Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Crime. Show all posts

Monday, February 2, 2009

Eeyores News ans View

I wanted to do something about Earthquakes and the activity on the West Coast and EZ at FRC posted this article, the next few article's and pictures are showing a newer pattern of earthquakes and possible volcanic activity along the west coast.

EZ posted
I DON'T USUALLY DO THIS
earlier this month i was on a radio show talking about the increase earth quake activity all along the west coast ..
I watch it from this link http://frc4u.org/id14.html
it continues to increase and the activity seems to be getting worse through out the us --as seen from the link above..
I got up this morning to find this news story --4 weeks from when i brought it up ---
http://portal.tds.net/news/read.php?id=16886385&ps=1011&cat=&cps=0〈=en
im not claiming to be predicting anything just pointing out that the change i saw 4 weeks ago in the activity is now getting bad enough for the news to pick it up...
I suggest if you live on the west coast you keep your heads down and your gear ready ----im not convinced it's going to be limited to the north west...
I do have it as a priority to get some better monitoring tools up
I do suggest you go to this page and watch the jet stream to see how you will be affected
http://frc4u.org/id11.html
Then he posted this with the picture at the top
USGS Volcano Hazards Program Volcano Update
AVO update page and observatory web site
Unrest at Redoubt Volcano continues, though no eruption has yet occurred. Seismicity levels have risen within the last 8 hours. Redoubt remains at Aviation Color Code ORANGE and Volcano Alert Level WATCH.
AVO's website has been overwhelmed with traffic this morning because of extensive national news coverage. A backup, low-bandwidth webserver is operating with limited information.
Staff are currently monitoring the volcano 24 hours a day. We will issue further information as it becomes available.
Update in Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) format
Then i posted this one
There we two quakes: These are of interest to us as they are close by.
No Reports of Damage From 4.5-Magnitude Seattle Earthquake
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,485619,00.html
SEATTLE - There were no immediate reports of damage from a 4.5-magnitude earthquake
that rattled the Seattle and Puget Sound area early Friday, but it woke a lot of
people up.
The quake at 5:25 a.m. was centered 14 miles northwest of Seattle near Kingston, in
Kitsap County.....................

There we two quakes:
Region: SEATTLE-TACOMA AREA, WASHINGTON
Geographic coordinates: 47.772N, 122.556W
Magnitude: 4.5 Mcd
Depth: 58 km
Universal Time (UTC): 30 Jan 2009 13:25:03
Time near the Epicenter: 30 Jan 2009 05:25:03
Local standard time in your area: 30 Jan 2009 13:25:03

Location with respect to nearby cities:
3 km (2 miles) NW (313 degrees) of Indianola, WA
5 km (3 miles) N (8 degrees) of Suquamish, WA
5 km (3 miles) SW (235 degrees) of Kingston, WA
23 km (14 miles) NW (314 degrees) of Seattle, WA

Region: SEATTLE-TACOMA AREA, WASHINGTON
Geographic coordinates: 47.890N, 122.481W
Magnitude: 4.6 Mb
Depth: 5 km
Universal Time (UTC): 30 Jan 2009 13:25:01
Time near the Epicenter: 30 Jan 2009 05:25:01
Local standard time in your area: 30 Jan 2009 13:25:01

Location with respect to nearby cities:
10 km (6 miles) N (8 degrees) of Kingston, WA
13 km (8 miles) NNW (327 degrees) of Woodway, WA
13 km (8 miles) NW (315 degrees) of Edmonds, WA
31 km (20 miles) NNW (339 degrees) of Seattle, WA

Is this the road we in the Us are headed down? At some point, money is worthless when the people quite trusting it. You ca not just keep printing it. One of these days the people in the US will look at the man behind the curtain and get a shock. Here are two articles Zimbabwe and the results of just printing money. Thanks to the Florida Guy at Survival Blog for the articles
Zimbabwe abandons its currency
Shoppers in Harare discuss the implications of paying in other currencies
Zimbabweans will be allowed to conduct business in other currencies, alongside the Zimbabwe dollar, in an effort to stem the country's runaway inflation.
The announcement was made by acting Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa.
BBC southern Africa correspondent Peter Biles says the Zimbabwean dollar has become a laughing stock. A Z$100 trillion note was recently introduced.
Until now only licensed businesses could accept foreign currencies, although it was common practice.
The country is also facing a deepening humanitarian crisis as well.
A cholera outbreak has killed over 3,000 people according to the World Health Organization (WHO).
And the World Food Programme (WFP) has revised up the number of people it says need food aid.
50 billion dollar Zimbabwean bank note
Our people are now using multiple currencies alongside the Zimbabwean dollar
Patrick Chinamasa
Acting Finance Minister
It now says seven million Zimbabweans are in need of food aid, up from 5.1 million in June.
WFP regional spokesman Richard Lee said the situation had deteriorated rapidly.
"The economic situation has worsened more dramatically than we had anticipated," he told AFP.
"The agency is being forced to halve the cereal rations given to hungry Zimbabweans so that all the people in need can receive aid."
Hyperinflation
Mr Chinamasa made the announcement as he delivered the annual budget to parliament.
"In line with the prevailing practices by the general public, [the] government is therefore allowing the use of multiple foreign currencies for business transactions alongside the Zimbabwean dollar," he said.
The country is in the grip of world-record hyperinflation which has left the Zimbabwean dollar virtually worthless - 231,000,000% in July 2008, the most recent figure released.
Teachers, doctors and civil servants have gone on strike complaining that their salaries - which equal trillions of Zimbabwean dollars - are not even enough to catch the bus to work each day.
Worthless
A 40-year-old Zimbabwean primary school teacher from the capital Harare, told the BBC news website earlier this week it cost nearly US$2 a day to travel to work, but inflation had reduced the average teacher's wage to the equivalent of US$1 a month.
He said he now made a living reselling maize to families in high density areas, as it made more money than teaching.
Before the announcement, shops in Zimbabwe were increasingly demanding payment in US dollars - a reality acknowledged by Mr Chinamasa.
"In the hyper-inflationary environment characterising the economy, our people are now using multiple currencies alongside the Zimbabwean dollar. These include the [South African] rand, US dollar, Botswana pula, euro and British pound among others."
A Harare resident said even street vendors were refusing to accept Zimbabwean notes.
Last year, the Central Bank was forced to slash 10 zeros from the local unit in an effort to make the currency more manageable.
Correspondents say that although the local currency will still be printed, all prices will be set in US dollars, making the Zimbabwe dollar irrelevant.
The country's economy is now on the brink of collapse - a situation worsened by the political crisis that resulted from last year's disputed presidential elections.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7859033.stm
Harare diary: 'Hope has died'
To be honest, we don't care about the politics that much any more.
We saw the failure of Monday's power-sharing talks coming - despondency set in a long time back.
These guys have failed to agree for about six months or more, so what was going to get them to agree this time?
As the talks were going on, we were talking about the incident over the weekend when the first lady - Grace Mugabe - slapped a photographer in Hong Kong.
It sums up the arrogance of those in power in this country. If you don't like somebody, you beat them up.
We read about it on a news service on the internet. It's not - as some have suggested - the pressure of the beginning of the end, I honestly don't think that thought ever enters their mind.
In town you now cannot buy anything unless you have foreign currency.
Even the vegetable vendors quote in US dollars and will sometimes let you negotiate to pay with the Zim-dollar equivalent for that day.
But if they could abduct her - such a public person doing such public work, gathering evidence of torture and so forth - detain her, ignore court orders to release her, then the message to the rest of us is clear: "It's business as usual; nothing has changed."
If you talk and speak your mind, you're labelled an activist - and that's it, you're gone. So that outspokenness has gone.
The one thing people have been excited about is the inauguration of US President Barack Obama.
On Tuesday, some people left work early so that they could be sitting at their TVs on time for when the satellite news stations broadcast the whole thing.
There's a feeling that because he's of African descent he's going be more involved with our politics and he's somebody who's going to really put his foot down that there has to be a solution.
There was this rumour going around that he'd invited opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to the inauguration, so I think people have this hope that Obama's going to have the Zimbabwean cause closer to his heart than [George W] Bush did and that he's going to do more to bring about a political solution.
The involvement of the South African and Mozambican leaders at the talks on Monday was just a waste of time and their taxpayers' money.
At the end of last year, the [Southern African Development Community] leaders at a conference on Zimbabwe's impasse asked Tsvangirai and [President Robert] Mugabe and their delegations to leave the room so that they could discuss the matter.
Mugabe refused to leave. So how on earth are you going to get him to give up a ministry, if you cannot get him to leave a room?
No passion
When I started doing this diary I was so on fire - I wanted to talk about what was happening in my country.
I hoped it would somehow bring the story to a lot more ordinary people - and there'd be action and something would change for the better.
But it's been a long 10 months and my passion and my hope in politicians has gone.
Even the hope that the MDC was going to change the political scene has gone.
We've basically started to label them as useless people as well - in as much as we appreciate that it's very difficult for them and they have tried really hard, when it comes down to it, they've failed.
But over the weekend I bought sour cream drinks - known as lacto - from a vendor for US$1 for two 500ml packets.
Some other guy came up and the vendor told him the same price. He said: "I don't have US dollars; how much in Zim dollars?"
The vendor told him: "I don't accept Zimbabwean dollars, sorry."
Inauguration rumours
The abduction last month of [human rights activist] Jestina Mukoko, has put paid to the feeling that it was safer to speak your mind - prevalent after the September deal.
I was becoming quite outspoken in my opinions.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7841562.stm

