling your eyes and thinking “Why doesn’t he write about something else?”
I will continue to rail against the loss of freedoms until my dying breath.
I take the saying “Give me liberty or give me death” very seriously.
It is my hope that if you are reading this, then you do, too.
Yours in Liberty,
@phdinweed @Zazenlife
Want to see some of my other articles? Click here.
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400lbs of Russia’s Failed Phobos-Grunt Mars Space Probe Could Fall To Earth
January 17, 2012 Leave a comment
Up to 400 pounds of Russia’s failed Phobos-Grunt Mars space probe could fall to Earth between Jan. 10 and 21, the Roscosmos space agency said Friday.
The most probable date for its re-entry into the atmosphere is Jan. 15, Roscosmos said.
“The dynamics of the rover’s braking in the Earth atmosphere depends on a variety of space and technical factors, including those beyond human control,” an agency statement said.
The Phobos-Grunt mission was launched Nov. 9 but failed to set off toward Mars when its engine malfunctioned, remaining instead in Earth orbit, ITAR-Tass reported.
Around 20 to 30 fragments made of heat-proof materials with a total weight of around 400 pounds may hit the ground, Roscosmos said, but the spacecraft’s highly toxic fuel will burn out in dense layers of the atmosphere at an altitude of about 60 miles.
“Judging by the world’s statistics, spacecraft that go off the orbit usually burn completely in dense layers of the atmosphere and fragments that reach the ground do not make any harm,” the agency said.
Source: Science News
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The Next Adolf Hitler? North Korean Citizens Put in “Labor Camps”
January 16, 2012 2 Comments
North Koreans participate in an orchestrated mourning for Kim Jong Il
When Kim Jong Il was alive and in power, he brainwashed a majority of the North Korean population.
Families were forced to have pictures of him in their homes, they were to only read about him, and they were to obey every single thing he said.
After his death, it only seems like it is getting worse.
On December 28th,Kim Jong-un and the North Korean government set up an orchestrated public mourning over his death. Citizens were basically forced into participating in this event. If people did not participate or act “genuinely enough” they were punished.
Citizens who did not show up or did not cry were sentenced to at least 6 months in a “Labor Training Camp.”
Their first method of punishment was going to be executions. If people did not participate, they were sentenced to be shot.
This should remind you of one leader.
Adolf Hitler.
It is scary to think about how similar the behavior of Kim Jong-un is to Adolf Hitler. Yes, the situations were completely different, but the style of thinking is identical.
Kill or punish anyone who get’s in the way. If you don’t participate, you die. If you’re not like us or believe what we believe, we will put you in a labor camp.
It wouldn’t be surprising to hear that Kim Jong-un started executing civilians for not respecting his authority or methods of power.
The orchestrated mourning reminded me of videos that I have watched of Hitlers speeches. All that I was thinking about was how brainwashed and scared all of these people are. They are all robots controlled by the government.
How can a person want to live in a place like this?
I wouldn’t want to have to raise a family in a place like that, I would rather be dead.
Authorities are in the process of forcing the North Korean citizens to idolize Kim Jong-un. Children in school are forced to learn about “the greatness of Kim Jong-un.” It is sad how brain washed the entire country is.
- If these people being forced to follow Kim Jong-undo not cooperate, they can also be sentenced to re-education camp, or they can be banished with their families to a remote area.
Kim Jong-un
A lot of this stuff has been going on while Kim Jung Il was in power, but his son is only looking worse. If one of his first actions was putting his own people in camps for not cooperating, what do you think he will do in the next couple of years?
Imagine you were killed, banished or sent to a labor camp because you didn’t cry over a president’s death?
