Shaking all over: Map of every major earthquake since 1898 reveals stunning image of planet's danger zones

Courtesy The Daily Mail/UK.  I'm not sure, though, what is defined as "major."  I'm guessing magnitude 6.  Impressive map:

If you are looking for somewhere safe from an earthquake, this might help.



For this map shows the where every major quake has struck since 1898, and as you can see, the edge of the Pacific Ocean appears particularly dangerous. In total there are a staggering 203,186 of them, dotted all over the world.
The neon-coloured map was created as a side-project by mapping manager John Nelson, in a case of taking his work home with him, as he works for data-visualisation software maker IDV Solutions.

Go to the link.  This map is bigger, and there's a bonus map of US tornadic activity over the last 61 years.  It's like weather nerd catnip!

Fukushima Update: Some Good(?) News, Some Not So Good News..

Two from Fukushima Diary..  The Good News?  Ok, the kind-of Good News?

[Reactor4] Debris removal was finished, fuel will be taken out soon.

Following up this article..[LIVE] Tepco is removing the upper part of reactor4

Tepco finished the debris removal of SFP4. Now the PCV and SFP4 are completely exposed outside.
They are going to take out 2 of the new fuel assemblies soon.[Link] 

So..  Only 1551 fuel assemblies to go?  This comment is also..  Troubling..

look, I have photos of SFP4 in the top part of reactor 4 building from last year – IT IS GONE.. Spent Fuel Pool Four is no longer part of the building. We can clearly see the top of the reactor (big yellow dome)but where is the fuel pool which should be ABOVE the reactor ???Where is SFP 4 ??

Huh.

Not so good news:  Survey robot died in reactor 3



Related to this article..Robot destroyed within 2 hours in reactor 2



Survey runner robot stopped on the radiation measurement of torus room in reactor3.


From 11:00 to 15:00 of 7/11/2012, Tepco was taking radiation, visual and “sound” data in torus room of reactor3 by using a robot. The atmospheric dose was 360 mSv/h.


Human worker opened the door of the torus room to let the robot enter, it went around clockwise, but the communication was interrupted at the manhole located at the South-East of torus room.
The robot is cabled, Tepco hasn’t verify the cause yet. They only assume the cable might have been damaged on the way. Tepco can’t take the robot back either because the radiation level is too high.


The robot sent radiation and visual data until it stopped but because the sound data is recorded in it, it can’t be obtained until they get the robot back. They were planning to detect the water leaking point by recording the sound data.


They recorded the sound data when they conducted robot survey in torus room of reactor2 as well, but because the alarm of survey meter was too noisy, they couldn’t hear the sound of water flow.

I'd still like to know the circumstances around TEPCO busting ass to clean up Reactor4 much faster than scheduled.  As with all things Fukushima, the bad news still outweighs the good.

LI(E)BOR-Gate Crosses Ocean, Blows Up Real Big..

US Attorneys General Jump On The Lieborgate Bandwagon; 900,000+ Lawsuits To Follow, And What Happens Next?  What does happen next, Zero Hedge?

The second Barclays announced its $450 million Libor settlement, it was all over - the lawyers smelled not only blood, but what may be the biggest plaintiff feeding frenzy of all time. Which is why it was only a matter of time: "State attorneys general are jumping into the widening scandal over whether banks tried to manipulate benchmark international lending rates, a move that could open a new front against the top global banks. A handful of state attorneys general said they are looking into whether they have jurisdiction over the banks, and are starting preliminary discussions to determine what kind of impact the conduct involving the Libor rate may have had in their states."


From Reuters:

"Our office is aware of the allegations around the manipulation of the Libor, and we are working with other state agencies to determine whether Massachusetts has suffered any losses as a result," a spokesman for Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said. A spokesman for Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said his office is aware of the recent settlement reached by British bank Barclays with U.S. and UK authorities and "will look at the case to the extent that our office might have any jurisdiction in the matter."


A spokeswoman for the Massachusetts transportation authority, MassDOT, said the agency "is actively investigating its portfolio for the purpose of determining if it was underpaid on its bonds due to the brewing Libor situation," as are many other issuers of debt whose rate is governed by Libor.

