July 6, 2012 – MEXICO- An outbreak of the H7N3 bird flu virus in western Mexico has infected about 2.5 million chickens and led authorities to destroy or dispose of almost a million birds.The country’s Agriculture Department said 129 farms in the western state of Jalisco have been inspected. Flu was confirmed in birds at 24 of the sites and tests continued on most of the rest. The farms in question have been placed under quarantine, the department said in a statement. The outbreak has caused increases in the price of chicken and egg products in Mexico. –AP
Concern mounts crisis could spread: Poultry farmers in Belize, especially in border areas near Mexico, are being asked to step up their bio-security measures as the Belize Agricultural Health Authority has placed a national poultry health alert following Mexico officially reporting a major outbreak of highly pathogenic H7N3 Avian Influenza (“Bird Flu”). The outbreak has hit three commercial poultry layer farms in the central Mexican state of Jalisco and Belizean authorities have announced that precautionary measures are being taken and border controls along the Belize/Mexico border are being strengthened.However, in a bid not to create panic and drive down sales, authorities are sending the message that poultry products are safe for human consumption. “The disease rarely affects humans and requires direct contact with sick birds. In humans, the disease causes conjunctivitis and mild flu symptoms.The outbreak in Mexico started on June 13, 2012. In total, over one million birds are believed to be susceptible across the three farms and over 200,000 have already died from the outbreak. A further 60,000 have been destroyed. The sick birds showed signs of weakness, poor alertness, difficulty in breathing, were lying on their side and had drooping wings prior to death,”stated officials. Other countries in the region, Guatemala in particular, have also called national alerts and are strengthening their surveillance and diagnostic programs for Avian Influenza. Control measures being applied in Mexico include: movement controls on poultry and poultry products; official sampling in commercial poultry farms, backyard poultry farms, and poultry markets; assessment of biosecurity and good livestock practices; and depopulation of affected farms. This outbreak in Mexico is considered a threat to Belize and the region due to a previous major outbreak in Mexico (in the period 1993 – 1996) where the disease became endemic and also spilled over into Guatemala and El Salvador.–Caribbean 360
From Spaceweather. Spaceweather doesn't have specific links, so if you visit after say, Saturday morning, just scroll down.
X-FLARE:Giant sunspot AR1515 unleashed a strong X1.1-class solar flare on July 6th at 2308 UT. Because Earth is well-connected to the blast site by solar magnetic fields, a fusillade of protons accelerated by the explosion might soon reach our planet. Stay tuned for updates.
Couple the flare with another sunspot..
NEW SUNSPOT:A new sunspot is emerging over the sun's southeastern limb, and it appears to be a big one. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory caught a first glimpse of the spot's dark cores during the early hours of July 6th:
I think 1515 still hasn't fully rotated towards earth, so July has the chance to become really interesting!
China's mega monument to hydroelectric hubris completed just in time for/or partly the cause of the upcoming apocalypse! Hooray! The Guardian:
The final turbine of China's massive Three Gorges dam has been connected to the power grid, marking the completion of a controversial hydropower project that cost the country more than £38bn and displaced at least 1.3 million people.
The installation of the project's 32nd 700-megawatt unit on Wednesday brought total capacity up to 22.5 gigawatts (GW), accounting for 11% of the country's total hydroelectric capacity. Britain's largest power station, Drax, produces 4GW. "The complete operation of all the generators makes the Three Gorges dam the world's largest hydropower project, and the largest base for clean energy,"Zhang Cheng, general manager of the project's operator, China Yangtze Power, told a ceremony. (The best aspect of this entire project.) The construction of the world's biggest hydropower plant began in 1994 and its first generating unit was connected to the grid in July 2003. The official state news agency Xinhua said the dam had already generated a total of 564.8bn kilowatt-hours, saving nearly 200m tonnes of coal a year.
But the project, located on the middle reaches of the Yangtze river, cost 254bn yuan (£26bn), four times the original estimate, and another 123.8bn yuan (£12bn) has been spent on "follow-up work". The project's 185-metre dam and 600km reservoir have forced the relocation of at least 1.3 million residents, and the government has acknowledged that earthquake and landslide risks have also increased in the region. Hydropower construction slowed after building work on the dam was completed in 2006, with several large-scale projects vetoed because of the soaring costs of handling those displaced and protecting the environment. But Beijing is now committed to bringing another 140GW of hydropower capacity on line between 2011 and 2015 to meet its renewable energy targets.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney could be even richer than the $250 million estimated by his campaign after it emerged he owns an offshore company which has not been disclosed to the public. The White House hopeful's campaign has been dogged by criticism that he is out of touch with average Americans due to his enormous wealth.
