3 NATO Ships Sunk, 15 Senior NATO Personnel Held Captive In Benghazi

Leonor conveys the degree of censorship we are under, how little we are actually being told, from NATO atrocities to NATO losses.

The 15 NATO personnel abducted are talked about at 8 min 35.

 

 

Source: Pakalert Press

Russia Says IMF Chief Jailed For Discovering All US Gold Is Gone

A new report prepared for Prime Minister Putin by the Federal Security Service (FSB) says that former International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was charged and jailed in the US for sex crimes on May 14^th after his discovery that all of the gold held in the United States Bullion Depository located at Fort Knox was ‘missing and/or unaccounted’ for.

Federal Security Service (FSB)

According to this FSB secret report, Strauss-Kahn had become “increasingly concerned” earlier this month after the United States began “stalling” its pledged delivery to the IMF of 191.3 tons of gold agreed to under the Second Amendment of the Articles of Agreement signed by the Executive Board in April 1978 that were to be sold to fund what are called Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) as an alternative to what are called reserve currencies.

Former International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn

This FSB report further states that upon Strauss-Kahn raising his concerns with American government officials close to President Obama he was ‘contacted’ by ‘rogue elements’ within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who provided him ‘firm evidence’ that all of the gold reported to be held by the US ‘was gone’.

‘Rogue elements’ within the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) who provided former International Monetary Fund (IMF) Chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn ‘firm evidence’ that all of the gold reported to be held by the US ‘was gone’

Upon Strauss-Kahn receiving the CIA evidence, this report continues, he made immediate arrangements to leave the US for Paris, but when contacted by agents working for France’s General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) that American authorities were seeking his capture he fled to New York City’s JFK airport following these agents directive not to take his cell-phone because US police could track his exact location.

Once Strauss-Kahn was safely boarded on an Air France flight to Paris, however, this FSB report says he made a ‘fatal mistake’ by calling the hotel from a phone on the plane and asking them to forwarded the cell-phone he had been told to leave behind to his French residence, after which US agents were able to track and apprehend him.

Within the past fortnight, this report continues, Strauss-Kahn reached out to his close friend and top Egyptian banker Mahmoud Abdel Salam Omar to retrieve from the US the evidence given to him by the CIA. Omar, however, and exactly like Strauss-Kahn before him, was charged yesterday by the US with a sex crime against a luxury hotel maid, a charge the FSB labels as ‘beyond belief’ due to Omar being 74-years-old and a devout Muslim.

In an astounding move puzzling many in Moscow, Putin after reading this secret FSB report today ordered posted to the Kremlin’s official website a defense of Strauss-Khan becoming the first world leader to state that the former IMF chief was a victim of a US conspiracy. Putin further stated,

“It’s hard for me to evaluate the hidden political motives but I cannot believe that it looks the way it was initially introduced. It doesn’t sit right in my head.”

Interesting to note about all of these events is that one of the United States top Congressman, and 2012 Presidential candidate, Ron Paul has long stated his belief that the US government has lied about its gold reserves held at Fort Knox.  So concerned had Congressman Paul become about the US government and the Federal Reserve hiding the truth about American gold reserves he put forward a bill in late 2010 to force an audit of them, but which was subsequently defeated by Obama regime forces.

Is There Gold in Fort Knox?

When directly asked by reporters if he believed there was no gold in Fort Knox or the Federal Reserve, Congressman Paul gave the incredible reply,

“I think it is a possibility.”

Also interesting to note is that barely 3 days after the arrest of Strauss-Kahn, Congressman Paul made a new call for the US to sell its gold reserves by stating, “Given the high price it is now, and the tremendous debt problem we now have, by all means, sell at the peak.”

Congressman Ron Paul has long stated his belief that the US government has lied about its gold reserves held at Fort Knox

Bizarre reports emanating from the US for years, however, suggest there is no gold to sell, and as we can read as posted in 2009 on the ViewZone.Com news site:

“In October of 2009 the Chinese received a shipment of gold bars. Gold is regularly exchanges between countries to pay debts and to settle the so-called balance of trade. Most gold is exchanged and stored in vaults under the supervision of a special organization based in London, the London Bullion Market Association (or LBMA). When the shipment was received, the Chinese government asked that special tests be performed to guarantee the purity and weight of the gold bars. In this test, four small holed are drilled into the gold bars and the metal is then analyzed.

Officials were shocked to learn that the bars were fake. They contained cores of tungsten with only a outer coating of real gold. What’s more, these gold bars, containing serial numbers for tracking, originated in the US and had been stored in Fort Knox for years. There were reportedly between 5,600 to 5,700 bars, weighing 400 oz. each, in the shipment!”

Chinese officials were shocked to learn that the bars were fake. The gold shipment contained a tungsten core with a thin coating of real gold. These tested gold bars originated in the US and had been stored in Fort Knox for years.

To the final fate of Strauss-Kahn it is not in our knowing, but new reports coming from the United States show his determination not to go down without a fight as he has hired what is described as a ‘crack team’ of former CIA spies, private investigators and media advisers to defend him.

To the practical effects on the global economy should it be proved that the US, indeed, has been lying about its gold reserves, Russia’s Central Bank yesterday ordered the interest rate raised from 0.25 to 3.5 percent and Putin ordered the export ban on wheat and grain crops lifted by July 1^st in a move designed to fill the Motherlands coffers with money that normally would have flowed to the US.

The American peoples ability to know the truth of these things, and as always, has been shouted out by their propaganda media organs leaving them in danger of not being prepared for the horrific economic collapse of their nation now believed will much sooner than later.

Food shortages: Creating a crisis to force global food control

Marti Oakley, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

A shortage of food is being intentionally staged around the world.  Apparently, if we resist the theft and seizure of food production and supply by bio-pirates and facilitated by government puppets, we will be intentionally starved into submission.  Threats of the food shortage are constantly launched into “lame stream media” as a warning to the rest of us that we had better comply or face the fate of those poorer nations where millions are suffering from famine or death from lack of food.

Also see: Doomsday Seed Vault: Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t

Somehow this scenario is in conflict with the PR propaganda of bio-pirates who claim their contaminated, harmful, genetically modified creations are the answer to the worlds food needs.

Claiming their Frankenfoods can somehow alleviate famine and hunger, these predators have bought and paid their way through one government after another as agricultural land is stolen, farmers displaced, and local food production is eradicated in favor of global corporate food control.

The problem is this: even with all the gmo seeds and crops, now comprising an estimated 70% of global production, and even with the constant tampering with animal dna and cloning, more of the worlds population is now suffering from a shortage of food or maybe a better description would be suffering from the withholding of food.

So where is this benefit from handing global food control over to corporate profiteers? It seems the only benefit is monetary and that is enjoyed only by corporations and governments who stuff their pockets while millions go hungry.

Looking at the data, it appears that gmo, dna tampering and cloning have decreased the global food supply to such an extent that the entire globe is now facing a food shortage.

This has to be so…..how else could we be facing a global food crisis when bio-pirates have been allowed such latitude and preferential treatment by governments’ world wide, while promising they could end world hunger?

Where is all this abundance of food claimed by these multi-national pirate corporations that would somehow magically and mysteriously appear if only they were allowed to control all the processes?  It appears evident that all the promises of increased food production from unnatural processes and unnecessary tampering with seeds, animals, poultry and even fish has no basis in fact.  In fact, the only plausible reason that makes any sense as to why any of this has been allowed is profit and control.  What is the use of producing 20% more corn if the nutritional value is less than half of traditional corn crops?  Food isn’t just about bulk or quantity, it has to be nutritious enough to sustain us.

Factory farming, courtesy of subsidies and protection by USDA/FDA and preferential legislation by those wonderful folks in the District of Criminals, have created an environmental disaster not only for the animals but for land and water supplies.  Add the recent theft of food production and supply courtesy of “Dirty Harry” Reid with his underhanded and corrupt passage of S.510 (S2751) the fake food safety bill; a bill which had nothing to do with food safety and was instead an all out assault on family farms and ranches meant to make continuing in agriculture untenable for anyone other than multi-national corporations and a bill which will force into export much of what is produced here in the US, and the stage is set for the intentional creation of a food shortage here at home. None of this is accidental.

