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Saudi Arabia is excavating a new archaeological site that will show horses were domesticated 9,000 years ago in the Arabian peninsula, the country's antiquities expert said on Wednesday.
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia | Thu Aug 25, 2011 5:38am EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/25/uk-saudi-archaeology-idUSLNE77O01R20110825
The discovery of the civilization, named al-Maqar after the site's location, will challenge the theory that the domestication of animals took place 5,500 years ago in Central Asia, said Ali al-Ghabban, Vice-President of Antiquities and Museums at the Saudi Commission for Tourism & Antiquities.
"This discovery will change our knowledge concerning the domestication of horses and the evolution of culture in the late Neolithic period," Ghabban told a news conference in the Red Sea port of Jeddah.
"The Maqar Civilization is a very advanced civilization of the Neolithic period. This site shows us clearly, the roots of the domestication of horses 9,000 years ago."
The site also includes remains of mummified skeletons, arrowheads, scrapers, grain grinders, tools for spinning and weaving, and other tools that are evidence of a civilization that is skilled in handicrafts.
Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, is trying to diversify its economy away from oil and hopes to increase its tourism.
Last year the SCTA launched exhibitions in Barcelona's CaixaForum museum and Paris's Louvre museum showcasing historic findings of the Arabian Peninsula.
(Reporting by Asma Alsharif; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
That doesn't sound like much though when you read this claiming horse domestication may have occurred as long as 30,000 years ago .........
SATURDAY, MARCH 5, 2011
Atlantean CroMagnons and Horses
http://frontiers-of-anthropology.blogspot.com/2011/03/atlantean-cromagnons-and-horses.html
CroMagnon Cave Art Depicting a Pregnant Mare Running Through Wild Wheat
Deriving from such sources as 'Secrets of the Ice Age' (Cited in Bibliography below), there are several lines of evidence that Cro-Magnon Man had domesticated animals thousands of years earlier than is generally
believed. At sites in France, engravings of horses -- estimated to be 15,000 years old -- have been found with what appear to be harnesses represented on them. Even more interesting are the fossilized teeth of some horses that lived in northern France about 30,000 years ago. These teeth show a distinctive pattern of wear, called "crib-biting," normally seen only in domesticated horses, kept penned in wooden stalls so that the horses chew on the stall walls out of nervousness or frustration.
The Atlantis Quest site based on the researches of R. Cedric Leonard is one of the better sites dealing with the subject: I waited for several years wanting to speak to Leonard but when we discussed a few things-such as I have been outlining on these blog postings-he angrily told me never to bother him again. However, here is his discussion on the CroMagnon domestication of the horse at http://www.atlantisquest.com/Taming.html
Domestication of the Horse
Przewalski horses grazing in pasture. The 30,000-year-old Aurignacian cave paintings of horses discovered in southwest France (Les Espelungues, et al.) seem to resemble the present day Przewalski Horse. Smaller than most domestic horse species, the Przewalski horses of western Mongolia weigh between 440 and 750 pounds, standing 48 to 56 inches high. They have stocky bodies, large heads, thick necks, and upright manes.
Competing theories exist as to the time and place of horse domestication. The earliest direct evidence for the domestication of the horse comes from Central Asia and dates to approximately 4,500 B.C. Since the horse did not change so radically (as did the wolf) due to domestication, it presents a special problem; thus when it comes to genetics the domestication of the horse is quite different to that of other livestock. (Bailey, Charles & Winder, 2000)
Studies have indicated that the genetic diversity among domestic horses is extensive, suggesting multiple events of domestication from genetically diverse populations, as well as different locations. One recent genetic study provides a much more detailed picture of how humans tamed and domesticated wild horses, indicating that it took many animals (mares) from many locations to form the breeds we see today.
The genetic material studied thus far implies that a majority of equine maternal genetic diversity must have been incorporated into the breeding stock at the time of domestication. Making certain assumptions, this study suggests that a minimum of seventy-seven wild mares would be required to explain the genetic diversity observed. (Ellegren, 1998)
Archeologically, several other problems are involved. Organic materials such as leather and wood are rarely recovered from such aged archaeological sites; and given unfavorable soil conditions, even bone itself is often destroyed. Another problem is that it is possible to ride a horse without the use of a saddle or bridle; and during the early stages of horse domestication, it is likely that they were usually ridden that way.
Some researchers see the possibility of it occurring at least as far back as the Pleistocene Epoch. Dr. Stanley J. Olsen, professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, notes that the numerous images found on the walls of cave and rock shelters of Paleolithic Europe imply a close relationship between the Upper Paleolithic Europeans and Equus przewalskii. (Olsen, 1984)
On its own no one type of indirect data can provide satisfactory evidence of horse domestication. Indirect evidence must have corroboration from as many directions as possible. (Levine, 1999) However, one important form of indirect evidence can be found in Paleolithic art. There is at least one Upper Paleolithic image of a horse and rider which would place horse domestication back into Atlantean times (Perrin, 1983).
Oldest known representation of an ancient rider on horseback.
Original line drawing by Abbe Breuil from the Trois Frères site
(a Magdalenian period grotto in Ariège, France; Perrin, 1983).
Among the artistic depictions of horses, beginning with the Aurignacian period more than 30,000 years ago and continuing down through the Azilian period, numerous engravings include lines which look for all the world like bridles. This is strong evidence in favor of the domestication of the horse during those early times. But due to the aforementioned problems, we are just as unsure that it was not a lot earlier than this.
Paleolithic engravings showing horses with straps and bridles
The bone and antler engravings of horses pictured here all have been carbon-dated to the Magdalenian period, circa. 14,000 to 10,000 B.C. Dozens of such carvings have been found in the caves of Southwestern France (Lasceau, Les Eyzies, etc.). It sure looks like bridles and straps are being depicted in these carvings, indicating that humans had brought them under their control.
Cave drawings dating circa 15,000 B.C. have also been discovered depicting horses with bridles at St. Michel d'Arudy, at the Grotte de Marsoulas, and at La Marche, France (all in Western Europe).
A claim, first advanced in the 1870s and recently revived by Paul Bahn, a British scholar, is that bone and antler objects known as batons de commandement may represent intregal parts of animal bridles. Such objects are usually made of a slim, curved bone or antler, which has a hole drilled through the larger end. Although the earliest Aurignacian batons are devoid of surface decoration, by Magdalenian times many were finely decorated with carvings of horses or reindeer. (Bahn, 1976)
A young British/American archeologist, Evan Hadingham (1979) of the University of Sheffield notes: "The Magdalenian carvers seem to have delighted in the difficulties of decorating the narrow, rounded surfaces with a fine tracery of complex and well-proportioned amimal forms." And these were usually reindeer or horses. The quality of the carvings can only be appreciated when a "pressing" is rolled out into a flat plane.
A number of Upper Paleolithic sites are scattered throughout the peninsula of Greece: among them Kastritsa, Asprochaliko, Seidi Cave, and Franchthi Cave. Of these the latter seems to have the most complete sequence of strata, beginning some 20,000 years ago in the Upper Paleolithic, continuing through the Mesolithic, and into the Neolithic of only 5,000 years ago. Horse bones have turned up in a number of such sites.
While excavating Franchthi Cave near the Bay of Argos, in the lowest stratum dating from 20,000 years, Dr. Jacobsen discovered sheep, goat, cattle, pig, and horse bones. Although he expresses doubt that these represented domesticated species, there were no doubts expressed about those found in the early Mesolithic strata directly above. These bones, he observed, were without doubt those of "domesticated varieties". (Jacobsen, 1976) Similar finds have been made throughout the area.
This overall picture is supported by excavations carried out by British, Greek, and German archaeologists in Epirus, Corfu, Boeotia, and the Peloponnese. The main evidence for Late Palaeolithic activity in these areas is largely in the form of flint tools, animal bones, and occasional ornaments made from teeth or bone.
Animal domestication during the Late Paleolithic may not be limited to the horse and dog. Unlike sheep or goats, the domestication of both horses and reindeer result in no obvious physical changes. At Isturitz Cave in French Basque country, in the Magdalenian levels, the leg bone of a reindeer was unearthed bearing evidence of a serious fracture that had healed. It was estimated that the animal had lived for at least two years following the fracture. (Hadingham, 1979) What are the chances of this animal having evaded predators for such an extended period, unless it had been tamed and protected?
Hadingham points out that, while maintaining a certain aloofness, reindeer are nevertheless subject to human control once becoming dependent on human care (like a pet), even to the point of answering to its name when called. This has been clearly demonstrated by the tribesmen of Northern Tungus in Siberia, among other places.
The presence of goat, sheep and horse bones in cave sites as early as the Late Paleolithic should tell us something. The bones are not charred, and there are no hearths. People of the Magdalenian period lived in houses, not in caves (although deep caves were often used for ritualistic purposes). Dare I suggest that the animals were being kept in caves, just as we use a barn or stable for the same purpose? It seems a reasonable inference to me. This would imply that the presence of these animals were as much for utilitarian purposes as for food—especially the horses.
Speaking of the Late Paleolithic populations of the Nile Valley, Smith (1976) wrote: "It has also been suggested that there may have been some tentative efforts at controlling or taming wild cattle." Depictions of cattle are engraved on the cliffs near Gebel Silsila, but it is unproven that the artists were Paleolithic. Of this we have no doubt: herding cattle would have been extremely difficult, if not impossible, without the aid of the horse.
Do the opinions of professional archeologists and anthropologists that Late Paleolithic people were "on the verge" of animal husbandry, or the existence of engravings of bridled horses prove that those animals were domesticated by the Atlantean people? No they don't. But they are at least suggestive of that possibility.
And in regard to "wild" sheep and goats, shouldn't Atlanteans who had domesticated such animals in their own country be expected to attempt the same among the wild animals on the continents? And shouldn't these once "wild" animals show signs of domestication with the passage of time? This is exactly what I see in the archeological and anthropological record.
Most modern experts tend to refuse acceptance of any given fact until it is proven beyond any shadow of doubt. I, being the "renegade" that I am, say, if it looks like a cow and smells like a cow, it probably is a cow. It appears to me that the evidence, when all facets are considered, tends to support the assertion of Plato that horses, cattle—and possibly sheep, goats and dogs—had been domesticated, or at least controlled, by the Atlanteans long before their arrival on the continents of Europe and North Africa.
Permanent settlements would have been impossible without some domestication of animals, and highly unlikely without some form of agriculture. And Cro-Magnon Man often created permanent settlements for himself. For recent discoveries regarding Ice Age agriculture, go to my Atlantean Agriculture page*.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Bahn, Paul G., Les Batons Perces . . . Reveil d'une Hypothese Abandonnee, in Prehistoric Archaeology t. XXXI, 1976.
Bailey, G. N., Levine, M. A., Whitwell, K. E., Jeffcott, L. B., "Palaeopathology and horse domestication". In Bailey, G., Charles, R., and Winder, N. (Eds), Human Ecodynamics and Environmental Archaeology, Oxbow, Oxford, 2000.
Davis, Simon J. M., & Valla, Francois R., Nature Journal, Vol. 276, No. 5688, December 1976.
Ellegren, H., "It Took Many Mares to Form the Domestic Horse," Trends in Genetics, Vol. 18, No. 10, 1998.
Hadingham, Evan, "Secrets of the Ice Age," Walker & Company Inc., New York, 1979.
Jacobsen, Thomas W., "17,000 Years of Greek Prehistory," Scientific American, Vol. 234, No. 6, June 1976.
Levine, M. A., "The origins of horse husbandry on the Eurasian Steppe," in Late Prehistoric Exploitation of the Eurasian Steppe, McDonald Institute, Cambridge, 1999.
Olsen, Stanley J., "The Early Domestication of the Horse in North China," Archaeology, Vol. 37, No. 1, Jan-Feb 1984.
Perrin, Timothy; "Prehistoric Horsemen," Omni magazine, Vol. 5, No. 37, August 1983.
Smith, Philip E. L., "Stone Age Man on the Nile," Scientific American, Vol. 235, No. 2, August 1976.
Vila, Caries, Savolainen, Peter, Maldonado, Jesus E., Amorim, Isabel R., Rice, John E., Honeycutt, Rodney L., Crandall, Keith A., Lundeberg, J., and Wayne, Robert K., Science, Vol. 276, 13 June 1997.