Florida beans and corn destroyed, potatoes delayed
By Doug Ohlemeier
Jim Monteith, sales manager for Pacific Collier Fresh Co., Immokalee, Fla., inspects some bell peppers Jan. 23, the day after a hard freeze struck south Florida growing regions. Florida growers were assessing damage from successive nights of subfreezing temperatures that hit growers Jan. 21-23.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Jan. 27, 3:40 p.m.) BELLE GLADE, Fla. — Cold weather damaged most of Belle Glade’s winter green beans and sweet corn.
As growers assessed damage from a series of freezes that struck south Florida growing regions during the overnight hours of Jan. 20-23, buyers should expect far fewer south Florida beans and corn.
“All of our beans were wiped out,” said Bryan Biederman, assistant sales manager for Pioneer Growers Co-op, one of the region’s largest growers of beans and corn. “Any corn we had planted for the month of March has been wiped out. It was truly a setback for our winter program.”
Biederman said Pioneer’s growers were assessing damage Jan. 27 and Jan. 28 before considering possible spring replanting plans.
For corn, Homestead growers normally harvest the bulk of production January through March with Belle Glade ramping up in spring volume in early April, though growers have smaller volumes in the ground for January and February harvests.
Belle Glade and Homestead-area bean growers plant and harvest continuously through the winter.
Initial reports had the freeze causing a 20% loss for Homestead green beans, squash and tomatoes.
Immokalee-area growers reported little damage to bell peppers and squash with damage to beans unknown.
The state’s tomatoes didn’t suffer much damage, said Reggie Brown, manager of the Maitland-based Florida Tomato Committee and executive vice president of the Florida Tomato Exchange.
“There was some spotty damage around depending on the farm and the condition of the crop,” he said Jan. 26. “But all in all, most growers are saying there was less damage than the temperatures would tend to indicate, which is a blessing. They got banged-up but they didn’t get wiped out.”
Meanwhile, for the state’s spring potato crop, damages weren’t as severe as initially believed.
Arnold Mack, president and chief executive officer of Mack Farms Inc., Lake Wales, and vice president of the South Florida Potato Cooperative, said production north of Lake Okeechobee into central Florida suffered the worst damage, ranging from 15%-40%.
He said the freeze may delay the potato crop by a couple of weeks.
“After the first and second morning, we thought we had quite a bit of severe damage,” Mack said Jan. 26. “But now, I think our farm has 30%-35% damage and that we shouldn’t give up on any of the potatoes the way the plants are looking. We should have some reduced tonnage but that first third of our crop was mature to the point to where it won’t be affected.”
http://www.thepacker.com/icms/_dtaa2/content/wrapper.asp?alink=2009-153858-579.asp&stype=topnews&fb=

FBI: Burgeoning gangs behind up to 80% of U.S. crime
By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY
Criminal gangs in the USA have swelled to an estimated 1 million members responsible for up to 80% of crimes in communities across the nation, according to a gang threat assessment compiled by federal officials.
The major findings in a report by the Justice Department's National Gang Intelligence Center, which has not been publicly released, conclude gangs are the "primary retail-level distributors of most illicit drugs" and several are "capable" of competing with major U.S.-based Mexican drug-trafficking organizations.
"A rising number of U.S.-based gangs are seemingly intent on developing working relationships" with U.S. and foreign drug-trafficking organizations and other criminal groups to "gain direct access to foreign sources of illicit drugs," the report concludes.
The gang population estimate is up 200,000 since 2005.
Bruce Ferrell, chairman of the Midwest Gang Investigators Association, whose group monitors gang activity in 10 states, says the number of gang members may be even higher than the report's estimate.
"We've seen an expansion for the last 10 years," says Ferrell, who has reviewed the report. "Each year, the numbers are moving forward."
'Growing threat' on the move
The report says about 900,000 gang members live "within local communities across the country," and about 147,000 are in U.S. prisons or jails.
"Most regions in the United States will experience increased gang membership … and increased gang-related criminal activity," the report concludes, citing a recent rise in gangs on the campuses of suburban and rural schools.
Among the report's other findings:
•Last year, 58% of state and local law enforcement agencies reported that criminal gangs were active in their jurisdictions, up from 45% in 2004.
•More gangs use the Internet, including encrypted e-mail, to recruit and to communicate with associates throughout the U.S. and other countries.
•Gangs, including outlaw motorcycle groups, "pose a growing threat" to law enforcement authorities along the U.S.-Canadian border. The U.S. groups are cooperating with Canadian gangs in various criminal enterprises, including drug smuggling.
Assistant FBI Director Kenneth Kaiser, the bureau's criminal division chief, says gangs have largely followed the migration paths of immigrant laborers.
He says the groups are moving to avoid the scrutiny of larger metropolitan police agencies in places such as Los Angeles. "These groups were hit hard in L.A." by law enforcement crackdowns, "but they are learning from it," Kaiser says.
MS-13 far-flung from L.A. incubator
One group that continues to spread despite law enforcement efforts is the violent Salvadoran gang known as MS-13.
Michael Sullivan, the departing director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, says the gang's dependence on shocking violence to advance extortion, prostitution and other criminal enterprises has frustrated attempts to infiltrate and disrupt the insular group's activities.
"MS-13's foothold in the U.S. is expanding," Sullivan says.
Kaiser says the street gang is in 42 states, up from 33 in 2005. "Enforcement efforts have been effective to a certain extent, but they (gang members) keep moving," he says.
MS-13 is the abbreviation for the gang also known as Mara Salvatrucha. The group gained national prominence in the 1980s in Los Angeles, where members were linked to incidents involving unusual brutality.
Since then, it has formed cells or "cliques" across the U.S., says Aaron Escorza, chief of the FBI's MS-13 National Gang Task Force.
The task force was launched in 2004 amid concerns about the gang's rapid spread. Gang members were targeted in broad investigations similar to those used to bust organized crime groups from Russia and Italy.
Among law enforcement efforts:
•Omaha: The last of 24 MS-13 members swept up on federal firearms charges and conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine were sentenced last year in the largest bust since the group emerged there in 2004.
The gang's strength dimmed as a result, but the nine-month probe did not eradicate the group, says Ferrell, who assisted in the investigation.
•Nashville: During the last two years, 14 MS-13 members pleaded guilty on charges ranging from murder to obstruction of justice.
Davidson County, Tenn., Sheriff Daron Hall, whose jurisdiction includes Nashville, says MS-13 started growing there about five years ago, corresponding with an influx of immigrant labor.
Last April, county officials began checking the immigration status of all arrestees. "We know we have removed about 100 gang members, including MS-13," to U.S. authorities for deportation, Hall says.
•Maryland: Earlier this month, federal authorities said they had convicted 42 MS-13 members since 2005. More than half were charged in a "racketeering conspiracy" in which members participated in robberies and beatings and arranged the murders of other gang members, according to Justice Department documents.
In one case, Maryland gang members allegedly discussed killing rivals with an MS-13 leader calling on a cellphone from a Salvadoran jail, the documents say.
Escorza says a "revolving door" on the border has kept the gang's numbers steady — about 10,000 in the U.S. — even as many illegal immigrant members are deported.
The FBI, which has two agents in El Salvador to help identify and track members in Central America and the United States, plans to dispatch four more agents to Guatemala and Honduras, Escorza says.
"They evolve and adapt," he says. "They know what law enforcement is doing. Word of mouth spreads quickly."
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-01-29-ms13_N.htm