One result of factory farming is of course the EnviroPig™.  We never needed this pig before factory farming, and the idea that now we should accept this Frankenstein creation made from e-coli and mouse genes being inserted into normal pig genes should be sending up the red flags.  Supposedly this pig is needed to reduce the amount of phosphates in the mountainous manure piles; the result of cramming hundreds or thousands of animals into small spaces.  What did these factory farming corporate geniuses think was going to happen?  Did they even care?  No.

ELIZABETH MAY ON ENVIRO-PIG, “PROGRESS TRAPS”, APRIL 2010

Excerpt:

. . .   The most chilling of industrialized agricultures progress traps may be the Enviro-pig. These pigs are being raised in isolation at the University of Guelph in hopes that they will be approved for human consumption. The problem Enviro-pigs are supposed to solve is water pollution from hog manure.

Due to the latest craze in inhumane treatment of pigs: raising tens of thousands of animals in single barns— indoors for their whole lives in cages over metal slotted floors—a new water pollution threat has been created. Liquid hog manure in the millions of gallons is being created in these mega-hog factories across Canada. The ‘disposal method’ is to spray the hog manure on farm fields as fertilizer. But the liquid hog manure is rich in phosphorus. The over-fertilizing effect of this manure in water courses causes eutrophication, choking the life out of lakes and rivers.

A sensible solution would be to return to more traditional ways of raising hogs.” (end Excerpt)

In every instance where genetic modification is present, no safeguards have been established, no control studies have been done to make sure these Frankenstein creations don’t escape and invade natural lands, crops and animals.  And in every instance they do escape, and I cannot for one instance think or believe that this is coincidental, incidental or accidental.  Even the EnviroPig™ has been allowed to escape and no one is sure if any of it ended up in the food supply.  That’s just how dedicated all these fine corporations and government agencies are……genetically altered pigs escape and no one seems concerned about whether or not they got into the food chain.  No tests or studies have been completed to assess the safety of these animals.

In addition, our judicial system, a term which is really an oxymoron, has repeatedly held private property owners liable for the unwanted and most times unknown invasion of gmo plants onto private property.  Now, a rational person would quickly deduce that the corporation who failed to control what is in reality an infestation of unnatural plants, would be at fault and damages to the unsuspecting land owner would be in order.  Not so! At least not in our kangaroo courts.  Routinely the land owner is held liable for unwittingly “stealing” the patented plant that has invaded his property and destroyed his traditional crops.  The idea that the corporation who failed to provide any control over their invasive species is out of the question.

Here in the US we have “zero discharge” rules that allow no nitrogen or phosphorous runoff from animal operations. Of course acknowledging these rules makes the killing off of Chesapeake Bay from poultry litter that leaked into the bay somewhat of a sore spot for the promoters of concentrated industrialized feeding operations.  All across the country where ever CAFO farms of any kind exist, they seem to do so without any over sight or adherence to the discharge rules as waterways and watersheds have become contaminated from phosphorus, phosphates and parasites now leaching into water supplies.  Mountains of manure are now so contaminated with phosphates, hormones, vaccines, antibiotics, all of which are used in massive quantities to keep poultry and animals on their feet until slaughter, manure can no longer be used as a fertilizer as it has been for all of our agricultural history and is now classified as toxic waste.

Apparently the plan is to defile the land, livestock and food supplies and then starve us into accepting some food-like product that has no nutritional value and that may also be a hazard to our health.

There is a food shortage coming….as planned.  Stock up, hide your supplies and hope that you have enough put by to sustain you and yours.  And please remember; it isn’t that we don’t have enough food for all….its just that a few million of us will have to be sacrificed to scare the rest of us into forfeiting our right to grow, harvest and sell our own food.

Those in control, and those expecting to profit will stand idly by and watch and wait.  These are the predators who watched as Haitian’s ate cardboard and dirt for lack of food, as 3 million Ethiopians walked to their deaths from starvation, as 100’s of children die each day for lack of food.  Each of these events was noted by the UN and various governments as; “We are gravely concerned.  It’s a sad day.  We’re trying to come up with a plan.  It saddens us to see this happen”….this while they shove food into their own mouths and turn away.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Researchers spent more than a decade hunting for an enzyme in nature responsible for breaking down phosphorous, finally finding it in the genome of the bacterium E. coli. (Get a genetics overview.) https://genographic.nationalgeographic.com/genographic/lan/en/overview.html

http://healthcare.zibb.com/trademark/enviro-pig/29733216

Trademark details

(Trademark owned by Ontario Pork Producers Marketing Board, http://www.ontariopork.on.ca/cms/en/AboutUs/aboutus.aspx )

Enviro-Pig® is a registered trademark used for Swine Feed Supplements, Medicated Swine Feed Additives, Vaccines For Swine, Pharmaceutical Preparations For the Treatment of Disease In Swine, and Swine Sperm Swine Eggs For Breeding Purposes, Swine Feed, Non-Medicated Swine Feed Additives, Swine Embryos, and Live Transgenic Swine Wholesale Distributorships Featuring Transgenic Swine, Swine Embryos, Swine Sperm, Swine Eggs, Swine Feed, Pharmaceutical Preparations For the Treatment of Disease In Swine, Vaccines For Swine, Swine Feed Supplements and Medicated and Non-Medicated Swine Feed Additives Animal Breeding and Insemination Services, Namely, Transgenic Swine Breeding, Artificial Insemination of Swine, Implantation of Genetic Material Into Swine, Implantation of Genetic Material Into Swine Eggs, Implantation of Genetic Material Into Swine Sperm, Implantation of Genetic Material Into Swine Embryos, Technical Consultation and Advice Regarding Transgenic Swine Breeding and Transgenic Swine Production, Production of Transgenic Swine, Swine Eggs, Swine Sperm, Swine Embryos, Swine Feed, Swine Feed Supplements and Swine Medicated and Non-Medicated Feed Additives and Pharmaceutical Preparations For Swine To the Order and Specification of Others and owned by Ontario Pork Producers Marketing Board.

Marti Oakley is a political activist and former op-ed columnist for the St Cloud Times in Minnesota. She was a member of the Times Writer’s Group until she resigned in September of 07. She is neither Democrat nor Republican, since neither party is representative of the American people. She says what she thinks, means what she says, and is known for being outspoken. She is hopeful that the American public will wake up to what is happening to our beloved country . . . little of it is left. Her website is The PPJ Gazette

Doomsday Seed Vault: Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t

by F. William Engdahl

Global Research, December 4, 2007

One thing Microsoft founder Bill Gates can’t be accused of is sloth. He was already programming at 14, founded Microsoft at age 20 while still a student at Harvard. By 1995 he had been listed by Forbes as the world’s richest man from being the largest shareholder in his Microsoft, a company which his relentless drive built into a de facto monopoly in software systems for personal computers.

In 2006 when most people in such a situation might think of retiring to a quiet Pacific island, Bill Gates decided to devote his energies to his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the world’s largest ‘transparent’ private foundation as it says, with a whopping $34.6 billion endowment and a legal necessity to spend $1.5 billion a year on charitable projects around the world to maintain its tax free charitable status. A gift from friend and business associate, mega-investor Warren Buffett in 2006, of some $30 billion worth of shares in Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway put the Gates’ foundation into the league where it spends almost the amount of the entire annual budget of the United Nations’ World Health Organization.

So when Bill Gates decides through the Gates Foundation to invest some $30 million of their hard earned money in a project, it is worth looking at.

No project is more interesting at the moment than a curious project in one of the world’s most remote spots, Svalbard. Bill Gates is investing millions in a seed bank on the Barents Sea near the Arctic Ocean, some 1,100 kilometers from the North Pole. Svalbard is a barren piece of rock claimed by Norway and ceded in 1925 by international treaty (see map).