Leonard rather simplifies the situation because not all ponies are created equal and some experts see evidence of a second type of pony represented in CroMagnon artwork and domesticated separately, AND is the type specifically native to the North Atlantic region. That type of pony is the forerunner of Icelandic and Shetland ponies, and possibly and more controversially possibly some Native American breeds.
The Icelandic pony type would be the original Atlantean horse and a breed of it would have been used in cavalries and in racing. It would itself be an extinct breed today, just as whatever kinds of elephants they had in Atlantis would now be an extinct species.
The association of horses with Poseidon (Neptune) is however legitimate, but originally the god would be a solar god since the horse is a solar animal. The horse races in the horse course in Plato's City of Atlantis would also have a solar significance. Because of this and because of the racecourse I would suggest that the six statue horses associated with the monumental statue of Poseidon in the temple itself were actually racing around the circular base, probably in a clockwise circle. That incidentally is six horses and a hundred nereids around the base of the main statue, 6X100 again.
Because Leonard made mention of the Atlantean Agriculture article I add it below. The situation is even "Worse" than he states" forerunners of the Naftufans were also "Protoagricultural" at 25000 years ago, and even older evidence for regular cultivation and processing of plant crops is found in Middle Stone Age Subsaharan Africa, including manos and metates and as far back as 50000-60000 years ago. In other words, the Egyptians and Naftufans were only following after a precviously-estabished and more widespread African pattern. However, since that pattern evidently includes CroMagnons in Northern Africa, and using Solutran tools as one of the markers, it is simple enough to say that the Atlantean CroMagnons were migrants Out of Africa and following the same tendancy to Protoagriculturalism common in Africa at the time.
Best Wishes, Dale D.
*Atlantean Agriculture page.
http://www.atlantisquest.com/Agriculture.html
EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT AGRICULTURE
Was it practiced in Atlantean times?
By R. Cedric Leonard
"Of all the cultural innovations created by man, certainly one of the most profound in its effects has been the invention of agriculture. This seemingly simple discovery of planting, cultivating and harvesting food provided the basis for larger populations and opened the way to all of the complex societies and higher civilizations that followed. Why and how it came about after more than a million years of hunting are questions that archaeologists and natural scientists are today trying to answer."
The above words penned by Dr. Robert H. Dyson (1973), professor of anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania and Curator of the Near Eastern Section of the University Museum, express clearly the importance of agriculture to civilization. The invention of writing is important and can do much to consolidate a culture, but without agriculture high civilization can never occur.
It is generally held that agriculture began six to eight thousand years ago at Catal Huyuk in Turkey, at Jarmo in northeastern Iraq and among the Starcevo Koros sites in Rumania and Yugoslavia. But was this beginning an "invention," or merely a resurgence?
Dr. Philip E. L. Smith (1976), professor of anthropology at the University of Montreal, utilizes the term "invent" to describe the shocking appearance of agriculture in the Nile Valley thousands of years too early in the so-called "Late Paleolithic". An alternative explanation for this apparent "anomaly" might be that this is a case of an Atlantean colony making use of techniques already "invented" in Atlantis. Let's take a look at these archeological discoveries.
NILE VALLEY
At several sites on the Kom Ombo Plain (10,000-13,000 B.C.) numerous grinding stones used for the processing of food have been excavated. Elsewhere in Egypt during the same period flint blades, polished with use and looking suspiciously like sickles, have also been found. (Smith, 1976) Several workers, Dr. J. Desmond Clark, professor of African prehistory at the University of California among them, have found evidence of similar activity, not only at Kom Ombo but in several other places in the lower Nile Valley. Prof. Clark writes:
"It is all the more surprising, therefore, that the appearance of food production in north Africa is relatively sudden and we have as yet no evidence of the initial stages towards incipient cultivation there that we know in the Levant and Mesopotamia." (Clark, 1970)
The reason such "initial stages" can't be found may be that they occurred previously in Atlantis. Late Aterian sites have been found as far east as Kharga Oasis in the western deserts of Egypt, and also along the Nile in Nubia. (Clark, 1970) The Aterian people were type de Mechta (Cro-Magnon-like); therefore, we gather that the Cro-Magnon invasions of North Africa had spread eventually into Egypt and the Nile Valley.
Physically the inhabitants of the Kom Ombo Plain were fully modern Homo sapiens, which Smith describes as "rather robust" in build (Smith, 1976). Such a description fits the type de Mechta, which is the North African version of European Cro-Magnon Man: skeletal specimens increase in numbers in the direction of the Atlantic Ocean—strong evidence pointing to an origin in the west (Briggs, 1955).
Prof. Fred Wendorf and Dr. Romuald Schild, both of the Department of Anthropology at Southern Methodist University, have made discoveries related to agriculture in Upper Paleolithic times at Wadi Kubbaniya. Grinding stones, a mortar and pestle, and several harvesting implements have turned up. C-14 dates ranged from 15,000 to 16,300 B.C. Specific C-14 dates were 15,850 B.C. (±200 years) and 15,130 B.C. (±200 years). (Wendorf & Schild, 1981)
Cereal grains were also found at the same levels as the agricultural implements, which created a degree of excitement. However, tandem Accelerator-Mass-Spectrometer tests conducted at the AMS facility in Tuscon Arizona indicated that modern charred wheat and barley grains (originally thought to be as old as the archeological artifacts) had somehow contaminated the lower levels of the site (a phenomenon yet to be explained). (Wendorf, et al.,1984)
The two archeologists offered this observation concerning the abundance of agricultural sites being discovered: "These are not the only Late Paleolithic sites which have been discovered in Egypt along the Nile, nor are they alone in containing stone artifact assemblages which seem to indicate the harvesting of grain. Among others are several sites at Wadi Tushka, near Abu Simbel, at Kom Ombo, north of Aswan, and a third group [a whole series of sites] near Esna. All these are in the Nile Valley." The Esna sites, which exhibit "extensive use of cereals," date from 13,000 to 14,500 years ago. (Wendorf & Schild, 1981) (To compare with Ice Age temperature variations click on Last Ice Age.)
They further elaborate: "While the flaked stone industries from them are different from those found at Kubbaniya, the Tushka site yielded several pieces of stone with lustrous edges, indicating that they were used as sickles in harvesting grain." (Wendorf & Schild, 1981)
After excavating numerous grinding stones associated with the Sebilian and Mechian cultures dating 10,000-13,000 B.C., Smith writes: "With the benefit of hindsight we can now see that many Late Paleolithic peoples in the Old World were poised on the brink of plant cultivation and animal husbandry as an alternative to the hunter-gatherer's way of life" (Smith, 1976). This seems to be clear admission by Prof. Smith that incipient agriculture was bring practiced in North Africa during the Late Paleolithic leading into the Mesolithic Age.
Where Dr. Smith and I part company is when he refers to such activities as a "false dawn," which tells me he thinks it's a fluke. It's equally possible that these people were actually continuing an activity familiar to them in Atlantis; and that the practice was interrupted by the horrendous climatic changes and seismic disturbances accompanying the end of the Ice Age. We could be looking at a "twilight" of an agricultural practice, rather than a so-called "false dawn".
EUROPE
According to Dr. Thomas W. Jacobsen, classical archeologist at the University of Pennsylvania, there are indications that during the Final Paleolithic Age in Greece both plant and animal domestication had taken place. (Jacobsen, 1976)
The site, Franchthi Cave in the Peloponnese, yielded numerous microliths in various geometric shapes—triangles, trapezoids, denticulates—all dating from the Upper Paleolithic. In his opinion, the microliths, embedded in hardwood or bone, formed the cutting edge for sickles used in the harvesting of grain.
Jacobsen comments: "The microliths, many of them geometric, would have been equally useful to hunters as projectile points, to fishermen as harpoon barbs, and possibly even to the collectors of plants as a cutting edge for primitive sickles . . . the required analyses remain to be carried out" (Jacobsen, 1976). Intensive study of wear patterns along the edges of the microliths should eventually reveal their specific uses.
Identical microliths are found among numerous other Upper Paleolithic sites throughout Spain, France, Crete, and even North Africa; but generally their connection with harvesting has gone unrecognized. For instance, at Mas d'Azil in southern France Edouard Piette found a quantity of barley seeds along with microliths, suggesting that the Azilians (a Cro-Magnon people) had been cultivating that species of cereal. It seems some rethinking of the function of microliths might be in order.
Microliths are found among the Magdalenians (also Cro-Magnons), going back thousands of years into the Upper Paleolithic: and they have also been found in abundance among the Mouillian and Capsian sites of North Africa (Briggs, 1955). It is possible that all these Late Paleolithic people were using the sickle to harvest grain.
THE AMERICAS
Agriculture in South America has also been continually pushed back by new discoveries. Some time ago Prof. Robert Banfer, leader of an anthropological team from the University of Missouri, discovered an ancient farming village near Paloma, Peru. Carbon-14 dates of charcoal fragments place the date of the village at no later than 8,000 B.C. (Hammond, 1981)
The village contained hundreds of grass-lined food storage pits, demonstrating that these early farmers were thoroughly familiar with food production, storage and control. According to Banfer, the evidence indicates that they practiced a primitive technique of farming which denuded the countryside, eventually turning it into a desert. Among other crops, they grew peanuts, squash, and various kinds of peppers. (Hammond, 1981)
Even more startling is the discovery by archeologist G. F. Carter (1957) of matates and manos dating to 55,000-80,000 years ago at Point Loma and La Jolla near San Diego, California (I was stationed there in the U.S. Navy at the time). This was a controversial find, and during the intervening years the scientific community has conveniently swept this "under the rug".
[These dates were obtained by the Amino Acid Razzmatazzation process, on associated bone remains, and are considered unreliable. This was a problem with several "Early Man" sites in California at the time and most Archaeologists later spoke disparagingly of "Carterfacts"-DD]
Small slender, leaf-shaped points—looking for all the world like Solutrean flints—double-convex knives, broad-stemmed knives, and numerous fine plano-convex tools dating from 13,000 to 28,000 B.C. were also found by in the San Diego area. Were there "Solutrean" people in North America at the same time the Solutreans were in western Europe? (Click on Atlanteans in America for answer.)
CONCLUSION
Does the above collection of data concerning the practice of (at least incipient) agriculture during the Upper Paleolithic (i.e., during Atlantean times) prove that the Atlanteans practiced agriculture? No. But it illustrates clearly that the principles of agriculture were certainly known and used during those times by the very people who appear to have arrived in Western Europe and Northwest Africa from the direction of Atlantis! And this was thousands of years before agriculture began to be practiced along the Fertile Crescent.
And is it mere coincidence that the available evidence suggests that the so-called "beginning" of agriculture appears first among the Natufian people in Palestine—an Atlantean outpost, according to our hypothesis? I would classify the Natufian efforts (circa. 10,000 B.C.) as a "resurgence" (rather than an "invention") of agriculture, which eventually spread into other areas of the Fertile Crescent—a mere "restart" of an activity which had been going on for thousand of years in Egypt, Nubia, Greece, and possibly Atlantis.
There is one thing we know for sure. The civilization of Atlantis described by Plato could not have existed if agriculture was unknown to its people. According to Plato's Critias, they not only practiced agriculture, but also utilized an extensive irrigation network, which greatly enhanced the natural productivity of the land. This was the "key" allowing them to attain high civilization.
The archeological data presented in this article demonstrates that the principles of agriculture were known several thousand years before the Ice Age came to a close: yet we have been led to believe that the inhabitants of the Fertile Crescent "invented" agriculture for the very first time only 8,000 to 9,000 years ago.
No doubt the beginning of agriculture was a momentous occurrence, whether occurring in Atlantis or elsewhere. Hunting and gathering will not support large aggregations of people living in one place; neither will it allow people to establish permanent cities, since such populations must follow migrating herds when subsistence depends on hunting.
We are also told that the domestication of animals did not occur until after Atlantis was long gone, but Plato's sources may have been accurate on this issue as well. Plato mentions sacrificial bulls and a horse-race track; and according to Plato the Atlantean priests wore cloth robes, indicating that they either grew cotton or had domesticated the sheep. As promised some time ago, I am finally offering a page on the Domestication of Animals.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Briggs, L. Cabot, "The Stone Age Races of Northwest Africa," Bulletin No. 18, American School of Prehistoric Research, Cambridge, 1955.