Red State...Blue State: Food Riots, Civil Unrest, and a Disunited States of America
Good posed by doctor_fungcool on http://www.thetreeofliberty.com that is worth reading,IMO. 230gr

Russian economist Igor Panarin is convinced that the current economic crisis has a political component which will eventually break the United States apart into as many as six separate nations. He's not alone in this belief. It has long been a staple belief of racist extremist groups and is now being predicted by some on the religious right who are ready with plans for how to rearrange the nation in the face of the Obama presidency. Conspiracy monger Alex Jones even got in on the act on his radio show this weekend, suggesting that there is an active globalist plot to weaken America by breaking it into several smaller nations.
On Russia Today Panarin predicted the outbreak of a civil war in the United States by 2010. Panarin has developed some following as a trends forecaster, and while his predictions may seem outlandish, he is not alone in subscribing to the idea that a breakup of the US in a civil war might be the outcome of the current economic crisis. Panarin blames the impending crisis on poor monetary policy and the US abandonment of the gold standard, a concern which he shares with many on the extreme right in America. He sees a collapse in America equivalent to the Russian collapse of the 1980s as the economic crisis leads to infrastructure failures and a backlash from outraged citizens.
Panarin is not alone in his beliefs. Trends forecaster Gerald Celente from the Trends Research Institute is also predicting tax rebellions, food riots, and the potential for civil war by 2012, largely as a result of the Obama administration's policies which he believes will accelerate economic collapse. Celente has made some successful trend predictions in the past, though his predictions seem to be directed largely by a far-right political ideology which includes the now-standard hatred for the Federal Reserve system which is common among Ron Paul supporters.
The scenario for the collapse of the United States usually starts with food shortages and food riots, mirroring international food distribution problems which we saw emerging last year with the food shortages in Haiti and the problems with the rice crop in the far east. Couple that with sudden fuel shortages which cause the breakdown of the interstate trucking system, and you have a formula for regional failures in the supply of food. This might even be compounded by the collapse of the dollar leading to the inability of the US to buy food on international markets.
Blame for this would immediately attach to the government and anger would increase as the government attempted to use forced redistribution of resources to help out the most vulnerable parts of the country. With a negative reaction to this in the more self-sufficient areas of the nation, most of which did not support Obama and are not represented by Democrats in Congress, you have a scenario for regional rebellion. Perhaps not armed uprisings, but obstructionism, refusal to comply with the federal government, and state governments demanding more local autonomy and less interference from Washington.
One aspect of the red state vs. blue state dynamic of the country which is often overlooked, is that while the Blue States have come out on top politically, the red states are much more self-sufficient in resources and infrastructure. In a time of crisis this underlying dynamic would become painfully obvious, as overpopulated and undersupplied states in the North and Midwest began demanding resources from politically disenfranchised states in the South and West where most of the agricultural and energy resources are located. When the force of the federal government is turned to massive redistribution of wealth and resources, those who are on the losing end of that redistribution are going to be very disgruntled. When a central government which you feel does not represent you comes to take the food from the mouths of your children and give it to someone else, suddenly concepts like secession and civil war seem more appealing than they might under ideal conditions.
The potential for a breakdown of loyalty to the federal government and for states turning against each other on a regional basis is certainly real. The country could easily split in two on red-blue lines, or break up as some have suggested with the West Coast, the South, Texas, the Midwest, and the East Coast all becoming autonomous regions. The question is whether the current crisis is bad enough or will become bad enough to precipitate such a breakup, and whether the federal government would actually engage in the kinds of actions which would precipitate the breakup of the union.
Right now certain indicators suggest that while the economic crisis is real, it does not extend to the parts of the economy which would precipitate this kind of critical breakdown in society. The crisis still remains primarily limited to the large-scale financial sector of the economy. Small businesses, regional economies, and regional banking seem little effected by the failure of large institutions. Loan defaults for agriculture and small businesses are not rising like real estate foreclosures and are remarkably low when compared with even the crisis period of the late 1980s. The food and goods distribution system also seems pretty secure. The combination of the fall in oil prices and ongoing reduced demand have put OPEC in a situation where oil prices may continue to go down or stabilize at a lower level, keeping trucking profitable and goods flowing around the country. Even fertilizer and feed prices appear to be on the decline as a result of low natural gas prices and a record corn harvest. All of this makes food shortages which might precipitate a crisis seem
he main concern is how much money can be sucked out of the strong parts of the economy to underwrite the mistakes and mismanagement of the large financial sector. It's really not the food shortages we need to look out for, but the possibility that government may decide to bankrupt the productive 80% of the economy to subsidize the failing 20%. If the Obama administration continues the policy of trying to cover the losses of the financial sector and starts paying for dubious employment schemes by picking the pockets of working people, farmers and small businesses, they may reach the point where people won't put up with it any longer. That outrage over wealth redistribution is more likely to precipitate a crisis than any problems with the food supply, but implementing such a policy would take enough time that the likely outcome would just be a backlash against Democrats in the 2010 and 2012 elections.
If the worst case scenarios these trend analysts predict somehow do come true and our leaders forget the rights of those who did not vote for them in their eagerness to subsidize the unions and big money interests which put them in office, we may be left with nothing but an emotional appeal for the union…

Food Riots, Civil Unrest, and the Disunited States of America
Written by Dave Nalle
Published December 02, 2008
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008/12/02/0019352.php
See also:
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2008...019352.phppage 1 | 2 | 3
I don't place a lot of credence in Infowars or Prison Planet. But i do know the Tree of Liberty Forum, go folks there. The might be at Prison Planet also, but everyone has preferences. This is ust sickening and worse, scary if it is true. No President should be worshiped, when they tried to king George Washington, he was totally against it. We should be against it now.
School Children Complain Of “Obama Worship” During Lessons
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
January 29th, 2009
Several disturbing stories have come to our attention over the past weeks and days that further highlight how sections of the American population have elevated Barack Obama to a dangerously inflated “messianic” status normally only associated with Royalty or totalitarian leaders.
What makes the following accounts so much more insidious, however, is that they all involve children.
Perhaps the most insidious is to be found on the Tree of Liberty forum where a concerned parent from Las Vegas reveals that his 1st grader son has complained of having to pledge allegiance every day at school to a huge projected image of the new president.

The post reads:
“My son, who is in 1st grade, came home yesterday saying that he didn’t want to go back to school anymore. So I asked him why? He said that during the Pledge of Allegiance the teacher put up a large image of Obama next to the flag. I asked him if he was sure of this and I suggested to him that maybe the teacher just put up an 8×10 photo of the President. He said, “No, it is a large picture of Obama and when we are done Ms. **** turns off the image.” I also asked if they did this for Bush last year. He again said, “No.” This was my son’s first day back to school since before Christmas. He was on a 5 week track break.
My wife volunteers a couple of days each week with helping out with my son’s teacher doing various duties. She said that she would come in early this morning to see what was going on. She just got back and reported that this was true and then some..
She said she waited out in the pod area and could see inside 3 of the 5 class rooms in this section of the school. She said that when the kids stand, each teacher flips on the classroom overhead and a full body image of Obama, with six U.S.. flags behind him, comes up about 4 feet away from the flag that hangs on the wall. She said that the image has Obama staring straight at you with no facial expressions, just a serious look.
I asked my wife if Obama had his hand over his heart. She said that she was so taken aback by this that she didn’t see it. What is worse is she said that all of the kids in each class faced Obama instead of the flag that hangs in the corner.
What the heck is going on?
Guys and gals, I need some advice on how to approach this. I can be somewhat hot headed so I need to plan accordingly with what to say to the principal when we go in to inquire about this.
I am sure I will be brushed off so what is my next step? Obviously, it will be to the school district, but then who? The ACLU, Veteran Groups, Christian Groups? Who would be interested in this vile activity?
This is happening in the Clark County School District here in Las Vegas, Henderson area.
Anyone in their right mind will realize that Americans are not supposed to “Pledge Allegiance” or “Service” to a President. The U.S. Constitution, that piece of paper that Obama clumsily swore to defend and protect, states quite clearly that elected representatives are supposed to act in “service” of the people’s best interests, not the other way around.
Imagine the outcry that would have ensued if it had been revealed that huge images of George W. Bush were being projected onto the walls of schools every day during his presidency.
Indeed, a similar incident in 2006 did cause waves of consternation when video emerged of children at a so called “Jesus Camp” being asked to worship a life size cutout of Bush.
Seemingly, now that Obama is President, this activity is not restricted to “wacky” religious gatherings and is becoming commonplace throughout schools in America.
Another concerned parent relates a similar story on our own Prison Planet forum.