On this God-forsaken island Bill Gates is investing tens of his millions along with the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto Corporation, Syngenta Foundation and the Government of Norway, among others, in what is called the ‘doomsday seed bank.’ Officially the project is named the Svalbard Global Seed Vault on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, part of the Svalbard island group.

Doomsday Seed Vault

The seed bank is being built inside a mountain on Spitsbergen Island near the small village of Longyearbyen. It’s almost ready for ‘business’ according to their releases. The bank will have dual blast-proof doors with motion sensors, two airlocks, and walls of steel-reinforced concrete one meter thick. It will contain up to three million different varieties of seeds from the entire world, ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future,’ according to the Norwegian government. Seeds will be specially wrapped to exclude moisture. There will be no full-time staff, but the vault’s relative inaccessibility will facilitate monitoring any possible human activity.

Did we miss something here? Their press release stated, ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future.’ What future do the seed bank’s sponsors foresee, that would threaten the global availability of current seeds, almost all of which are already well protected in designated seed banks around the world?

Anytime Bill Gates, the Rockefeller Foundation, Monsanto and Syngenta get together on a common project, it’s worth digging a bit deeper behind the rocks on Spitsbergen. When we do we find some fascinating things.

The first notable point is who is sponsoring the doomsday seed vault. Here joining the Norwegians are, as noted, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; the US agribusiness giant DuPont/Pioneer Hi-Bred, one of the world’s largest owners of patented genetically-modified (GMO) plant seeds and related agrichemicals; Syngenta, the Swiss-based major GMO seed and agrichemicals company through its Syngenta Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation, the private group who created the “gene revolution with over $100 million of seed money since the 1970’s; CGIAR, the global network created by the Rockefeller Foundation to promote its ideal of genetic purity through agriculture change.

CGIAR and ‘The Project’

As I detailled in the book, Seeds of Destruction, in 1960 the Rockefeller Foundation, John D. Rockefeller III’s Agriculture Development Council and the Ford Foundation joined forces to create the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in Los Baños, the Philippines.1 By 1971, the Rockefeller Foundation’s IRRI, along with their Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center and two other Rockefeller and Ford Foundation-created international research centers, the IITA for tropical agriculture, Nigeria, and IRRI for rice, Philippines, combined to form a global Consultative Group on International Agriculture Research (CGIAR).

CGIAR was shaped at a series of private conferences held at the Rockefeller Foundation’s conference center in Bellagio, Italy. Key participants at the Bellagio talks were the Rockefeller Foundation’s George Harrar, Ford Foundation’s Forrest Hill, Robert McNamara of the World Bank and Maurice Strong, the Rockefeller family’s international environmental organizer, who, as a Rockefeller Foundation Trustee, organized the UN Earth Summit in Stockholm in 1972. It was part of the foundation’s decades long focus to turn science to the service of eugenics, a hideous version of racial purity, what has been called The Project.

To ensure maximum impact, CGIAR drew in the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization, the UN Development Program and the World Bank. Thus, through a carefully-planned leverage of its initial funds, the Rockefeller Foundation by the beginning of the 1970’s was in a position to shape global agriculture policy. And shape it did.

Financed by generous Rockefeller and Ford Foundation study grants, CGIAR saw to it that leading Third World agriculture scientists and agronomists were brought to the US to ‘master’ the concepts of modern agribusiness production, in order to carry it back to their homeland. In the process they created an invaluable network of influence for US agribusiness promotion in those countries, most especially promotion of the GMO ‘Gene Revolution’ in developing countries, all in the name of science and efficient, free market agriculture.

Genetically engineering a master race?

Now the Svalbard Seed Bank begins to become interesting. But it gets better. ‘The Project’ I referred to is the project of the Rockefeller Foundation and powerful financial interests since the 1920’s to use eugenics, later renamed genetics, to justify creation of a genetically-engineered Master Race. Hitler and the Nazis called it the Ayran Master Race.

The eugenics of Hitler were financed to a major extent by the same Rockefeller Foundation which today is building a doomsday seed vault to preserve samples of every seed on our planet. Now this is getting really intriguing. The same Rockefeller Foundation created the pseudo-science discipline of molecular biology in their relentless pursuit of reducing human life down to the ‘defining gene sequence’ which, they hoped, could then be modified in order to change human traits at will. Hitler’s eugenics scientists, many of whom were quietly brought to the United States after the War to continue their biological eugenics research, laid much of the groundwork of genetic engineering of various life forms, much of it supported openly until well into the Third Reich by Rockefeller Foundation generous grants.2

The same Rockefeller Foundation created the so-called Green Revolution, out of a trip to Mexico in 1946 by Nelson Rockefeller and former New Deal Secretary of Agriculture and founder of the Pioneer Hi-Bred Seed Company, Henry Wallace.

The Green Revolution purported to solve the world hunger problem to a major degree in Mexico, India and other select countries where Rockefeller worked. Rockefeller Foundation agronomist, Norman Borlaug, won a Nobel Peace Prize for his work, hardly something to boast about with the likes of Henry Kissinger sharing the same.

In reality, as it years later emerged, the Green Revolution was a brilliant Rockefeller family scheme to develop a globalized agribusiness which they then could monopolize just as they had done in the world oil industry beginning a half century before. As Henry Kissinger declared in the 1970’s, ‘If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food, you control the population.’

Agribusiness and the Rockefeller Green Revolution went hand-in-hand. They were part of a grand strategy which included Rockefeller Foundation financing of research for the development of genetic engineering of plants and animals a few years later.

John H. Davis had been Assistant Agriculture Secretary under President Dwight Eisenhower in the early 1950’s. He left Washington in 1955 and went to the Harvard Graduate School of Business, an unusual place for an agriculture expert in those days. He had a clear strategy. In 1956, Davis wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review in which he declared that “the only way to solve the so-called farm problem once and for all, and avoid cumbersome government programs, is to progress from agriculture to agribusiness.” He knew precisely what he had in mind, though few others had a clue back then— a revolution in agriculture production that would concentrate control of the food chain in corporate multinational hands, away from the traditional family farmer.3

A crucial aspect driving the interest of the Rockefeller Foundation and US agribusiness companies was the fact that the Green Revolution was based on proliferation of new hybrid seeds in developing markets. One vital aspect of hybrid seeds was their lack of reproductive capacity. Hybrids had a built in protection against multiplication. Unlike normal open pollinated species whose seed gave yields similar to its parents, the yield of the seed borne by hybrid plants was significantly lower than that of the first generation.

That declining yield characteristic of hybrids meant farmers must normally buy seed every year in order to obtain high yields. Moreover, the lower yield of the second generation eliminated the trade in seed that was often done by seed producers without the breeder’s authorization. It prevented the redistribution of the commercial crop seed by middlemen. If the large multinational seed

companies were able to control the parental seed lines in house, no competitor or farmer would be able to produce the hybrid. The global concentration of hybrid seed patents into a handful of giant seed companies, led by DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred and Monsanto’s Dekalb laid the ground for the later GMO seed revolution.4

In effect, the introduction of modern American agricultural technology, chemical fertilizers and commercial hybrid seeds all made local farmers in developing countries, particularly the larger more established ones, dependent on foreign, mostly US agribusiness and petro-chemical company inputs. It was a first step in what was to be a decades-long, carefully planned process.

Under the Green Revolution Agribusiness was making major inroads into markets which were previously of limited access to US exporters. The trend was later dubbed “market-oriented agriculture.” In reality it was agribusiness-controlled agriculture.

Through the Green Revolution, the Rockefeller Foundation and later Ford Foundation worked hand-in-hand shaping and supporting the foreign policy goals of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and of the CIA.

One major effect of the Green Revolution was to depopulate the countryside of peasants who were forced to flee into shantytown slums around the cities in desperate search for work. That was no accident; it was part of the plan to create cheap labor pools for forthcoming US multinational manufactures, the ‘globalization’ of recent years.

When the self-promotion around the Green Revolution died down, the results were quite different from what had been promised. Problems had arisen from indiscriminate use of the new chemical pesticides, often with serious health consequences. The mono-culture cultivation of new hybrid seed varieties decreased soil fertility and yields over time. The first results were impressive: double or even triple yields for some crops such as wheat and later corn in Mexico. That soon faded.