Carter, G. F., "Pleistocene Man at San Diego," Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, 1957.
Clark, J. Desmond, "The Prehistory of Africa," Praeger Publishers (University Series), New York, 1970
Dyson, Robert H., In Introduction to "The First Farmers," by Jonathan N. Leonard and editors of Time-Life Books, New York. 1973.
Jacobsen, Thomas W., "17,000 Years of Greek Prehistory," Scientific American, Vol. 234, No. 6, June 1976.
Hammond, Allen L., "Unearthing the New World's oldest village," Science 81, Vol. 2, No. 6, July-August 1981.
Smith, Philip E. L., "Stone Age Man on the Nile," Scientific American, Vol. 235, No. 2, August 1976.
Wendorf, Fred & Schild, Romoald, "The Earliest Food Producers," Archaeology, Vol. 34, No. 5, September-October 1981.
Wendorf, et al., "New radiocarbon dates on the cereals from Wadi Kubbaniya," Science, Vol. 225, Nos. 645-6, 1984.
Speaking of disasters if that Hurricane makes landfall as a Cat 4 on NY there's gonna be a lot less of NYC left in it's wake. The wind tunnel effect there is going to be just ungodly. It'll make that storm in Ghost Busters look like nothing.
Awwww here's a theory you can sink your teeth into. :)~
Russia Reports Nuclear Explosions Hit Vast US Military Tunnel Network
Posted by EU Times on Aug 24th, 2011
(the sounds on the videos are pretty weird though)
http://www.eutimes.net/2011/08/russia-reports-nuclear-explosions-hit-vast-us-military-tunnel-network/
A frightening foreign military intelligence directorate (GRU) report circulating in the Kremlin today states that over the past nearly 36 hours the vast intercontinental military tunnel complex constructed by the United States Air force over the past nearly 45 years was hit with two powerful nuclear explosions at its main terminuses in Colorado and Virginia used nearly exclusively by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
According to this report, this unprecedented nuclear attack began on the evening of 22 August when one of the main air pressure relief tunnels for this CIA tunnel, located at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa Florida, was forced open allowing millions of cubic feet of air to rush suddenly into the atmosphere. The unique sound of this event was captured by video [3rd video] during a baseball game being played at Tropicana Field near MacDill, though US officials blamed the “mystery noise” on a faulty sound system.
This GRU report, however, points out that Russian engineers are well acquainted with this unique sound as they work feverishly to prepare an additional 5,000 bomb shelters ordered by Prime Minister Putin this past spring to be completed by the end of 2012.
Russian engineers were, also, able to duplicate this unique sound this past March when they were called into the Ukraine to vent a number of deep underground tunnels from poison gas that had killed three people near Kiev and which was, likewise, captured by video. [video below]
The most detailed video of these horrific sounds is from Ukraine, Kiev
These bizzare sounds were also heard in Belarus
The sounds were also heard in America
People from Canada, United Kingdom and Lithuania have also reported these strange sounds!
Within a few hours of the venting of this vast tunnel complex, this report continues, a nuclear device was detonated at its western terminus located near Trinidad Colorado with the second blast occurring nearly 12 hours later at the eastern terminus near Culpeper Virginia, and both causing powerful earthquakes felt by tens of millions of Americans.
Unbeknownst to the vast majority of the American people is that the vast military tunnel network constructed since the early 1960’s under their country has cost an estimated $40 trillion and with the exception of this attack shows no sign of abating.
The only known photo of one of the massive US Air Force boring machines used to construct this vast tunnel complex was taken by Little Skull Mountain in Nevada in December 1982 [top right photo] and is similar in design to those used to construct the Chunnel between England and France.
Maps of these tunnels, and the underground bases associated with them, have been compiled over the years by many independent researchers along with lists of their probable locations.
The specific tunnel attacked by these nuclear devices, this GRU report says, was being used by the CIA during their moving of their headquarters and all of their assets out of their Langley Virginia location to their new base located in Denver Colorado that was begun in 2005 for reasons still not fully explained.
The GRU speculates that the timing of this attack in hitting the western terminus first, then the eastern one, was more than likely meant to “trap and destroy” whatever the CIA was currently moving through this tunnel from Langley to Denver.
Most interesting to note is that this attack comes nearly a decade to the day after the 11 September 2011 internal war between the CIA and the US military establishment that rained destruction upon America, and then the world, but whose final battle has yet to be fought, or won, by either side.
To what the final outcome of this titanic struggle will be it is not in our knowing, other than to note that when two powerful forces like these collide, and as they have done so many times in the past, the ultimate losers end up being the American people whose delight in total ignorance as to what is happening around them continues to astound the whole world.
Thanks for that update. Sorry to hear you are so close to so much nuclear power.
Keynes and Hayek Head to Head | Roger W. Garrison
A (Hopefully Fake) Paul Krugman Laments The Lack Of Death And Destruction Following Today's Earthquake
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 08/24/2011 01:28 -0400
Google Gross Domestic Product keynesianism Krugman New York State Paul Krugman Twitter
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/hopefully-fake-paul-krugman-laments-lack-death-and-destruction-following-todays-earthquake
We truly can only hope that this Google Plus account of Paul Krugman is merely a well-orchestrated parody, because if it is indeed that of the self-styled uber-Keynesian, the time for the public outrage, his economic beliefs aside, has arrived. In a blast post on Google's imitation of twitter and facebook, which should immediately result in the termination of the Nobel prize winning economist if it was indeed penned by him, this particular account of "Paul Krugman" writes: "People on twitter might be joking, but in all seriousness, we would see a bigger boost in spending and hence economic growth if the earthquake had done more damage." Translation...well it's pretty obvious, but for those laboring under the aftermath of a full frontal lobotomy, the person who tweeted this essentially yearns for his voodoo economic religion to be validated following countless failures of Keynesianism (no, really, after this latest injection of Xx *illion dollars into the economy things will really be well), at the expense of death and destruction. Even more poignant translation: "Krugman" would like nothing more than to put an equal sign between the death of a human being and its proportional GDP replacement value. What next: Krugman lamenting that only certain races end up getting killed in conflict, those whose replacement potential is too low, demanding more death? Or that X number of deaths would have been more stimulative if it was really XXX? This is about as close as we will get to a Keynesian admitting that reparations for death and destruction are the only two special clauses under which fiscal stimulus does work. Which of course means that with idiots such as the poster of the above who actually thinks this, be it Krugman or some of his countless voodoo brethren, and with their proximity to the president, the only logical explanation is that a war is coming, and is being welcomed by all these s[h|c]am "economists", for whom human death and suffering is a fair tradeoff in preserving their tenure or modestly-paid, liberal publication blogging jobs. If this indeed Krugman's account, it is imperative that the NYT immediately terminate this pathologically deranged and homicidal psychopath. Institutionalization in a mentally insane ward may be a proper subsequent action.
Man I just cannot get on alexanderhigginsblog anymore. I can't even fill out the page that says you must enable cookies and type these words in this box. It's all jammed up.
Would you mind copying and pasting the article? It's really pissing me off I can't get to that page anymore. I guess it probably has something to do with my location on the globe, just doesn't want anyone in N. Cyprus accessing it? Any other thoughts on why I can't get in?
I went back and looked at solar activity over the past week and it's like a blank slate supposedly no coronal mass ejections or anything. So is it live or is it Memorex? It does make you wonder.
Sorry I didn't post on it here last night I was too darned tired. At least I hit Nuclear Hubris before I passed out. :)~ I did hear from many in my home town of Huntington West Virginia all the way over on the KY border, they said the whole town rocked even there. The courthouse now has a big crack in the rotunda. That's a looooong way away from the epicenter too. It takes about 7 1/2 hrs to drive to D.C. from there.
That was great.
I think though that the collapse is going to happen within the next 12 - 24 months and it's way ahead of the time that China thought it would have to get their house in order. The Japan thing is really going to accelerate this thing and no one is even considering what the real impact of that is on the world economy. It's as though it's not even happening the way they just continue on like Japan's not dying before our very eyes.
Wow that is quite a premium to pay but it is a nice sculpture.
Red mercury anyone?
Excellent
My cousin sent her goddaughter who was teaching about 60 miles N. of Fukushima a sizable box of potassium iodide from the U.S.. It was never delivered. I would imagine it was confiscated.
I feel the same way. :)
U.S. to build "Shadow Web"
When a wave of revolution crashed over the Middle East this Spring, many said what ended in the streets began with 140 characters or less—on social media like Twitter, Youtube and Facebook. Hoping to harness the people power of online communication, the US State Department is providing $2 million in grants for the "internet in a suitcase" to help dissidents circumvent repressive regimes' internet censorship with mobile web technology. But critics like John Young of Cryptome and Barrett Brown of Project PM say these "liberation technologies" could also allow governments and corporations to spy on and influence online revolutions.
Democrat questions TSA over Israeli-style ‘chat downs’
By Eric W. Dolan
Monday, August 15th, 2011 -- 7:44 pm
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/08/15/democrat-questions-tsa-over-israeli-style-chat-downs/
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) on Monday called for the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to halt the implementation of a new behavioral screening program that is modeled after Israel's airport security screening methods.
He is a ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security.
The 60-day Behavior Detection Officer pilot program began Monday at the Boston Logan International Airport. In the new "Assessor" screenings, TSA officers will ask passengers a few personal questions and look for signs that they may be hiding something. Suspicious passengers will be sent to a secondary screening or referred to a law enforcement officer.
In a letter (PDF) to TSA Administrator John Pistole, Thompson questioned why the agency had decided to implement a "scientifically unproven technique," noting there "is no scientific validation, limited or comprehensive, of the efficacy of the Assessor model of screening to detect persons who pose a security risk to aviation."
Thompson is skeptical that the results of the pilot program can determine how the agency should proceed with the "chat downs."
"Although the [Behavior Detection Officers] may not have interviewed a sufficient number of passengers to yield a statistically significant result during this 60 day period, TSA representatives indicated during the briefing that the agency plans on using the results of the pilot to determine whether the 'assessor' program should be expanded."
"As Congress and the Executive Branch continue to negotiate historic reductions in federal spending, it is curious that TSA continues to deploy personnel and divert dwindling budget resources to this unproven, costly and potentially ineffective security screening protocol," he added.
The Behavior Detection Officer pilot program is part of a nearly $1 billion national program called the Screening Passengers by Observation Technique (SPOT) program.
Citibank Accused of Murdering a Credit Card Deadbeat
BY JEFF NEUMANN AUG 17, 2011 6:33 AM 26,401 126 Share
http://gawker.com/5831666/citibank-accused-of-murdering-a-credit-card-deadbeat
Are you feeling the heat from debt collectors? Or maybe you just aren't sure how you'll make your next credit card payment? Whatever the case, just be thankful you don't owe money to Citibank in Indonesia. And if you do, don't accept an invitation to settle in the bank's interrogation room.
The Washington Post today has the horrifying story of a 50-year-old Indonesian businessman named Irzen Octa who owed $5,700 on his Citibank credit card. Fearful of losing his home, he accepted an invitation to be questioned at a Citibank office in Jakarta, which has a camera-free interrogation room for its mercenary debt collectors.
"Wish me luck," [Octa] apparently told his wife before leaving home March 28. "I may be signing a new contract and can settle our debts." He set off about 6 a.m. on his motorcycle, driving first to a school to drop off his younger daughter and then heading to Jakarta. He had a "very happy face," his widow recalled.
In the afternoon, a friend of her husband, Tubagus Surya, telephoned from a Citibank office in south Jakarta and told her that her husband had "gone." Surya, who arrived at the Citibank office soon after his friend collapsed, said in a telephone interview that he found Octa sprawled on the floor with his nose bleeding and bruises on his head and abdomen.
Two hours later, Octa was captured on security cameras being wheeled out of the room "apparently unconscious or dead."
A doctor who examined Octa's corpse the day after he died wrote two reports: One said he had suffered "asphyxiation" and a "strike from a blunt instrument"; the other said that he'd had a brain hemorrhage.
A "deeply saddened" Citibank said it had nothing to do with Octa's death. And besides, its debt collectors at the time were outsourced and weren't even Citibank employees! The bank's new country head, Tigor Siahaan told the Post that Octa "could have died of natural causes." He added that Citibank doesn't even allow "harsh language," let alone murder when it's trying to settle with deadbeats.