Lawyers for several states have had early discussions about whether they might pool investigative resources and launch a broader, multi-state effort, but no formal consortium has been established yet, people familiar with the discussions said. New York might be expected to lead such an effort, since most of the banks' U.S. operations are based there. A spokesman for the New York attorney general declined comment on whether the issue is being looked at.
Some municipalities, including the city of Baltimore, and funds including the Frankfurt-based Metzler Investment GmbH, which manages 47 billion euros ($59 billion) in assets, have already sued more than a dozen banks, arguing they were bilked of potentially billions of dollars.

How many potential lawsuits are we talking about here? Quite a bit in fact as the FT explains:

There are at least 900,000 outstanding US home loans indexed to Libor that were originated from 2005 to 2009, the period the key lending gauge may have been rigged, investigators have said. Those mortgages carry an unpaid principal balance of $275bn, according to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a bank regulator.

Also, as explained here before, not only is this a legal bonanza, but it will be a political feast for the Congressional circus to earn numerous C-SPAN brownie points.

“I think the US government should be just as aggressive in getting to the bottom of this scandal as the United Kingdom has been,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, chair of the bank regulatory subcommittee on the Senate banking committee.



“This was not isolated to London, but affected tens of millions of investors, borrowers and taxpayers in our country as well,” Mr Brown added.

What does the above mean?
1) Starting today and going forward, there will be numerous essays, "analyses" and white papers, all of which will try to estimate (some on a paid basis) the damages and impact of the Libor manipulation that took place at least in the period under discussion 2005-2009. All of these will be absolutely wrong, as nobody has any clear idea of how the cumulative impact of the Libor rate, which may have been pushed below either lower or higher depending on how it suited a given BBA-member bank, over a period of years will have impacted hundreds of trillions in partially offsetting notional securities. Therefore, while one day it may have led to impairments, another day it would benefit the end-holder of a given interest-rate sensitive product. But they will try. And the bigger the number, the better, which leads us to...


2) The lawyers will crawl out of the woodwork like worms after a torrential downpour, and will all be willing to work on contingency, telling potential clients they are owed thousands, nay, millions based on such and such analysis. All they need is to have held a mortgage, or a credit card, or any variable interest liability in the 4 years in question. And to sign the dotted line.


3) The resulting lawsuits, most of which in class action format, will be of gargantuan proportions, simply to encourage settlement, as ongoing litigation will easily destroy the financial system. The litigation reserves at the TBTF banks will explode and will cause years of EPS writedowns. But at least they will be one-time charges, so the stocks don't get crushed too much. That said, forget any growth out of the banking sector, and certainly the 16 BBA member banks, all of whom are about to be sued to smithereens in civil suits as more and more banks step up and settle to avoid criminal prosecution.


4) The biggest irony is that the torrent of upcoming suits will be in effect targeting none other than the Fed. Because while banks which all were massively levered to even a one basis point move in Libor were very sensitive to the smallest variations in 3 month USD libor, end-clients who did not have this leverage were far less impaired. But that doesn't matter: after all the same clients were impaired through gross borderline criminal negligence which is all that matters in a court of law (assuming the honorable judge John Roberts is not presiding pro hac vice). Thus the entity that will be sued by proxy is the Federal Reserve, whose Federal Funds rate is really the setter for the baseline Libor rate. Note the chart below which shows that over the past decade, the 3M USD Libor and the Fed Funds rate were virtually interchangeable: (Chart available at the link..)
 
Yet while it was the Fed's decisions at the bottom of it all, unless someone implicates the Fed or the BOE further, both will get away scott free: after all what they do is public policy, for the public good and to defend their various appointed mandates. And neither pushed banks to manipulate their rates (even if both were well aware there was gambling going on here), or so they claim, even when presented with evidence to the contrary.



What will really happen, is that the private banks, having been bailed out by the central banks at the taxpayers' dime, will now serve as a buffer to protect these same institutions from rising popular anger, not just at Lieborgate, but Robosigning, Robosettlement, CDOs, rehypothecation, High Frequency Trading, toxic assets marked-to-unicorns, the end of Mark-to-Market, ZIRP, NIRP, expert networks, insider trading, MF Global, and countless other examples of what happens when financial fraud is let loose with no fear of consequence in a Bernanke Put world.


As a result, the status quo will literally buy itself a few more years as it delays the tipping point by any means necessary, in the process kicking back a little to politicians, lawyers, and the general public in exchange for a few years of subpar earnings for bank shareholders that should have been wiped out back in 2008 anyway. And everyone will be happy.


That's how Lieborgate will play out.

