Meat, poultry, vegetables feel heat from global warming

The world's billion poor, whether producers or consumers, will bear the brunt, warned scientists who ended a conference Saturday on agriculture and climate change in Hyderabad, southern India."In some ways, the time for doing things is already past,"

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down, while their taxes, gas and energy costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms, as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans)

As a people fail to understand evolutionary parameters which are conveniently "lacking/missing" in suppressed energy science today, future legends of our time will reflect a repetitive history: "the people followed the errs of the kings, and in a short span of time, lost their freedom, their land, their temples, their lives" Freedom is not to be disconnected from responsibility.


Meat, poultry, vegetables feel heat from global warming

by Anil Penna Sat Nov 24, 8:54 PM ET Yahoo News – Agence France Presse
From meat, poultry and milk to potatoes, onions and leafy greens, everything consumed on the world's dining tables is feeling the heat from climate change, scientists say.
Researchers are trying to establish the extent to which global warming will affect livestock, plant life and staple crops such as rice to bolster their resistance to disease and breed stronger varieties.
The world's billion poor, whether producers or consumers, will bear the brunt, warned scientists who ended a conference Saturday on agriculture and climate change in Hyderabad, southern India.
"In some ways, the time for doing things is already past," said John McDermott, deputy director of research at the Nairobi-based International Livestock Research Institute. "The changes are already happening."
As an example, rift valley fever, a deadly virus transmitted to sheep, cattle, camels and humans by mosquito bites, is being fuelled by climate change, the scientist said.
The virus is manifesting itself in broader swathes of East Africa and the Middle East because of climate variability in dry regions that helps vectors such as mosquitoes, tsetse flies and ticks to breed and spread, he said.
"What you see are diseases moving into areas where they have not been before, which means sometimes animals are exposed where they haven't been for a long time," he said.
"That leads to more outbreaks," McDermott added.
For the poor, livestock offers a livelihood as well as a savings bank they can tap, selling off their cows or chickens to deal with a health or family emergency.
"These are the people who don't make much of an impact on the ecological footprint of the world," said McDermott.
But they are also the people most at risk from damage wrought on livestock by diseases that could be aggravated by climate-related phenomena.
Scientists are also studying cropping and disease patterns in vegetables -- potatoes and tomatoes to cabbage and spinach, onion and garlic -- to see how they can cope with the stresses brought by global warming and its side-effects.
"If you make it a given that temperatures will go up, water will be a problem -- that will be your worst-case scenario," said Jackie Hughes, deputy director of research at the Shanhua, Taiwan-based World Vegetable Centre.
"You're going to have typhoons, cyclones and hurricanes," she said, adding vegetable growers may have to grow different varieties, use grafting techniques to address flooding and devise rain and insect protection for their crops.
"Probably, it will mean a shift of where crops are grown -- onions moving a little bit in one direction and tomatoes, cabbages coming out of very, very dry areas," she added.
Success in tackling the impact of climate change on crops is important as the world is host to a billion people who are already underweight and under-nourished, Hughes said.
The average adult is required to consume 74 kilogrammes of vegetables a year and "most don't reach that," she added.
Scientists are also concerned about the potential effect of climate change on potato blight, a weather-driven disease that takes a heavy toll on potato crops.
The pathogen that causes the blight is an "incredibly fast breeder," said Dyno Keatinge, deputy research head of the International Crops Research Institute here.
"So I am worried, you don't see me smiling in complacency," said Keatinge, who comes from Ireland where the disease caused a great famine in the 1840s.

Lack of toilets is fatal, global association says

"Some 2.6 billion people worldwide do not have access to proper toilet facilities, with potentially fatal consequences. It is regrettable that the matter of defecation is not given as much attention as food or housing."

Mild shock and disbelief barely registered in the nation of the most productive, overworked, underpaid, underinsured, vacation deprived, low paid slave/workers in the world, as they watched their bridges fall down, while their taxes, gas and energy costs continued skyrocketing to uncharted realms, as the masses stagnated in unmovable traffic, and government departments threatened to close due to lack of funds - On the bright side, the worldwide corporate 2% greedy guts, individually, had aplenty, more wealth than 30 nations combined, apiece.... irrelevant to who is paying for their errors (as in subprime loans)

As a people fail to understand evolutionary parameters which are conveniently "lacking/missing" in suppressed energy science today, future legends of our time will reflect a repetitive history: "the people followed the errs of the kings, and in a short span of time, lost their freedom, their land, their temples, their lives" Freedom is not to be disconnected from responsibility.

Lack of toilets is fatal, global association says
By Jack Kim
Reuters, SEOUL

Lack of proper toilet facilities and sanitation kills almost two million people a year, most of them children, the World Toilet Association said at its first meeting on Thursday.

"It is regrettable that the matter of defecation is not given as much attention as food or housing," Sim Jae-duck, the association's South Korean head, told the meeting at its recently opened lavatory-shaped headquarters south of Seoul.

Sim, a lawmaker nicknamed "Mr. Toilet," said some 2.6 billion people worldwide do not have access to proper toilet facilities, with potentially fatal consequences.

About 1.8 million people die every year from diarrheal diseases that are mainly blamed on inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene, the World Health Organisation's regional director for the Western Pacific, Shigeru Omi, told the meeting.

The majority of these deaths occur in Asia and 90 percent of the fatalities are children under the age of five, he added.

"Just imagine the number of children whose lives could be saved through simple low-cost interventions in sanitation and hygiene," Omi told the meeting.

The United Nations has declared 2008 the "Year of Sanitation" and is calling for a renewed effort to improve sanitation and hygiene facilities, especially in developing countries.

Several charities also marked World Toilet Day on Monday by launching international campaigns for more hygiene awareness and investments in toilet facilities.

The Seoul meeting, which brought together public health officials from around the world and U.N. agencies, aims to raise funds for sanitation in developing countries.

"The funding needed is not overwhelmingly large, but the return is immense," said Vanessa Tobin of U.N. children's agency UNICEF. "Political support is extremely important. Advocacy for this issue is a high priority."

According to the United Nations, spending $10 billion a year could halve the proportion of people without basic toilet facilities by 2015, and Tobin said this investment would net an estimated $84 billion in savings from improved public health and better living conditions.