But further details of his earnings have emerged today which suggest he could be even richer than predicted.
Tax experts today said the lack of disclosure over the company means the public has no clear idea where Romney's money is coming from. Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd, based in Bermuda, was not listed on any of Romney's state or federal financial reports. The company is among several Romney holdings that have not been fully disclosed, including one that recently posted a $1.9 million earning.
The omissions were permitted by state and federal authorities overseeing Romney's ethics filings, and he has never been cited for failing to disclose information about his money, so there is no suggestion that he has done anything illegal. Experts in private equity, tax and campaign finance law say Romney's limited disclosures deprive the public of an accurate depiction of his wealth and a clear understanding of how his assets are handled and taxed. Sankaty was transferred to a trust owned by Romney's wife, Ann, one day before he was sworn in as Massachusetts governor in 2003,according to Bermuda records obtained by The Associated Press.
The Romneys' ownership of the offshore firm did not appear on any state or federal financial reports during Romney's two presidential campaigns. Only the Romneys' 2010 tax records, released under political pressure earlier this year during the Republican primary campaign, confirmed their continuing control of the company.
The mystery surrounding Sankaty reinforces Romney's history of keeping a tight rein on his public dealings, already documented by his use of private email and computer purges as Massachusetts governor and his refusal to disclose his top fundraisers. The Bermuda company had almost no assets, according to Romney's 2010 tax returns. But such partnership stakes could still provide significant income for years to come, said tax experts, who added that the lack of disclosure makes it impossible to know for certain. 'We don't know the big picture,' said Victor Fleischer, a University of Colorado law professor and private equity expert who urged corporate tax code reforms during congressional testimony last year. 'Most of these disclosure rules are designed for people who have passive ownership of stocks and bonds.
'But in this case, he continues to own management interests that fluctuate greatly in value long after his time with the company and even the end of his separation agreement. And the public has no clear idea where the money is coming from or when it will end.' Named for a historic Massachusetts coastal lighthouse, Sankaty was part of a cluster of similarly named hedge funds run by Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded and led until 1999. The offshore company was used in Bain's $1 billion takeover of Domino's Pizza and other multimillion-dollar investment deals more than a decade ago. Romney's campaign declined to answer detailed questions from AP about Sankaty.
You see, when you're super rich, you practice "a lack of disclosure." When you're poor or middle class, you're being "sketchy as hell." Sketchy. As. Hell. Owning a company you don't claim MIGHT be legal according to private equity law, but from about any perspective outside legalese, it looks more than a shade shady.Etch-A-Sketchy? Etch-A-Shady? Yeah; I like either.
Active Region 1515 continues to rotate towards us.. Yahoo News:
The sun fired off yet another intense solar flare today (July 5), the latest in a series of storms from a busy sunspot being closely watched by space telescopes and astronomers. NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory snapped a daunting new image of a strong M-class solar flare that peaked this morning at 7:44 a.m. EDT (1144 GMT). The M6.1 flare triggered a moderate radio blackout that has since subsided, according to officials at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The eruption came from a sprawling sunspot, called Active Region 1515, which has been particularly dynamic this week. In fact, the sunspot region has now spewed 12 M-class solar flares since July 3, NASA officials said in a statement today.The sunspot region is huge, stretching more than 62,137 miles long (100,000 kilometers) in length, they added. This sunspot region has also produced several coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are clouds of plasma and charged particles that are hurled into space during solar storms. Powerful CMEs have the potential to disrupt satellites in their path and, when aimed directly at Earth, can wreak havoc on power grids and communications infrastructure. The CMEs that were triggered by this week's solar flares, however, are thought to be moving relatively slowly, and will likely not hit Earth since the active region is located so far south on the face of the sun, NASA officials said. [More Solar Flare Photos from Sunspot AR1515] But, the sunspot is slowly rotating toward Earth, and scientists are still monitoring its activity. "Stay tuned for updates as Region 1515 continues its march across the solar disk," officials at the Space Weather Prediction Center, a joint service of NOAA and the National Weather Service, wrote in an update. X-class solar flares are the strongest sun storms, with M-class flares considered medium-strength, and C-class the weakest.Today's M6.1 eruption is a little over half the size of the weakest X-class flare, NASA officials said. Radio blackouts can occur when a layer of Earth's atmosphere, called the ionosphere, is bombarded with X-rays or extreme ultraviolet light from solar eruptions.Disturbances in the ionosphere can change the paths of high and low frequency radio waves, which can affect information carried along these channels. Radio blackouts are categorized on a scale from R1 (minor) to R5 (extreme). An R2 radio blackout can result in limited degradation of both high- and low-frequency radio communication and GPS signals, NASA officials said. The sun is currently in an active phase of its roughly 11-year solar weather cycle. The current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, is expected to peak in mid-2013.