I'm down with the article's overall cynicism, but I don't quite agree:  The above post is a little too rosy a prediction regarding the status quo.  This numbers, players, and their connections will ultimately be too big to be ignored or downplayed(No matter how many people become complicit), especially when paired with economic black hole that is derivatives.  How do you visualize/quantify 600 plus trillion dollars?  This is the preliminary level of the upcoming financial conflagration..

JAMES KUNSTLER: We're Entering A Dangerous New Period In History

He's not wrong.   Businessinsider:
News that that a swarm of termites deep inside the British banking system have been fiddling the interbank interest rates (LIBOR) for years in order to systematically vacuum a few billion pence off the exchange floors for themselves is the latest blow to the credibility of the global money system - and probably a fine overture to a looming climactic implosion of the gigantic, creaking, smoldering, reeking, duck-taped edifice of broken promises, booby-trapped hedge obligations, counterparty follies, central bank euchres, sovereign flim-flams, and countless chicanes too various, dark, and deep to smoke out.


Next, we'll probably hear that Lloyd Blankfein over at Goldman Sachs has been tinkering with the rotation of the earth in order to gain a few micro-milliseconds of advantage in his firm's high frequency trading rackets. After all, back in 2008 Lloyd himself claimed to be "doing God's work."


In short, world banking is now hopelessly pranged, and I am not at all sure the project of civilization (modern edition) can continue by other means. The impairments of capital formation are now so profound that no one and nothing can be trusted.


Not only are all bets off, but nobody will want to make any new bets - and by that I mean venture to invest accumulated wealth (capital) in some useful project designed to sustain human well-being. What remains is just the desperate hoarding of whatever remains in assets uncontaminated by the pledges of others to pony up.


All this points to a dangerous new period of political history, a deadly Hobbesian scramble to evade the falling timber in a burning house as the rudiments of a worldwide social contract go up in flames. Such is the importance of legitimacy: the basic condition for governance, especially among supposedly free people.


You can meddle in a lot of distributory issues - who gets what - but when you mess with the most basic operations of money to the extent that no one is sure what it's really worth, or what it represents, then you are deeply undermining society. This is now the condition that is set to blow up republics.


Reality dislikes fraud and accounting tricks. Reality is serious about settling scores. Reality eventually intervenes and puts an end to monkey business. What will it be this time?


Europe and America have been buying a month here, a month there (of a fragile, continuing status quo) on the installment plan. That's what QE, TARPs, LTRO, EFSF, Operation Twist, et cetera, are all about. Think of them as multi-billion dollar (euro) fire extinguishers bought on credit cards. Europe is now completely out of credit to buy more fire fighting equipment.


For months now it has been down to whether Germany intends to keep supporting Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, the French banks (and a few stray forgotten places between the backwaters of the Danube and the Gulf of Finland) without any say in how they manage their allowance. Much as Germany enjoyed the Ponzi heyday of the Euro zone, a big "tilt" sign now flashes ominously over the continent, signaling game over. All fall down.


Everybody gets real poor real fast. M. Hollandaise over in Paris has already sealed his fate with his stupid plan to return to "go" on the Ponzi game-board. Merkel's tattered scarecrow of a coalition will blow away in the next national election. The Club Med countries will soon boil up in street-fighting, Holland and Finland will drink themselves to death, and across the channel outsider Britain will fizzle away to a burnt bowl of mulligatawny. That's what the end of the summer looks like to me.


Over here, in this sorry-ass edition of America, the election will look more and more like a World Wrestling Federation staged dumb-show between two catamite hostages of a foul corporate oligarchy. Imagine that horse's ass Mitt Romney spending the next four months denouncing Obama-care, modeled on his own health care reform in Massachusetts, while Obama pretends he has a grip on an economy where the rule of law is absent due to Obama's own omissions and negligence.


And if you can't stand that spectacle, just look around at America itself: a wasteland of futile motoring and discount shopping populated by depressed, overfed clowns bedizened with sinister tattoos, pretending to be Star Warriors. No nation ever seen in human history ever laid such a disappointing egg. Only to have it fry on the sidewalk.____________________________________

You ever get that sneaking suspicion 2013's gonna be real different than 2012?

Also:  I'm in the mood to type like hillbillies talk, that's why.

Uh-Oh: Sorcha Mighta Nailed It..