In some cultures, the solution requires very little water, as is the case in sub-Saharan Africa where ash on top of a pit is often all that is needed, she said.

"It is very important to remember most people who don't have access are poor people living in rural areas," Tobin added.

(Editing by Jon Herskovitz and Miral Fahmy) 2007 Reuters News Service. ABC News Internet Ventures

UN: Climate Change Here And Getting Worse

BIG CO2 BUGS, UMBRELLAS FOR THE EARTH, 'CORNY' FUEL, FREEDUMB VS FREEDOM. Does the Future stand a chance with lame science? As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems reveal. Over 50 years of Scientific Stagnation within the energy sector bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence & resource wars" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.

UN: Climate Change Here And Getting Worse
VALENCIA, Spain, Nov. 17, 2007
(CBS/AP) The Earth is hurtling toward a warmer climate at a quickening pace, a Nobel-winning U.N. scientific panel said in a landmark report released Saturday, warning of inevitable human suffering and the threat of extinction for some species. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said climate change imperils "the most precious treasures of our planet" and called on the United States and China -- the world's two biggest polluters - to do more to fight it. As early as 2020, 75 million to 250 million people in Africa will suffer water shortages, residents of Asia's megacities will be at great risk of river and coastal flooding, Europeans can expect extensive species loss, and North Americans will experience longer and hotter heat waves and greater competition for water, the report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says. The potential impact of global warming is "so severe and so sweeping that only urgent, global action will do," Ban told the IPCC after it issued its fourth and final report this year. The IPCC adopted the report, along with a summary, after five days of sometimes tense negotiations. It lays out blueprints for avoiding the worst catastrophes - and various possible outcomes, depending on how quickly and decisively action is taken. The document says recent research has heightened concern that the poor and the elderly will suffer most from climate change; that hunger and disease will be more common; that droughts, floods and heat waves will afflict the world's poorest regions; and that more animal and plant species will vanish. The Summary for Policymakers, and the longer version, called the synthesis report, distill thousands of pages of data and computer models from six years of research compiled by the IPCC. The information is expected to guide policy makers meeting in Bali, Indonesia, next month to discuss an agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. The panel was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year along with former Vice President Al Gore for their efforts to raise awareness about the effects of climate change. The report is important because it is adopted by consensus, meaning countries accept the underlying science and cannot disavow its conclusions. While it does not commit governments to a specific course of action, it provides a common scientific baseline for the political talks. The U.N. says a new global plan must be in place by 2009 to ensure a smooth transition after the expiration of the Kyoto terms, which require 36 industrial countries to radically reduce their carbon emissions by 2012. "There are real and affordable ways to deal with climate change," Ban said. He said a new agreement should provide funding to help poor countries adopt clean energy and to adapt to changing climates. Ban encouraged the United States and China, which have stood apart from the Kyoto accord, to join in the next phase of cooperative efforts against climate change. "I look forward to seeing the U.S. and China playing a more constructive role starting from the Bali conference," Ban told reporters. "Both countries can lead in their own way." But the Bush administration is making no promises, reports CBS News correspondent Joie Chen. Just last week, the president signaled that his focus is on getting companies to do what they can to help - voluntarily. "It's easier to deal with the climate change issue if you've got the revenues and finances to invest in new technologies that will change how we live, and at the same time enable us to grow our economies," President Bush said. The report says emissions of carbon, which comes primarily from fossil fuels, must stabilize by 2015 and go down after that. Otherwise the consequences could be "disastrous," said IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri. In the best-case scenario, temperatures will continue to rise from carbon already in the atmosphere, the report said. Even if factories were shut down today and cars taken off the roads, the average sea level will reach as high as 4½ feet higher than the preindustrial period, or about 1850. "We have already committed the world to sea level rise," said Pachauri. If the Greenland ice sheet melts, the scientists couldn't even predict by how many meters the seas will rise, drowning coastal cities. Yet differences remain stark on how to control carbon emissions. While the European Union has taken the lead in enforcing the carbon emission targets outlined in Kyoto, the United States opted out of the 1997 accord. President Bush described it as flawed because major developing countries such as India and China, which are large carbon emitters, were excluded from any obligations. He also favors a voluntary agreement. Sharon Hays, a White House science official and head of the U.S. delegation, said the certainty of climate change was clearer now than when Bush rejected Kyoto. "What's changed since 2001 is the scientific certainty that this is happening," she said in a conference call to reporters late Friday. "Back in 2001 the IPCC report said it is likely that humans were having an impact on the climate," but confidence in human responsibility had increased since then. "What's new is the clarity of the signal, how clear the scientific message is," said Yvo de Boer, the U.N.'s top climate change official. "The politicians have no excuse not to act." Opening with a sweeping statement directed at climate change skeptics, the summary declares that climate systems have already begun to change. Unless action is taken, human activity could lead to "abrupt and irreversible changes" that would make the planet unrecognizable.

The Future Is Drying Up

Does the Future stand a chance? As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence & resource wars" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.

October 21, 2007
The Future Is Drying Up
By JOE GERTNER
Scientists sometimes refer to the effect a hotter world will have on this country’s fresh water as the other water problem, because global warming more commonly evokes the specter of rising oceans submerging our great coastal cities. By comparison, the steady decrease in mountain snowpack — the loss of the deep accumulation of high-altitude winter snow that melts each spring to provide the American West with most of its water — seems to be a more modest worry. But not all researchers agree with this ranking of dangers. Last May, for instance, Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate and the director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, one of the United States government’s pre-eminent research facilities, remarked that diminished supplies of fresh water might prove a far more serious problem than slowly rising seas. When I met with Chu last summer in Berkeley, the snowpack in the Sierra Nevada, which provides most of the water for Northern California, was at its lowest level in 20 years. Chu noted that even the most optimistic climate models for the second half of this century suggest that 30 to 70 percent of the snowpack will disappear. “There’s a two-thirds chance there will be a disaster,” Chu said, “and that’s in the best scenario.”
In the Southwest this past summer, the outlook was equally sobering. A catastrophic reduction in the flow of the Colorado River — which mostly consists of snowmelt from the Rocky Mountains — has always served as a kind of thought experiment for water engineers, a risk situation from the outer edge of their practical imaginations. Some 30 million people depend on that water. A greatly reduced river would wreak chaos in seven states: Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and California. An almost unfathomable ...full text

Georgia declares drought emergency

Does the Future stand a chance?
As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence & resource wars" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known that Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of radioactive nuclear power application ) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.

