August 27, 2011

Gandhi on ending injustice: Speak the truth because Truth is God

Fukushima Cesium Leaks 'Equal 168 Hiroshimas'

"Medicinal marijuana oil made from cannabis buds, when ingested thrice daily, for two months, will destroy leukemia and cancer cells.  Here is just one study which shows the results:"

Only 2% of welfare applicants in Florida failed drug tests 

Mysterious apocalyptic sounds are being heard around the world

Leonor Exploring Libyan Archeology - Leptis Magna

Scientists: Oil fouling Gulf matches Deepwater Horizon well (photo gallery, video)  Recent history repeats..

Koch-backed conservative group spams Detroit with fake eviction notices

Wow..  The Scumbaggery is right out in the open now, and the Race To The Bottom quickens.


I'm always amazed at the 20's movie-style evil displayed by the Koch brothers.  So Snidely Whiplash, but on a global level, with real world implications.  Their actions are despicable to decent people, but the relentless, singleminded Service-to-Self behavior these people display is nothing less than an Anthropological amazement:  How will people behave who are at once, all consumed by the obsession of Pursuit of Power, and CAPABLE of following that obsession to its fullest access?  It is fascinating to watch!  It's pointless to ask "How are they gonna top this one(Insert X situation here..)?"  They always find a way to sink lower..  No matter how large or small the fight might be, they always show up packin' nukes. 

I wonder what will be their(and others like them) penultimate karmic comeuppance.  I don't think it will be at the hands of those they've oppressed and maligned, though.  The debt is so large, the wound so gaping and diseased, I can't imagine what form will bring about their/our collective re-alignment, but it'll have to be HUGE.  Solar Flare?  Asteroid?  Comet/Planet Elenin?  Infinite Novelty?  Or maybe it's Nuclear, and it's already begun.  However The Reckoning manifests, rest assured it will.  It's unstoppable.

I just hope mine comes after theirs.  I want to know:  How will their arc descend?

This Week In Korea Conflict.

South Korea and Japan discuss first-ever military agreements

Pentagon Chief Huddles With Allies About NKorea

U.S. Recruits Japan As Global Military Partner

North Korea Threatens America with Long-Range Missiles

North Korea calls for unconditional talks with South Korea

North Korea's military: a bad hand played well

So, things are pretty much the same: Gigantic powderkeg, no real spark -- yet.

WikiLeaks: A Few Highlights..

WikiLeaks cables: US suspected Allen Stanford long before ECB deal

..US diplomats were so concerned about rumours of "bribery, money-laundering and political manipulation" surrounding Allen Stanford that they avoided contacting him or being photographed with him.

The extent of the widespread concern among embassy staff in Bridgetown, Barbados, where Stanford invested millions of dollars in Caribbean cricket before his empire came crashing down after being accused of an $8bn fraud of "shocking magnitude" and arrested by the FBI, will raise fresh questions about the wisdom of the England and Wales Cricket Board in getting into bed with him in June 2008.

The concerns are revealed in a cable dated 3 May 2006..  Emphasising the chance nature of the encounter, the cable notes: "Allen Stanford is a controversial Texan billionaire who has made significant investments in offshore finance, aviation, and property development in Antigua and throughout the region. His companies are rumoured to engage in bribery, money-laundering and political manipulation."

Who's Allen Stanford? Well, pre-prison, he was a corrupt Texas billionaire. He's changed careers now, but is unhappy with his status as penitentiary punching bag.. I guess I'd have more sympathy for him if he wasn't such a gigantic, horrible asshole. But, such is life, right?

WikiLeaks cables: Bulgarian nuclear project 'dogged by safety concerns'  Because nuclear energy is the best industry for shoddy, half assed workmanship..
The cables claim that despite its due diligence, RWE's confidence had turned to "buyer's remorse" within weeks. In the cable, the US ambassador cited local contacts as saying there was a rush to start construction so that the project would keep RWE on board. RWE had reportedly said that it would not provide funding until it sees the "first concrete poured", signalling the start of construction. Belene project experts privately expressed "serious concerns" that if safety practices continued to be ignored "it could pose a huge risk". RWE's partner, the state-owned Bulgarian electricity company, NEC, which held 51% of the project, declined to comment on any of the allegations.
 
Is Apple scared, or looking for a fight?

Korean Update-Or-At Least Someone's Making Money..