“Super Event” Warned Near As Weather Chaos Pounds Planet  I had this article completely done and the "gremlins" ate it.  Hmm; Funny how that happens..  Synopsis:  Sorcha Faal is a sketchy source, but they predicted the 2004 Sumatra quake/tsunami three days prior.  (Warning:  This link could be sketchy and virus causing.  My firewall really doesn't like me going there..)  This post feels very similar..  Pakalertpress:

A grim report prepared by the Russian Academy of Sciences (RAS) for President Putin on the catastrophic flooding in the ‎Krasnodar region that has killed at least 144 people warns that our world is fast approaching what is termed as a “Chizhevsky Super Event” due to the rapidly growing number of sunspots that continue to hurl M and X Class Flares towards Earth causing continued and massive global weather chaos.



A “Chizhevsky Super Event” is named after famed Russian scientist Alexander Chizhevsky (1897-1964) who founded “heliobiology” (study of the sun’s effect on biology) and “aero-ionization” (study of effect of ionization of air on biological entities). Chizhevsky was also was noted for his work in “cosmo-biology, biological rhythms and hematology.”



Chizhevsky is most notable for his use of historical research (historiometry) techniques to link the 11 year solar cycle, Earth’s climate and the mass activity of peoples, research that was confirmed by Western scientists earlier this decade in two important studies titled Amplifying the Pacific Climate System Response to a Small 11-Year Solar Cycle Forcing and Synchronized Northern Hemisphere climate change and solar magnetic cycles during the Maunder Minimum.



Important to note, this report says, are the “four components” of Chizhevsky’s eleven year cycle and their approximate lengths: 1) a three year period of minimum activity characterized by passivity and autocratic rule; 2) a two year period during which masses begin to organize under new leaders and one theme; 3) a three year period of maximum excitability, revolution and war; 4) a three year period of gradual decrease in excitability until the masses are apathetic.


Of these “four components”, this report continues, our world has now entered into the Third Period: A three year period of maximum excitability, revolution and war.


According to Chizhevsky’s research, RAS scientists state in this report, the defining characteristics to be looked for when our world enters into a Third Period “Super Event” timeline is a rapid overturning of existing weather phenomena combined with an equally sudden major changing of the global social-political power structures all occurring during a period of Solar Maximum.


Interesting to note about the current Solar Maximum we are in was the 23 March 2009 scientific article titled Space Storm Alert: 90 Seconds From Catastrophe published by New Scientist that eerily describes somewhat exactly what is now occurring in the United States following their East Coast region being struck by what is being called a “derecho” storm that, in part, says:


“It is midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power.”


According to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center web site, a derecho (pronounced “deh-REY-cho”) is a widespread, long-lived wind storm that is associated with a band of rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms.


Chizhevsky’s research, however, states that derecho storms are but a precursor to the much more damaging events associated with a “Super Event”, a finding made even more terrifying with the 2008 news that NASA’s five THEMIS spacecraft had discovered a breach in Earth’s magnetic field ten times larger than anything previously thought to exist. Solar wind can flow in through the opening to “load up” the magnetosphere for powerful geomagnetic storms.


RAS scientists in this report blame this “loading up” of the magnetosphere caused by solar flares for causing not only the catastrophic Russian floods, but also our present global weather chaos, to include: 1.) The unrelenting heat wave hitting the United States that has caused at least 30 deaths, hundreds of forest fires and billions in crop damage. 2.) The torrential floods and rain continuing to batter the United Kingdom. 3.) The catastrophic floods that have hit India leaving nearly 100 dead and millions homeless. 4.) The historic and severe drought that has hit northern and central Mexico. 5.) The historic drought that has ravaged Brazil’s northeast.


Most important to note about a “Chizhevsky Super Event”, this report concludes, is that while no one is able to predict exactly what the “main event” may be, the historic record leaves no doubt whatsoever that it is coming with terrifying suddenness and will most certainly upend the entire world as we know it.


Of particular concern for this particular “Chizhevsky Super Event”, say RAS scientists in this report, would be the sudden outbreak of global war combined with an equally catastrophic global flu outbreak such as that which happened last century during the Solar Maximum decade of 1910-1918 that saw the outbreak of World War I and the Spanish Flu Pandemic that combined killed estimated 500 million people.

Not known to but a few researchers was that in 2001 Canadian researchers warned that influenza epidemics are more likely to sweep the globe when the sun develops spots and sends its excess energy barreling toward Earth such as it is doing now.