Georgia declares drought emergency
White House says it will review Perdue’s request for federal assistance
The Associated Press
Updated: 2:46 p.m. CT Oct 20, 2007

CUMMING, Georgia - With water supplies rapidly shrinking during a drought of historic proportions, Gov. Sonny Perdue declared a state of emergency Saturday for the northern third of the state of Georgia and asked President Bush to declare it a major disaster area.
Georgia officials warn that Lake Lanier, a 38,000-acre reservoir that supplies more than 3 million residents with water, is less than three months from depletion. Smaller reservoirs are dropping even lower.
Perdue asked the president to exempt Georgia from complying with federal regulations that dictate the amount of water released from Georgia's reservoirs to protect federally protected mussel species downstream.
"We need to cut through the tangle of unnecessary bureaucracy to manage our resources prudently — so that in the long term, all species may have access to life-sustaining water," he said.
On Friday, Perdue's office asked a federal judge to force the Army Corps of Engineers to curb the amount of water it drains from Georgia reservoirs into streams in Alabama and Florida. Georgia's environmental protection director is drafting proposals for more water restrictions.
More than a billion gallons of water is released from .... full text

Vice President Threatens 'Serious' Consequences

Civilization marching in sync to fulfill Nostradamus's prophesies. As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. The new scientific comprehension eliminates the caveman 'club/stick' conflict resolution methods still used in the 21st century. Besides, caveman club/stick methods do not work well with nuclear toys, as they threaten all of humanity

Cheney: 'We Will Not Allow' Iran Nukes
Vice President Threatens 'Serious' Consequences
By JOHN HENDREN
WASHINGTON, Oct. 21, 2007 —
Vice President Dick Cheney today issued his sternest warning to date on Iran, saying the Persian nation will not be allowed to pursue its nuclear program.
Dismissing Iran's claims that it is seeking only nuclear energy and not a weapons program, Cheney accused Iranian leaders of pursuing a practice of "delay and deception in an obvious effort to buy time."
"Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions," Cheney told the Washington Institute for Near East Studies. "The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences."
The rising rhetoric could signal that President Bush intends to take action -- possibly military action -- to halt Iran's nuclear program before the president leaves office on Jan. 20, 2009, some analysts said.
"That's pretty firm, clear language," Michael O'Hanlon, a military analyst for the Brookings Institution, told ABC News of Cheney's wording. "And it raises more clearly the specter of military action. That is much more than saying this isn't just an option that we've taken off the table."
Cheney's statement bore a striking resemblance to this warning before an audience of Republicans on Jan. 31, 2003, less than two months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq: "We will not permit a brutal dictator with ties to terror and a record of feckless aggression to dominate the Middle East and to threaten the United States."
A spokeswoman for the vice president said his statements today echoed his previous comments on Iran.
On March 7, 2006, for instance, he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, "And we join other nations in sending that regime a clear message: We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."
And on May 11, 2007, he said, "We'll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region."
But analysts said the administration's talk on Iran has taken on a tone of rising warning and aggressiveness, ...full text

US eyes boom in nuclear reactors

What to do, what to do with the waste in our petrified and stale concept of nuclear? As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence & resource wars" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known, Energy from Corn (or going backwards to a dimwitted concept of nuclear) sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.


US eyes boom in nuclear reactors
By Laura Smith-Spark BBC News, Washington 10-11-07











Almost three decades have passed since the last application was filed to build a new nuclear reactor in the US. Now, up to 30 are expected in the next three years.
As time has passed, memories have faded of the 1979 radioactive leak at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania that threw the US nuclear industry into disarray.
Meanwhile, energy security concerns and worries about climate change have reshaped the debate, and financial incentives and a new licensing process have altered the economics.
The first full application for two new reactors, in southern Texas, was submitted at the end of September.
Another four are due by the end of the year and a dozen in 2008, many in south-eastern states, the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) said.
The earliest could be in operation by 2015.
A range of factors is fuelling the renewed enthusiasm:
The introduction of a new fast-track combined construction and operation permit, making new reactors easier and cheaper to build
A tax credit, introduced in the 2005 Energy Policy Act, of 1.8 cents per kilowatt hour for the first 6,000 megawatts generated by nuclear plants
Risk insurance adding up to $2bn for the first six plants to be built, protecting companies against the cost of delays in construction
Multi-billion-dollar loan guarantees
A likelihood that the cost of emitting CO2 will rise as the battle against climate change intensifies
But the impending flood of applications is fuelling a new row over whether nuclear power represents a bold step to address 21st Century needs or a mistaken return to flawed 20th Century technology ..... full text

Regional nuclear war could trigger mass starvation

As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence & resource wars" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known, Energy from Corn sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.

Regional nuclear war could trigger mass starvation
13:17 03 October 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Rob Edwards
A nuclear war between India and Pakistan could cause one billion people to starve to death around the world, and hundreds of millions more to die from disease and conflicts over food.

That is the horrifying scenario being presented in London today by a US medical expert, Ira Helfand. A conference at the Royal Society of Medicine will also hear new evidence of the severe
damage that such a war could inflict on the ozone layer.

"A limited nuclear war taking place far away poses a threat that should concern everyone on the planet," Helfand told New Scientist. This was not scare mongering, he adds: "It is appropriate, given the data, to be frightened."

Helfand is an emergency-room doctor in Northampton, Massachusetts, US, and a co-founder of the US anti-nuclear group, Physicians for Social Responsibility. In his study he attempted to map out the global consequences of India and Pakistan exploding 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear warheads.

Global hoarding
Earlier studies have suggested that such a conflict would throw five million tonnes of black soot into the atmosphere, triggering a reduction of 1.25°C in the average temperature at the earth's surface for several years. As a result, the annual growing season in the world's most important grain-producing areas would shrink by between 10 and 20 days.

Mass starvation
The global death toll from a nuclear war in Asia "could exceed one billion from starvation alone", Helfand concludes. Food shortages could also trigger epidemics of cholera, typhus and other diseases, as well as armed conflicts, which together could kill "hundreds of millions".