The Green Revolution was typically accompanied by large irrigation projects which often included World Bank loans to construct huge new dams, and flood previously settled areas and fertile farmland in the process. Also, super-wheat produced greater yields by saturating the soil with huge amounts of fertilizer per acre, the fertilizer being the product of nitrates and petroleum, commodities controlled by the Rockefeller-dominated Seven Sisters major oil companies.

Huge quantities of herbicides and pesticides were also used, creating additional markets for the oil and chemical giants. As one analyst put it, in effect, the Green Revolution was merely a chemical revolution. At no point could developing nations pay for the huge amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. They would get the credit courtesy of the World Bank and special loans by Chase Bank and other large New York banks, backed by US Government guarantees.

Applied in a large number of developing countries, those loans went mostly to the large landowners. For the smaller peasants the situation worked differently. Small peasant farmers could not afford the chemical and other modern inputs and had to borrow money.

Initially various government programs tried to provide some loans to farmers so that they could purchase seeds and fertilizers. Farmers who could not participate in this kind of program had to borrow from the private sector. Because of the exorbitant interest rates for informal loans, many small farmers did not even get the benefits of the initial higher yields. After harvest, they had to sell most if not all of their produce to pay off loans and interest. They became dependent on money-lenders and traders and often lost their land. Even with soft loans from government agencies, growing subsistence crops gave way to the production of cash crops.5

Since decades the same interests including the Rockefeller Foundation which backed the initial Green Revolution, have worked to promote a second ‘Gene Revolution’ as Rockefeller Foundation President Gordon Conway termed it several years ago, the spread of industrial agriculture and commercial inputs including GMO patented seeds.

Gates, Rockefeller and a Green Revolution in Africa

With the true background of the 1950’s Rockefeller Foundation Green Revolution clear in mind, it becomes especially curious that the same Rockefeller Foundation along with the Gates Foundation which are now investing millions of dollars in preserving every seed against a possible “doomsday” scenario are also investing millions in a project called The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

AGRA, as it calls itself, is an alliance again with the same Rockefeller Foundation which created the “Gene Revolution.” A look at the AGRA Board of Directors confirms this.

It includes none other than former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan as chairman. In his acceptance speech in a World Economic Forum event in Cape Town South Africa in June 2007, Kofi Annan stated, ‘I accept this challenge with gratitude to the Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and all others who support our African campaign.’

In addition the AGRA board numbers a South African, Strive Masiyiwa who is a Trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation. It includes Sylvia M. Mathews of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation; Mamphela Ramphele, former Managing Director of the World Bank (2000 – 2006); Rajiv J. Shah of the Gates Foundation; Nadya K. Shmavonian of the Rockefeller Foundation; Roy Steiner of the Gates Foundation. In addition, an Alliance for AGRA includes Gary Toenniessen the Managing Director of the Rockefeller Foundation and Akinwumi Adesina, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation.

To fill out the lineup, the Programmes for AGRA includes Peter Matlon, Managing Director, Rockefeller Foundation; Joseph De Vries, Director of the Programme for Africa’s Seed Systems and Associate Director, Rockefeller foundation; Akinwumi Adesina, Associate Director, Rockefeller Foundation. Like the old failed Green Revolution in India and Mexico, the new Africa Green Revolution is clearly a high priority of the Rockefeller Foundation.

While to date they are keeping a low profile, Monsanto and the major GMO agribusiness giants are believed at the heart of using Kofi Annan’s AGRA to spread their patented GMO seeds across Africa under the deceptive label, ‘bio-technology,’ the new euphemism for genetically engineered patented seeds. To date South Africa is the only African country permitting legal planting of GMO crops. In 2003 Burkina Faso authorized GMO trials. In 2005 Kofi Annan’s Ghana drafted bio-safety legislation and key officials expressed their intentions to pursue research into GMO crops.

Africa is the next target in the US-government campaign to spread GMO worldwide. Its rich soils make it an ideal candidate. Not surprisingly many African governments suspect the worst from the GMO sponsors as a multitude of genetic engineering and biosafety projects have been initiated in Africa, with the aim of introducing GMOs into Africa’s agricultural systems. These include sponsorships offered by the US government to train African scientists in genetic engineering in the US, biosafety projects funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank; GMO research involving African indigenous food crops.

The Rockefeller Foundation has been working for years to promote, largely without success, projects to introduce GMOs into the fields of Africa. They have backed research that supports the applicability of GMO cotton in the Makhathini Flats in South Africa.

Monsanto, who has a strong foothold in South Africa’s seed industry, both GMO and hybrid, has conceived of an ingenious smallholders’ programme known as the ‘Seeds of Hope’ Campaign, which is introducing a green revolution package to small scale poor farmers, followed, of course, by Monsanto’s patented GMO seeds. 6

Syngenta AG of Switzerland, one of the ‘Four Horsemen of the GMO Apocalypse’ is pouring millions of dollars into a new greenhouse facility in Nairobi, to develop GMO insect resistant maize. Syngenta is a part of CGIAR as well.7

Move on to Svalbard

Now is it simply philosophical sloppiness? What leads the Gates and Rockefeller foundations to at one and the same time to back proliferation of patented and soon-to-be Terminator patented seeds across Africa, a process which, as it has in every other place on earth, destroys the plant seed varieties as monoculture industrialized agribusiness is introduced? At the same time they invest tens of millions of dollars to preserve every seed variety known in a bomb-proof doomsday vault near the remote Arctic Circle ‘so that crop diversity can be conserved for the future’ to restate their official release?

It is no accident that the Rockefeller and Gates foundations are teaming up to push a GMO-style Green Revolution in Africa at the same time they are quietly financing the ‘doomsday seed vault’ on Svalbard. The GMO agribusiness giants are up to their ears in the Svalbard project.

Indeed, the entire Svalbard enterprise and the people involved call up the worst catastrophe images of the Michael Crichton bestseller, Andromeda Strain, a sci-fi thriller where a deadly disease of extraterrestrial origin causes rapid, fatal clotting of the blood threatening the entire human species. In Svalbard, the future world’s most secure seed repository will be guarded by the policemen of the GMO Green Revolution–the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations, Syngenta, DuPont and CGIAR.

The Svalbard project will be run by an organization called the Global Crop Diversity Trust (GCDT). Who are they to hold such an awesome trust over the planet’s entire seed varieties? The GCDT was founded by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Bioversity International (formerly the International Plant Genetic Research Institute), an offshoot of the CGIAR.

The Global Crop Diversity Trust is based in Rome. Its Board is chaired by Margaret Catley-Carlson a Canadian also on the advisory board of Group Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux, one of the world’s largest private water companies. Catley-Carlson was also president until 1998 of the New York-based Population Council, John D. Rockefeller’s population reduction organization, set up in 1952 to advance the Rockefeller family’s eugenics program under the cover of promoting “family planning,” birth control devices, sterilization and “population control” in developing countries.

Other GCDT board members include former Bank of America executive presently head of the Hollywood DreamWorks Animation, Lewis Coleman. Coleman is also the lead Board Director of Northrup Grumman Corporation, one of America’s largest military industry Pentagon contractors.

Jorio Dauster (Brazil) is also Board Chairman of Brasil Ecodiesel. He is a former Ambassador of Brazil to the European Union, and Chief Negotiator of Brazil’s foreign debt for the Ministry of Finance. Dauster has also served as President of the Brazilian Coffee Institute and as Coordinator of the Project for the Modernization of Brazil’s Patent System, which involves legalizing patents on seeds which are genetically modified, something until recently forbidden by Brazil’s laws.