“Epidemics are four times as likely during solar maxima,” said Ken Tapping, a solar physicist with the National Research Council, pointing to the striking correlation between flu pandemics and the peaks of the 11-year sunspot cycle, also known as the solar maximum. He and two colleagues have compared flu and solar records dating back to 1729 and found a statistically significant connection. There were flu epidemics, some of them fatal to millions of people, in 1729, 1830, 1918, 1957, 1968 and 1977, years when solar activity and flares bombarded the Earth with extra radiation and cosmic rays.


The effects of solar cycles on influenza epidemics is especially important to note as along with the current global weather chaos the highly deadly Bird Flu virus has once again emerged in Mexico, China and Indonesia.

To me, this report feels authentic.  It would also explain A Lot.  It would also be unimaginably tragic.  It helps nothing that we're also in a webbot window, also..

Look at it this way, if the Super Event fails to transpire, you still have Fukushima or the Presidential elections to look forward to!

Happy Summer, everyone!

Huh; Which Is Worse? The Timing, The Willful Ignorance, Or The Result?

"Worst TB outbreak in 20 years kept secret.  State rushes closure of its only TB hospital in Lantana."  No one will care until "real people," you know, other than the homeless, start getting sick.   The Palm Beach Post.  Excerpts:

The CDC officer had a serious warning for Florida health officials in April: A tuberculosis outbreak in Jacksonville was one of the worst his group had investigated in 20 years. Linked to 13 deaths and 99 illnesses, including six children, it would require concerted action to stop.



That report had been penned on April 5, exactly nine days after Florida Gov. Rick Scott signed the bill that shrank the Department of Health and required the closure of the A.G. Holley State Hospital in Lantana, where tough tuberculosis cases have been treated for more than 60 years.


As health officials in Tallahassee turned their focus to restructuring, Dr. Robert Luo’s 25-page report describing Jacksonville’s outbreak — and the measures needed to contain it – went unseen by key decision makers around the state. At the health agency, an order went out that the TB hospital must be closed six months ahead of schedule.

Had they seen the letter, decision makers would have learned that 3,000 people in the past two years may have had close contact with contagious people at Jacksonville’s homeless shelters, an outpatient mental health clinic and area jails. Yet only 253 people had been found and evaluated for TB infection, meaning Florida’s outbreak was, and is, far from contained.


The public was not to learn anything until early June, even though the same strain was appearing in other parts of the state, including Miami.


Tuberculosis is a lung disease more associated with the 18th century than the 21st, referred to as “consumption” in Dickensian times because its victims would grow gaunt and wan as their lungs disintegrated and they slowly died. The CDC investigator described a similar fate for 10 of the 13 people who died in Jacksonville.


They wasted away before ever getting treatment, or were too far gone by the time it began. Most of the sick were poor black men.

“The high number of deaths in this outbreak emphasizes the need for vigilant active case finding, improved education about TB, and ongoing screening at all sites with outbreak cases,” Luo’s report states.

Today, three months after it was sent to Tallahassee, the CDC report still has not been widely circulated.

Backer of closing hospital didn’t know



Meanwhile the champion of the health agency consolidation, Rep. Matt Hudson, R-Naples, said he had not been informed of the Jacksonville outbreak and the CDC’s role as of Friday.


Told the details, the chairman of the House Health Care Appropriations Committee vowed that there would be money for TB treatment.


“There is every bit of understanding that we cannot not take care of people who have a difficult case of TB,” Hudson said. 


The governor’s office asked a reporter to forward a copy of the CDC letter on Saturday, but did not comment by press time.


Treatment for TB can be an ordeal. A person with an uncomplicated, active case of TB must take a cocktail of three to four antibiotics — dozens of pills a day — for six months or more. The drugs can cause serious side effects — stomach and liver problems chief among them. But failure to stay on the drugs for the entire treatment period can and often does cause drug resistance.


At that point, a disease that can cost $500 to overcome grows exponentially more costly. The average cost to treat a drug-resistant strain is more than $275,000, requiring up to two years on medications. For this reason, the state pays for public health nurses to go to the home of a person with TB every day to observe them taking their medications.


However, the itinerant homeless, drug-addicted, mentally ill people at the core of the Jacksonville TB cluster are almost impossible to keep on their medications. Last year, Duval County sent 11 patients to A.G. Holley under court order. Last week, with A.G. Holley now closed, one was sent to Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. The ones who will stay put in Jacksonville are being put up in motels, to make it easier for public health nurses to find them, Duval County health officials said.