Another study being unveiled at today's conference suggests that the smoke unleashed by 100, small, 15 kiloton nuclear warheads could destroy 30-40% of the world's ozone layer. This would kill off some food crops, according to the study's author, Brian Toon, an atmospheric scientist from the University of Colorado in Boulder, US.

The smoke would warm the stratosphere by up to 50°C, accelerating the natural reactions that attack ozone, he says. "No-one has ever thought about this before," he adds, "I think there is a potential for mass starvation."

Such dire predictions are not dismissed by nuclear experts ...full text

Iraq Demands $136M Blackwater Payout

THE OIL IS SAFE! Time will tell the Gifts we bring to ourselves and our children in the next few years - the major forces at play accelerating and foretelling our destination are in the headlines - science suppression causing the Trouble With Physics and creating the stagnant energy science is an extremely unwise and lethal choice as it also deprives us of the evolutionary wisdom and understanding that accompanies new energy revelations - all requirements for survival Evolution Freedom Survival The Promise of New Energy

Iraq Demands $136M Blackwater Payout
BAGHDAD, Oct. 8, 2007
(CBS/AP) Iraqi authorities want the U.S. government to sever all contracts in Iraq with Blackwater USA within six months and pay $8 million in compensation to each of the families of 17 people killed when the firm's guards sprayed a traffic circle with heavy machine gun fire last month. The demands, part of an Iraqi government report examined by The Associated Press, also called on U.S. authorities to hand over the Blackwater security agents involved in the Sept. 16 shootings to face possible trial in Iraqi courts. CBS News has found the Iraqi witness accounts of the shootings are remarkably consistent. They say a four-vehicle Blackwater convoy drove into a traffic circle but was blocked by barriers protecting a maintenance crew, reports CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer. The Blackwater guards threw water bottles, warning the cars to stop, but as one car continued to inch forward, Blackwater started shooting, instantly killing the driver. The tone of the Iraqi report appears to signal further strains between the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the White House over the deaths in Nisoor Square, which have prompted a series of U.S. and Iraqi probes ...full text

Medicare Audits Show Problems in Private Plans

Contempt For Life? The New Shallow Religion: "As long as It makes a profit, It is Good "period". As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. Scientific Stagnation bodes an ill wind to evolution, sustainability, and survival as "cycles of humiliation, dumbing us down, violence & resource wars" join hands with global warming and ecological imbalance to precipitate the historical "rise and fall" - a Tsunami accelerating toward us with a far more spectacular event than the legends and myths of 'Atlantis and Lemuria"........ had more people known, Energy from Corn sounded a wee bit kindergartenish and senile for the twenty first century......the Future may have had a chance.


NYT October 7, 2007
Medicare Audits Show Problems in Private Plans
By ROBERT PEAR
WASHINGTON, Oct. 6 — Tens of thousands of Medicare recipients have been victims of deceptive sales tactics and had claims improperly denied by private insurers that run the system’s huge new drug benefit program and offer other private insurance options encouraged by the Bush administration, a review of scores of federal audits has found.
The problems, described in 91 audit reports reviewed by The New York Times, include the improper termination of coverage for people with H.I.V. and AIDS, huge backlogs of claims and complaints, and a failure to answer telephone calls from consumers, doctors and drugstores.
Medicare officials have required insurance companies of all sizes to fix the violations by adopting “corrective action plans.” Since March, Medicare has imposed fines of more than $770,000 on 11 companies for marketing violations and failure to provide timely notice to beneficiaries about changes in costs and benefits.
The companies include three of the largest participants in the Medicare market, UnitedHealth, Humana and WellPoint.
The audits document widespread violations of patients’ rights and consumer protection standards. Some violations could directly affect the health of patients — for example, by delaying access to urgently needed medications.
In July, Medicare terminated its contract with a private plan in Florida after finding that it posed an “imminent and serious threat” to its 11,000 members. .... full text

Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations

Time will tell the Gifts we bring to ourselves and our children in the next few years - the major forces at play accelerating and foretelling our destination are in the headlines - science suppression causing the Trouble With Physics and creating the stagnant energy science is an extremely unwise and lethal choice as it also deprives us of the evolutionary wisdom and understanding that accompanies new energy revelations - all requirements for survival Evolution Freedom Survival The Promise of New Energy

NYT October 4, 2007
Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations
By SCOTT SHANE, DAVID JOHNSTON and JAMES RISEN
WASHINGTON, Oct. 3 — When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.
But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.
Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.
Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.
The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of ...full text

Iran To U.S.: No, You're The Terrorists

Marching in sync to fulfill Nostradamus's prophesies. As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. The new scientific comprehension eliminates the caveman 'club/stick' conflict resolution methods still used in the 21st century. Besides, caveman club/stick methods do not work well with nuclear toys, as they threaten all of humanity

Iran To U.S.: No, You're The Terrorists
CBS News - TEHRAN, Iran, Sept. 29, 2007
(AP) Iran's parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the CIA and the U.S. Army "terrorist organizations," in apparent response to a Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The hard-line dominated parliament cited U.S. involvement in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II; using depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq; supporting the killings of Palestinians by Israel; bombing and killing Iraqi civilians; and torturing terror suspects in prisons. "The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror," said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio. The resolution, which is seen as a diplomatic offensive against the U.S., urges Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to treat the two as terrorist organizations. It also paves the way for the resolution to become legislation that - if ratified by the country's hardline constitutional watchdog - would become law. The government is expected to wait for U.S. reaction before making its decision. On Wednesday, the Senate voted 76-22 in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. While the proposal attracted overwhelming bipartisan support, a small group of Democrats said they feared labeling the state-sponsored organization a terrorist group could be interpreted as a congressional authorization of military force against Iran. The Bush administration had already been considering whether to blacklist an elite unit within the Revolutionary Guard, subjecting part of the vast military operation to financial sanctions. The U.S. legislative push came a day after Ahmadinejad told world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly that his country would defy attempts to impose new sanctions by "arrogant powers" ...full text

U.N. Chief: Act Now On Global Warming

Pay very close attention to THE TROUBLE WITH PHYSICS. Scientific ignorance/suppression in the energy sector, skewing our view of reality, is the greatest profound wonder and threat to the survival of civilization in the world today. Scientific ignorance carries a clear and present, lethal danger. The preposterous, comical 'worst case scenario' proposed solutions to global warming confirm an absolute, fanatic belief in a crippled science devoid of simple evolutionary energy options which modern civilization requires for survival. For the majority, the thought does not even exist that simple scientific fundamentals could be missing, blocking advanced energy systems applications which eliminate lack, limitation and unbalanced threats through the normal evolutionary progression of energy systems