File Under: People are still losing their damn minds. Associated Press, via Century Link:
ALTOONA, Pa. (AP) — A new mother has been charged with smoking the powerful synthetic stimulant known as bath salts two days after she gave birth, while still in the maternity ward of a central Pennsylvania hospital.
Online court records don't list an attorney for 31-year-old Carla Murphy, of Altoona, who is charged with aggravated assault and various drug counts for allegedly stripping naked and fighting with staff at the Altoona Regional Hospital on June 17. She faces a preliminary hearing Aug. 8. The Altoona Mirror ( bit.ly/NawCAx) reports hospital police had to be called to subdue Murphy after she stripped, rolled around on the shower floor, and couldn't answer questions from hospital staff. Police later found the drugs in Murphy's personal effects and at her home.
That little Gemini baby's best chance is a new family. Yikes.
The good news? At least she didn't eat the baby. This is beginning to look like a copycat "Those-dudes-freaked-out, but-I-can-handle-it" type phenomenon. Stupid people who don't give psychoactive substances the proper respect are intrigued, and more of these cases will pop up as awareness and curiosity increases. The media will most certainly create more awareness of bath salts, therefore more incidents will occur, therefore the media will report those incidents, growing awareness. And more people will be intrigued and curious..
There are A Lot of stupid people around, so I doubt this phenomenon will dissipate anytime soon. My guess is that these incidents will occur in locations where there is already heavy methamphetamine manufacturing, distribution, and usage problems.
Again with the Royals and their intrigue and their conquering and sexing each other up, it's like a damn soap opera up in hyuhh("here," utilizing the southern U.S. pronunciation..) Yahoo News. Excerpts:
An Australian forklift driver who some historians argued was the true heir to the British throne has died in the small New South Wales town he called home, his local newspaper reported Thursday. Mike Hastings, 71, was a real-life aristocrat, born the 14th earl of Loudoun, who moved to Australia in 1960 in search of adventure. He made international headlines in 2004 when a documentary team from Britain's Channel Four conducted extensive research into the monarchy and concluded his ancestors were cheated out of the crown in the 15th century. Hastings, an avowed republican, died on June 30 and was buried Thursday in Jerilderie, about 750 kilometres (465 miles) southwest of Sydney, the local Wagga Wagga Daily Advertiser reported. Hastings was a descendant of England's House of York, whose dynastic struggle with the House of Lancaster became known as the Wars of the Roses and was dramatised by William Shakespeare. The British documentary's historian Michael Jones found documents in France's Rouen Cathedral that he believed showed King Edward IV, who ruled with a brief interruption from 1461 to 1483, was illegitimate. Jones believes that Edward's father Richard of York was fighting the French at Pontoise when he was conceived, while his mother Cecily was 200 kilometres (125 miles) away at Rouen, allegedly in the amorous arms of an English archer. If true, the crown should have passed on to Edward's younger brother George, the duke of Clarence, who was a direct ancestor to Hastings.
Oh shit! I think the dominoes already started falling! We could be watching a HUGE scandal accompanying total global financial collapse. But really, when you think of it, why wouldn't there be a HUGE scandal accompanying said global financial collapse? Zero Hedge:
Paul Tucker, the Bank of England executive at the center of the Barclays/Diamond trigger-conversation, has issued a statement requesting a Treasury hearing to show his "keenness to clarify the position with regard to the events" of that hanging chad of a phone-call.What is most troublesome (for every major banker and politician) is his apparent willingness to take more down with him. As the M.A.D. escalates, MNI reports that minutes from 2007 show Tucker (who was/is in line as we noted yesterday for the top-job once King leaves next year) was fully aware from the early days of the financial crisis that market participants believed Libor was rigged. The Group’s November 2007 minutes, from a Tucker-chaired meeting, state “Several group members thought that Libor fixings had been lower than actual traded interbank rates through the period of stress.”The minutes show that not only was the issue raised back in November 2007 but that the BOE went to great lengths as the crisis deepened the following year to keep its finger on the money markets’ pulse. It seems that instead of mounting the 'plead-da-fif' defense Tucker is coming all-guns-blazing and is willing to drag more names into this miasma as a suicide-bomb of a hearing where the truth is realized could well bring every high ranking banking official to admit the continued unreality of Libor rates.