Hershey's Guestworkers Speak Out!
jobswithjustice 21 videos Subscribe
Uploaded by jobswithjustice on Aug 17, 2011
Hundreds of students paid $3,000-$6,000 each to come to the U.S. this summer for what they thought would be a cultural exchange program through the State Department's J-1 visa program. Instead, they found themselves packing chocolates at the Hershey's plant in deeply exploitative conditions. Some of the workers came to speak and ask for our support at the Jobs with Justice national conference. Find out how you can help at www.jwjblog.org/2011/08/student-guestworkers-sit-in-at-hershey-factory-your-help -needed
Synthesis Energy Systems Announces Successful Test of High Ash Chinese Coal for Use in China's Ammonia Industry
© Marketwire 2011
17.08.2011 15:49:41 -
http://www.live-pr.com/en/synthesis-energy-systems-announces-successful-r1049057828.htm
(live-PR.com) - HOUSTON, TX -- (Marketwire) -- 08/17/11 -- Synthesis Energy Systems, Inc. ("SES") (NASDAQ: SYMX), a global energy and gasification technology company, announced today the successful completion of a 5-day long commercial demonstration test at SES' Zaozhuang joint venture plant in Shandong Province, China where it gasified low quality high ash coal on behalf of Yankuang Yishan Chemical Industry Company ("YYCC"). The demonstration test was completed successfully and included operations at full load and part load and the syngas produced during the test met all production performance specifications, including high carbon conversion efficiency.
YYCC supplied the coal to SES for this test as part of its ongoing efforts to find a retrofit solution for a large coal to ammonia fertilizer plant in Shandong Province. YYCC's Shandong fertilizer plant, like many others in China, currently uses an older generation gasification technology which requires very expensive high quality coals. Based on SES' successful coal test, YYCC and SES plan to move into commercial discussions regarding retrofitting YYCC's ammonia fertilizer plant with U-GAS® technology. The SES U-GAS® technology can enable these plants to lower the cost of ammonia production through the use of much less expensive lower quality coals.
Robert Rigdon, President and CEO of SES, said, "We are very pleased with the successful completion of this test. The coal tested by YYCC is similar to many of the low quality coals we routinely gasify at our Zaozhuang plant and now YYCC has added confidence after watching their coal being efficiently gasified as well." Rigdon added, "China produces most of its ammonia for the fertilizer industry utilizing coal gasification processes and most of these facilities are limited by older gasification processes that require using expensive, high quality coals. We believe that retrofitting these plants with SES' U-GAS® technology can significantly lower the cost of production by allowing the use of inexpensive and abundant low quality coal. We look forward to advancing our discussions with YYCC for retrofitting their ammonia facility in Shandong."
"In gasifying the high ash coal provided by YYCC, SES' U-GAS® technology has demonstrated an excellent adaptability to low quality coal, and we are satisfied with the results," stated Mr. Zu Yu, Deputy Chief Engineer of YYCC. Mr. Zu added, "YYCC is following China's national guidance and requirement to transform and restructure its manufacturing methodologies, and as such YYCC is in search of a solution to alter the raw materials structure of ammonia and to utilize the local sub-bituminous coal for gasification into syngas in order to lower the production cost and to increase the carbon conversion rate. With this successful coal test, we more firmly believe that SES' U-GAS® technology is ideally suited to meet our specifications and requirements on production cost, energy consumption, environmental, etc. As a result, we are moving forward with our commercial discussions with SES."
About Synthesis Energy Systems, Inc.
SES provides technology, equipment and engineering services for the conversion of low rank, low cost coal and biomass feedstocks into energy and chemical products. Its strategy is to create value through providing technology and equipment in regions where low rank coals and biomass feedstocks can be profitably converted into high value products through its proprietary U-GAS® fluidized bed gasification technology, which SES licenses from the Gas Technology Institute. U-GAS® gasifies coal cost effectively, without many of the harmful emissions normally associated with coal combustion plants. The primary advantages of U-GAS® relative to other gasification technologies are (a) greater fuel flexibility provided by the ability of SES to use all ranks of coal (including low rank, high ash and high moisture coals, which are significantly cheaper than higher grade coals), many coal waste products and biomass feed stocks; and (b) the ability of SES to operate efficiently on a smaller scale, which enables the construction of plants more quickly, at a lower capital cost, and, in many cases, in closer proximity to coal sources. SES currently has offices in Houston, Texas, and Shanghai, China. For more information on SES, visit www.synthesisenergy.com : or call (713) 579-0600.
About Yankuang Yishan Chemical Industry Company
Yankuang Yishan Chemical Industry Company ("YYCC"), formed in 1978 and located in Zoucheng City, Shandong Province, is a leading producer of urea, ammonia and methanol, and sells ammonium carbonate and other fertilizers. YYCC is a subsidiary of the Yancon Group. YYCC's total assets exceed RMB 1 billion and the company has a Triple A credit rating from its bank. YYCC's long-term central strategic mission is the development of coal chemical base, with developing fine chemicals as the core route to realize the transformation from a fertilizer producer to a chemical producer.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks, trends and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Among those risks, trends and uncertainties are the early stage of development of SES, its estimate of the sufficiency of existing capital sources, its ability to successfully develop its licensing business, its ability to raise additional capital to fund cash requirements for future investments and operations, its ability to reduce operating costs, the limited history and viability of its technology, the effect of the current international financial crisis on its business, commodity prices and the availability and terms of financing opportunities, its results of operations in foreign countries and its ability to diversify, its ability to maintain production from its first plant in the ZZ joint venture, its ability to complete the expansion of the ZZ project, its ability to obtain the necessary approvals and permits for its Yima project and other future projects, the estimated timetables for achieving mechanical completion and commencing commercial operations for the Yima project, its ability to negotiate the terms of the conversion of the Yima project from methanol to glycol, the sufficiency of internal controls and procedures and the ability of SES to grow its business as a result of the ZJX and Zuari transactions as well as its joint venture with Midas Resource Partners. Although SES believes that in making such forward-looking statements its expectations are based upon reasonable assumptions, such statements may be influenced by factors that could cause actual outcomes and results to be materially different from those projected. SES cannot assure you that the assumptions upon which these statements are based will prove to have been correct.
Important Notice
In connection with the proposed transaction, SES has filed a preliminary proxy statement, and intends to files a definitive proxy statement, with the SEC and intends to mail the definitive proxy statement to the stockholders of SES. SES and its directors and officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from the stockholders of SES in connection with the transaction. Information about the transaction is set forth in the preliminary proxy statement filed, and will be set forth in the definitive proxy statement to be filed, by SES with the SEC.
When available, you may obtain the preliminary and definitive proxy statements for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at www.sec.gov : . Investors should read the definitive proxy statement carefully before making any voting or investment decision because that document will contain important information.
Contact:
Synthesis Energy Systems, Inc.
Kevin Kelly
Chief Accounting Officer
(713) 579-0600
Email Contact :
MBS Value Partners, LLC
Matthew D. Haines
Managing Director
(212) 710-9686
Email Contact :
Anonymous Call to New Animal Abuse Hotline Leads to Raid on Colorado Woman’s Rabbit Farm
by Bob McCarty
http://biggovernment.com/bmccarty/2011/08/11/anonymous-call-to-new-animal-abuse-hotline-leads-to-raid-on-colorado-womans-rabbit-farm/
Debe Bell will probably never forget Thursday, July 21. It was the day she found herself surrounded by people from her local law enforcement agency, and they weren’t there to help.
Unlike John Dollarhite of Nixa, Mo., and several magicians across the country who’ve been hounded and threatened with massive fines by agents from the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, Bell had to go face to face with her hare-brained local sheriff.
An anonymous Crime Stoppers hotline tip led animal control officers from the Jefferson County (Colo.) Sheriff’s Office to descend upon Bell’s one-acre farm at about 10:30 that morning and, before the day was over, remove nearly 200 rabbits from the property. The 59 year old was being accused of 24 misdemeanor charges of cruelty to animals, including charges that she somehow mistreated two meat rabbits already inside her freezer. More on the hotline later.
Bell had purchased the 1.01-acre property 12 miles north of Denver nearly 40 years earlier with plans to raise as much livestock as she wanted. After all, it was zoned for agricultural purposes (“A-2”) and had everything she needed, including a four-bedroom, tri-level home and a 600-square-foot barn. It looked like a great place to raise a family.
About 15 years later, Bell formed Six Bells Farm Candle Company and Rabbitry as a licensed farm business. Launched as an offshoot of a 4-H project via which she taught her four children how to take care of something other than themselves, it grew into an operation that involved raising more than a dozen varieties of rabbits, primarily for personal meat consumption but also for use in educating children — including kids involved in 4-H — and members of the general public nationwide.
As the years passed, Bell’s expertise and reputation grew alongside her rabbit farm. Not only did she become president of the local Long’s Peak Rabbit Club, but she became known as the go-to “resource person” for 4-H kids in Colorado who were interested in rabbits. Her reputation as a top expert when it comes to understanding and caring for rabbits spread throughout Colorado and across the United States. But that was before the raid.
The Day of the Raid
When Bell, 59, woke to begin that day almost three weeks ago, she had no idea government agents would soon swoop down on her tiny farm and effectively put an end to the pursuit of happiness in which she had been engaged for more than 25 years.
An instructor and lab coordinator at Metropolitan State College in Denver, Bell was in Boulder doing research when she was interrupted around 1 p.m.
“My neighbor called and said, ‘They’re seizing your animals! You need to get home!’” Bell recalled.
When Bell asked for more details, the neighbor explained that animal control officers and deputies from the sheriff’s office had arrived around 10:30 a.m. and were preparing to seize her rabbits.
About 45 minutes from home, Bell wrapped up her research as quickly as she could and drove home to find out more about who was taking her rabbits and why. She wanted to save the rabbits, each of which she knew by name, breed, tattoo and sex.
Upon arriving home at about 1:40 p.m., she found the animal control officers being unreasonable and milling about on her property — without a search warrant. The “salt in the wound” that the situation had become was the fact that the sheriff’s office officials were accompanied by volunteers from the local branch of the House Rabbit Society — a nationwide group comprised of people who, according to Bell, think rabbits need to be raised like small children.
Much “discussion” took place during the day and, when the animal control officers told Bell she had “too many animals for your zoning,” she begged to differ.
“No, you need to check your zoning regulations,” she told them. “I moved in before you changed the zoning. I can have as many animals as I want. I have more than an acre. I’m zoned A-2.”
Apparently stumped by her knowledge of the local zoning, she said they told her they would set the zoning issue aside.
When she told them her business was a livestock operation, they told her they disagreed and began to push the proverbial envelope.
Bell said one officer told her, “We found a dead rabbit,” and acted as if that was the “nail in the coffin” for his case. She responded bluntly, saying, “Rabbits die” — a fact she learned while growing up in Central Texas, where everybody is aware of that fact.
That prompted the officer in charge to tell Bell her rabbits were going to be seized, spayed or neutered, and then put up for adoption.
“What for?” Bell asked.
Instead of answering her directly, the officer responded to her question with one of his own.
“When was the last time you were in the barn?”
“This morning at 5 o’clock when I watered them,” Bell answered.
“Well, they have no water,” the officer countered.
“They’re fine,” Bell replied. “They have a swamp cooler and three fans.”
What’s a swamp cooler? According to Bell, it’s an air conditioning device that blows air over moist pads to lower temperatures in environments such as barns. More on this later, too.
At that point, Bell said, the officers had been in her barn for more than three hours, had opened up the doors, messed with the barn’s water system and had, effectively, turned off the water to the swamp cooler.
When their often-heated conversation turned to the temperature inside the barn, Bell said she told the officer that her barn’s cooling system could not keep up if it had to air condition the back yard where the outdoor temperature was 94 degrees. That prompted more than one officer to literally scream at her, saying, “It’s 84 degrees in there!”
“Yeah,” Bell replied, stunned that the officers were apparently concerned about rabbits suffering in 84-degree heat.
When the officer asked if she had any idea how many animals she had, she answered, “One-hundred sixty-three and probably 19 or 20 babies.”