U.N. Chief: Act Now On Global Warming
UNITED NATIONS, Sept. 25, 2007
(CBS/AP) With tales of rising seas and talk of human solidarity, world leaders at the first United Nations climate summit sought Monday to put new urgency into global talks to reduce global warming emissions. What's needed is "action, action, action," California's environmentalist governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, told the assembled presidents and premiers. The Bush administration showed no sign, however, that it would reverse its stand against mandatory emission cuts endorsed by 175 other nations. Some expressed fears the White House, with its own forum later this week, would launch talks rivaling the U.N. climate treaty negotiations. President Bush wasn't among the more than 80 world leaders on hand for the summit. But former Vice President and ex-Senator Al Gore was - delivering a luncheon speech on changes already attributed to global warming, including last week's scientific report that the Arctic ice cap this summer shrank to a record-small size. "We cannot continue a slow pace," said Gore, proposing that heads of state meet every three months beginning in 2008 to ensure the world is doing all it can to meet the threat. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon set the day's theme in his opening address, calling for action and describing the U.N. negotiating umbrella as "the only forum" where the issues can be decided. "Two decades ago, here in this hall, climate change first surfaced on the world's political agenda," said the U.N. leader, warning that the stakes are ...full text

More Profit and Less Nursing at Many Homes

Contempt for Life: Oh, the profits are divinely obscene! What life? What health care? Bridges falling down? ......Meanwhile, back at the here and now reality, the priority one subheadings remain in LIMBO ...................Priority One A: energy evolution - stagnant and dead with a 100 year old equation, E=MC2, unexpanded, unevolved, petrified as in stone .............Priority One B: Survival Criteria for increasingly complex, energy intensive 'holistic' global systems - nonexistent. (these criteria are derived directly from evolving energy stages beyond the caveman approach to nuclear energies - but then, that's The Trouble With Physics and pending trouble with civilization's future survival)

NYT September 23, 2007
More Profit and Less Nursing at Many Homes
By CHARLES DUHIGG

Analyzing the Data
For this article, The New York Times analyzed trends at nursing homes purchased by private investment groups by examining data available from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Times examined more than 1,200 nursing homes purchased by large private investment groups since 2000, and more than 14,000 other homes. The analysis compared investor-owned homes against national averages in multiple categories, including complaints received by regulators, health and safety violations cited by regulators, fines levied by state and federal authorities, the performance of homes as reported in a national database known as the Minimum Data Set Repository and the performance of homes as reported in the Online Survey, Certification and Reporting database.

Habana Health Care Center, a 150-bed nursing home in Tampa, Fla., was struggling when a group of large private investment firms purchased it and 48 other nursing homes in 2002.
The facility’s managers quickly cut costs. Within months, the number of clinical registered nurses at the home was half what it had been a year earlier, records collected by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services indicate. Budgets for nursing supplies, resident activities and other services also fell, according to Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration.
The investors and operators were soon earning millions of dollars a year from their 49 homes.
Residents fared less well. Over three years, 15 at Habana died from what their families contend was negligent care in lawsuits filed in state court. Regulators repeatedly warned the home that staff levels were below mandatory minimums. When regulators visited, they found malfunctioning fire doors, unhygienic kitchens and a resident using a leg brace that was broken.
“They’ve created a hellhole,” said Vivian Hewitt, who sued Habana in 2004 when her mother died after a large bedsore became infected by feces.
Habana is one of thousands of nursing homes across the nation that large Wall Street investment companies have bought or agreed to acquire in recent years.
Those investors include prominent private equity firms like Warburg Pincus and the Carlyle Group, better known for buying companies like Dunkin’ Donuts.
As such investors have acquired nursing homes, they have often reduced costs, increased profits and quickly resold facilities for significant gains.
But by many regulatory benchmarks, residents at those nursing homes are worse off, on average, than they were under previous owners, according to an analysis by The New York Times of data collected by government agencies from 2000 to 2006.
The Times analysis shows that, as at Habana, managers at many other nursing homes acquired by large private investors have cut expenses and staff, sometimes below minimum legal requirements.
Regulators say residents at these homes have suffered. At facilities owned by private investment firms, residents on average have fared more poorly ...full text

Arctic Ice Continues Record Melting

Freedom and vigilance at full alert: shopping dropping, footsybally, baseybally, stucky in traffic, Ipoding, and staying number one as the most productive low paid, vacation deprived, uninsured (unaffordable insurance) workers in the world. Time will tell the Gifts we bring to ourselves and our children in the next few years - the major forces at play accelerating and foretelling our destination are in the headlines - science suppression causing the Trouble With Physics and creating the stagnant energy science is an extremely unwise and lethal choice as it also deprives us of the evolutionary wisdom and understanding that accompanies new energy revelations - all requirements for survival Evolution Freedom Survival The Promise of New Energy

Arctic Ice Continues Record Melting
Arctic Ice the Size of Florida Gone in a Week
By CLAYTON SANDELL
ABC Sept. 10, 2007 —
An area of Arctic sea ice the size of Florida has melted away in just the last six days as melting at the top of the planet continues at a record rate.
2007 has already broken the record for the lowest amount of sea ice ever recorded, say scientists, smashing the old record set in 2005.
Currently, there are about 1.63 million square miles of Arctic ice, according to the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo. That is well below the record of 2.05 million square miles set two summers ago and could drop lower before the final numbers are in.
North Pole's Ice Disappears
In just the last six days, researchers say 69,000 square miles of Arctic ice has disappeared, roughly the size of the Sunshine State.
Scientists say the rate of melting in 2007 has been unprecedented, and veteran ice researchers worry the Arctic is on track to be completely ice-free much earlier than previous research and climate models have suggested ... full text

The Madness Of "King George"

"But the price of freedom, then as now, is vigilance; and somehow the lumbering giant of American democracy fell asleep at the wheel, tranquilized by its own success". Time will tell the Gifts we bring to ourselves and our children in the next few years - the major forces at play accelerating and foretelling our destination are in the headlines - science suppression causing the Trouble With Physics and creating the stagnant energy science is an extremely unwise and lethal choice as it also deprives us of the evolutionary wisdom and understanding that accompanies new energy revelations - all requirements for survival Evolution Freedom Survival The Promise of New Energy