“I live in Toledo, Ohio & my 3 kids (16, 13 & 10) had to watch the Inauguration Ceremony in our Toledo Public Schools. My 13 year old daughter is supposed to write a letter to President Obama & my 10 year old is supposed to write 5 facts & 5 opinions on President Obama.
What do I tell them so I don’t get CPSB called on me?”
Given that he has been described as the “global leader”, it is quite apt that Obama worship is apparently not restricted to U.S. schools.
Two weeks ago, the Toronto Star reported on how Rowntree Public School now has its own “Obama Curriculum” complete with a theme song that “blasts” out the following lyrics from speakers in the school every day.
“Building blocks of a new vow/ A million stops and a new route …”
Children are asked to complete “Obama video worksheets” while learning all about the President’s life but apparently not what his policies are or even what party he represents.
As part of the curriculum, the students were asked to write a letter to the President, which is also featured in the article.
The final paragraph states “You are the best because you are the first African-American President in the United States of America!” and the children end by promising that they will “always remember your slogan, ‘Yes we can!’”.
The “Obama Curriculum” is clearly not an isolated phenomenon. We have also recently reported on how one teacher has suggested removing from school curriculums all classic novels that explore racial prejudice in society, purely because Obama is now President.
When added to the footage of glassy eyed children singing beautiful melodic songs about Obama (see below) and the now infamous footage of the Obama youth brigade children blindly reciting what their elders have told them to, these stories add up to a disturbing overall trend.
The youth brigades of Nazi Germany and the former Soviet Union are obviously an extreme form of this kind of blind indoctrination; however, they were more like scout organizations, their doctrines were never openly instituted in schools!
Perhaps even more disturbing is that there is no significant authoritative pressure pushing this kind of activity in schools. Clearly the teachers instigating the activities in the incidents related above are doing so of their own will. The phenomenon is a cultural one.
The fervor with which Obama is being received by portions of the American public is reaching a frightening level. It has come to the point where the new President is literally being hailed as the anointed savior of humanity.
We have flocks of celebrities encouraging Americans to “pledge service” to Obama, a disturbing notion given the fact that Obama has promised to found a “national civilian security force” and institute forms of compulsory community service for all Americans.
It is one thing for naive adults to buy into such groupthink but to also subject young children to this, a mentality akin to the desperate role worship of Big Brother in George Orwell’s 1984, is profoundly foreboding for any so called free society.
http://www.infowars.com/school-children ... g-lessons/

Saturday, November 29, 2008

eeyore's News and View

A sign of the times
Plenty of takers for man's basement pile of coal November 24, 2008 - 3:06pm
CLEVELAND (AP) - A ton of coal was just taking up space in the basement of Steve Hronek's 90-year-old house, but to other people it was an alternative-fuel treasure. The knee-high pile of anthracite coal was down there in 1997 when Hronek bought the house, which once was heated with a low-tech coal-burning furnace.He turned to a high-tech solution, offering the coal in an online classified ad to anyone who wanted it.One dealer said that type of anthracite coal, higher in heat and lower in soot than common bituminous or soft coal, sells for $220 or more per ton, but Hronek just wanted his basement cleaned up.The ad he posted Nov. 17 offered the coal for free _ to anyone who was willing to haul the big, heavy chunks out of his basement in Cleveland Heights.Responses from people looking for fuel started coming within 15 minutes and continued for two days, and people showed up with trucks.Hronek says all the coal has been spoken for.___Information from: The Plain Dealer, http://www.cleveland.com/


RefrigeratorConversion Smoker


1. Damper control
2. Shelves or racks
3. Smoke inlet hole
4. Metal baffle supported at 3” to 4” above smoking inlet perforated with many holes
5. Sheet-metal screws
6. Heat source:
Electric hot plate
Hibachi
Butane gas burner
7. Old frozen food compartment, or refrigeration unit space
8. 2 or 3 — 2” or 4” holes for draft
9. Alternate draft control
10. If refrigerator has no lower compartment, heat source may be placed right in the refrigerator, but preferably raise the refrigerator and build a lower compartment for the heat source.

A good smoke oven can be made from an old refrigerator. It is well insulated and so will hold heat, save fuel, and finish off food more quickly, for example, than the shed-type smoke house. The refrigerator already has a number of removable metal racks. It has a full-length door that is convenient for loading and unloading. Here are some hints for conversion.
It is best to keep the smoke-making equipment outside the storage compartment. This permits maximum use of the inside ca­pacity for the meat or fish being smoked. Cut a hole about 8” di­ameter in the floor; one inch above it, mount a horizontal metal plate as a baffle, to dissipate the smoke.
If the refrigerator is of the type that has the machinery under­neath the storage compartment, remove the motor and compressor. Utilize this space for making smoke with a hotplate and a pan of hardwood chips. If the bottom section is a removable vegetable bin, do the same. Or, for maximum capacity, raise the refrigerator on four concrete blocks, cut a hole in the bottom, and set the smoke apparatus outside. Build an enclosure of plywood, metal or concrete blocks around the smoke source, so that the smoke cannot drift aside, but is forced into the refrigerator.
In the top of the refrigerator cut one 3” or two 2” holes. Arrange something—pivoted metal flaps, bricks, etc.—to control the aper­ture of these vents. Alternatively, fit a two-foot length of stovepipe with a butterfly damper
Operating Notes:
To avoid cutting large holes, removing compressors, or making other major alterations, the hotplate and pan of chips may be placed in the main storage compartment.
It is well to bear in mind that a refrigerator is not designed to withstand heat! The author once converted a ‘fridge by cutting a hole in the bottom, then lit a fire of charcoal briquettes underneath, using green boughs to make smoke. Around the edge of the hole, the insulation was exposed. All at once, the refrigerator caught fire and the insulation burned up! Several similar incidents have been reported. So, for safety’s sake, use no other heat source than a hot plate inside a ‘fridge. With an outside heat source, do not let flames come near the insulation. Whatever smoke generating system is used, beware of excessive heat.
To use the cold-smoke process, dig a fire pit as described for the box-smoker, and lead the smoke into the refrigerator from a distance.
From - Home book of Smoke-Cooking Meat, Fish & GameBy Jack Sleight & Raymond Hull

Solar Food Dehydrator

Made from two cardboard boxes, some clear plastic wrap, and a little tape. You can build a nearly free solar dehydrator. Set it on a stool or chair and face it's solar collector towards the sun, and you have a functional food preservation machine for little work and even less money.

The above picture almost says it all. Using a long thin cardboard box for the collector and a taller, nearly square, cardboard box for the drying box. Boxes could be made to size by cutting and taping together small cardboard pieces. Line the bottom of the collector box with a black plastic garbage bag or paint the bottom with black, water based, poster paint, (lamp black or soot mixed with a little vegetable oil would work as well). If you use spray paint or other toxic paints, let the collector bake in the sun for a day or two before use. Cover the top of the collector with clear plastic wrap or window glass, etc. Tape it together as shown.

To increase the efficiency, you may want to cover the sides and bottom of both boxes with fiberglass or styrofoam insulation.