If this scandal blows up this week, financial news network viewers will see some epic freakouts: Some meltdowns will be from guests, others will be from on-air personalities. Maybe not, though. This might not be the actual chaos trigger. That might happen a few weeks or months still down the road. But whenever it does, when LIBOR and Derivatives actually collapse, you will know. You won't help but know!
Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah and Iran will fight alongside the Syrian regime if it is attacked by foreign forces, a pro-Damascus Palestinian fighter leader said on Tuesday. Inthe event of “a foreign attack, we discussed with our brothers (in the Syrian regime), with (Hezbollah chief) Hassan Nasrallah and our brothers in Iran, we will be part of this battle,” said Ahmad Jibril of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. In an interview with Beirut-based Mayadeen television, Jibril said that if a “Turkish-European alliance or NATO escalate… we will take to the streets and fight on behalf of all those with honour and our Syrian brothers.” Jibril also cited Nasrallah as saying Hezbollah would fight on behalf of the Syrian regime, and described the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance as “one axis” that the PFLP-GC is part of.He added that he met recently with Nasrallah, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, without specifying when. He also noted that the Hezbollah chief “said he would join this battle, in the event of a foreign attack” on Syria. The Iranian regime, he said, told him it would not allow a strike on Syria.“We have warned the Turks several times not to play with fire,” Jibril said. Echoing the Syrian regime’s discourse, the PFLP-GC chief said the 16-month uprising against Assad was not a genuine local movement, but rather “a change in the foundations of this region in order to create a new Middle East,”referring to a term coined in 2006 by former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.Jibril described the defence of the Syrian regime as “a decisive battle.” Victory would be necessary, he said, in order to “defeat the American and Zionist projects.”–Gulf News
Iran says missiles could destroy US missile bases:.. Amir Ali Haji Zadeh, commander of the Revolutionary Guards aerospace division, was quoted by Fars news agency as saying. Haji Zadeh said 35 U.S. bases were within reach of Iran’s ballistic missiles, the most advanced of which commanders have said could hit targets 2,000 km (1,300 miles) away. ‘We have thought of measures to set up bases and deploy missiles to destroy all these bases in the early minutes after an attack,” he added. It was not clear where Haji Zadeh got his figures on U.S. bases in the region. U.S. military facilities in the Middle East are located in Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Turkey, and it has around 10 bases further afield in Afghanistan and Kyrgyzstan.Reuters U.S. increases military presence:The United States has quietly moved significant military reinforcements into the Persian Gulf to deter the Iranian military from any possible attempt to shut the Strait of Hormuz and to increase the number of fighter jets capable of striking deep into Iran if the standoff over its nuclear program escalates. The deployments are part of a long-planned effort to bolster the American military presence in the gulf region, in part to reassure Israel that in dealing with Iran, as one senior administration official put it last week, “When the president says there are other options on the table beyond negotiations, he means it.”New York Times Turkey recovers pilots’ bodies:Turkey on Wednesday found the bodies of two pilots shot down by Syria last month during a contested flight that pushed the neighbors’ relations to a new low almost a year after Ankara threw its weight behind the opposition to oust President Bashar al-Assad from power. The military General Staff in Ankara said on Wednesday that it was working to remove the bodies of Captain Gokhan Ertan and Lieutenant Hasan Hüseyin Aksoy from the Mediterranean.Turkey didn’t identify the location of the dead pilots or provide any additional details. The armed forces weren’t immediately able to provide comment.Wall Street Journal
I still don't think this is bath salts. There might be a few instances of bath salts actually being the cause, but the root cause is something else. This article is the first one I've found that directly links bath salts with this violent variant of cannibalism. The aggressor has admitted to being on bath salts, so this might be the first one yet! Opposing Views:
Police in Gwinnett County, Georgia say that 21-year-old Karl Laventure,who admitted to being high on bath salts, had super-human strength and threatened to eat them [and customers] at a golf driving range last month. Officer Ross Hancock told WSB-TV that Laventure was half naked, running through a pond and threatening customers at the range with a golf club when he arrived. Officer Hancock recalled that a blast of pepper spray didn’t seem to phase Laventure: “He didn’t even wipe his eyes, he just kept them open." It took four shocks with a taser to get Laventure to the ground. But before it was all over, Laventure received a total of 14 taser jolts. Disturbing video released by authorities shows Laventure being pinned to the ground and mumbling incoherently:“I’m'a eat you. Four Four. Oh God. Don’t make me eat you.”