The Madness Of "King George"
CBS News Sept. 3, 2007
(The Nation) This column was written by Simon Prentis.
To those of us here in Britain, there is an Orwellian edge to the news that George Bush is invoking executive privilege to protect his policies from Congressional investigation. Just like that scene in "Animal Farm," when the newly-liberated animals start to believe that some are more equal than others, it sounds like the President of the United States has reverted to the divine right of kings. Wasn't that something you guys fought so hard to escape from? The phrase "I'm the decider" may have a certain folksy charm that Charles I would never have stooped to, but it's clearly coming from the same stable. And we should be just as suspicious of it now as we were then. I say "we," because even though you decided it was wiser to cut and run, risking all for a new life across the pond, those of us you left behind in the seventeenth century didn't like it any more than you did. Nobody does; it's humiliating to have to submit to someone who thinks he's unaccountable. We tried our hand at civil war, cut the head off our king and toughed it out for a while, but in the end our nerve failed us. And as we negotiated our shabby compromise with royalty, you moved the project forward with a nation devoted for the first time to the cause of liberty - leaving us to watch with an older brother's bitter blend of scorn and envy as his younger sibling threatened to outdo him. As, of course, you eventually did. And little wonder. With the dispossessed of every land flocking to your shores in search of life on a level playing field, you were a beacon of hope for those on the run from tyranny and oppression. France even sent you the Statue of Liberty, a gift to mark your first centenary, and a fitting symbol of what you represented to ordinary people everywhere. Fueled by the power of this American Dream, you were then the beneficiary ...full text

Report Cites Major CIA Lapses Before 9/11

The trut and nothin but the trut in our search for weapons of mass donkeys, and clean, extremely cheap, unlimited new energy systems missing since the late 1940's - wonder if that has anything to do with the Trouble With Physics and the threats twenty first century civilization faces from lack and limitation fostering Resource Wars with obscenely profitable dinosaur energy systems causing global warming

Report Cites Major CIA Lapses Before 9/11

Insert: beautiful, beautiful words "Systematic Breakdown" - imagine a tsunami approaching a seashore village, and 50-60 people knew about it, but through systematic breakdown, failed to get the warning across and all died.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21, 2007
(CBS/AP) The CIA's top leaders failed to use their available powers, never developed a comprehensive plan to stop al Qaeda and missed crucial opportunities to thwart two hijackers in the run-up to Sept. 11, the agency's own watchdog concluded in a bruising report released Tuesday. Completed in June 2005 and kept classified until now, the 19-page executive summary finds extensive fault with the actions of senior CIA leaders and others beneath them. "The agency and its officers did not discharge their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner," the CIA inspector general found. "They did not always work effectively and cooperatively," the report stated. Nearly three years before 9/11, then-CIA Director George Tenet signed a directive declaring "we are at war" with Osama Bin Laden and directed that "no resources or people (be) spared," reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin. But the inspector general found "no…strategic plan was ever created" and no extra money or people were added to operations against Bin Laden. Yet the review team led by Inspector General John Helgerson found neither a "single point of failure nor a silver bullet" that would have stopped the attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. In a statement, CIA Director Michael Hayden said the decision to release the report was not his choice or preference, but that he was making the report available as required by Congress in a law President George W. Bush signed earlier this month. "I thought the release of this report would distract officers serving their country on the front lines of a global conflict," Hayden said. "It will, at a minimum, consume time and attention revisiting ground that is already well plowed." The report does cover terrain heavily examined by a congressional inquiry and the Sept. 11 Commission. However, the CIA watchdog's report goes further than previous reviews to examine the personal failings of individuals within the agency who led the pre-Sept. 11 efforts against al Qaeda. Helgerson's team found that no CIA employees violated the law or were part of any misconduct. The report recommends Tenet and other senior officers face possible disciplinary action, adds Martin, but a statement by the current CIA director says that's not going to happen. In October 2005, then-CIA Director Porter Goss also rejected the recommendation. He said he had spoken personally with the current employees named in the report, and he trusted their abilities and dedication. "The report unveiled no mysteries," Goss said. Hayden stuck by Goss's decision. Providing a glimpse of a series of shortfalls laid out in the longer, still-classified report, the executive summary says:
· U.S. spy agencies, which were overseen by Tenet, lacked a comprehensive strategic plan to counter Osama bin Laden prior to Sept. 11. The inspector general concluded that Tenet "by virtue of his position, bears ultimate responsibility for the fact that no such strategic plan was ever created."
· The CIA's analysis of al Qaeda before Sept. 2001 was lacking. No comprehensive report focusing on bin Laden was written after 1993, and no comprehensive report laying out the threats of 2001 was assembled. "A number of important issues were covered insufficiently or not at all," the report found.
· The CIA and the National Security Agency tussled over their responsibilities in dealing with al Qaeda well into 2001. Only Tenet's personal involvement could have led to a timely resolution, the report concluded.
· The CIA station charged with monitoring bin Laden, code-named Alec Station, was overworked, lacked operational experience, expertise and training. The report recommended forming accountability boards for the CIA Counterterror Center chiefs from 1998 to 2001, including Black.
· Although 50 to 60 people read at least one CIA cable about two of the hijackers, the information was not shared with the proper offices and agencies. "That so many individuals failed to act in this case reflects a systemic breakdown....