Drawing courtesy of: Mother's Energy Efficiency Book Copyright 1983 ISBN 0-938-43205-2


TESTS FOR DRYNESS:

Rely on appearance and feel to judge dryness.
Cool a test handful a few minutes before deciding whether the food is done.
Consider fruit dry when no wetness can be squeezed from a piece which has been cut - it should be rather tough and pliable.
Consider vegetables dry when brittle.

PRE- AND POST-DRYING TREATMENTS FOR FRUITS & VEGETABLES:

Steam blanching is safe pre-treatment which can prevent spoilage - especially of low acid foods such as vegetables.

Important post-drying treatments are:
Conditioning - i.e. leaving in open air for long periods to equalize moisture content.
Pasteurizing - i.e. exposing the dried foods to high heat to eliminate harmful organisms

STORAGE:

Ensure food is thoroughly cool before storing.
Store in small quantities in glass or food-grade plastic.
Check supplies frequently for contamination or dampness.
Keep in a dry, cool place (between 4 C/40 F and 21 C/70 F).

PREPARING FOR EATING:

Fruits - cover with boiling water in saucepan and simmer the fruit covered for 10-15 min.
- sweeten to taste at the very end of cooking.
- remove from heat and cool still covered Vegetables.
- soak all vegetables except greens in cold water until they are nearly restored to their original texture.
- use only enough water to cover and always cook in the soaking water.
- cover greens with enough boiling water to cover and simmer until tender.


This could happen anywhere at anytime, but this time of ear it is going to be happening more and more. Please becareful you and yours.
Woman robbed at Tysons Mall On Monday, Nov. 24 at 7:40 p.m. officers were called to 2001 International Drive for a robbery. The victim, a 58-year-old Potomac, Md. woman, was in the parking lot outside of Nieman Marcus when the suspect approached her.
He cut the purse strap and attempted to steal the bag. She fought for the purse and sustained a minor injury. The suspect fled and the victim was transported to Inova Fairfax Hospital. The purse was recovered.
The suspect was described as Asian, 25-35 years old, approximately 5 feet 4 inches tall and 140 pounds. He was wearing a gray hoodie and black pants.


Friday, November 21, 2008

Eeyore's News and View

With all the space junk and trash we have left up in space it is a wonder that the space staion has not been struck with some of it.
Astronaut loses tool bag, spacewalk to continue
HOUSTON (AP) — Flight controllers were revamping plans Wednesday for the remaining spacewalks planned during space shuttle Endeavour's visit to the international space station, after a crucial tool bag floated out to space during a repair trip.
The briefcase-sized tool bag drifted away from astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper on Tuesday as she cleaned and lubed a gummed-up joint on a wing of solar panels on the space station. She and fellow astronaut Stephen Bowen were midway through the first of four spacewalks planned for the mission. The tool bag was one of the largest items ever lost by a spacewalker.
As Stefanyshyn-Piper cleaned up a large gob of grease that seeped from a gun used to lubricate the joint, the tool case somehow became untethered from a larger bag and floated away along with a pair of grease guns, wipes and a putty knife attached to it.
"What it boils down to is all it takes is one small mistake for a tether not to be hooked up quite correctly or to slip off, and that's what happened here," said lead spacewalk officer John Ray.
Stefanyshyn-Piper and Bowen finished the spacewalk in almost seven hours by sharing tools from Bowen's bag. Ray noted that Stefanyshyn-Piper showed "real character and great discipline" by continuing on. She was the first woman to be assigned as lead spacewalker for a shuttle flight.

"Despite my little hiccup, or major hiccup, I think we did a good job out there," Stefanyshyn-Piper said after returning to the space station.
Flight controllers are considering having the two spacewalkers share Bowen's pair of grease guns for the three remaining spacewalks on Thursday, Saturday and Monday. They could also use caulking guns meant for repairing the space shuttle. Another option is to have one spacewalker clean the joint while the other uses the grease gun to lubricate it.
For more than a year, the joint has been unable to automatically point the right-side solar wings toward the sun for maximum energy production.
Officials weren't worried the bag would hit the space station or the docked space shuttle because by late Tuesday it already was 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) in front of the orbiting complex, said flight director Ginger Kerrick.
"It is definitely moving away with every orbit," Kerrick said.
Inside the space station, crewmembers were so ahead of schedule in moving equipment delivered by Endeavour that shuttle flight planners were contemplating skipping an extra day at the outpost orbiting 220 miles (355 kilometers) above Earth.
The equipment includes a recycling system that converts urine into water, an extra bathroom, kitchenette, two bedrooms, an exercise machine and refrigerator that will allow space station residents to enjoy cold drinks for the first time. And the extra gear will allow the space station's crew to double to six next year.
The water recycling system was to be hooked up late Wednesday, and the first batch of urine would run through the system later in the week. Samples will be flown back to Earth for safety tests before astronauts use it.

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/space/2008-11-18-space-shuttle_N.htm
(If you go to the link they have some neat graphics and video also)

European Stocks Advance; Total, Shell, Alcatel Lead the Gains
By Adam Haigh
Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- European
stocks rose as higher oil prices lifted energy producers and better-than-expected earnings from Hewlett-Packard Co. and Home Depot Inc. eased concern the recession will snuff out profits.
Total SA, Europe's third-largest energy producer, and BP Plc climbed more than 4 percent as crude gained. Alcatel-Lucent SA jumped 4.8 percent on Dassault Aviation's 1.56 billion-euro ($2 billion) offer for Alcatel's stake in Thales SA.
The
Dow Jones Stoxx 600 Index added 0.8 percent at 201.91 in London, reversing an earlier decline of as much as 2.2 percent. The gauge has lost 45 percent this year as writedowns and credit losses topped $965 billion in the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
U.S. earnings are ``reassuring the market,'' said
Arnaud Scarpaci, a fund manager at Agilis Gestion in Paris, which oversees $152 million. The market ``seems oversold,'' he said.
The Stoxx 600 is valued at 9 times reported earnings of the companies in the index, below the four-year average of 14 times profit. The gauge traded at 7.9 times earnings in Oct. 27, the lowest since at least January 2002.
National benchmark indexes increased in nine of the 18 markets in western Europe. The U.K.'s FTSE 100 rose 1.9 percent, and France's CAC 40 gained 1.1 percent. Germany's DAX added 0.5 percent.
Total climbed 4.6 percent to 40.76 euros. BP, Europe's second-biggest oil producer, added 4.1 percent to 507.5 pence, and Royal Dutch Shell Plc, the largest, gained 3.9 percent to 1,693 pence.
Oil Gains
Crude oil for December delivery rose 75 cents, or 1.4 percent, to $55.70 a barrel in New York.
Alcatel-Lucent jumped 4.8 percent to 1.90 euros. Dassault Aviation offered 1.56 billion euros ($2 billion) for Alcatel- Lucent's 20.8 percent stake in
Thales SA.
Earnings from Hewlett-Packard, the world's biggest maker of personal computers, and Home Depot, the largest home-improvement retailer, signaled they are withstanding the economic slowdown. Banks led declines earlier today as concern the economic slowdown will trigger more losses, while Burberry Group Plc's forecast disappointed investors.
BNP Paribas SA dropped 5.1 percent to 40.81 euros. UBS AG, the Swiss bank that got a $59.2 billion aid package from the state and central bank, lost 3.5 percent to 13.27 francs.
The cost of protecting bank bonds from default rose to the highest in almost a month as prices of mortgage-linked securities tumble.
Burberry
Burberry, the London-based luxury goods company, slid 13 percent to 175 pence after saying pretax earnings may be at the ``mid to lower'' end of analysts' projections in the current fiscal year.
Earnings for the 1,829 companies in western Europe that reported results since Oct. 7 declined 9.9 percent on average, trailing expectations by 6 percent, Bloomberg data show.
Analysts now predict profit will slide 10 percent in 2008, compared with 11 percent growth forecast at the start of the year, the data show.
Carphone Warehouse Group Plc slumped 9.4 percent to 118 pence. Europe's largest mobile-phone retailer said it won't sell the TalkTalk Internet unit as it considers splitting into two listed companies.
ERG SpA, Italy's biggest exporter of oil products, slipped 4.6 percent to 11.26 euros. Morgan Stanley gave it an
``underweight'' recommendation and a price estimate of 10.40 euros on the shares.
Bilfinger Berger AG, Germany's second-largest construction company, led construction shares lower after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. added the stock to its ``conviction sell'' list, citing expectations for lower capital spending in chemicals and oil industries. The shares lost 4.9 percent to 30.61 euros.
Hochtief AG, Germany's biggest construction company, sank 2.8 percent to 27.66 euros.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a6LygoxbIcxc&refer=home

Here are a couple of articles that go along with the pirate post, i did this past Wednesday. The first one is about how as BadTimes set in the crime rate will increase. The story is from Scotland, but it will happen here also. The others are about the Pirate problems.