Officer Hancock said: “He was still talking gibberish, still cussing, still saying he wanted to eat us, eat other people."
'Bath salts' have been suspected in a number of zombie-like attacks in recent months.
Mephedrone, the active ingredient in bath salts, is a synthetic stimulant that users say makes them feel energized and confident.At toxic levels, the drug reportedly causes intense confusion and sometimes violent rage, spikes in body temperature and hallucinations.
And yet this is the first(possibly) confirmation that yes, this might actually be bath salt related. If indeed Laventure really did admit to being on them.. This still sounds like.. Something Else to me. Something Else.
These attacks have added a big dose of the sensational to the 24 hour news cycle spicing up both crime and human interest segments, yeah? Daily Life in 2012 now includes the possibility some random person you encounter could, for whatever reason, snap and try to eat you.
Why not? Fukushima happened. Why not zombies? Aliens? Bring it, spacemen.. Change is occurring faster than we can process it. McKenna would be pleased with this level of manifesting novelty, don't you think?
Youngblood, it's like this: While there have been weather extremes throughout history, we are now in a period of increasing, escalating, extreme weather events and those events are occurring globally. Don't let people tell you this is normal. It is not. This is the beginning of some major.. adjustments. You will need to hang on. Reuters, via The Extinction Protocol:
July 3, 2012 – CHICAGO-More than 2,000 temperature records have been matched or broken in the past week as a brutal heat wave baked much of the United States, and June saw more than 3,200 records topped, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) said Monday. From June 25 to July 1, some 2,171 record temperatures were either broken or matched, the NOAA said. For the 30 days of June, that number rose to 3,215. Accuweather meteorologist Alex Sosnowski said the number of records broken was very unusual. He said that while some aspects of the heat wave are unknown, much of it is because of a lack of snow cover during the late winter on America’s plains. Instead of the sun’s heat melting snow, it instead heated the ground, which in turn warmed the air. The increase in temperature even made crops grow ahead of schedule until now; Sosnowski said the lack of rainfall has stunted crops’ growth. Sosnowski added that while some areas are not unusually warm, namely New England and the Northwest,the center of the country will experience high temperatures for the next several weeks, possibly into August. Five states had more than 100 record temperatures broken in June. Texas had 237 records broken, followed by Colorado (226), Kansas (164), Missouri (126), and Arkansas (115). The NOAA data comes as a relentless heat grips much of the eastern United States for a fourth straight day. About 2.1 million homes and businesses remained without power on Monday after violent storms and soaring temperatures killed at least 18 people since Friday, many of them when trees fell on their cars or houses.
At least we know this: It kayn't be global warmun 'kuz it's codde owtsaahhd!
Hey; HEY: SOMETHING is happening. Shut the fuck up about what you call it, and start DEALING WITH IT.
Did Polonium kill Yasser Arafat? If so, whose Polonium was it?Al Jazeera. With video. Excerpts:
It was a scene that riveted the world for weeks: The ailing Yasser Arafat, first besieged by Israeli tanks in his Ramallah compound, then shuttled to Paris, where he spent his final days undergoing a barrage of medical tests in a French military hospital. Eight years after his death, it remains a mystery exactly what killed the longtime Palestinian leader. Tests conducted in Paris found no obvious traces of poison in Arafat’s system. Rumors abound about what might have killed him – cancer, cirrhosis of the liver, even allegations that he was infected with HIV. A nine-month investigation by Al Jazeera has revealed that none of those rumors were true: Arafat was in good health until he suddenly fell ill on October 12, 2004. More importantly, tests reveal that Arafat’s final personal belongings – his clothes, his toothbrush, even his iconic kaffiyeh – contained abnormal levels of polonium, a rare, highly radioactive element. Those personal effects, which were analyzed at the Institut de Radiophysique in Lausanne, Switzerland, were variously stained with Arafat’s blood, sweat, saliva and urine. The tests carried out on those samples suggested that there was a high level of polonium inside his body when he died. “I can confirm to you that we measured an unexplained, elevated amount of unsupported polonium-210 in the belongings of Mr. Arafat that contained stains of biological fluids,” said Dr. Francois Bochud, the director of the institute. The findings have led Suha Arafat, his widow, to ask the Palestinian Authority to exhume her late husband’s body from its grave in Ramallah. If tests show that Arafat’s bones contain high levels of polonium, it would be more conclusive proof that he was poisoned, doctors say. “I know the Palestinian Authority has been trying to discover what Yasser died from,” Suha Arafat said in an interview. “And now we are helping them. We have very substantial, very important results.”