Dollar Rises Against Euro on Prospect U.S. Payrolls Expanded

North Korea may attack the province that surrounds Seoul, the Tokyo Shimbun newspaper said, citing an unidentified person who quoted an official in the communist nation. South Korea will hold artillery drills on Yeonpyeong, the island shelled by the North last week, on Dec. 6, television broadcaster MBN reported today, citing government officials it didn’t identify.

Japan and the U.S. will conduct a joint military exercise from tomorrow until Dec. 10.

“Geopolitical risk appears to be returning a bit on worries that North Korea may attack the South,” said Satoshi Okagawa, head of the foreign-exchange and money trading group in Singapore at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., a unit of Japan’s third-largest banking group. “There’s some safe-haven buying of the yen and the dollar.”

And:

The won strengthened for a third day as funds based abroad bought $373 million more Korean shares than they sold yesterday, the biggest net purchases in almost three weeks, exchange data show. The Kospi index of shares posted its highest close since Nov. 10 on optimism that tensions between North and South Korea are easing.

“We haven’t seen North Korean retaliation, which they pledged to do after the attack, and the lack of negative events let risk aversion subside,” said Dariusz Kowalczyk, senior economist at Credit Agricole CIB in Hong Kong. “Positive sentiment globally boosted appetite for risk assets like the Korean won.”

US, Japan begin war games; China denounces drills

In an ongoing show of force following a deadly North Korean attack on a front-line island, the U.S. and Japan began one of their biggest-ever military exercises Friday, mobilizing more than 44,000 troops, hundreds of aircraft and a U.S. supercarrier.

The drills come just after the U.S. and South Korea concluded maneuvers in the Yellow Sea. The exercises brought immediate criticism from China, which is wary of having foreign navies off its shores and has been increasingly assertive over large swaths of waters in the south and east China seas, where some of the drills would take place.
..
The Nov. 23 North Korean attack killed two South Korean marines and two civilians on Yeonpyeong Island, a tiny enclave of civilians and military bases located near a disputed maritime border.

The attack has heightened tensions in the region and renewed fears of a bigger clash breaking out that could draw in neighboring countries, including Japan, where about 50,000 U.S. troops are based under a security pact.

South Korea’s New Defense Chief Threatens Air Strikes on North

South Korea’s new defense minister vowed retaliation that would include airstrikes if North Korea makes another attack following last month’s deadly artillery bombardment.

“I will mobilize all combat capabilities available to severely punish the enemy,” Kim Kwan Jin, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said today at a confirmation hearing. “I will surely use planes. This is a matter of self-defense.”

This may be a sign that the crisis is cooling a bit..

“The latest tough talk seemed to be mostly aimed at deterring North Korea from further provocations,” said Kim Yong Hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. “There is only so much South Korea can do in terms of tough actions when there’s little assurance of how far North Korea will go.”

Or maybe cooling not so much..

A news report says North Korea now has more multiple-launch rockets capable of hitting Seoul.

Yonhap news agency says North Korea has increased its arsenal of rockets by 100 pieces to about 5,200. Yonhap cited an unidentified South Korean military source.

The agency says the rockets have a range of 37 miles (60 kilometers), putting Seoul within striking distance.

Korean Update

Saber rattling continues near NLL  Excerpts:

Tensions are heightening in the area around Yeonpyeong Island, with the confirmation that North Korean forces deployed multi-launch rocket systems (MLRSs) forward to a coastal location facing the island and opened additional naval artillery firing ports on Sunday, the first day of joint South Korea-U.S. exercises. The North Korean military was also reported to have stepped up its anti-air posture targeting aerial activity by South Korean fighter planes, with the forward deployment of SA-2 earth-to-air missiles in the area north of Baengnyeong and Yeonpyeong Islands.

“The North Korean military was found to have deployed some of its 122 mm MLRSs forward to an inland area near Kaemori, from which the attack on Yeonpyeong Island was launched, and opened additional 76.2 mm naval artillery firing ports besides the previous fourteen locations,” said a military official said Sunday. “The South Korean military is also stepping up its alertness posture to prepare for a potential provocation situation.”

“It appears that North Korea positioned SA-2 earth-to-air missiles to the front following the attack on Yeonpyeong Island,” said a government source. “The government is mobilizing all its resources to precisely monitor the movements.”