Bell said she went a step further by telling the officer she could tell him the location of every animal in that barn. In addition, she told him the cages were tagged, numbered and sexed — with either pink tape or blue tape on them — and that she knew each rabbit in that barn by name.
Though officers couldn’t have overlooked the fact that the rabbit enclosures were clean and the barn was equipped with cooling, fly-control and watering systems, Bell said they seemed intent on making sure she didn’t do anything crazy to get in their way.
Bell said she wasn’t allowed to move, was threatened with being arrested at least four times, could not go inside her barn and, if she wanted to go anywhere else, had to ask officers for permission.
When Bell told one of the four sheriff’s deputies on scene that she wasn’t comfortable with House Rabbit Society members being on her property, she said the deputy looked her in the eye and said, “It is what it is.”
Hoping to document her experience, Bell said she took three photos — two of which appear above — of the area around her barn. Soon after, she was told by a sheriff’s deputy, under threat of arrest, that she had better stop.
“They told me four, five or six times (that) they were taking the animals no matter what,” Bell said, noting that she pointed out to them several times that there was nothing wrong with the animals or the conditions in which they were living.
When an officer told Bell the rabbits were living in “deplorable conditions,” she told him he was wrong.
“They are not living in deplorable conditions,” she said. “Their cages are clean. The trays are underneath them. We’re cleaning this weekend.”
Bell went on to explain to the officer that kids from the local 4-H organization who are involved in raising rabbits come out every weekend to help clean cages and do other things related to the care of the rabbits.
$24,000 Per Month
Several times during the day, animal control officers approached Bell and asked her to sign the rabbits over to them. When she asked what it was going to cost her if she didn’t, their reply stunned her.
“They said, ‘Five dollars a day per rabbit,’” Bell recalled, “and I said, ‘That’s $815 per day. Take ‘em! I can’t afford that.”
As a result of recently putting two boys through Colorado State University, Bell said, she told the officers she has a “mountain of debt” already and could not afford more than $24,000 per month — for a minimum of one month. The entire herd of rabbits was worth only $17,000.
At approximately 4:30 p.m., Bell said, a sheriff’s deputy arrived with the long-awaited search warrant and, within a half hour, the assembled animal control officers and volunteers began hauling out the rabbits in an effort that lasted about four hours.
The ‘Official’ Story
When I contacted sheriff’s office spokesperson Mark Techmeyer by phone early Tuesday afternoon, he explained how an anonymous tip led to his agency obtaining a search warrant.
“They reacted on a Crime Stoppers tip and went out there, and they saw what they believed to be some issues,” Techmeyer said. “Then they were able to take that information back to the judge and get a warrant issued.”
Thanks to a new Crime Stoppers program launched in June 2011, he said, individuals can call a statewide animal abuse hotline and, while remaining anonymous, can report cases of suspected animal abuse.
Rabbit Experts?
While I had him on the phone, I asked Techmeyer if any of the employees at the sheriff’s animal control division were rabbit experts, Techmeyer never answered the question. Instead, he quibbled, saying, “That depends upon how you define ‘experts,’” and then changed the subject.
None of the animal control employees — or the volunteers accompanying them — knew much about rabbits, according to Bell. In fact, she said the rabbits were severely mishandled during their removal.
For instance, 10-day-old babies “still in a nest box with their mommy” were wrapped in a towel and placed inside a cat crate and stood their mother on top of them.
“I looked at ‘em and I said, ‘You just issued a death sentence for those babies,’” Bell said, explaining that the mother would stomp the babies.
In response, the sheriff’s office employee said, “That’s their mom. Why would she do that?”
“Because they’re rabbits,” Bell replied.
“They loaded them in cardboard boxes, put them in a horse trailer and hauled them off to the fairgrounds,” Bell said, “where they housed them in a concrete, non-air conditioned horse stall barn.”
In addition to being placed in a hot environment, Bell said, her rabbits were placed in dog and cat crates with solid-bottom floors, meaning, “The minute they urinate, they’re standing in their own urine.”
The Next Step
Asked what her next step might be, Bell said her attorney, Elizabeth Kearney of Burthoud, Colo., has written several letters on her behalf, trying to get a meeting with Scott Storey, the district attorney for Jefferson and Gilpin Counties, but “keeps hitting brick walls.”
“They don’t want to return her calls,” she said. “They don’t want to talk to her.”
In addition, Bell said, sheriff’s office officials will not provide any information to Bell about the condition of her rabbits and will not allow her veterinarian of nearly 25 years to examine them.
Why might that be? Bell thinks she knows the answer.
“I think, honestly, they dug themselves a deep hole,” she said, “and they don’t quite know how to crawl out of it.”
“They’ve destroyed me emotionally, socially and professionally,” Bell said, listing numerous ways in which local animal rights activists have publicized information about the case in an effort to make her and her four children — all adults who haven’t lived under her roof for several years — look bad. But that’s not all.
“They’ve made 4-H kids all across Colorado just sob,” she said, “because I am their 4-H connection.”
Bell noted that 12 of the seized rabbits belong to 4-H kids who were planning to show them at upcoming fairs — two at the Jefferson County Fair that begins Thursday and the remaining 10 at the Colorado State Fair which runs from Aug. 26 to Sept. 5 in Pueblo.
Rabbit raisers in Colorado are so scared they might suffer the same fate as Six Bells Farm, Bell said, that many are not going to show their animals at the Colorado State Fair. The shortage of participants at this year’s Small Animals Show is so severe that officials extended the deadline for entry and, in order to prevent animal rights activists from collecting the names of rabbit owners, officials are planning to not display the names of rabbit owners alongside their rabbits.
“I would hope the entire United States would get involved in this,” Bell said, “because this is a group of people that have gotten away with this crap once or twice and they’re just continuing.
“Because they’ve been given the power erroneously once, they’re taking it more and more,” she continued, “and they’re gonna chase farmers out.”
Closing thought for the day: Bell said she learned through a third party familiar with her case that the people caring for the displaced rabbits at the fairgrounds eventually bought a cooling device to improve the rabbits’ living conditions at the fairgrounds. What did they buy? You guessed it! A swamp cooler.
United States Soldier Joins The Ron Paul Revolution
Comment of the Year, by Sergeant Lewis: (Paul's stance on Iran/foreign policy)
Submitted by Habit4ming on Tue, 08/16/2011 - 13:23
in Daily Paul Liberty Forum
http://www.dailypaul.com/174639/comment-of-the-year-by-sargeant-lewis
Ron Paul was called a "kook" today, concerning his stance on Iran, in the comment section of an article at THE HILL entitled "Ron Paul shines in Iowa; major media cheats him." Follows Sergeant Lewis' response to said comment:
I am a Sergeant in the U.S. Army. I support Ron Paul and I support his foreign policy. I am sure you would not dare call me a Paultard to my face.
No, you would give me the same parroted line I hear 100 times a day, "Thank you for your service". When I hear some flabby couch potato like you say that to me it makes me sick. Yes, I serve our country, but our wars do not.
I do my best to keep my men alive while we carry out this sick policy of sticking our noses in other peoples business. When was the last time you had a friend die in your arms or look for the leg that was just blown off of the man next to you? When was the last time you walked past dead children that were killed by U.S. weapons? I'm glad you can sleep at night, because many times I cannot. I have children myself you self righteous SOB. If someone killed my children you can bet I would do everything in my power to seek revenge.
You dare call me rabid and blind? I know what I am talking about. Why don't you grab a gun and head to Iran if you want to fight them so much. Ron Paul is right. They are no threat to us. We need to mind our own business. They hate us not because we are rich and free, they hate us because we are in their countries.
It is people like you that are the biggest threat to this country, not Iran.
BY SgtLewis on 08/16/2011 at 11:06
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/...
The above is also linked at Lew Rockwell.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/politicaltheatre/2011/08/effectiv...
There seems to be some major confusion about that......
We want to help people, not hurt them': Hacker group insist claims it wants to destroy Facebook are all a big mistake
By TED THORNHILL
Last updated at 8:22 AM on 12th August 2011
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2024807/Anonymous-denies-claims-wants-destroy-Facebook.html#ixzz1VGoc1vGX
Synthesis Energy Systems and China Energy Announce Extension of Agreement for $83.8 Million Equity Investment
Move Provides Time to Include Strategic Commercialization Partners
http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/synthesis-energy-systems-china-energy-announce-extension-agreement-838-million-equity-nasdaq-symx-1550414.htm
HOUSTON, TX--(Marketwire - Aug 16, 2011) - Synthesis Energy Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ: SYMX) ("SES"), a global energy and gasification technology company that provides products and solutions to the energy and chemicals industries, announced today that it has agreed with Zhongjixuan Investment Management Company Ltd. ("ZJX") and China Energy Industry Holding Group Co., Limited ("China Energy") to extend the closing period of their March 31, 2011 share purchase agreement through December 31, 2011. ZJX/China Energy recently notified SES of its intent to complete the investment into SES in partnership with Yima Coal Industry Group Co., Ltd. ("Yima") and requested the extension in order to allow China Energy and YIMA sufficient time to complete the required Chinese governmental approvals.
Yima is a Chinese state-owned enterprise with operating revenue in 2010 of approximately US$3.0 billion. Yima has recently taken part of its coal business public on the Shanghai Stock Exchange via the listing of Da You Energy (600403:Shanghai), which is 85% owned by Yima. Da You has a market capitalization of approximately US$4.5 billion.
SES is currently partnered with Yima on a coal chemical project in Henan Province, China, which is in the advanced stages of construction. This project is the first phase of a planned multi-project industrial park with total investment of approximately US$4.0 billion.
"Our collaboration with China Energy has drawn the interest of important Chinese companies such as Yima that have plans to build new, large scale coal-to-natural gas, chemicals, and energy projects in China," stated Robert Rigdon, President and CEO of SES." Through this partnership with Yima, ZJX/China Energy is further strengthening its capability, which will be helpful to SES in terms of accelerating its growth in China through connecting low quality coal resources into near term projects. We therefore believe it is prudent to extend the agreement to allow the related governmental approval steps to be completed."
Feng Feng, Managing Chairman of China Energy, stated, "We believe in the potential to significantly improve our cooperation with SES by partnering with Yima to complete the investment into SES. Yima is a well-established company in China's coal industry that also has coal to chemicals and energy projects operating and under construction, with plans to build new, large-scale projects in the near future. We see Yima as a particularly strong strategic and financial partner due to its access to capital and its plans for aggressively growing its coal and coal-to-gas and chemicals businesses. We appreciate the efforts made by SES in working with us to engage strong strategic partners that can provide additional resources along with operational expertise and large scale investment projects."
This transaction remains subject to shareholder approval as well as customary closing conditions. Full details of the transaction are available in an 8-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on March 31, 2011.
About Synthesis Energy Systems, Inc.
SES provides technology, equipment and engineering services for the conversion of low rank, low cost coal and biomass feedstocks into energy and chemical products. Its strategy is to create value through providing technology and equipment in regions where low rank coals and biomass feedstocks can be profitably converted into high value products through its proprietary U-GAS® fluidized bed gasification technology, which SES licenses from the Gas Technology Institute. U-GAS® gasifies coal cost effectively, without many of the harmful emissions normally associated with coal combustion plants. The primary advantages of U-GAS® relative to other gasification technologies are (a) greater fuel flexibility provided by the ability of SES to use all ranks of coal (including low rank, high ash and high moisture coals, which are significantly cheaper than higher grade coals), many coal waste products and biomass feed stocks; and (b) the ability of SES to operate efficiently on a smaller scale, which enables the construction of plants more quickly, at a lower capital cost, and, in many cases, in closer proximity to coal sources. SES currently has offices in Houston, Texas, and Shanghai, China. For more information on SES, visit
www.synthesisenergy.com or call (713) 579-0600.