Unsupported polonium The institute studied Arafat’s personal effects, which his widow provided to Al Jazeera, the first time they had been examined by a laboratory. Doctors did not find any traces of common heavy metals or conventional poisons, so they turned their attention to more obscure elements, including polonium. It is a highly radioactive element used, among other things, to power spacecraft. Marie Curie discovered it in 1898, and her daughter Irene was among the first people it killed: She died of leukemia several years after an accidental polonium exposure in her laboratory. At least two people connected with Israel’s nuclear program also reportedly died after exposure to the element, according to the limited literature on the subject. But polonium’s most famous victim was Alexander Litvinenko, the Russian spy-turned-dissident who died in London in 2006 after a lingering illness. A British inquiry found that he was poisoned with polonium slipped into his tea at a sushi restaurant. There is little scientific consensus about the symptoms of polonium poisoning, mostly because there are so few recorded cases. Litvinenko suffered severe diarrhea, weight loss, and vomiting, all of which were symptoms Arafat exhibited in the days and weeks after he initially fell ill. Animal studies have found similar symptoms, which lingered for weeks - depending on the dosage – until the subject died. “The primary radiation target… is the gastrointestinal tract,” said an American study conducted in 1991, “activating the ‘vomiting centre’ in the brainstem.”
Scientists in Lausanne found elevated levels of the element on Arafat’s belongings- in some cases, they were ten times higher than those on control subjects, random samples which were tested for comparison. The lab’s results were reported in millibecquerels (mBq), a scientific unit used to measure radioactivity. Polonium is present in the atmosphere, but the natural levels that accumulate on surfaces barely register, and the element disappears quickly.Polonium-210, the isotope found on Arafat's belongings, has a half-life of 138 days, meaning that half of the substance decays roughly every four-and-a-half months.“Even in case of a poisoning similar to the Litvinenko case, only traces of the order of a few [millibecquerels] were expected to be found in [the] year 2012,” the institute noted in its report to Al Jazeera. But Arafat’s personal effects, particularly those with bodily fluids on them, registered much higher levels of the element. His toothbrushes had polonium levels of 54mBq; the urine stain on his underwear, 180mBq. (Another man’s pair of underwear, used as a control, measured just 6.7mBq.)
Further tests, conducted over a three-month period from March until June, concluded that most of that polonium – between 60 and 80 per cent, depending on the sample – was “unsupported,” meaning that it did not come from natural sources.
Must've been swamp gas or lens flare. Maybe it was a "lone wolf." I'm sure everything will be fine. Just keep shopping, please..
Happy Birthday, Wal-Mart. We inexplicably love you despite your best efforts to kill our economy. Other Words:
Sam Walton opened the first Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas, 50 years ago this month. Sprawled along a major thoroughfare outside the city's downtown, that inaugural store embodied many of the hallmarks that have since come to define the Walmart way of doing business.Walton scoured the country for the cheapest merchandise and deftly exploited a loophole in federal law to pay his mostly female workforce less than minimum wage. That relentless focus on squeezing workers and suppliers for every advantage has paid off since July 1962.Walmart is now the second-largest corporation on the planet. It took in almost half-a-trillion dollars last year at more than 10,000 stores worldwide. Walmart now captures one of every four dollars Americans spend on groceries. Its stores are so plentiful that it's easy to imagine that the retailer has long since reached the upper limit of its growth potential. It hasn't. Walmart has opened over 1,100 new supercenters since 2005 and expanded its U.S. sales by 35 percent. It aims to keep on growing that fast. With an eye to infiltrating urban areas, Walmart recently introduced smaller "neighborhood markets" and "express" stores.
While the big-box business model Sam Walton pioneered half a century ago has been great for Walmart, it hasn't been so great for the U.S. economy. Walmart's explosive growth has gutted two key pillars of the American middle class: small businesses and well-paying manufacturing jobs. Between 2001 and 2007, some 40,000 U.S. factories closed, eliminating millions of jobs. While Walmart's ceaseless search for lower costs wasn't the only factor that drove production overseas, it was a major one.During these six years, Walmart's imports from China tripled in value from $9 billion to $27 billion. Small, family-owned retail businesses likewise closed in droves as Walmart grew.Between 1992 and 2007, the number of independent retailers fell by over 60,000, according to the U.S. Census. Their demise triggered a cascade of losses elsewhere. As communities lost their local retailers, there was less demand for services like accounting and graphic design, less advertising revenue for local media outlets, and fewer accounts for local banks.As Walmart moved into communities, the volume of money circulating from business to business declined. More dollars flowed into Walmart's tills and out of the local economy. In exchange for the many middle-income jobs Walmart eliminated, all we got in return were low-wage jobs for the workers who now toil in its stores.To get by, many Walmart employees have no choice but to rely on food stamps and other public assistance. Walmart's history is the story of what has gone wrong in the American economy. Wages have stagnated. The middle class has shrunk. The ranks of the working poor have swelled. Whatever we may have saved shopping at Walmart, we've more than paid for it in diminished opportunities and declining income. And the worse things get, the more alluring Walmart's siren call of low prices becomes.While the Ford Motor Co. once profited by creating a workforce that could afford to buy its cars, todayWalmart profits by ensuring that Americans cannot afford to shop anywhere else. The average family of four now spends over $4,000 a year at Walmart.