Inside Home Affairs: Heading for recession – and the crime wave that goes with it

Published Date: 19 November 2008

By Michael Howie

NOW that people increasingly feel they cannot afford that new HD TV or hi-fi, will they be more likely to steal it?

That is the question senior police officers are asking themselves as the economic downturn starts to bite in Scotland.

After several years of declining crime rates, there are some indications the tide may be turning as recession triggers an increase in shoplifting, housebreaking, fraud and other "dishonesty" offences.

Last week, a report from Lothian and Borders Police showed a 9 per cent increase in crimes of dishonesty, year on year, for the three months ending 30 September.

Tom Halpin, the force's acting chief constable, said he was "very alert to the possibility that the current financial climate could have had an effect on the level of crime".

A 9 per cent increase means more than 1,500 more crimes were committed in the force area in one quarter.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, recently warned violent crime could grow by nearly a fifth – a prediction based on what happened during the 1991-2 recession.

The Home Office has singled out attacks on immigrants, who may be blamed for "stealing jobs", as a particular concern.

It appears, however, that a credit-crunch crime wave has yet to hit us.

The Scotsman has learned that, since April, crimes of dishonesty have fallen in at least four of Scotland's eight police force areas – Grampian, Fife, Central Scotland and Dumfries and Galloway.

However, most experts are in agreement: crime rates will increase as the recession deepens.

And one leading academic told me: "We are likely to see rates of imprisonment rise as unemployment rises.

"Courts tend to favour custodial sentences because unemployment people will have more free time and therefore be more inclined to commit further offences."

A rise in white-collar crime is also predicted, as tens of thousands of middle-class workers face redundancy.

The picture appears to be bleak indeed.

http://news.scotsman.com/scotland/Heading-for-recession--and.4706853.jp

Off Africa's coast, pirates 'out of control'

By Tom Vanden Brook, Jim Michaels and Peter Eisler, USA TODAY

They come out of the darkness in the waters off the coast of East Africa, zooming up in speedboats to the sides of massive cargo ships, armed with grappling hooks, AK-47s and rocket-propelled grenades.

Quickly, these modern-day pirates climb aboard their prey: cargo ships that contain food, machine parts and, most recently, oil or enough weaponry to supply a small army. Most of the time they meet no opposition — only frightened, unarmed crews who find themselves prisoners and held for ransoms that have exceeded $1 million.

Based in Somalia, these pirates are only a little like the images of the daring, swashbuckling thieves who have gallivanted through Hollywood movies or adventure stories that have been passed on for generations.

These pirates typically use the Global Positioning System to coordinate attacks along major shipping corridors in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Aden. A report last month by Chatham House, a British think tank, said that once aboard, Somali pirates typically are focused on demanding a ransom from the ship's operators and chewing khat, a narcotic leaf that is a stimulant, that they bring with them.

| Sirius Star

Piracy off Somalia's coast has long been a symbol of that African nation's instability. Now attacks on shipping are soaring and becoming more brazen, heightening concerns about the safety of shipping from oil-rich areas in Africa and the Middle East at a time of global economic instability.

The potential for Somali renegades to send tremors through the world's economy was clear Saturday, when pirates captured their biggest prize to date: the Sirius Star, a Saudi supertanker brimming with 2 million barrels of oil (estimated value: $100 million).

The Times of London reported Wednesday the Saudi government had confirmed that the ship's owner — Vela International Marine — was negotiating a possible ransom with pirates who boarded the oil tanker more than 450 nautical miles from the Kenyan port of Mombasa.

The pirates' raid of the Sirius Star — and hijackings Tuesday in the Gulf of Aden of a Thai ship with 16 crewmembers and an Iranian cargo vessel with a crew of 25 — are signs that attacks by loosely organized bands of Somali pirates are "a criminal enterprise which has gone completely out of control," says Capt. Pottengal Mukundan, director of the International Maritime Bureau, which tracks piracy.

U.S. and British analysts say the series of raids underscore worries that terrorists could dive into the same lawless seas off East Africa, capture booty to finance their operations or mount a spectacular attack with a seized ship.

"There is serious concern that terrorists see piracy as an opportunity for themselves," says Roger Middleton, an expert on piracy at Chatham House. "It can provide the means to generate enormous amounts of money, or to capture a boat with the more disturbing prospect of a huge oil tanker as a floating bomb."

In March, the Pentagon confirmed that U.S. forces attacked a suspected al-Qaeda terrorist in Somalia.

Pirates already are driving up the cost of shipping and insurance. Some shipping lines have begun avoiding the shipping corridors near Somalia and their shortcut to the West through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, which can add between five and 10 days to a trip from Asia to Europe, says David Ellis, president of Odfjell USA, a Norwegian-owned shipping company. Each extra day at sea, he says, costs about $30,000.

Environmental catastrophe looms if a supertanker is punctured during an attack or purposely sunk, Middleton says.

The Bush administration is trying to coordinate efforts to stop the pirates, although military officials say they can't stop all pirates because there are too many ships in a huge area to protect.

"We're working with other members of the Security Council right now to see if there are actions that we can do to more effectively fight against piracy and prevent it," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Wednesday.

Meantime, the pirates continue to operate with near impunity across broad swaths of the Indian Ocean. They often anchor their seized boats near the ungoverned Somali coast and wait for the ships' owners to pay increasingly lucrative ransoms.

This year, pirates have attacked at least 95 ships near Somalia, including 38 hijackings, Mukundan says. More than 740 crewmembers have been taken hostage. There has been one fatality, Middleton says, adding that he fears hijackings could become increasingly violent.

Last year saw fewer than 25 attacks. As recently as 2004, pirates made just five raids. During the last week alone, pirates attacked 11 ships off Somalia and in the Gulf of Aden.

The pirates' targets usually are slow-moving cargo ships that can't match the mobility of the pirates' small, swift 15-foot skiffs powered by outboard engines. The pirates zip around the larger ships, locate a low deck and climb aboard with rope ladders. The shipping vessels' small crews — the huge supertanker had just 25 aboard — often are armed lightly, if at all, and are easily subdued by pirates with automatic weapons.

"Clearly, they are tactically proficient at what they do," says Cmdr. Jane Campbell, spokeswoman for the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain, which patrols the region.

At first, the pirates worked in the waters close to shore. Now, they're ranging into open waters, expanding their range with so-called mother ships. These vessels, often fishing trawlers, can hold several skiffs and travel hundreds of miles offshore to menace shipping lanes.

For now, money appears to be the primary motive for piracy, Middleton says. A few years ago, ransoms in the tens of thousands of dollars were common. Last year, pirates gathered ransoms of a few hundred thousand dollars. In 2008, they have been topping $1 million. Ransom payments could total $30 million this year, Middleton says.

In one case, Middleton wrote, the ransom was paid in cash delivered by boat to the pirates on the captured ship. After splitting the cash, the pirates slipped away at night and evaded capture.

When coalition warships board pirate ships, they dispose of the weapons, but have to let the suspects go, Vice Adm. Bill Gortney, commander of the 5th Fleet, told USA TODAY on Wednesday. "That is the single biggest shortfall that we have. We could have a huge effect if we could solve that problem."

Fighting back

The challenge of protecting more than 16,000 ships that move through the region is enormous. Ships from the 5th Fleet, NATO, Russia and other countries cruise the waters. But the pirates' hunting grounds are vast: more than 1 million square miles. That's an area roughly four times the size of Texas or the Red and Mediterranean seas combined.

"We can't be everywhere," Gortney says. "They can be fishermen and 10 minutes later they're on the vessel," he says. "Once they're onboard the vessel, we have a hostage situation."

In recent months, there has been some success in fending off pirates. Last month, pirates captured 31% of the ships they attacked compared with 53% in August, according to the 5th Fleet.