Forward-Looking Statements
This press release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are subject to certain risks, trends and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Among those risks, trends and uncertainties are the early stage of development of SES, its estimate of the sufficiency of existing capital sources, its ability to successfully develop its licensing business, its ability to raise additional capital to fund cash requirements for future investments and operations, its ability to reduce operating costs, the limited history and viability of its technology, the effect of the current international financial crisis on its business, commodity prices and the availability and terms of financing opportunities, its results of operations in foreign countries and its ability to diversify, its ability to maintain production from its first plant in the ZZ joint venture, its ability to complete the expansion of the ZZ project, its ability to obtain the necessary approvals and permits for its Yima project and other future projects, the estimated timetables for achieving mechanical completion and commencing commercial operations for the Yima project, its ability to negotiate the terms of the conversion of the Yima project from methanol to glycol, the sufficiency of internal controls and procedures and the ability of SES to grow its business as a result of the ZJX and Zuari transactions as well as its joint venture with Midas Resource Partners. Although SES believes that in making such forward-looking statements its expectations are based upon reasonable assumptions, such statements may be influenced by factors that could cause actual outcomes and results to be materially different from those projected. SES cannot assure you that the assumptions upon which these statements are based will prove to have been correct.
Important Notice
In connection with the proposed transaction, SES has filed a preliminary proxy statement, and intends to files a definitive proxy statement, with the SEC and intends to mail the definitive proxy statement to the stockholders of SES. SES and its directors and officers may be deemed to be participants in the solicitation of proxies from the stockholders of SES in connection with the transaction. Information about the transaction is set forth in the preliminary proxy statement filed, and will be set forth in the definitive proxy statement to be filed by SES with the SEC.
When available, you may obtain the preliminary and definitive proxy statements for free by visiting EDGAR on the SEC website at www.sec.gov. Investors should read the definitive proxy statement carefully before making any voting or investment decision because that document will contain important information.
Contact Information
Contact:
Synthesis Energy Systems, Inc.
Kevin Kelly
Chief Accounting Officer
(713) 579-0600
Email Contact
MBS Value Partners, LLC
Matthew D. Haines
Managing Director
(212) 710-9686
Email Contact
Swiss Ponder Battle Over Runaway Franc
By Simone Meier - Aug 16, 2011 7:10 AM CT
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-15/swiss-ponder-unthinkable-as-world-s-chaos-turns-franc-economy-upside-down.html
An employee handles Swiss francs and euro notes at a currency exchange near Zurichon on Aug. 12, 2011. Photographer: Gianluca Colla/Bloomberg
Play Video
Aug. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Stephen Gallo, head of market analysis at Schneider Foreign Exchange, talks about the possible impact of a euro bond on Europe's sovereign debt problems. Gallo, speaking with Lisa Murphy on Bloomberg Television's "In the Loop," also discusses the performance of the Swiss franc. (Source: Bloomberg)
A sign sits above the entrance to the Swiss National Bank (SNB) in Zurich, Switzerland. Photographer: Gianluca Colla/Bloomberg
Switzerland, the nation that hasn’t gone to war with a foreign power since Napoleon, is reluctantly debating a generational taboo: ceding monetary independence to win a battle over its runaway currency.
Swiss National Bank Vice President Thomas Jordan said the central bank is assessing “a whole range of options” to prevent the franc, which reached a record against the euro this month, from making Swiss goods prohibitively expensive. Even a cup of coffee at Cafe St. Gotthard in Zurich costs $8.30, with one Swiss franc buying $1.2816 at today’s exchange rate.
Billionaire entrepreneur Christoph Blocher, one of the politicians who called on SNB President Philipp Hildebrand to resign after the bank lost $21 billion last year in a vain attempt to restrain the currency, now supports a franc target.
“The franc is catastrophically overvalued,” said Blocher, a former justice minister for the People’s Party, Switzerland’s largest. “It’s almost like economic warfare -- to wage a war, you must use all measures at your disposal, and you must win.”
Switzerland’s currency is 39 percent overvalued against the euro, based on purchasing power parity as calculated by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. That’s “a headache,” according to ABB Ltd. (ABBN), the world’s largest maker of power-transmission gear, which responded by buying more parts from euro-region suppliers to feed its Swiss factories. Workers at Lonza Group AG (LONN), a Basel-based chemicals maker, are working longer hours without extra pay, while VonRoll Infratec AG, a maker of piping systems, is paying some salaries in euros.
‘Drastic Decisions’
“If the franc can’t be weakened, many machinery makers will have to take drastic decisions this fall,” Economiesuisse, the country’s biggest business lobby group, said. The Swiss currency appreciated as much as 1.3 percent today, trading at 1.1181 at 1:48 p.m. in Zurich, up from 1.1329 yesterday. Versus the dollar, it was at 77.86 centimes.
The franc, considered a haven in times of turmoil, has appreciated 11 percent versus the euro this year, reaching a record 1.0075 on Aug. 9. Against the dollar, it appreciated to an all-time high of 70.71 centimes earlier this month. A visitor to a Swiss branch of McDonald’s Corp. pays 128 percent more for a Big Mac than a U.S. diner, up from a 72 percent premium a year ago, according to a Bloomberg index that measures burger prices in dollars, based on data collected by “The Economist.”
Zurich is already the world’s second-most expensive city after Oslo, a study conducted by UBS AG (UBSN) showed today. Zurich residents also had the highest wages and purchasing power, it said. Geneva ranked third in terms of prices.
‘Generalized Fear’
The Swiss government and the central bank held “intense” talks over a possible franc target and measures are ready to be adopted this week, SonntagsZeitung reported on Aug. 14, citing people familiar with the situation. The SNB may introduce a lower limit of slightly above 1.10 against the euro before gradually increasing it, according to the newspaper.
“We have to find ways to further improve efficiency and hope that the franc will return to normal, which it will do eventually,” said Mehdi Barkhordar, managing director at Produits Artistiques Metaux Precieux, a Geneva-based precious metals refiner and trader known as PAMP. “Everyone in the world is panicked. It’s the fashion today because of the climate of generalized fear.”
Daniel Kalt, an economist at UBS in Zurich, sees an exchange-rate target versus the euro along with purchases of foreign currencies as a way to stop investors from piling into the franc. The Zurich-based central bank was last forced to commit itself to an exchange-rate target in 1978, when it strapped its exchange rate to Germany’s deutsche mark.
October Elections
Lawmakers, facing general elections in October, have joined executives in signaling increasing concern about the franc’s ascent. Swatch Group AG (UHR) Chief Executive Officer Nick Hayek and Credit Suisse Group AG (CSGN) Chairman Urs Rohner attended a meeting with Swiss Economy Minister Johann Schneider-Ammann on Aug. 2 in Bern, according to Neue Zuercher Zeitung. The participants all pledged to back the SNB, the report said.
Schneider-Ammann said after the meetings that the central bank “wants to feel that it’s being supported on significant decisions.” The franc’s strength will be on the agenda when the seven government members meet on Aug. 17.
“Corrections will only be sustainable if the SNB swiftly follows rumors with actions, or else it will be regarded as toothless tiger,” said Ulrich Leuchtmann, head of currency strategy at Commerzbank AG in Frankfurt.
Pride in Franc
With exports contributing about half of gross domestic product, Swiss companies including Nestle SA (NESN), the world’s biggest food company, and UBS, the country’s biggest bank, are under increasing pressure to cut costs to maintain margins.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. earlier this month cut its Swiss growth forecasts for this year to 1.9 percent from 2.1 percent, and for next year to 0.6 percent from 2 percent. The “chances of the real economy emerging unscathed are remote,” economists Dirk Schumacher and Adrian Paul said.
“I’m proud of the Swiss franc, but something needs to be done,” said Peter Seid, 70, a retired teacher from Winterthur, Switzerland. “Otherwise, people will face pay cuts, or if the situation persists, they might even start losing their jobs.”
The SNB has been reluctant to purchase foreign currencies after attempts to weaken the franc in the 15 months through mid- June 2010 caused a record loss last year. Social Democratic lawmaker Susanne Leutenegger Oberholzer said as recently as last month if Hildebrand “isn’t in the position to get the exchange rate under control,” he should step down.
Right Timing?
While it has shed about 3.5 percent against the euro since the SNB’s surprise rate cut on Aug. 3, the franc has strengthened 7.2 percent over the past two months as European leaders struggled to contain the debt crisis. That will make it hard for the SNB to prevail, said to Alexander Krueger, chief economist at Bankhaus Lampe KG in Dusseldorf.
“As long as people are concerned, the franc will continue to appreciate, probably beyond parity” with the euro, he said. “Currency interventions wouldn’t be enough to counter this extreme risk aversion. The SNB is rather powerless.”
Policy makers are ready to “act as soon as we’re convinced that it’s the right time,” Jordan at the SNB told Tages- Anzeiger in an interview published on Aug. 11. He also said that “any temporary measures” to weaken the franc are possible, when asked about a currency peg to the euro.
Ashraf Laidi, CEO of Intermarket Strategy Ltd. in London, sees a currency peg as “far from practical,” while Simon Smith, chief economist at FXPro Financial Services Ltd. in London, said a currency target would be hard to impose while the franc remains strong.
No Panacea
“If the franc is as over-valued as the Swiss authorities currently believe, then this would have to be rectified somehow before a peg could be instigated,” Smith said. “The final issue is that, with sovereign risk factors being such a powerful force on currencies, it’s quite difficult to see how the Swiss could stand side-by-side with the euro in the coming years.”
With all four main government coalition parties now willing to support renewed currency purchases, the SNB may find it easier to accelerate its efforts, said Adrian Vatter, a professor of political science at the University of Bern.
“Swiss parties are eventually uniting behind the government and the central bank,” Vatter said. “This will strengthen the SNB’s credibility and give it the backing needed for setting an exchange-rate target.”
Swiss Battle
Swiss soldiers were last engaged in battle on Swiss soil in 1798/99 to fight the advancing army of Napoleon Bonaparte. The Swiss defeat led to the collapse of the old Swiss Federation.
Christophe Darbellay, head of the Christian Democratic Party, told Bloomberg News in a telephone interview that “we need to do everything we can to fight the franc’s ascent given this difficult situation,” saying there is no “taboo.”
The central bank may have to spend between 200 billion ($251 billion) and 300 billion francs to defend any target, said Kalt at UBS. “The SNB would have to keep intervening and defending its lower target for as long as it takes,” and “it would be a high-risk game.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Simone Meier in Zurich at smeier@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Gilbert at magilbert@bloomberg.net
Apparently on Facebook now people are complaining that they are being censored especially for posting "spam" and apparently Ron Paul is one of the things being singled out. All it takes is for enough people to complain about posting behavior and once you hit the magic number of complaints you are banned for 15 days without question or recourse so all it takes is a flash mod of complainers and you're hit. Then if there is a second offense your account is deleted. I haven't personally seen it happen but some people I talk to have on certain forums.
England riots: pair jailed for four years for using Facebook to incite disorder
Two men – whose posts did not result in riot-related event – sentenced at Chester crown court after arrests last week
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 16 August 2011 18.49 BST
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/16/uk-riots-four-years-disorder-facebook
Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, one of two men jailed for four years at Chester crown court for using Facebook to incite disorder, even though their actions did not cause rioting
Two men have been jailed for four years for using Facebook to incite disorder.
Jordan Blackshaw, 20, from Marston near Northwich, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, from Warrington, appeared at Chester crown court on Tuesday. They were arrested last week following incidents of violent disorder in London and other cities across the UK.
Neither of their Facebook posts resulted in a riot-related event.
During the sentencing, the recorder of Chester, Elgin Edwards, praised the swift actions of Cheshire police and said he hoped the sentences would act as a deterrent to others.
Assistant Chief Constable Phil Thompson said: "If we cast our minds back just a few days to last week and recall the way in which technology was used to spread incitement and bring people together to commit acts of criminality, it is easy to understand the four year sentences that were handed down in court today.
"In Cheshire, we quickly recognised the impact of the situation on our communities and the way in which social media was being used to promote and incite behaviour that would strike fear in to the hearts of our communities.
"From the offset, Cheshire constabulary adopted a robust policing approach using the information coming into the organisation to move quickly and effectively against any person whose behaviour was likely to encourage criminality. Officers took swift action against those people who have been using Facebook and other social media sites to incite disorder.
"The sentences passed down today recognise how technology can be abused to incite criminal activity, and send a strong message to potential troublemakers about the extent to which ordinary people value safety and order in their lives and their communities. Anyone who seeks to undermine that will face the full force of the law."
It's pissing off a lot of people too. People are talking about it.
JFSAG: Izzard on WWII
Mass protest forces Chinese authorities to shut petrochemical plant
By John Chan
16 August 2011
(China is so going to blow.)