Red Star Rising: Russian Military Rebuilds

Marching in sync to fulfill Nostradamus's prophesies. As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. The new scientific comprehension eliminates the caveman 'club/stick' conflict resolution methods still used in the 21st century. Besides, caveman club/stick methods do not work well with nuclear toys, as they threaten all of humanity

Red Star Rising: Russian Military Rebuilds
MOSCOW, Aug. 19, 2007
NYT (Christian Science Monitor) This article was written by Fred Weir.
After a newly self-confident, oil-rich Russia teamed up with China in joint military exercises Friday, it is moving to reclaim the former Soviet Union's status as a global military power. A seven-year, $200-billion rearmament plan signed by President Vladimir Putin earlier this year will purchase new generations of missiles, planes, and perhaps aircraft carriers to rebuild Russia's arsenal. Already, the new military posture is on display: This summer, Russian bombers have extended their patrol ranges far into the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, forcing U.S. and NATO interceptors to scramble for the first time since the cold war's end. "Diplomacy between Russia and the West is increasingly being overshadowed by military gestures," says Sergei Strokan, a foreign-policy expert with the independent daily Kommersant. "It's clear that the Kremlin is listening more and more to the generals and giving them more of what they want." Economic Bloc Ups Military Teamwork On Friday, Mr. Putin joined leaders of China and other members of the six-nation Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Russia's Chelyabinsk region to view the final stage of the group's most ambitious joint military maneuvers yet, including 6,500 troops and over 100 aircraft. Also on hand were scheduled to be leaders of SCO observer states and prospective members, among them India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia. At an SCO summit in Kyrgyzstan Thursday, Putin stressed that while Russia is not seeking to build a Cold War-style "military bloc," he does see the SCO expanding from its original purpose as an economic association to take on a greater military role. "Year by year, the SCO is becoming a more substantial factor in ensuring security ...full text

Russia, China Hold Joint War Games

Marching in sync to fulfill Nostradamus's prophesies. As common sense in science is lost with the continued stagnation of our energy base and deep troubling theoretical foundational issues in physics, so too, Civilization's Survival Parameters fly out of sight, out of mind, along with the values and morals inherent within new scientific understanding which new energy systems would reveal. The new scientific comprehension eliminates the caveman 'club/stick' conflict resolution methods still used in the 21st century. Besides, caveman club/stick methods do not work well with nuclear toys, as they threaten all of humanity

Russia, China Hold Joint War Games
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 6:57 a.m. ET
CHEBARKUL TESTING RANGE, Russia (AP) -- Fighter jets streaked through the air as Russian and Chinese forces held their first joint maneuvers on Russian land Friday in a demonstration of their growing military ties and a shared desire to counter U.S. global clout.
The war games in the southern Ural Mountains involved some 6,000 troops from Russia and China along with a handful of soldiers from four ex-Soviet Central Asian nations that are part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a regional group dominated by Moscow and Beijing.
The drills coincided with a massive Russian air force exercise in which dozens of Russian strategic bombers ranged far over the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic oceans.
President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Hu Jintao and other leaders of the SCO nations attended the exercise, which followed their summit Thursday in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek.
The summit concluded with a communique that sounded like a thinly veiled warning to the United States to stay away from the strategically placed, resource-rich region.
''Stability and security in Central Asia are best ensured primarily through efforts taken by the nations of the region ...full text

US Slipping in Life Expectancy Rankings

Oh, the profits are divinely obscene! What health care? Bridges falling down? Let's Limbo now, lower, lower life expectancy...
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the priority one subheadings below remain in LIMBO ...................
Priority One A: energy evolution - stagnant and dead with a 100 year old equation, E=MC2, unexpanded, unevolved, petrified as in stone .............
Priority One B: Survival Criteria for increasingly complex, energy intensive 'holistic' global systems - nonexistent. (these criteria are derived directly from evolving energy stages beyond the caveman approach to nuclear energies - but then, that's The Trouble With Physics and pending trouble with civilization's future survival)

US Slipping in Life Expectancy Rankings
US Slipping in Life Expectancy Rankings; Other Nations Improving Health Care, Nutrition
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER
CBS The Associated Press
WASHINGTON
Americans are living longer than ever, but not as long as people in 41 other countries.
For decades, the United States has been slipping in international rankings of life expectancy, as other countries improve health care, nutrition and lifestyles.
Countries that surpass the U.S. include Japan and most of Europe, as well as Jordan, Guam and the Cayman Islands.
"Something's wrong here when one of the richest countries in the world, the one that spends the most on health care, is not able to keep up with other countries," said Dr. Christopher Murray, head of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington.
A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Andorra, a tiny country in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, had the longest life expectancy, at 83.5 years, according to the Census Bureau. It was followed by Japan, Macau, San Marino and Singapore.
The shortest life expectancies were clustered in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region that has been hit hard by an epidemic of HIV and AIDS, as well as famine and civil strife. Swaziland has the shortest, at 34.1 years, followed by Zambia, Angola, Liberia and Zimbabwe.
Researchers said several factors have contributed to the United States falling behind other industrialized nations. A major one is that 45 million Americans lack health insurance, ...full text

China Weighs Economic "Nuclear Option"

Time will tell the Gifts we bring to ourselves and our children in the next few years - the major forces at play accelerating and foretelling our destination are in the headlines - science suppression causing the Trouble With Physics and creating the stagnant energy science is an extremely unwise and lethal choice as it also deprives us of the evolutionary wisdom and understanding that accompanies new energy revelations - all requirements for survival Evolution Freedom Survival The Promise of New Energy



China Weighs Economic "Nuclear Option"
BEIJING, Aug. 9, 2007
(CBS) CBS News' Barry Petersen filed this story from China for CBSNews.com.
Talking about currency rates is a lot like being forced by Mom to eat your vegetables: you know it's good for you, but you hate it. So, apologies for offering a big course of Brussels sprouts here, but it is information worth knowing. The Chinese are holding and investing something like $1.3 trillion they made from selling goods to America. Now, some Chinese officials have floated the idea that these U.S. dollars could be used against the United States. Here is how the London Telegraph's Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reported the story: "Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning — for the first time — that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the U.S. Congress. "Described as China's 'nuclear option' in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the U.S. currency is already breaking down through historic support levels." The words that hit were "NUCLEAR OPTION". Rarely do you find that in a story on currency. Here is the problem: The United States maxed-out its credit cards long ago, and it needs to borrow and borrow both to raise still more money, and to pay interest on that ever-growing debt. The Chinese, with all those dollars, are willing to lend by buying U.S. Treasury bonds. That keeps interest rates down and that gives Americans extra bucks to buy… more goods from China. This is now a part of the presidential campaign. Here's what Sen. Joe Biden (D-Delaware) said at this week's AFL-CIO debate in Chicago about our debts to China: "This administration, in order to fund a war that shouldn't be being fought and tax cuts that weren't needed for the wealthy — we're now in debt almost a trillion dollars — a trillion dollars to China. We better end that war, cut those taxes, reduce the deficit and make sure that they no longer own the mortgage on our home." His comment drew this response ...full text

A Sudden Storm Brings New York City to Its Knees

More trapped energy, more weather

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the priority one subheadings below remain in LIMBO ...................