Cary Fowler is the Trust’s Executive Director. Fowler was Professor and Director of Research in the Department for International Environment & Development Studies at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. He was also a Senior Advisor to the Director General of Bioversity International. There he represented the Future Harvest Centres of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) in negotiations on the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources. In the 1990s, he headed the International Program on Plant Genetic Resources at the FAO. He drafted and supervised negotiations of FAO’s Global Plan of Action for Plant Genetic Resources, adopted by 150 countries in 1996. He is a past-member of the National Plant Genetic Resources Board of the US and the Board of Trustees of the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center in Mexico, another Rockefeller Foundation and CGIAR project.

GCDT board member Dr. Mangala Rai of India is the Secretary of India’s Department of Agricultural Research and Education (DARE), and Director General of the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR). He is also a Board Member of the Rockefeller Foundation’s International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which promoted the world’s first major GMO experiment, the much-hyped ‘Golden Rice’ which proved a failure. Rai has served as Board Member for CIMMYT (International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center), and a Member of the Executive Council of the CGIAR.

Global Crop Diversity Trust Donors or financial angels include as well, in the words of the Humphrey Bogart Casablanca classic, ‘all the usual suspects.’ As well as the Rockefeller and Gates Foundations, the Donors include GMO giants DuPont-Pioneer Hi-Bred, Syngenta of Basle Switzerland, CGIAR and the State Department’s energetically pro-GMO agency for development aid, USAID. Indeed it seems we have the GMO and population reduction foxes guarding the hen-house of mankind, the global seed diversity store in Svalbard. 8

Why now Svalbard?

We can legitimately ask why Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation along with the major genetic engineering agribusiness giants such as DuPont and Syngenta, along with CGIAR are building the Doomsday Seed Vault in the Arctic.

Who uses such a seed bank in the first place? Plant breeders and researchers are the major users of gene banks. Today’s largest plant breeders are Monsanto, DuPont, Syngenta and Dow Chemical, the global plant-patenting GMO giants. Since early in 2007 Monsanto holds world patent rights together with the United States Government for plant so-called ‘Terminator’ or Genetic Use Restriction Technology (GURT). Terminator is an ominous technology by which a patented commercial seed commits ‘suicide’ after one harvest. Control by private seed companies is total. Such control and power over the food chain has never before in the history of mankind existed.

This clever genetically engineered terminator trait forces farmers to return every year to Monsanto or other GMO seed suppliers to get new seeds for rice, soybeans, corn, wheat whatever major crops they need to feed their population. If broadly introduced around the world, it could within perhaps a decade or so make the world’s majority of food producers new feudal serfs in bondage to three or four giant seed companies such as Monsanto or DuPont or Dow Chemical.

That, of course, could also open the door to have those private companies, perhaps under orders from their host government, Washington, deny seeds to one or another developing country whose politics happened to go against Washington’s. Those who say ‘It can’t happen here’ should look more closely at current global events. The mere existence of that concentration of power in three or four private US-based agribusiness giants is grounds for legally banning all GMO crops even were their harvest gains real, which they manifestly are not.

These private companies, Monsanto, DuPont, Dow Chemical hardly have an unsullied record in terms of stewardship of human life. They developed and proliferated such innovations as dioxin, PCBs, Agent Orange. They covered up for decades clear evidence of carcinogenic and other severe human health consequences of use of the toxic chemicals. They have buried serious scientific reports that the world’s most widespread herbicide, glyphosate, the essential ingredient in Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide that is tied to purchase of most Monsanto genetically engineered seeds, is toxic when it seeps into drinking water.9  Denmark banned glyphosate in 2003 when it confirmed it has contaminated the country’s groundwater.10

The diversity stored in seed gene banks is the raw material for plant breeding and for a great deal of basic biological research. Several hundred thousand samples are distributed annually for such purposes. The UN’s FAO lists some 1400 seed banks around the world, the largest being held by the United States Government. Other large banks are held by China, Russia, Japan, India, South Korea, Germany and Canada in descending order of size. In addition, CGIAR operates a chain of seed banks in select centers around the world.

CGIAR, set up in 1972 by the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation to spread their Green Revolution agribusiness model, controls most of the private seed banks from the Philippines to Syria to Kenya. In all these present seed banks hold more than six and a half million seed varieties, almost two million of which are ‘distinct.’ Svalbard’s Doomsday Vault will have a capacity to house four and a half million different seeds.

GMO as a weapon of biowarfare?

Now we come to the heart of the danger and the potential for misuse inherent in the Svalbard project of Bill Gates and the Rockefeller foundation. Can the development of patented seeds for most of the world’s major sustenance crops such as rice, corn, wheat, and feed grains such as soybeans ultimately be used in a horrible form of biological warfare?

The explicit aim of the eugenics lobby funded by wealthy elite families such as Rockefeller, Carnegie, Harriman and others since the 1920’s, has embodied what they termed ‘negative eugenics,’ the systematic killing off of undesired bloodlines. Margaret Sanger, a rapid eugenicist, the founder of Planned Parenthood International and an intimate of the Rockefeller family, created something called The Negro Project in 1939, based in Harlem, which as she confided in a letter to a friend, was all about the fact that, as she put it, ‘we want to exterminate the Negro population.’ 11

A small California biotech company, Epicyte, in 2001 announced the development of genetically engineered corn which contained a spermicide which made the semen of men who ate it sterile. At the time Epicyte had a joint venture agreement to spread its technology with DuPont and Syngenta, two of the sponsors of the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault. Epicyte was since acquired by a North Carolina biotech company. Astonishing to learn was that Epicyte had developed its spermicidal GMO corn with research funds from the US Department of Agriculture, the same USDA which, despite worldwide opposition, continued to finance the development of Terminator technology, now held by Monsanto.

In the 1990’s the UN’s World Health Organization launched a campaign to vaccinate millions of women in Nicaragua, Mexico and the Philippines between the ages of 15 and 45, allegedly against Tentanus, a sickness arising from such things as stepping on a rusty nail. The vaccine was not given to men or boys, despite the fact they are presumably equally liable to step on rusty nails as women.

Because of that curious anomaly, Comite Pro Vida de Mexico, a Roman Catholic lay organization became suspicious and had vaccine samples tested. The tests revealed that the Tetanus vaccine being spread by the WHO only to women of child-bearing age contained human Chorionic Gonadotrophin or hCG, a natural hormone which when combined with a tetanus toxoid carrier stimulated antibodies rendering a woman incapable of maintaining a pregnancy. None of the women vaccinated were told.

It later came out that the Rockefeller Foundation along with the Rockefeller’s Population Council, the World Bank (home to CGIAR), and the United States’ National Institutes of Health had been involved in a 20-year-long project begun in 1972 to develop the concealed abortion vaccine with a tetanus carrier for WHO. In addition, the Government of Norway, the host to the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Vault, donated $41 million to develop the special abortive Tetanus vaccine. 12

Is it a coincidence that these same organizations, from Norway to the Rockefeller Foundation to the World Bank are also involved in the Svalbard seed bank project? According to Prof. Francis Boyle who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by the US Congress, the Pentagon is ‘now gearing up to fight and win biological warfare’ as part of two Bush national strategy directives adopted, he notes, ‘without public knowledge and review’ in 2002. Boyle adds that in 2001-2004 alone the US Federal Government spent $14.5 billion for civilian bio-warfare-related work, a staggering sum.

Rutgers University biologist Richard Ebright estimates that over 300 scientific institutions and some 12,000 individuals in the USA today have access to pathogens suitable for biowarfare. Alone there are 497 US Government NIH grants for research into infectious diseases with biowarfare potential. Of course this is being justified under the rubric of defending against possible terror attack as so much is today.

Many of the US Government dollars spent on biowarfare research involve genetic engineering. MIT biology professor Jonathan King says that the ‘growing bio-terror programs represent a significant emerging danger to our own population.’ King adds, ‘while such programs are always called defensive, with biological weapons, defensive and offensive programs overlap almost completely.’ 13

Time will tell whether, God Forbid, the Svalbard Doomsday Seed Bank of Bill Gates and the Rockefeller Foundation is part of another Final Solution, this involving the extinction of the Late, Great Planet Earth.