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2011/aug2011/chin-a16.shtml
A protest involving thousands of people last Sunday forced the authorities in the north-eastern Chinese city of Dalian to announce the closure of a major petrochemical facility. The event, sparked by residents’ fears that toxic materials would leak from the plant during a typhoon, is a further indication of sharp social tensions and the significant role of the Internet in organising protests against the Stalinist regime and the corporate elite that it represents.
Owned by Fujia Petrochemical Company, the $1.5 billion Dalian complex was only two-years-old. It manufactured paraxylene (known as PX), which is a key ingredient in the production of polyester, but is an eye and nose irritant and can cause damage to people’s health, including their nervous systems.
The decision to close the plant came just hours after Dalian Communist Party Secretary Tang Jun, standing on top of a police van, had failed to disperse a huge crowd in the People’s Square outside the government compound. The authorities said 12,000 people had gathered, but the South China Morning Post reported that the number could have been in the hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of riot police officers confronted the protesters, but did not attempt to use force.
Tang then promised to relocate the facility sometime in the future, but was met with demands for an exact date. The British Guardian reported that mobile phone pictures uploaded online showed protesters holding banners declaring: “I love Dalian and reject poison”, “Return me my home and garden,” and “Get out PX, protect Dalian.”
Fearing the movement would escalate, and trigger wider social and political discontent, an emergency municipal government meeting was held in the afternoon, leading to the closure announcement. Despite the apparent concession to the protesters, the regime deployed special police officers later in the evening, according to Hong Kong’s Ming Pao Daily. They reportedly beat demonstrators who refused to leave the square.
Fujia is the second largest private taxpayer to the Liaoning provincial government. Established in 2000, the company was strongly backed by the provincial and municipal governments, which had afforded it “Golden Tiger” and “Grand Dragon” awards for generating economic growth and for being a “civilised” enterprise. The fast-growing group—its revenues have doubled each year—was one of China’s top 500 enterprises in 2010. Fujia’s president and CEO Wang Yizheng was named by a local newspaper group as one of the “top ten” business figures in the province this year.
Thus to shut down one of Fujia’s plants was a major blow, not just to the company, but the Liaoning government’s finances. The decision was undoubtedly motivated by political considerations, most likely conveyed from Beijing, to the effect that the Dalian authorities had to quickly end the demonstration before it became a vehicle for other grievances, such as rising prices and chronic unemployment.
On August 9, just five days before the Dalian demonstration, about 10,000 people had rioted in Qianxi County in Guizhou province, incensed by the rough handling of an elderly woman by urban administration officials who confiscated her motorbike. Angry crowds burned five police vehicles, and set government buildings ablaze. Two days later, another social eruption took place in Hebei province’s Shijiazhuang city after a drunken police officer smashed a taxi and beat its driver. Ultimately, a thousand protesters clashed with a hundred special police officers who had been sent in as reinforcements.
The protest in Dalian was doubly troubling for the regime because north-eastern China, a centre of former state industry, has been a hotbed of militant struggles by industrial workers over the past decade due to the wholesale privatisation of basic industry and destruction of jobs. In 2002, tens of thousands of laid-off oil workers in Daqing, Heilongjiang province, demonstrated against the elimination of jobs and entitlements. In 2009, 30,000 steelworkers staged a stormy protest in Tonghua city, Jilin province, during which a company executive was killed, to oppose the sale of their plant to a private company.
Dalian has become a rapidly growing industrial hub, with major transnational corporations like chip manufacturer Intel and tyre maker Goodyear operating in the city, alongside privatised companies in steel, petrochemicals and heavy manufacturing. Beijing evidently feared that police repression directed against the demonstrators would ignite a wider movement throughout the city’s working class.
Also of grave concern to the regime was that the protest developed quickly last week via microblogging and social networking sites, following the unexpected arrival of a powerful typhoon, Muifa.
When the storm hit the port city, residents feared that the sea walls around the Fujia plant would be flooded and damaged. Online postings drew comparisons with Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, which was swamped by the March 11 tsunami. Muifa did breach the sea wall at the perimeter of the Fujia plant’s 20 large storage tanks. Locals were evacuated and 400 truckloads of rocks were sent to rebuild the walls.
While officials assured residents that the dyke had been restored and nothing had spilled, local people were distrustful, especially following the July 23 Wenzhou bullet train collision that killed 40 people. Beijing’s attempts to cover up the details of that crash have intensified the popular suspicion of the official whitewashing of all major accidents. In order to placate public anger, the Chinese government has ordered a month-long high speed rail safety campaign, and significantly lowered the maximum speeds and ticket prices for bullet trains.
Photographs of an initial gathering of protesters in Dalian early on Sunday morning were circulated on the Internet, attracting mostly young people to the scene. The movement was modelled on a June 2007 demonstration in Xiamen, a special economic zone in Fujian province, where locals sent text messages encouraging friends to meet for a “walk” to complain about another paraxylene plant, forcing it to relocate two years later.
Similar calls to “walk” have emerged in other parts of China, including those earlier this year proposing a “Jasmine Revolution” like the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. Beijing is acutely aware of China’s parallels with the dictatorial regimes in North Africa and Middle East, which also presided over rising prices and stark social inequality, and that anxiety has been reinforced by the social unrest in Europe and the US.
Last week’s riots in Britain have also led to a wider discussion on Twitter-like sites, especially Weibo, with many participants comparing China’s social conflicts to Britain’s unrest. “In fact, China has riots more serious than England’s every week,” one comment cited by Reuters noted.
Alarmed that Chinese youth and workers are drawing these comparisons, Beijing is seeking to restrict Internet access among its 485 million Chinese users, many of whom are young workers. A section of the Chinese elite openly welcomed British Prime Minister David Cameron’s threat to shut down Twitter and other social networking sites as a means of preventing the spread of social unrest.
An August 13 editorial by the state-run Global Times declared: “The economic and social turmoil in the US, Britain and France might trigger a worldwide groupthink and introspection on the boundaries of democracy and freedom of speech.” It added: “Media in the US and Britain used to criticise developing countries for curbing freedom of speech. Britain’s new attitude will help appease the quarrels between the East and West over the future management of the Internet.” As for China itself, the editorial insisted, “advocates of an unlimited development of the Internet should think twice about their original ideas.”
The comment is a warning to workers in China and beyond that, despite online celebrations of a “victory” in Dalian, forcing the closure of a petrochemical plant, intensified state repression is being prepared against any challenge from the working class.
US releases CIA documents on Bay of Pigs invasion
By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ - AP Hispanic Affairs Writer | AP – 12 hrs ago
http://news.yahoo.com/us-releases-cia-documents-bay-pigs-invasion-191105350.html
MIAMI (AP) — Newly declassified U.S. documents show a CIA operative accidentally fired on friendly pilots during the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
The B-26 bombers flown by the Cuban exiles were disguised to look like Cuban military planes, but the ruse worked too well, the documents indicated. It was not clear, though, if anyone was hurt.
The documents also show U.S. officials authorized limited use of napalm on military targets and to protect the invasion's beachhead area.
Earlier this month, the U.S. made public all but one of five top secret volumes covering the CIA's official history of the failed attack on Fidel Castro's fledgling government. The move came in response to a lawsuit filed in April by the independent, Washington-based National Security Archive. The nonprofit research group has sought for years to declassify all five volumes on the invasion.
The Archive posted more of the documents on its website Monday.
In them, CIA operative Grayston Lynch, who was in charge of guns aboard one of the landing craft that remained off the Cuban coast during the invasion, recalled warning the exile pilots to "to stay away from us, because we couldn't tell them from the Castro planes."
He said the B-26 bombers failed to heed his warning.
"We ended up shooting at two or three of them," he said, explaining, "our planes were a little nosey, and they wanted to take a look at the action."
In the report, two U.S. pilots described dropping bombs and napalm on Cuban troops that "left the convoy badly messed up."
Initially, officials hesitated to use napalm because it "'would cause concern and public outcry,'" the documents indicated. But by the second day of fighting, that notion "had gone by the board in favor of anything that might reverse the situation in Cuba in favor of the (exile) Brigade forces."
The invasion by CIA-trained Cuban exiles was a pivotal moment in U.S.-Cuba relations and has become something of a "what not to do" case study in U.S. covert actions.
"We are one step closer to having a complete record in the worst debacle of U.S. clandestine operations," said Peter Kornbluh, who heads the Archive's Cuba project. He vowed to continue pressing the government to release the fifth volume.
About 1,300 exiles landed in Cuba on April 17, 1961. Two days earlier, the exile pilots had helped destroy portions of Cuba's small air force, but Castro had enough planes remaining to take out their supply ships. Nearly 300 Cuban and exile fighters were killed in the invasion. A few captured exiles were executed and others were held prisoner for years. Most of the more than 1,200 captured exiles were released by Castro a year later in an exchange brokered by the Kennedy administration.
___
On the web: National Security Archive: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB353/index.htm
New Study Blames Human Beings For Half of Arctic Ice Melt
Monday 15 August 2011
by: Richard Mauer, Anchorage Daily News | Report
(slowly but surely MSM catching on even if it's only half way)
http://www.truth-out.org/new-study-blames-human-beings-half-arctic-ice-melt/1313431037
Anchorage - About half the recent record loss of Arctic sea ice can be blamed on global warming caused by human activity, according to a new study by scientists from the nation's leading climate research center.
The peer-reviewed study, funded by the National Science Foundation is the first to attribute a specific proportion of the ice melt to greenhouse gases and particulates from pollution.
The study used supercomputers and one of the world's most sophisticated climate models to reach its conclusions, said lead author Jennifer Kay, a staff scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. The paper was published last week in the scientific journal Geophysical Research Letters.
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Kay said her study was an attempt to learn how much Arctic Ocean melting can be attributed to "natural variability" - complex changes wrought by nonhuman forces - and how much has been caused by greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and by atmospheric particulates.
In doing so, she was also able to look ahead to future annual and decade-long fluctuations. She and the other authors said conditions will become more volatile from year to year. That means there will be years and perhaps decades when the ice pack expands. But the trend is in the other direction.
"There's no doubt about it - sea ice is going away," she said. "What we found was that about half of that trend is related to the increasing greenhouse gases." The other half of the sea-ice loss, as observed over the late 20th century, was "just related to variability in the system."
The study comes at an important time as public policy and climate change intersect in Alaska and elsewhere in the North. The reduction of the ice pack is already opening Arctic waters to transportation, development and military activities. The NCAR study says that the melting of the ice pack is no short-term fluke but an actual change in climate.
The study could also come into play in the current legal and political fight over the federal government's listing of polar bears as a threatened species. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed polar bears on the assumption the loss of sea ice - an essential part of their habitat - would soon have dramatic effects on their survival.
The state and others sued, claiming in part that the earlier modeling that predicted sea-ice loss was flawed and that the listing would needlessly hinder development.
On the other side, environmentalists wanted more restrictions than the federal government proposed, including reductions in Lower 48 greenhouse gas emissions to forestall the death of the ice pack.
In the study, the authors said earlier research determined that greenhouse gases were responsible for some loss of sea ice, but no one had been able to firmly establish how big a part they played.
Kay said the climate model she chose, Community Climate System Model version 4, had been developed by teams of scientists over several decades. She ran 4,000 years' worth of data through the model, a period when volcanoes, solar variations and other factors were known or believed to have forced climate changes.
The scientists placed extra focus on the years since 1979, when satellite images became available to determine the extent of sea-ice depletion.
The model accurately "predicted" what actually occurred historically, validating the method, she said.
But more to the point, by replaying the climate forces of the 20th century over and over through the model, the scientists were able to show that variability can account for only half the loss of ice, she said.
That means that if humans were still only hunters and gatherers, sea ice might have retreated anyway over the past 30 years.
But what made the loss of ice a record? Kay said it was centuries of carbon emissions and other human-caused changes to the atmosphere. Those pollutants prevent solar heat from radiating back into space, creating the "greenhouse effect."
Had variability instead trended in the opposite direction over the past 30 years - toward growing the ice pack - the model showed that the addition of greenhouse gasses would have prevented the ice pack from thickening. The variability would have masked the greenhouse effect for a period of time - the ice wouldn't have shrunk, but it also wouldn't have grown, she said.