Military authorities are taking this activity from North Korea as targeting South Korean fighter planes flying in the area near the NLL. The SA-2 is an anti-aircraft missile developed by the former Soviet Union, and has a firing range of 13 to 30 kilometers. The anti-ship missiles positioned by North Korean on the West Sea coast north of the NLL include Samlets and Silkworms, with a firing range of 80 km.

Although Monday's exercises were cancelled because of bad weather, the tension is still very high.  North Korea is even using the really cool phrase "Ultra-Emergency" to describe the situation..  The South Korean military is protesting, and South Korea's President said Monday "Kick sand in our face just one more time and there's gonna be trouble.."  Shit's heating up, yo..  Like I said, more updates to come..

Tensions Don't Seem To Be Easing, Do They?

'Artillery fire' heard near South Korea island  Pre War Excerpts:

South Korea's military said two explosions were heard on Friday and it was checking the source of the sounds.

The two blasts were heard off Yeonpyeong island near the disputed border in the Yellow Sea, a Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman told AFP.

"We're checking the origin of the sounds," he said.

And:

Officials said “dozens” of artillery rounds had landed on Yeonpyeong Island at in the Yellow Sea, 50 miles off the South’s northwest coast in an area close to a disputed sea border.

Other reports suggested around 200 shells could have been fired in the attack which began at 2.34pm local time (7.34am GMT).

F-16 fighter jets were scrambled and South Korean land-based forces returned fire on the North as civilians were evacuated to emergency bunkers, according to witnesses quoted by the Seoul-based cable news television channel YTN.

If this turns out to be artillery fire, the Korean situation is rapidly blooming into Worldwide crisis.   Once again, timing(Global Debt Crisis)and associations(China) figure heavily into why this sabre rattling is so much more important than past border squabbles.  If we aren't already there, we're rapidly approaching the border of "One wrong move and it's over."

Here's A Doom Nugget Buried Under Charlie Sheen's Unconscious, Drunken Body..

Not literally, people; come on.. Failure Shuts Down Squadron of Nuclear Missiles. Excerpts/Italics:

President Obama was briefed this morning on an engineering power failure at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming that took 50 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), one-ninth of the U.S. missile stockpile, temporarily offline on Saturday.

The base is a main locus of the United States’ strategic nuclear forces. The 90th Missile Wing, headquartered there, controls 150 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic nuclear missiles. They’re on full-time alert and are housed in a variety of bunkers across the base.
..
..engineers believe that a launch control center computer (LCC), responsible for a package of five missiles, began to “ping” out of sequence, resulting in a surge of “noise” through the system. The LCCs interrogate each missile in sequence, so if they begin to send signals out when they’re not supposed to, receivers on the missiles themselves will notice this and send out error codes.

Since LCCs ping out of sequence on occasion, missileers tried quick fixes. But as more and more missiles began to display error settings, they decided to take off-line all five LCCs that the malfunctioning center was connected to. That left 50 missiles in the dark. The missileers then restarted one of the LCCs, which began to normally interrogate the missile transceiver. Three other LCCs were successfully restarted. The suspect LCC remains off-line.
And:
The defense official said that there had not been a power failure, though the official acknowledged that that explanation had made its way through public affairs channels.

“We’ve never had something as big as this happen,” a military officer who was briefed on the incident said. Occasionally, one or two might blink out, the officer said, and several warheads are routinely out of service for maintenance. At an extreme, “[w]e can deal with maybe 5, 6, or 7 at a time, but we’ve never lost complete command and control and functionality of 50 ICBMs.”

The Military says this happened previously in 1998 to two bases in North Dakota and Montana, and the same piece of hardware is blamed, too(see article linked), but I find the timing and magnitude of this incident particularly disturbing. I can't imagine the same programming/system problem that happened twelve years ago happened again because they couldn't isolate the bugs. 1998 was the Stone Age in cybertime, so no progress finding a fix? Really? Rating: Highly Suspect to Unadulterated Bullshit.

So.. What caused it? How did the Military lose command and control of one ninth our ballistic missiles? Escalating tensions between North and South Korea, China and Japan, Israel and Iran, Russia and Georgia, stealth cyber warriors everywhere and nowhere at once, and something locks up our nukes? And what if something were to actually take control of those nukes and turn them inward?

Have you noticed no one's talking about Stuxnet anymore? It must have just dissolved and gone away overnight..