On Tuesday, for example, the Indian Navy encountered a suspected pirate mother ship in the Gulf of Aden towing two speedboats, an Indian government statement said. The suspected pirates, seen brandishing rocket-propelled grenade launchers, fired at the Indian ship.

The INS Tabar returned fire and sank the ship. The suspected pirates fled on the speedboats.

The International Maritime Organization has urged its members to use a recommended corridor in the sea that is patrolled by the U.S. Navy, NATO and ships from other countries.

An average of 15 military vessels operate in the Maritime Security Protection Area, which was established Aug. 22 to protect commercial ships in the Gulf of Aden. Participating nations include the United States, Denmark, France, Greece, India, Italy, Malaysia, Netherlands, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, according to Royal Navy Cdr. Stephen Chaston, a NATO spokesman.

Another challenge: Ship operators often are reluctant to carry firearms on board, says Nick Knittel, vice president of Miami-based McRoberts Maritime Security. Weapons create bureaucratic problems, because shipmasters often must declare any firearms when entering a port, and the weapons typically are impounded by that country's authorities until the ship departs, he says.

Having weapons on board could make a situation more dangerous, says Knittel, a former Army captain with the 101st Airborne Division. Crewmembers could be wounded in a firefight, Knittel says, and pirates could capture the weapons and use them against the crew.

Many large cargo ships now feature satellite tracking devices that allow companies to monitor for any changes in course or speed — and contact authorities if there are signs of a pirate attack. Crews sometimes are trained to use fire hoses to fend off pirates, and many large cargo ships sailing high-risk routes light their decks with floodlights at night and assign crewmembers to watch for attackers.

Shipping companies also can hire armed guards to ride on ships, but in many cases "it's very expensive to have armed private security, like hiring over-the-seas mercenaries," Knittel says.

Even so, the surge in pirate attacks is prompting shipping companies to consider new ways to protect their crews and cargo.

Blackwater Worldwide, the private security firm that protected U.S. diplomats in Iraq, has offered its services and 183-foot ship, the McArthur, to any nation that wants to pay to protect its cargo. It's not clear what security measures had been taken on the Sirius Star.

Having security teams aboard cargo ships may help deter attacks, Gortney says. "Companies don't think twice about using security guards to protect their valuable facilities onshore. Protecting valuable ships and their crews at sea is no different."

Fixing Somalia

The ultimate solution to piracy: creating a stable government in Somalia, which is nominally under the control of a faction backed by neighboring Ethiopia. That, says Mukundan of the International Maritime Bureau, "could take decades."

Since the ouster of longtime dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991, Somalia has been under the influence of various ethnic and religious factions. U.S. troops landed there in 1992 to help restore order; in October 1993, a battle between Army Rangers and insurgents left 18 soldiers and hundreds of Somalis dead. That battle inspired the book and movie Black Hawk Down.

The United States backed the ouster of the government led by the fundamentalist Islamic Courts Union in 2006.

It's a "stateless society," says Stephen Morrison, an Africa expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "Until you get some semblance of order and governance within Somalia, you're going to see these kinds of developments — piracy, the insertion of radical Islamist movements … and you're going to see humanitarian catastrophe."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-11-19-pirates_N.htm

Russia sends in the navy to fight pirates Reuters | Friday, 21 November 2008 Russia will keep a warship off the coast of East Africa to patrol against Somali pirates.
This month one of its destroyers, the Neustrashimy (Fearless), scared off pirates trying to capture ships in the Gulf of Aden.
"After the Neustrashimy, ships from other fleets of the Russian navy will head to the region," Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky told the RIA Novosti news agency. Military forces across the world are trying to protect cargo ships using the sea corridor around the Horn of Africa linking Europe and Asia – one of the busiest trade routes in the world. On Saturday, pirates captured a Saudi Arabian tanker carrying a cargo of oil valued at around US$100 million.
The aging Russian navy wants to improve its image after a series of deadly accidents.
This month 20 people died on a Russian submarine when fire extinguishing equipment went off, releasing a toxic gas which asphyxiated them.
It was the worst Russian naval accident since an explosion on a submarine killed 118 sailors in 2000.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/sundaystartimes/4767721a6443.html


Depression 2009: What would it look like?
Lines at the ER, a television boom, emptying suburbs. A catastrophic economic downturn would feel nothing like the last one.
(Greg Klee/Globe Staff Illustration)
By Drake Bennett
November 16, 2008
OVER THE PAST few months, Americans have been hearing the word "depression" with unfamiliar and alarming regularity. The financial crisis tearing through Wall Street is routinely described as the worst since the Great Depression, and the recession into which we are sinking looks deep enough, financial commentators warn, that a few poor policy decisions could put us in a depression of our own.

It's a frightening possibility, but also in many ways an abstraction. The country has gone so long without a depression that it's hard to know what it would be like to live through one.
Most of us, of course, think we know what a depression looks like. Open a history book and the images will be familiar: mobs at banks and lines at soup kitchens, stockbrokers in suits selling apples on the street, families piled with all their belongings into jalopies. Families scrimp on coffee and flour and sugar, rinsing off tinfoil to reuse it and re-mending their pants and dresses. A desperate government mobilizes legions of the unemployed to build bridges and airports, to blaze trails in national forests, to put on traveling plays and paint social-realist murals.
Today, however, whatever a depression would look like, that's not it. We are separated from the 1930s by decades of profound economic, technological, and political change, and a modern landscape of scarcity would reflect that.
What, then, would we see instead? And how would we even know a depression had started? It's not a topic that professional observers of the economy study much. And there's no single answer, because there's no one way a depression might unfold. But it's nonetheless an important question to consider - there's no way to make informed decisions about the present without understanding, in some detail, the worst-case scenario about the future.
By looking at what we know about how society and commerce would slow down, and how people respond, it's possible to envision what we might face. Unlike the 1930s, when food and clothing were far more expensive, today we spend much of our money on healthcare, child care, and education, and we'd see uncomfortable changes in those parts of our lives. The lines wouldn't be outside soup kitchens but at emergency rooms, and rather than itinerant farmers we could see waves of laid-off office workers leaving homes to foreclosure and heading for areas of the country where there's more work - or just a relative with a free room over the garage. Already hollowed-out manufacturing cities could be all but deserted, and suburban neighborhoods left checkerboarded, with abandoned houses next to overcrowded ones.
And above all, a depression circa 2009 might be a less visible and more isolating experience. With the diminishing price of televisions and the proliferation of channels, it's getting easier and easier to kill time alone, and free time is one thing a 21st-century depression would create in abundance. Instead of dusty farm families, the icon of a modern-day depression might be something as subtle as the flickering glow of millions of televisions glimpsed through living room windows, as the nation's unemployed sit at home filling their days with the cheapest form of distraction available.

The odds are, most economists say, we will yet avoid a full-blown depression - the world's policy makers, they argue, have learned enough not to repeat the mistakes of the 1930s. Still, in a country that has known little but economic growth for 50 years, it matters to think about what life would look like without it.

There is, in fact, no agreed-upon definition of what a depression is. Economists are unanimous that the Great Depression was the worst economic downturn the industrial world has ever seen, and that we haven't had a depression since, but beyond that there is not a consensus. Recessions have an official definition from the National Bureau of Economic Research, but the bureau pointedly declines to define a depression.
What sets a depression apart, most economists would agree, are duration and the scale of joblessness. To be worthy of the name, a depression needs to be more than a few years long - far longer than the eight-month average of our recent recessions - and it needs to put a lot of people out of work. The Great Depression lasted a decade by some measures, and at its worst, one in four American workers was out of a job. (By comparison, unemployment now is at a 14-year high of 6.5 percent.)
In a modern depression, the swelling ranks of the unemployed would likely change the landscape of the country, uprooting people who would rather stay where they are and trapping people who want to move. In the 1930s, this took the visible form of waves of displaced tenant farmers washing into California, but it also had another, subtler effect: it froze the movement of the middle class. The suburbanization that was to define the post-World-War-II years had in fact started in the 1920s, only to be brought sharply to a halt when the economy collapsed.
Today, a depression could reverse that process altogether. In a deep and sustained downturn, home prices would likely sink further and not rise, dimming the appeal of homeownership, a large part of suburbia's draw. Renting an apartment - perhaps in a city, where commuting costs are lower - might be more tempting. And although city crime might increase, the sense of safety that attracted city-dwellers to the suburbs might suffer, too, in a downturn. Many suburban areas have already seen upticks in crime in recent years, which would only get worse as tax-poor towns spent less money on policing and public services.
"You could have a sort of desurburbanization phenomenon," suggests Michael Bernstein, a historian of the Depression and the provost of Tulane University.
The migrations kicked off by a depression wouldn't be in one direction, but a tangle of demographic crosscurrents: young families moving back to their hometowns to live with the grandparents when they can no longer afford to live on their own, parents moving in with their adult children when their postretirement fixed incomes can no longer support them. Some parts of the country, especially the Rust Belt, could see a wholesale depopulation as the last remnants of the American heavy-manufacturing base die out.