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F. William Engdahl is the author of Seeds of Destruction, the Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation just released by Global Research. He also the author of A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order, Pluto Press Ltd.. To contact by e-mail: info@engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

Humans Have Intentionally Modified Weather for Military Purposes and Climate Control for Decades

Source : Pakalert Press

Washington’s Blog

Weather modification is a well-known endeavor. For example, governments have been seeding clouds for decades to create more rain.

And during warfare to create mud to slow the enemy’s ability to use roads.

As the Guardian reported in 2001:

During the Vietnam war, the Americans launched Project Popeye, a secret mission to seed the tops of monsoon clouds and trigger phenomenal downpours that would wash away the Ho Chi Minh Trail used for ferrying supplies.For five years Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos were sprayed during the monsoons, and military intelligence claimed that rainfall was increased by a third in some places. It only came to an end in March 1971 when [Washington Post] journalist Jack Anderson exposed the project and caused such a public furor that the UN general assembly approved a universal treaty banning environmental warfare.

But the US air force planners recently came up with new proposals to launch new weather weapons. Instead of silver-iodide, the idea is to shower fine particles of heat-absorbing carbon over clouds to trigger localised flooding and bog down troops and their equipment. Lasers on aircraft would also trigger lightning onto enemy aircraft, whilst other lasers could be fired at fog to clear a path over enemy targets on the ground.

Whether or not they work, past experiences tell us to be wary of tampering with the weather. In 1947, meteorologists tried to kill off a dying hurricane out at sea by seeding the clouds. The following day, the hurricane suddenly gathered strength, swung round and hit Savannah, Georgia causing extensive damage. The weather boffins were so rattled by the disaster it was not until August 1969 that they dared try again.

When Hurricane Debbie was 700 miles out at sea, they flew three seeding missions around its eye, where tropical storms are at their most intense, but the results were mixed – with each seeding the hurricane’s winds were reduced and each time they picked up again.

Interestingly, U.S. weather modification efforts during the Vietnam war were revealed as part of the Pentagon Papers.

As the Washington Post reported on July 2, 1972:

Indochina – by the evidence of a long-ignored passage in the Pentagon Papers – has been a test battleground, the site of purposeful rain-making along the Ho Chi Minh trails.

***

Sen. Claiborne Pell (D-R.I.) is prominent among members of Congress who believe it has become a reality. “There is very little doubt in my mind,” he says. Rep. Gilbert Gude (R-Md.) states: “There’s no doubt in my mind that it’s going on in Vietnam.”

“I think there’s no doubt rain-making was used in Laos on the trail,” says a Senate committee aide wee versed in defense affairs.

***

It is a “successful” pre-1967 use which is documented in the “senator Gravel” version of the Pentagon papers. In late February, 1967, this document discloses the Joint Chiefs of Staff prepared a list of “alternative strategies” for President Johnson.

One, titled “Laos Operations”, read:

“Continue at present plus Operation Pop Eye to reduce trafficability along infiltration routes … authorization required to implement phase of weather modification process previously successfully tested and evaluated in same area. (Italics added)

In 1967 — according to columnist Jack Anderson, who published the first allegation of Indochina rain-making — U.S. forces started secret Project Intermediary Compatriot “to hamper enemy logistics” … (with) claimed success in creating man-made cloudbursts … and flooding conditions” along the Ho Chi Minh trails, “making them impassable.”

The Post makes clear that cloud-seeding wasn’t limited to the Vietnam war theater:

The Defense Department freely reports that it has “field capacities” for making rain. It used them in the Philippines in 1969, in a six-month “precipitation augmentation project” at the Philippines request; in India in 1967, at a similar invitation; over Okinawa and Midway Islands, and in June, July and August, 1971, over drought-stricken Texas, at the urgent request of Gov. Preston Smith.

***

Navy rain-makers are currently involved in two long-range California programs — one over the Pacific off Santa Barbara, an attempt to increase rainfall over a national forest; the other over the Central Sierras to try to increase the snow-pack for electric utilities that depend on water power.

In 2008, the Denver Post noted the enormous scope of weather modification projects:

Scientists are monitoring more than 150 weather-modification projects in 40 countries, including at least 60 in the Western United States. The projects include wringing additional snow out of clouds for California hydropower and easing droughts in sub-Saharan Africa.

Most of the current research on this inexact science is being conducted abroad ….

In 2005, the Boston Globe provided an account of the early discovery of silver iodide as a tool for modifying weather:

In 1946, over Mount Greylock in western Massachusetts, a General Electric research chemist named Vincent Schaefer scattered three pounds of crushed dry ice out of an airplane into a cloud and set off a snow flurry. It was the world’s first successful cloud seeding-later that year, the meteorologist Bernard Vonnegut (brother to the novelist) discovered that silver iodide smoke had a similar effect-and weather modification emerged from the realm of con men and eccentrics. Most meteorologists remained skeptical, but by 1951, 10 percent of the United States was under commercial cloud seeding.

“Intervention in atmospheric and climatic matters on any desired scale” was only decades away, predicted John von Neumann, the mathematician who helped invent and began programming the first electronic computers to model the weather. Over the next 30 years, the federal government spent hundreds of millions of dollars on projects all over the country to increase precipitation, to mitigate hailstorms (an age-old enemy of farmers), and, most successfully, to clear the fog from around airports. Perhaps the era’s most ambitious endeavor was Project Stormfury, which sent up airplanes to seed the eye walls of hurricanes with silver iodide to weaken the winds before landfall.

(And see this discussion by an MIT scientist regarding the use of weather modification to mitigate hurricane damage.)

Moreover, the Post points out that – even in 1972 – weather modification has been tested for other applications as well:

Among patterns that can be predictably” be modified [Robert M. White, the current chief of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ] said, are: cold fog (which can be cleared from airfields) ; cumulus clouds (most common in the tropics — “In Florida,”, White said, “we have been able almost at will to make them grow explosively”); orographic clouds (moist air moving up over mountains — “At the right temperature you can begin thinking of milking them for water”) and hailstorms (which can often be suppressed, according to recent claims by the Russians, who fire silver iodide into them from rockets and artillery).

And – as the Post notes – even in 1972, the government was studying the affect of weather modification on climate:

ARPA Director Stephen J. Lukasik told the Senate Appropriations Committee in March: “Since it now appears highly probable that major world powers have the ability to create modifications of climate that might be seriously detrimental to the security of this country, Nile Blue [a computer simulation] was established in FY 70 to achieve a US capability to (1) evaluate all consequences of of a variety of possible actions … (2) detect trends in in the global circulation which foretell changes … and (3) determine if possible , means to counter potentially deleterious climatic changes …”

“What this means,” Lukasik explains, “is learning how much you have to tickle the atmosphere to perturb the earth’s climate. I guess we’d call it a threat assessment.”

The Post also quoted high-level scientists warning that enemies could modify weather as a direct form of warfare, for example, by flooding coastal areas where one’s enemy resided.

Now, weather modification is so mainstream that Texas openly discusses it’s cloud-seeding programs.

And U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas introduced the Weather Modification Research And Technology Transfer Authorization Act in 2004, saying:

Weather modification is the general term that refers to any human attempt to alter the weather…. These efforts have been used in the U.S. for more than 50 years to reduce crop and property damage, optimize useable precipitation during growing seasons and lessen the impact of periodic, often severe droughts.

The weather modification projects in Texas and other States in the U.S. are much more than well considered responses to drought. They are trying to use the latest technological developments in the science to chemically squeeze more precipitation out of clouds. Moisture that is needed to replenish fresh-water supplies in aquifers and reservoirs.

(The bill apparently didn’t pass)

There’s even a Journal of Weather Modification (here’s a peek inside).

The Technology Has Advanced Far Beyond Seeding Clouds With Silver Iodide

The technology has advanced a long way since the early 1970s.

For example, the Telegraph reported yesterday that Abu Dhabi ‘creates man-made rainstorms’ by “using giant ionisers, shaped like giant lampshades, to generate fields of negatively charged particles, which create cloud formation.” “There are many applications,” Professor Hartmut Grassl, a former institute director, is quoted by the Daily Mail as saying. “One is getting water into a dry area. Maybe this is a most important point for mankind.”