They spoke about CDC’s report Friday, only after weeks of records requests from The Palm Beach Post. The report was released late last week only after a reporter traveled to Tallahassee to demand records in person. The records should be open to inspection to anyone upon request under Florida Statute 119, known as the Government in the Sunshine law.

It's a good thing the evil, partially dismantled Department of Health wasn't there to nip this TB resurgence in the bud.  It's a good thing!  Have you seen one of our many beautiful beaches?

So Governor Scott:  How much money do you think you're saving by consolidating the Department of Health and closing this particular Tuberculosis Hospital?

Also, Sir:  How much money do you think a full blown epidemic of a drug resistant strain of Tuberculosis within the state, or nation wide..  How much you think that would cost?

It's incredibly heartening to know that no one in Florida government gives a shit what the CDC says about..  Well, anything!  Nobody bothered to read the report.  Wow. 

Well..  Sleep tight, Florida!  When it comes to All Things Infectious, you are definitely on your own..  Goodnight!

Things That Make You Go Hmmm - Such As The Transition From Conspiracy Theory To Conspiracy Fact

Here comes the LIBOR scandal!  And it's BIG.  And probably The Tipping Point for all Financials.  BIG.  From Grant Williams, author of Things That Make You Go Hmmm, via Zero Hedge:



Attempts to manipulate free markets invariably end badly - after all, they are, supposedly, by their very nature, free.


Over the past few weeks, the exposure of the Libor-rigging scandal has monopolized the headlines of the financial press and inveigled its way onto the front pages of every major news publication in the world through the sheer size and scale of the story.


Something as big as this just CAN’T be hidden from the public.


Only... it can.


It has been. It no doubt still is to a certain extent. I’m not going to go through all of the events of the past few weeks as you are no doubt familiar with them, but [simply understanding how LIBOR works makes for a simple conclusion].


I’m afraid it’s rather obvious. Given that almost half the reported inputs that help establish the Libor rate are discarded immediately, Barclays simply CANNOT have manipulated the Libor rate alone. Period.

What’s more, to effectively ensure the rate is set at the price required, you’d need to not only establish the highest and lowest 25% of prices, but then ensure the remaining 50% average out to the required rate and, based on the fact that there are 16 banks that submit rates, that would mean about 13 of the 16 involved would need to be complicit.



As a very good friend of mine put it earlier this week; at best this is a cartel, at worst it’s outright fraud on a scale that is completely unprecedented.


So for five years there have been attempts to fix the Libor rate and, take it from me, during that time, many inside the financial industry were familiar with the rumors of such manipulation but it was another huge scandal with such high powered connected interests that it would no doubt be brushed squarely under the carpet. Forget ‘too big to fail’. This was ‘too deep to prove’.


Libor is so important to so many people in the financial industry that the question of why it was manipulated really ought to be framed differently:

Assuming you COULD manipulate something as important and potentially beneficial as the Libor rate with such ease for years, why wouldn’t you?

The answer to this question would ordinarily be:

"Because it’s illegal and government regulators would throw the book at us"

So, working from the ground up; we have a set of traders looking to produce the best profits they can for personal gain, the major bank they work for and who should be supervising them with a need to disguise the level of its own funding costs and above them all, a government seeking to keep borrowing costs down in the middle of a gigantic financial storm. From such alignments of interest are the greatest of conspiracies born.



In my humble opinion, the Libor scandal (which has a LONG way to go before it has played out and which will claim a LOT more scalps) will mark a fundamental change in the treatment of financial conspiracy theories in the media. The sheer amount of coverage it will undoubtedly receive will signal a shift in attitude towards the exposing of such scandals rather than the blind-eyes that have been regularly turned in recent years.
But perhaps, most-of-all, watching how quickly those in high places begin to throw each other under the bus, it will hasten the end of many other possible government conspiracies as exposing such events becomes an exercise in self-preservation. Prime amongst conspiracy theories that may soon be finally proven to be either valid or the figments of overactive imaginations, are those alleged in the gold and silver markets.


The allegations concerning precious metal price manipulation predate those surrounding Libor by decades but until now day they have remained similarly acknowledged within financial circles and ignored without. That may well be about to change.