"There will be some cities like Detroit that in a real depression could just become ghost towns," says Jeffrey Frankel, a Harvard economist and member of the National Bureau of Economic Research committee that declares recessions. (Frankel does not, he emphasizes, think we are headed for a depression.)
At the household level, the look of want is different today than during the last prolonged downturn. The government helps the unemployed and the poor with programs that didn't exist when the Great Depression hit - unemployment insurance, Medicaid, food stamps, Social Security for seniors. Beyond that, two of the basics of existence - food and clothing - are a lot cheaper today, thanks to industrial agriculture and overseas labor. The average middle-class man in the late 1920s, according to the writer and cultural critic Virginia Postrel, could afford just six outfits, and his wife nine - by comparison, the average woman today has seven pairs of jeans alone. So we're less likely to see one of the iconic images of the Great Depression: Formerly middle-class workers in threadbare clothes lining up for free food.
If we look closely, however, we might see more former lawyers wearing knockoffs, doing their back-to-school shopping at Target or Wal-Mart rather than Banana Republic and Abercrombie & Fitch. Lean times might kill off much of the taboo around buying hand-me-downs, and with modern distribution networks - and a push from the reduce-reuse-recycle mind-set of environmentalism - we might see the development of nationwide used-clothing chains.
In general, novelty would lose some of its luster. It's not simply that we'd buy less, we'd look for different qualities in what we buy. New technology would grow less seductive, basic reliability more important. We'd see more products like Nextel phones and the Panasonic Toughbook laptop, which trade on their sturdiness, and fewer like the iPhone - beautiful, cleverly designed, but not known for durability. The neighborhood appliance shop could reappear in a new form - unlicensed, with hacked cellphones and rebuilt computers.
And while very few would starve, a depression would change how we eat. Food costs remain far below what they were for a family in the 1920s and 1930s, but they have been rising in recent years, and many people already on the edge of poverty would be unable to feed themselves on their own in a harsh economic climate - soup kitchens are already seeing an uptick in attendance. At the high end of the market, specialty and organic foods - which drove the success of chains like Whole Foods - would seem pointlessly expensive; the booming organic food movement could suffer as people start to see specially grown produce as more of a luxury than a moral choice. New England's surviving farmers would be particularly hard-hit, as demand for their seasonal, relatively high-cost products dried up.

According to Marion Nestle, a food and public health professor at New York University, people low on cash and with more time on their hands will cook more rather than go out. They may also, Nestle suggests, try their hands at growing and even raising more of their own food, if they have any way of doing so. Among the green lawns of suburbia, kitchen gardens would spring up. And it might go well beyond just growing your own tomatoes: early last month, the English bookstore chain Waterstone's reported a 200 percent increase in the sales of books on keeping chickens.
At the same time, the cheapest option for many is decidedly less rustic: meals like packaged macaroni and cheese and drive-through fast food. And we're likely to see a move in that direction, as well, toward cheaper, easier calories. If so, lean times could have the odd effect of making the population fatter, as more Americans eat like today's poor.

To understand where a depression would hit hardest, however, look at the biggest-ticket items on people's budgets.
Housing, health insurance, transportation, and child care are the top expenses for American families, according to Elizabeth Warren, a bankruptcy law specialist at Harvard Law School; along with taxes, these take up two-thirds of income, on average. And when those are squeezed, that could mean everything from more crowded subways to a proliferation of cheap, unlicensed day-care centers.
Health insurance premiums have risen to onerous levels in recent years, and in a long period of unemployment - or underemployment - they would quickly become unmanageable for many people. Dropping health insurance would be an immediate way for families to save hundreds of dollars per month. People without health insurance tend to skip routine dental and medical checkups, and instead deal with health problems only when they become acute - meaning they get their healthcare through hospital emergency rooms.
That means even longer waits at ERs, which are even now overtaxed in many places, and a growing financial drain on hospitals that already struggle to pay for the care they give uninsured people. And if, as is likely, this coincided with cuts in money for hospitals coming from cash-strapped state and local governments, there's a very real possibility that many hospitals would have to close, only further increasing the burden on those that remain open. In their place people could rely more on federally-funded health centers, or the growing number of drugstore clinics, like the MinuteClinics in CVS branches, for vaccines, physicals, strep throat tests, and other basic medical care. And as the costs of traditional medicine climbed out reach for families, the appeal of alternative medicine would in all likelihood grow.

Higher education, another big expense, would probably take a hit as well. Students unable to afford private universities would opt for public universities, students unable to afford four-year colleges would opt for community colleges, and students unable to afford community college wouldn't go at all. With fewer applicants, admissions standards would drop, with spots that once would have been filled by more qualified, poorer students going instead to wealthier applicants who before would not have made the cut. Some universities would simply shrink. In Boston, a city almost uniquely dependent on higher education, the results - fewer students renting apartments, going to restaurants and bars, opening bank accounts, buying books, taking taxis - would be particularly acute.
A depression would last too long for unemployed college graduates to ride out the downturn in business or law school, so people would have to change career plans entirely. One place that could see an uptick in applications and interest is government work: Its relative stability, combined with a suspicion of free-market ideology that would accompany a truly disastrous downturn, could attract more people and even help the public sector shake off its image as a redoubt for the mediocre and the unambitious.

In many ways, though, today's depression would not look like the last one because it would not look like much at all. As Warren wrote in an e-mail, "The New Depression would be largely invisible because people would experience loss privately, not publicly."
In the public imagination, the Depression was a galvanizing time, the crucible in which the Greatest Generation came of age and came together. That is, at best, only partly true. Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam has found that, for many, the Depression was isolating: Kiwanis clubs, PTAs, and other social groups lost around half their members from 1930 to 1935. And other studies on economic hardship suggest that it tends to sap people's civic engagement, often permanently.
"When people become unemployed in the Great Depression, they hunker down, they pull in from everybody." Putnam says.
That effect, Putnam believes, would only be more pronounced today. The Depression was, famously, a boom time for movies - people flocked to cheap double features to escape the dreariness of their everyday poverty. Today, however, movies are no longer cheap. Nor is a day at the ballpark.
Much of a modern depression would unfold in the domestic sphere: people driving less, shopping less, and eating in their houses more. They would watch television at home; unemployed parents would watch over their own kids instead of taking them to day care. With online banking, it would even be possible to have a bank run in which no one leaves the comfort of their home.
There would be darker effects, as well. Depression, unsurprisingly, is higher in economically distressed households; so is domestic violence. Suicide rates go up in tough times, marriage rates and birthrates go down. And while divorce rates usually rise in recessions, they dropped during the Great Depression, in part because unhappy couples found they simply couldn't afford separation.
In precarious times, hunkering down can become not simply a defense mechanism, but a worldview. Grant McCracken, an anthropologist affiliated with MIT who studies consumer behavior, calls this distinction "surging" vs. "dwelling" - the difference, as he wrote recently on his blog, between believing that the world "teems with new features, new things, new opportunities, new excitement" and thinking that life's pleasures come from counting one's blessings and appreciating and holding onto what one already has. Economic uncertainty, he argues, drives us toward the latter.
As a nation, we have grown very accustomed to the momentum that surging imparts. And while a depression remains far from inevitable, it's as close as it has been in a lifetime. We might want to get a sense for what dwelling feels like.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/11/16/depression_2009_what_would_it_look_like/