And former secretary of defense William Cohen told a conference on terrorism on April 28, 1997 that people can:

Alter the climate … remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.

The Use of Sulfur Dioxide to Affect Climate?

Tom Wigley – senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research and former director of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia and current – has proposed releasing sulfur dioxide in the upper atmosphere to reflect sunlight and reduce warming. And see this.

Wigley talks about this proposal in a Discovery channel special on weather modification.

Other scientists have suggested the same thing. See – by way of example only – this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this and this.

More History … and Complicated Issues to Consider for the Future

The above-described Boston Globe article pointed to the complexity of the issues involved in weather modification:

In 2003 the National Academy of Sciences recommended “a coordinated national program” to “conduct a sustained research effort” into weather modification.

Politicians in Western and Southwestern states are funding attempts to tickle more moisture out of the clouds ….

Last fall, a meteorologist named Ross Hoffman suggested in Scientific American that a network of microwave-beaming satellites could literally take the wind out of hurricanes.

In some of the driest parts of Mexico, a Bedford-based company called Ionogenics is testing a rainmaking apparatus that uses an array of steel poles to ionize the air.

China, a country with widespread cloud seeding, has announced plans to engineer clear weather in Beijing for the 2008 Olympics.

Meanwhile, deepening concern over the possibly cataclysmic effects of climate change has spurred a number of recent proposals, some sketched out in considerable detail, to engineer a measure of counteractive cooling. John Latham, an atmospheric physicist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., has proposed increasing the reflectivity of the cloud cover by stirring up water vapor from the ocean with a fleet of giant egg-beater-like turbines.

A few years ago, a team led by the late Edward Teller suggested creating a similar effect by launching a million tons of tiny aluminum balloons into the atmosphere.

***

As our ability to comprehend the weather improves and as the threat of climate change looms larger, some scientists are ready to brave the uncertainty and tangled ethics of tinkering with the skies. . . .

The US military, unsurprisingly, was intrigued by the possibility of a godlike meteorological arsenal. According to Spencer Weart, a physicist and historian of science at the American Institute of Physics, the thinking in the Defense Department was “maybe we’ll give the Russians a real Cold War, or maybe they’ll give us one, so we should be ready.” Pentagon money funded much of the era’s climate research, helping to create the weather models we now use in forecasting. War gamers dreamed up climatological warfare scenarios like laying down a blanket of fog over an airfield or visiting drought upon an enemy’s breadbasket.

***

But the grandest climate engineering schemes came from the Soviet Union. The most Promethean among them was a late 1950s proposal to dam the Bering Strait and, by pumping water from the Arctic Ocean into the Pacific, draw warm water northward from the Atlantic to melt the polar ice pack, making the Arctic Ocean navigable and warming Siberia. The leading Soviet climatologist, Mikhail I. Budyko, cautioned against it, arguing that the ultimate effects were too difficult to predict (though he himself had played with the idea of warming the Arctic by covering it in soot to decrease its reflectivity). John F. Kennedy, as a presidential candidate, suggested the United States look into collaborating on the project. While the two countries continued desultory discussions of the Bering Strait plan into the 1970s, the American government was by then losing interest in the whole field of weather modification.

***

In 1972, a government cloud-seeding run in South Dakota was followed by a violent deluge, and more than 200 people were killed in the ensuing flood. Meteorologists disagreed over whether seeding was to blame, but the incident became an ominous symbol for those who saw weather modifiers as latter-day Pandoras. . . . Boyle’s caution may be merited, but scientists are better equipped today to understand and manipulate the weather than they were 30 years ago.

***

Some scientists and engineers, such as Daniel Schrag, director of Harvard’s Laboratory for Geochemical Oceanography, point out that, in light of the planet’s growing thirst and rising temperature, even Soviet-scale climate modification is attracting real consideration. Boyle, who spoke at a joint MIT-Cambridge University conference on the topic last year, readily concedes, “There are very prominent, serious scientists who are considering these things.”

***

A 1996 Air Force report entitled “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025,” argued that “the tremendous military capabilities that could result from this field are ignored at our own peril.”

***

Even purely peaceful aims would lead to a cascade of seemingly zero-sum conflicts. In the US, cloud seeding has set off several lawsuits in which, for example, downwind farmers have accused a cloud-seeding neighbor of “stealing” their rain. Such issues only grow in complexity along with the scale.

***

According to Joe Kaplinsky, a technology analyst in London, “To raise these things before the technology has really gotten off the ground is to deprive us of the potential benefits of any technology, because any technology can be misused.” “Of course some people will benefit and some people will lose,” Kaplinsky says, “but there are social mechanisms for solving disagreements, either through compensation or through democratic debate.”

Here is a copy of the Air Force study “Weather as a Force Multiplier: Owning the Weather in 2025″.

The American Institute of Physics – the organization mentioned in the Boston Globe article – provides an interesting overview of the history of weather modification:

From 1945 into the 1970s, much effort went into studies of weather modification. American entrepreneurs tried cloud-seeding to enhance local rainfall, Russian scientists offered fabulous schemes of planetary engineering, and military agencies secretly explored “climatological warfare.”

***

In the mid 1970s … Research turned instead to controversial “geoengineering” schemes for interventions that might restrain global warming if it started to become unbearable.

***At the close of the Second World War, a few American scientists brought up a troublesome idea. If it were true, as some claimed, that humans were inadvertently changing their local weather by cutting down forests and emitting pollution, why not try to modify the weather on purpose? For generations there had been proposals for rainmaking, based on folklore like the story that cannonades from big battles brought rain.

Now top experts began to take the question seriously…. At the end of 1945 a brilliant mathematician, John von Neumann, called other leading scientists to a meeting in Princeton, where they agreed that modifying weather deliberately might be possible. They expected that could make a great difference in the next war. Soviet harvests, for example, might be ruined by creating a drought. Some scientists suspected that alongside the race with the Soviet Union for ever more terrible nuclear weapons, they were entering an equally fateful race to control the weather. As the Cold War got underway, U.S. military agencies devoted significant funds to research on what came to be called “climatological warfare.”

***

In 1953 a President’s Advisory Committee on Weather Control was established to pursue the idea. In 1958, the U.S. Congress acted directly to fund expanded rainmaking research. Large-scale experimentation was also underway, less openly, in the Soviet Union.Military agencies in the U.S. (and presumably in the Soviet Union) supported research not only on cloud seeding but on other ways that injecting materials into the atmosphere might alter weather. Although much of this was buried in secrecy, the public learned that climatological warfare might become possible. In a 1955 Fortune magazine article, von Neumann himself explained that “Microscopic layers of colored matter spread on an icy surface, or in the atmosphere above one, could inhibit the reflection-radiation process, melt the ice, and change the local climate.” The effects could be far-reaching, even world-wide. “What power over our environment, over all nature, is implied!” he exclaimed. Von Neumann foresaw “forms of climatic warfare as yet unimagined,” perhaps more dangerous than nuclear war itself. He hoped it would force humanity to take a new, global approach to its political problems.

***

Around 1956, Soviet engineers began to speculate that they might be able to throw a dam across the Bering Strait and pump water from the Arctic Ocean into the Pacific. This would draw warm water up from the Atlantic. Their aim was to eliminate the ice pack, make the Arctic Ocean navigable, and warm up Siberia. The idea attracted some notice in the United States — presidential candidate John F. Kennedy remarked that the idea was worth exploring as a joint project with the Soviets, and the discussion continued into the 1970s.

***

Beginning around 1961, Budyko and other scientists speculated about how humanity might alter the global climate by strewing dark dust or soot across the Arctic snow and ice. The soot would lower the albedo (reflection of sunlight), and the air would get warmer. Spreading so much dust year after year would be prohibitively expensive. But according to a well-known theory, warmer air should melt some snow and sea-ice and thus expose the dark underlying soil and ocean water, which would absorb sunlight and bring on more warming. So once dust destroyed the reflective cover, it might not re-form.