Unencumbered by liability, the rising price of gold has always been a barometer of governmental failure to protect the purchasing power of fiat currency and the best indication of the damage that inflation does.Forget inexorably rising gold prices. Forget the corrections that shake loose hands from the wheel at every turn. In the broader context they carry far less relevance than the intrinsic values that gold provides a consistent yardstick to.
A look at the value of assets measured in ounces of gold remains the most consistent way to get a sense of their real value and the charts below demonstrate all too clearly the true performance of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and average US house prices over the long term when measured in gold ounces.
 

If the long-stated claims about government-sanctioned, bank-led manipulation of precious metals markets put forward so eloquently by the likes of Ted Butler, Bill Murphy & Chris Powell at GATA as well as Messrs. Sprott, Sinclair, Davies et al are eventually proven to have any validity whatsoever, the fallout from the Libor scandal will prove to be (to use the words of Jamie Dimon) just another “tempest in a tea pot” as the precious metals are the very underpinnings of the entire global financial system. Conspiracy or no, it would be a blessed relief to get closure no matter what the truth turns out to be.




Oh Snap. Are we really here? If 13 of 16 banks are complicit, how much further statistically is 16 of 16? The answer?  Not far at all.  How crazy will the public response be when this finally goes mainstream? Financial Pandora's Box blowing open in 3.. 2..

Lastly;  Lest anyone forget, people have been talking about the derivatives collapse for quite some time now.  Also:  While this might not be the first time Barclays got caught shit handed, it might be the last.. 

Jordanian Parliament member pulls gun on debate opponent

The "People are losing their damn minds" file keeps getting larger..  Also:  Jordan is supposedly one of the "stable" Middle Eastern countries.  Again, though, I don't think this phenomenon is connected to any one region, either..   The Raw Story (With video):


A member of Jordan’s parliament faces attempted murder charges after pulling a gun on his opponent in a televised debate.



According to the Los Angeles Times, Mohammed Shawabka drew his weapon at former minister Mansour Murad Friday after Murad called him “a mafia thief” who “bought people’s votes.” The two men were taking part in a discussion Friday on a private satellite channel, Josat, regarding the uprising in Syria. Shawabka, who represents the town of Madaba, had accused Murad of being a spy for the Syrian government.


Despite repeated pleas to calm down by the host, identified by The Times of Israel as Mohammed Habashneh, Shawabka first threw his shoe at Murad before pulling his gun out and shoving Murad, though no shots were fired. The interviewer managed to get between both men.  (A true Moderator.  Very brave.)


The Jordan Times reports that the Syrian government has not issued a comment on Shawabka’s actions.

The crazy, it seems, is contagious. 

Even experts question claim that Rudy Eugene was not on bath salts

Still doubling down on the bath salts meme, I see..  The Sun Sentinel.  Excerpts:

Rudy Eugene was not on "bath salts" or synthetic marijuana when he chewed the face off a homeless man in May – if you believe the toxicology reports, that is.


Scientists and skeptical observers don't.
Broward Sheriff Al Lamberti is just one of the doubting Thomases who think the so-called "Causeway Cannibal" was on something not caught by either of the two labs that ran the toxicology tests.
"We are not testing for everything that may be out there," said Dr. Barry Logan, one of the nation's leading toxicologists.
That's because they can't.
Clandestine labs are using more than 100 chemical compounds to make synthetic marijuana, but even the most sophisticated lab can only test for 17, said Logan, director of Forensic and Toxicological Services at NMS Labs in Pennsylvania, the same lab hired by Miami-Dade County to help test Eugene for bath salts and synthetic marijuana. (There are over 100 ACTIVE compounds in synthetic drugs?  Dubious..)
Bath salts, also known as synthetic amphetamines, are also hard to track for the same reason.
There are hundreds of bath salt compounds out there, but toxicologists can only test for 40, (Again..) Logan said.


"This is always a moving target," Logan said. "As soon as a test exists for something, there are new compounds waiting in the wings. We are always a step behind."  (How would these "clandestine labs" know what can be detected and what can't without some kind of Forensics Department insider information?  How could "clandestine labs" be that sophisticated?  I'm having a hard time believing that basic bath salts could be that chemically diverse and still be considered bath salts.  A really hard time..  Wouldn't it be easier to round up products available from a radius around Eugene's daily activities and test them all against his blood?)

Even Logan was surprised when Eugene's drug scan found only traces of marijuana.

"His behavior was consistent with someone who was delusional and hallucinating, which would be consistent with bath salts," Logan said. (Or Angel dust.  Or Jimson Weed..)