As for the future, with the climate warming and the Arctic ice thinning still further, you can throw away the term "natural variability," she said. Where heavy sea ice once tended to dampen climate variability, that natural climate is gone. With the ice pack reduced, she said, year-to-year and decade-to-decade volatility increases.
"Our work really demonstrates that the variability in the climate model simulations is not entirely natural by the end of the 20th century," she said. "That's why we call it in the paper, 'internal variability.' We're in a warmer state now, so we have different variability than we did before when it was just natural variability."
Economic Crisis Or Nonviolent Opportunity? Gandhi's Answer To Financial Collapse
Thursday, August 11, 2011 At 03:48PM
By Michael Nagler [Waging Nonviolence]
http://www.seismologik.com/journal/2011/8/11/economic-crisis-or-nonviolent-opportunity-gandhis-answer-to.html
On Monday the Dow Jones industrial average fell 634.76 points; the sixth-worst point decline for the Dow in the last 112 years and the worst drop since December 2008. Every stock in the S&P 500 index declined.
It is easy to blame bipartisan bickering for the impasse that led to Standard & Poor’s downgrading of the American debt,
and in turn the vertiginous fall of the Dow. This bickering—this substitution of ideology for reason, of egotism for compassion and responsibility on the part of lawmakers—is a national disgrace; but while it failed to fix the problem, we must realize that it did not cause it. The cause—and potential for a significant renewal—lies much deeper.
So let’s allow ourselves to ask a fundamental question: what’s an economy for?
The real purpose of an economic system is to guarantee to every person in its circle the fundamentals of physical existence (food, clothing, shelter) and the tools of meaningful work so that they can get on with the business of living together and working out our common destiny. This was Gandhi’s vision, among others’. We can no longer afford to ignore him in this sector any more than we can ignore his spectacular contributions to peace and security.
By the time Gandhi’s thinking on the subject matured in his classic treatise, Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home Rule (1909), he saw that our present economic system is being driven by a dangerous motive: the multiplication of wants. Because these wants are artificial—being that they created by advertising—and can never be satisfied, it creates what economist David Korten has called a “phantom economy” of fantastic financial manipulations that of course can never endure.
We will never know real prosperity—where we acknowledge that we are much more than producer/consumers and can only be fulfilled when we discover a higher purpose—until we shift to another basis entirely, the fulfillment of needs. We have physical needs, to be sure, but also and more importantly social and even spiritual ones.
While this takes us beyond the domain of economics proper, a sound economy based on our real needs is the foundation. What, then, are the principles of that which has come to be known as Gandhian economics, and how could we implement them?
Arguably the most revolutionary feature of this system is the concept of trusteeship, which defines the relationship of a person to material goods—or, for that matter, any talents they can deploy. Borrowed from English law, it is the nonviolent equivalent of ownership: people regard themselves as trustees of their possessions for the good of their respective societies, rather than as owners for their own real or symbolic benefit (when you have more than you need, you are trying to impress others or yourself with your own importance).
Wherever an attitude of trusteeship is recognized—and clearly it is first of all a psychological, and only then a legal phenomenon—greed would find it difficult to take hold. We would no longer over-consume, no longer surrender our responsibility to corporations as the most efficient instruments for overconsumption and accumulation, no longer need to fight wars over inessentials, no longer ravish the planet in a vain search for happiness—the prospect is giddying.
The trick, of course, is how to bring about this shift. Reeducation at this depth is not easy, but it is any day easier than trying to stop overconsumption and exploitation while so many people still feel that happiness is something they can buy, and there is not enough to go around. No revolution, however violent, has managed to dispossess the wealthy of their wealth against their will; but extremely wealthy people (think of George Soros and a few others) who have cheerfully redistributed it when the concept of trusteeship took hold.
Trusteeship, like much of Gandhi’s thinking, falls in line with the wisdom delivered by scriptures East and West, that we are really not the owner of anything. Indeed it needs no scripture to tell us this, since the stark fact of life is that all we think we own can be taken away by any number of contingencies — and, let’s face it, will be so taken by the final contingency of death. Trusteeship, however difficult to achieve, liberates us psychologically from the existential insecurity that is driving us into this dead end of competition and greed.
Other features of Gandhi’s scheme are (material) simplicity, localism (svadeshi), the sanctity of “bread labour” (a phrase he got from John Ruskin), and nonviolence towards others and the earth itself. All came into play with his stellar program of spinning homespun cloth (khadi, or khaddar) that gave employment to otherwise idled millions (sound familiar?), united the country in a vast network of growers, spinners, weavers, and buyers, and, almost incidentally it seemed, broke the hold of the British Raj in India.
Today many experiments that could potentially provide one or another piece of this program are doing very well, thank you, around the world: community farms, local currencies, “transition towns” and so forth. One thing that would certainly help them coalesce into a real movement, making them a visible alternative to the “multiplication of wants” economy that’s collapsing around our ears, is a voluntary shift to trusteeship carried out by individuals at their own pace in their own applications. And what’s not doable about that—provided we stay clear of television long enough to repossess our minds?
Korten has advanced a brilliant three-part strategy: change the defining stories of the mainstream culture, create a new economic reality from the bottom up, and change the rules to support the values and institutions of the emergent new reality. Gandhian economics in general, and trusteeship in particular, would be a major enabling condition, working as it does within consciousness itself, for these great changes.
Monday’s debacle points out once again that forward-thinking people need to provide a “safe haven” – a plausible, attractive alternative – for every sector of the current system that’s showing signs of potentially terrifying collapse: security, education, healthcare, and of course the economy. Gandhi had eye-opening experiments we can learn from in all these areas, and what we’ve just sketched out would be a great place to start?.
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Has anyone heard about the "Star Child" skull found in Mexico in the 1930's? Very interesting.
New Species of human remains discovered in Russia
Bart Simpson is probably one of them and he took a few glowy rods home to play with.
Good think Japan doesn't have a nuclear weapons arsenal, someone would just walk home with the stuff.
An Explosive New 9/11 Charge
In a new documentary, ex-national security aide Richard Clarke suggests the CIA tried to recruit 9/11 hijackers—then covered it up. Philip Shenon on George Tenet’s denial.
Aug 11, 2011 8:47 AM EDT
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/11/september-11th-anniversary-richard-clarke-s-explosive-cia-cover-up-charge.html
With the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks only a month away, former CIA Director George Tenet and two former top aides are fighting back hard against allegations that they engaged in a massive cover-up in 2000 and 2001 to hide intelligence from the White House and the FBI that might have prevented the attacks.
The source of the explosive, unproved allegations is a man who once considered Tenet a close friend: former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, who makes the charges against Tenet and the CIA in an interview for a radio documentary timed to the 10th anniversary next month. Portions of the Clarke interview were made available to The Daily Beast by the producers of the documentary.
Richard A. Clarke in 2010., Markus Schreiber / AP Photo
In the interview for the documentary, Clarke offers an incendiary theory that, if true, would rewrite the history of the 9/11 attacks, suggesting that the CIA intentionally withheld information from the White House and FBI in 2000 and 2001 that two Saudi-born terrorists were on U.S. soil – terrorists who went on to become suicide hijackers on 9/11.
Clarke speculates – and readily admits he cannot prove -- that the CIA withheld the information because the agency had been trying to recruit the terrorists, while they were living in southern California under their own names, to work as CIA agents inside Al Qaeda. After the recruitment effort went sour, senior CIA officers continued to withhold the information from the White House for fear they would be accused of “malfeasance and misfeasance,” Clarke suggests.
Clarke says it is fair to conclude “there was a high-level decision in the CIA ordering people not to share information.” Asked who would have made the order, Clarke replies, “I would think it would have been made by the director,” referring to Tenet.
Clarke said that if his theory is correct, Tenet and others would never admit to the truth today “even if you waterboarded them.”
In a written response prepared last week in advance of the broadcast, Tenet says that Clarke, who famously went public in 2004 to blow the whistle on the Bush White House over intelligence failures before 9/11, has “suddenly invented baseless allegations which are belied by the record and unworthy of serious consideration.”
The CIA insisted to the 9/11 Commission and other government investigations that the agency never knew the exact whereabouts of the two hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, inside the U.S.—let alone try to recruit them as spies.
Agency officials said the CIA's delay in sharing information about the two terrorists was a grave failure, but maintained there was no suggestion of deception by CIA brass. Tenet has said he was not informed before 9/11 about Hazmi and Mihdhar's travel to the U.S., although the intelligence was widely shared at lower levels of the CIA.
The 9/11 Commission investigated widespread rumors in the intelligence community that the CIA tried to recruit the two terrorists—Clarke was not the first to suggest it—but the investigation revealed no evidence to support the rumors. The commission said in its final report that "it appears that no one informed higher levels of management in either the FBI or CIA" about the two terrorists.
But in his interview, Clarke said his seemingly unlikely, even wild scenario – a bungled CIA terrorist-recruitment effort and a subsequent cover-up – was “the only conceivable reason that I’ve been able to come up with” to explain why he and others at the White House were told nothing about the two terrorists until the day of the attacks.
“I’ve thought a lot about this,” Clarke says in the interview, which was conducted in October 2009. He said it was fair to conclude “there was a high-level decision in the CIA ordering people not to share information.” Asked who would have made the order, Clarke replies, “I would think it would have been made by the director,” referring to Tenet.
Clarke, now a security consultant and bestselling author, has hinted in his writings in the past that there may have been a CIA cover-up involving Hazmi and Mihdhar, although he has never made such direct attacks on Tenet and others at the CIA by name.
He did not reply to requests from The Daily Beast to expand on his comments or to explain why he has not repeated them publicly since the 2009 interview. The documentary’s producers, FF4 Films, said they had been in contact with Clarke this month and that he stood by his remarks in the broadcast.
The producers had previously made a well-reviewed film documentary, "Press for Truth," (www.911pressfortruth.com), on the struggle of a group of 9/11 victims' families to force the government to investigate the attacks.
In finishing the radio documentary, they recently supplied a copy of Clarke's comments to Tenet, who joined with two of former top CIA deputies -- Cofer Black, who was head of the agency's counterterrorism center, and Richard Blee, former head of the agency's Osama Bin Laden unit -- in a statement denouncing Clarke.
“Richard Clarke was an able public servant who served his country well for many years,” the statement says. “But his recently released comments about the run-up to 9/11 are reckless and profoundly wrong.”
“Clarke starts with the presumption that important information on the travel of future hijackers to the United States was intentionally withheld from him in early 2000. It was not.”
The statement continued. “Building on his false notion that information was intentionally withheld, Mr. Clarke went on to speculate – which he admits is based on nothing other than his imagination – that the CIA might have been trying to recruit these two future hijackers as agents. This, like much of what Mr. Clarke said in his interview, is utterly without foundation.”
But Clarke’s theory, if true, would explain a central mystery about the 9/11 attacks – why the CIA failed for so long to tell the White House and senior officials at the FBI that the agency was aware that two Al Qaeda terrorists had arrived in the United States in January 2000, just days after attending a terrorist summit meeting in Malaysia that the CIA had secretly monitored.
Clarke, who led government-wide counterterrorism efforts from the White House during the Bush and Clinton administration, has said in the past that he was astonished to learn after 9/11 that the CIA had long known about the presence of Hazmi and Mihdhar inside the United States.
“To this day, it is inexplicable why, when I had every other detail about everything related to terrorism, that the director didn’t tell me, that the director of the counterterrorism center didn’t tell me,” Clarke said in the interview for the documentary, referring to Tenet and Cofer Black. “They told us everything – except this.”
He said that if he had known anything about Hazmi and Mihdhar even days before 9/11, he would have ordered an immediate manhunt to find them – and that it would have succeeded, possibly disrupting the 9/11 plot.
“We would have conducted a massive sweep,” he said. “We would have conducted it publicly. We would have found those assholes. There’s no doubt in my mind, even with only a week left. They were using credit cards in their own names. They were staying in the Charles Hotel in Harvard Square, for heaven’s sake.” He said that “those guys would have been arrested within 24 hours.”
I hate to say it but I'm sort of glad to be further away than N. America although I think even the middle of the Mediterranean isn't as good as the S. Hemisphere.
The Earth is such an unstable place............ how can man seriously think about having hundreds of reactors world wide is just mind boggling to me.
Celente predicting gold seizure