Such market concentration is unprecedented in U.S. history, as is the concentration of wealth it has engendered.Sam Walton's heirs own about half of Walmart's stock and have a net worth equal to the combined assets of the bottom one-third of Americans — about 100 million people. This year alone, the Waltons will pocket $2.7 billion in dividends from their Walmart holdings. They are among the few Americans who have reason to celebrate Walmart's 50th birthday.As for the rest of us, the milestone offers a good moment to reflect on the company's business model and where it might lead us if we allow Walmart's growth to continue full-steam for another 50 years.
Evidence that yeah, South Park is funny, but politically short sighted. When no one has any money to buy their DVD's, do you think Trey Parker and Matt Stone will change their ignorant minds? They're uber-rich, so probably not..
Two people have been picked up by helicopter after two RAF Tornado jets crashed in the Moray Firth. The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the Tornado GR4s, which have a pilot and navigator, were from RAF Lossiemouth, on the Moray coast. The RNLI said Wick, Invergordon and Buckie lifeboats were searching for two missing crew south of Wick. The MoD said one of the aircraft had been seen in the water and the other was classed as "missing". Aberdeen Coastguard was alerted to the incident at about 13:50. An RAF helicopter picked up two people and flew them to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness. The three lifeboats have been searching an area 25 miles (40km) south of Wick, in the Beatrice oil field, for the two crew who remain missing.
I'm not referencing the Colorado wildfires, or any other physical fire burning at the moment, either. This is the perfect song for right here right now in 2012. Play loud. Headphones preferred.
On an unrelated note, I'm wondering if there aren't more people unwittingly tuning into the global vibration, and for some, it's a heavy culture shock. Hence, the global uptick ofunusualviolence.
The first derivatives domino is rocking back and forth. Can Barclay's "stabilize"(sweep under the rug/publicly ignore) the situation before events get out of hand? Reuters. Excerpts:
Pressure grew on Barclays Plc Chief Executive Bob Diamond to quit asBritain launched an inquiry on Monday into a market-rigging scandal, saying a "culture that flourished in the age of irresponsibility" among bankers had to end. Barclays Chairman Marcus Agius resigned on Monday, saying "the buck stops with me" as the scandal over manipulating Libor interest rates claimed its first major scalp. But his departure did not take the heat offDiamond, who ran Barclays' investment banking arm when the rate rigging took place, drawing a record fine for the lender last week in a scandal likely to involve many more banks. "The buck in Barclays stops with Bob Diamond, and it is Bob Diamond who must accept responsibility," said John Mann, an opposition Labor member of a parliamentary committee that later this week will question Agius and Diamond.
"He must resign. He's got to go," Mann told Sky News. Anger with the culture of bankers in London, a world financial capital and major part of the British economy, crossed the political divide with Conservative finance minister George Osborne outlining the parliamentary inquiry. "The behavior of some in the financial services has damaged the reputation of an industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people and is vital to the economic prosperity of the country," Osborne told parliament. "It's time to deal with the culture that flourished in the age of irresponsibility and hold those who allowed it to do so to account." Barclays has admitted that some of its traders tried to manipulate the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor), which is used worldwide as a benchmark for prices on about $350 trillion of derivatives and other financial products across a range of currencies and loan durations.
Well, gosh! I ain't never heard of no derivatives! They really couldn't kill the global economy, could they? Yes. Yes they could..