Priority One A: energy evolution - stagnant and dead with a 100 year old equation, E=MC2, unexpanded, unevolved, petrified as in stone

Priority One B: Survival Criteria for increasingly complex, energy intensive 'holistic' global systems - nonexistent. (these criteria are derived directly from evolving energy stages beyond the caveman approach to nuclear energies - but then, that's The Trouble With Physics and pending trouble with civilization's future survival)

August 9, 2007
A Sudden Storm Brings New York City to Its Knees
By JAMES BARRON
A brief but fierce storm drenched the New York region just before the morning rush yesterday, paralyzing the transit system, flooding major thoroughfares, cutting off electricity to thousands of homes and causing confusion that lingered through a humid, sweaty day.
The storm, which sent water gushing into subway tunnels and swirling over commuter railroad tracks, also unleashed a tornado that brushed Staten Island, then whipped southwestern Brooklyn with winds of up to 135 miles an hour.
That was perhaps the most ominous part of a deluge that left people wondering if they were waking up to a major catastrophe, with streets blocked by the twisted wreckage of cars with broken-out windows that had been battered by debris.
The deluge overwhelmed storm sewers, and one woman was killed after her car became stuck in a flooded underpass on Staten Island. The police said another car struck hers, starting a fire that burned her so badly that her body could not be immediately identified.
City officials said at least a half-dozen people elsewhere had been injured by the storm.
Commuter rail service was interrupted, and hundreds of airline flights were delayed. Stretches of heavily trafficked arteries like Queens Boulevard and Flatbush Avenue were under water.
But the biggest disruption struck the city’s subway system, where most lines were shut down during the morning rush when the water knocked out signals, stranding or delaying millions of riders. Though the Metropolitan Transportation Authority restored most of them during the day, a half-dozen were still out of commission during the evening rush hour and the agency said some problems could last into today.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer ordered the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to review how the transit system had failed after a sudden downpour for the third time in seven months. At a separate news briefing, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg referred to “chaos with the subway system,” but refrained from judging ...full text

U.N.: Record extreme weather in '07

More energy, more weather
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the priority one subheadings below remain in LIMBO ...................
Priority One A: energy evolution - stagnant and dead with a 100 year old equation, E=MC2, unexpanded, unevolved, petrified as in stone
Priority One B: Survival Criteria for increasingly complex, energy intensive 'holistic' global systems - nonexistent. (these criteria are derived directly from evolving energy stages beyond the caveman approach to nuclear energies - but then, that's The Trouble With Physics and pending trouble with civilization's future survival)

U.N.: Record extreme weather in '07
Global land temperatures in January, April likely warmest on record
MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 6:50 p.m. CT Aug 7, 2007

GENEVA - The world experienced a series of record-breaking weather events in early 2007, from flooding in Asia to heat waves in Europe and snowfall in South Africa, the United Nations weather agency said Tuesday.
The World Meteorological Organization said global land surface temperatures in January and April were likely the warmest since records began in 1880, at about 3 degrees Fahrenheit higher than average for those months.
There have also been severe monsoon floods across South Asia, abnormally heavy rains in northern Europe, China, Sudan, Mozambique and Uruguay, extreme heat waves in southeastern Europe and Russia, and unusual snowfall in South Africa and South America ... full text

Airlines Sue FBI And CIA Over 9/11 Blame

What others are saying since 9-11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P682rGIhZwI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgfzqulvhlQ

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the priority one subheadings below remain in LIMBO ...................

Priority One A: energy evolution - stagnant and dead with a 100 year old equation, E=MC2, unexpanded, unevolved, petrified as in stone

Priority One B: Survival Criteria for increasingly complex, energy intensive 'holistic' global systems - nonexistent. (these criteria are derived directly from evolving energy stages beyond the caveman approach to nuclear energies - but then, that's The Trouble With Physics and pending trouble with civilization's future survival)

Airlines Sue FBI And CIA Over 9/11 Blame
NYT NEW YORK, Aug. 7, 2007
(AP) Airlines and aviation-related companies sued the CIA and the FBI on Tuesday to force terrorism investigators to tell whether the aviation industry was to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks. The two lawsuits in U.S. District Court in Manhattan sought court orders for depositions as the aviation entities build their defenses against lawsuits seeking billions of dollars in damages for injuries, fatalities, property damage and business losses related to Sept. 11, 2001. The aviation companies said the agencies in a series of boilerplate letters had refused to let them depose two secret agents, including the 2001 head of the CIA's special Osama bin Laden unit, and six FBI agents with key information about al Qaeda and bin Laden. The airlines, airport authorities, security companies and an aircraft manufacturer said they were entitled to present evidence to show the terrorist attacks did not depend upon negligence by any aviation defendants and that there were other causes of the attacks. They said that the depositions were likely to result in evidence showing the terrorists were sophisticated, ideologically driven and well-financed and would have succeeded regardless of any action by the aviation entities. "The aviation parties are entitled to show that operations conducted by the federal intelligence agencies were the most effective way to uncover and stop the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and that the inability of the federal intelligence agencies to detect and stop the plot is a more causal circumstance of the terrorist attacks than any allegedly negligent conduct of the aviation parties," the FBI lawsuit said. In the CIA lawsuit, companies including American Airlines owner AMR Corp., United Airlines' UAL Corp., US Airways Group Inc., Delta Air Lines Inc., Continental Airlines Inc. and Boeing Co. asked to interview the deputy chief of the CIA's bin Laden unit in 2001 and an FBI agent assigned to the unit at that time. The names of both are secret. In the FBI lawsuit, the companies asked to interview five former and current FBI employees who had participated in investigations of al Qaeda and al Qaeda operatives before and after Sept. 11. Those individuals included Coleen M. Rowley, the former top FBI lawyer in its Minneapolis office, who sent a scathing letter to FBI Director Robert S. Mueller in May 2002 complaining that a supervisor in Washington interfered with the Minnesota investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks. The lawsuits also sought to speak to Harry Samit, an FBI agent in the Minneapolis office who was among those who arrested Moussaoui in August 2001. They said he had testified that he suggested to his superiors ...full text