The report released last week by the Miami-Dade County Medical Examiner contained this disclaimer: "Within the limits of current technology by both laboratories, marijuana is the only drug identified in the body of Mr. Rudy Eugene."
Experts say there is no question Eugene's behavior was drug-induced – and not by marijuana. But it's hard to prove because even the most sophisticated labs cannot test for every compound.


"We are not incompetent," said Dr. Bruce Goldberger, professor and director of toxicology at the University of Florida. "We have the tools, we have the sophistication and know-how. But the field is evolving so rapidly it is hard for us to keep track. It's almost as if it is a race we can never win."


Goldberger thinks Eugene was on a drug far stronger than marijuana the day of the attack.


"To say marijuana could have induced this behavior is simply outrageous," Goldberger said. "No matter how sick mentally or physically a person is, they don't go around eating people's faces, or barking at police, or eating a dog, like what happened recently in Texas."


A Waco man who tried to eat a dog on June 14 told police he was high on synthetic marijuana at the time.


Users say they are drawn to fake weed because it gets them high and doesn't show up in most drug tests.

Love this comment..

Talk to the Haitian Voodoo Priest to get the chemical substance.



The media simply refuses to see this as religious because of their agnostic action line, which makes them useless in a story like this. Al Lamberti (R) is showing his Liberal Catholic roots by refusing to acknowledge religion as a factor. He can't believe it's not Bath Salts? Who is he? He sees, more than most of us, the dirty underbelly of Broward crime stats for sure, but does that make him a an expert forensic pathologist? No! Granted their are example of extreme behavior by people who claimed to use fake "Mary Jane," two examples in this story are given, but notice also that none of them "killed" their victims, and none of them claimed it was bath salts!

This is..  Close..  But I still think this is something else.  Summer's still young, so I'm sure we'll have more incidents to work with.  I've also never seen reports of these "clandestine labs" being busted, either..  Have you?

Radiation reading on weather forecast of Fukushima

Nice..  Fukushima Diary:

This tweet grabbed my attention.
In Fukushima, NTV reports radiation level on weather forecast like precipitation.
Look at this carefully. It’s weather forecast, but not precipitation. This is how Fukushima is at this moment.

I'm sure this is nothing.  If it was, wouldn't American media be reporting this too, as opposed to what Brad Pitt's dumbass mom says?

A Journey Through Vogelsang: Once USSR's Massive East German Nuclear Military Base, And Now A Ghost Town

Der Speigel, via Zero Hedge.  Pictures at the link.

Vogelsang, one of the largest Soviet garrisons outside of the Soviet Union, was the base of the 25th tank division. For almost 40 year, soldiers belonging to the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany lived here -- until they finally withdrew in 1994.
Sine then, Vogelsang has been left to the elements, a ghost town in the middle of the Brandenburg forest. And yet, two decades after the last light was switched off, there is still plenty of life at the site. Deer and raccoon roam among the trees as do feral sheep and goats.


The barracks too still hint at the life they once contained. While most look the same from the outside, plenty of differences can be seen on the inside. The type of heating within, for example, indicates whether they housed officers or mere foot soldiers. The former tended to have decorative, tiled wood stoves instead of simple potbelly stoves. Window grates in the form of a shining sun likewise provided a bit of ornamentation.


The residential buildings, similar to the gigantic halls housing military equipment and vehicles, were painted in standard shades of gray, blue, green, yellow and sometimes even pink. The resulting mixture is a photographer's dream.

These pictures conjure an odd, wistful feeling for the "simple days" of the Cold War.  Although our "enemies" were more clearly drawn, so was our collective sense of optimism regarding our future path(National and global..).  That optimism now seems quaint, naive, or even dangerous.  So many different directions we could have taken the last 20 to 30 years, or after communism's fall, and yet, here is where we are..  How did we stray so far away from sanity and progress?  How did this happen?

1 million chickens culled in outbreak of H7N3 bird flu in Mexico

Another variant of bird flu rears its head in Mexico..  Again.  Huh.  The Extinction Protocol:

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

Maddow: Ron Paul Could Be Nominated At The Republican National Convention

Video courtesy The Rachel Maddow Show, via Mox News and You Tube.

Nebraska.  Next week.  This could get awesome.

Heads Up! X Flare On Its Way!

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!



Updates forthcoming.

China's controversial Three Gorges dam completed

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.

Three Gorges Dam and the Earth's rotation



Dam Safety Analysis