Another day, another revolutionary disclosure.. UFO Blogger. Excerpts:
Now in latest development, according to NASA scientists believe they have found the strongest sign yet that Saturn's giant moon, Titan, may have a salty ocean beneath its chilly surface. If confirmed, it would catapult Titan into an elite class of solar system moons harbouring water, an essential ingredient for life. Titan boasts methane-filled seas at the poles and a possible lake near the equator. And it's long been speculated that Titan contains a hidden liquid layer, based on mathematical modelling and electric field measurements made by the Huygens spacecraft that landed on the surface in 2005. The latest evidence is still indirect, but outside scientists said it's probably the best that can be obtained short of sending a spacecraft to drill into the surface - a costly endeavor that won't happen anytime soon. The research looks convincing, said Gabriel Tobie of France's University of Nantes. "If the analysis is correct, this is a very important finding," Tobie said. .. Titan is one of the few worlds in the solar system with a significant atmosphere, and the presence of an underground ocean could help explain how Titan replenishes methane in its hazy atmosphere.
Having an internal body of water would also make Titan an attractive place to study whether it would be capable of supporting microbial life. Other moons on the shortlist: Jupiter's Europa, where an underground ocean is thought to exist and another Saturn moon, Enceladus, where jets have been seen spewing from the surface.
"Any environment that has liquid water needs to be investigated carefully," said planetary scientist Jean-Luc Margot of the University of California, Los Angeles, who had no role in the research.
Must the Chinese jump on every American fad? Face eating is ours, damnit! WebProNews. Excerpts:
The newest “zombie” story to come outis from China, where a bus driver reportedly stopped his bus in traffic, blocking a woman’s car. He then got off the bus, climbed up on the hood of the woman’s car, and began beating at her windshield. When she got out of the car in a panic, he jumped on her and began chewing her face. Allegedly, several people tried to pull the man off, to no avail…although someone had the presence of mind to snap pictures as it was happening. Thank goodness for bystanders! Police eventually responded and took the man into custody.
The bus driver is said to have only been under the influence of alcohol during the attack (although why he was drunk and driving a bus is a question I hope is answered soon). The woman, who was only identified in the Chinese news story as Du (her surname), survived the attack but will undergo surgery to repair her nose and mouth.
Why are people losing their minds in such a spectacular manner? Are we in the very preliminary stages of some form of global mass hysteria? Are these isolated incidents signalling a much larger, coming phenomenon? Is there a combination of factors, or one unifying circumstance overriding peaceful decorum, inciting these violent outbursts? Still no answers, just more questions..
This is amazing for two reasons, both fairly obvious: If Rupert Murdoch thinks you're creepy and may be evil, that is.. An Achievement. The other; Is Rupert Murdoch and his News International picking a fight with The Church of Scientology? That would be, by definition, popcorn worthy! The Raw Story:
Media mogul Rupert Murdoch weighed in on the Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes divorce story Sunday, saying he thinks Scientologists are “creepy” and possibly even evil. The News Corporation chief urged his Twitter followers to watch the story, which broke on Friday when Holmes announced she was filing from divorce from Hollywood A-lister Cruise, a prominent member of the Church of Scientology. “Watch Katie Holmes and Scientology story develop. Something creepy, maybe even evil, about these people,” Murdoch said on his Twitter account, @rupertmurdoch. The fairytale Hollywood couple’s split was revealed when Holmes’ publicist announced that the actress had filed for divorce after five years of marriage, ending an unexpected love story dogged by tabloid rumors. A spokesman for Cruise said the “Mission Impossible” star was “deeply saddened” by the news, fueling reports that his wife’s announcement had taken him by surprise. Speculation about why Holmes wanted out has included suggestions she was concerned that Cruise was forcing their six-year-old daughter Suri deeper into the Church of Scientology. The TMZ celebrity news website has reported that Holmes is seeking sole custody of Suri. Citing unnamed sources, it said she feared “thatTom would drag Suri deep into the church.”
“We’re told the couple had been arguing over Suri — that she’s now of the age where Scientology becomes a significant part of her life,” it said. Murdoch’s Scientology comment generated a surge of Twitter traffic, prompting another tweet: “Since Scientology tweet hundreds of attacks. Expect they will increase and get worse and maybe threatening.
“Still stick to my story,” he added.
There was no immediate response to a request for comment from the Church of Scientology, or from publicists for Cruise or Holmes. A short time after his Scientology tweet, Murdoch was asked his views on Mormonism — in the spotlight currently as Mormon Mitt Romney takes on President Barack Obama for the White House. “Mormonism a mystery to me, but Mormons certainly not evil,” the News Corp tycoon replied
By the way: That whole phone hacking scandal unpleasantness.. How's that working out for you?
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This, ultimately, will be a record of the evolution of my consciousness through life experience. It's a bit of a jigsaw puzzle at the moment, but the archive is close to achieving some form of order.
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