***

A 1972 U.S. government rain-making operation in South Dakota was followed by a disastrous flood, and came under attack in a class-action lawsuit.

***

Already back in 1965, a Presidential advisory panel had suggested that if greenhouse effect warming by carbon dioxide gas ever became a problem, the government might take countervailing steps. The panel did not consider curbing the use of fossil fuels. They had in mind geoengineering schemes — spreading something across the ocean waters to reflect more sunlight, perhaps, or sowing particles high in the atmosphere to encourage the formation of reflective clouds. Some back-of-the-envelope arithmetic suggested such steps were feasible, and indeed could cost less than many government programs. In 1974, Budyko calculated that if global warming ever became a serious threat, we could counter it with just a few airplane flights a day in the stratosphere, burning sulfur to make aerosols that would reflect sunlight away.

For a few years in the early 1970s, new evidence and arguments led many scientists to suspect that the greatest climate risk was not warming, but cooling. A new ice age seemed to be approaching as part of the natural glacial cycle, perhaps hastened by human pollution that blocked sunlight. Technological optimists suggested ways to counter this threat too. We might spread soot from cargo aircraft to darken the Arctic snows, or even shatter the Arctic ice pack with “clean” thermonuclear explosions. [For background, see this and this.]

***

The bitter fighting among communities over cloud-seeding would be as nothing compared with conflicts over attempts to engineer global climate. Moreover, as Budyko and Western scientists alike warned, scientists could not predict the consequences of such engineering efforts. We might forestall global warming only to find we had triggered a new ice age.

Such worries revived the U.S. military’s interest in artificial climate change on a global scale. A group at the RAND corporation, a defense think tank near Los Angeles, had been working with a computer climate model that originated at the University of California, Los Angeles.

***

The RAND group had to scramble to find support elsewhere. They turned to the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense.

***

When a National Academy of Sciences panel convened in 1991 to catalog the options, the members got into a long and serious debate over whether to include the grand “geoengineering” ideas. Might hopes of a future fix just encourage people to avoid the work of restricting greenhouse gas emissions? The panel reluctantly voted to include every idea, so that preparations could start in case the climate deteriorated so badly that radical steps would be the lesser evil. Their fundamental problem was the one that had bedeviled climate science from the start — if you pushed on this intricate system, nobody could say for sure what the final consequences might be.

What About Contrails?

The Environmental Protection Agency notes in a report entitled “Aircraft Contrails Factsheet”:

Persistent contrails can last for hours while growing to several kilometers in width and 200 to 400 meters in height.

***

Figure 2. Photograph of two contrail types. The contrail extending across the image is an evolving persistent contrail. Shown just above it is a short-lived contrail. Short-lived contrails evaporate soon after being formed due to low atmospheric humidity conditions. The persistent contrail shown here was formed at a lower altitude where higher humidity was present …. (Photos: J. Holecek, NOAA Aeronomy Laboratory, Boulder, CO.)

***

Figure 3. Persistent contrails and contrails evolving and spreading into cirrus clouds. Here, the humidity of the atmosphere is high, and the contrail ice particles continue to grow by taking up water from the surrounding atmosphere. These contrails extend for large distances and may last for hours. On other days when atmospheric humidity is lower, the same aircraft passages might have left few or even no contrails. (Photo: L. Chang, Office of Atmospheric Programs, U.S. EPA.)

***

Figure 5. Satellite photograph showing an example of contrails covering central Europe on May 4, 1995. The average cover in a photograph is estimated by using a computer to recognize and measure individual contrails over geographical regions of known size. Photograph from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)-12 AVHRR satellite and processed by DLR (adapted from Mannstein et al., 1999). (Reproduced with permission of DLR.)

***

Persistent contrails are of interest to scientists because they increase the cloudiness of the atmosphere. The increase happens in two ways. First, persistent contrails are line-shaped clouds that would not have formed in the atmosphere without the passage of an aircraft. Secondly, persistent contrails often evolve and spread into extensive cirrus cloud cover that is indistinguishable from naturally occurring cloudiness (See Figure 3). At present, it is unknown how much of this more extensive cloudiness would have occurred without the passage of an aircraft. Not enough is known about how natural clouds form in the atmosphere to answer this question. Changes in cloudiness are important because clouds help control the temperature of the Earth’s atmosphere. Changes in cloudiness resulting from human activities are important because they might contribute to long-term changes in the Earth’s climate. Many other human activities also have the potential of contributing to climate change. Our climate involves important parameters such as air temperature, weather patterns, and rainfall. Changes in climate may have important impacts on natural resources and human health. Contrails’ possible climate effects are one component of aviation’s expected overall climate effect.

***

Persistent line-shaped contrails are estimated to cover, on average, about 0.1 percent of the Earth’s surface ….

It is clear that persistent jet contrails can affect weather and climate. I have no idea whether persistent jet contrails are an unintentional affect of airplanes interacting with the environment, or an intentional attempt to affect the weather.

The articles quoted in the first part of this essay provide support for the possibility that at least some of the affects might be intentional. And as a 2008 international workshop on weather modification noted:

It has been well established that successful implementation of Cloud Seeding resulting in precipitation enhancement has significant positive beneficial impact in managing the issue of global warming and climate change….

German television network RTL purportedly alleges that the German government has admitted testing persistent jet contrails for military purposes – as a high-tech form of “chaff” to disrupt enemy radar.

The EPA attributes formation of persistent jet contrails to altitude and humidity, as well as trace impurities such as sulfur contained in jet fuel. On the other hand, some claim that very high concentrations of chemicals like barium and sulfur have been found in groundwater after the incidence of persistent jet contrails increased. And see this.

But whether or not persistent jet contrails are intentionally being created to affect climate or for military purposes or are an unintentional byproduct of flying a modern airplane is beyond the scope of this essay.

More convincing video of Jerusalem UFO comes to light

Source : Pakalert Press

Wake Up BD & Pakalert Press reported on an incredible UFO sighting along with accompanying video clip. The event occurred in Jerusalem at 1am on the Saturday morning. A UFO descended to the level of the Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount before zooming off skywards. Since we broke the story the Internet has buzzed with talk abut this sighting. Unconfirmed reports of other witnesses have surfaced, along with a third clip of the event that many believe is a hoax and a parody.

Now a fourth video of the event has surfaced. This video was supposedly taken by a group of Israelis visiting the Old City of Jerusalem.

The shown footage in this latest clip appears more substantially more convincing than the other clips.

See first clip here

Unknown Light Object Landed and Tookoff in Jerusalem, Israel

Source : Pakalert Press

Recent UFO video of strange unknown light in the sky over Jerusalem in Israel. This video was recorded on Friday, 28th January 2011 around 1 am.

Witness report: This morning around 01:00 AM at the promenade of Armon Hantziv in Jerusalm, i was witness(with another guy), an amazing ufo aircraft over Jerusalem old city (mount Moriah) Dome of the Rock,Temple Mount, (قبة الصخرة, הר הבית).
What is the meaning of this sighting ???

In Pictures: Australia Biblical Floods – Latest updates

Source : Pakalert Press

Updates

Major cyclone activity seen for flood-hit Australia

Thu Jan 13, 2011 6:07pm EST

(Reuters) – Australia’s flood-stricken Queensland state should expect to see above-average cyclone activity through to end-March, the national weather bureau said on Friday, a forecast that threatens already flooded areas with more heavy rains.

“There is every chance we will still see above average conditions,” a Bureau of Meteorology spokesman said, saying that so far the current cyclone season had made a slow start.

Towns evacuated, major river warnings issued as floods sweep Victoria

UPDATE 8.50pm: THOUSANDS of Victorians have been forced from their homes as flood waters spread throughout towns and farms in the state’s north and north-west.

Some towns were all but abandoned as major flood alerts were called for the Glenelg, Wimmera, Loddon, Avoca and Campaspe Rivers, with minor flood warnings current for nine other waterways, including the Maribyrnong and Werribee Rivers in Melbourne’s southern and north-western suburbs.

The State Emergency Service (SES) said more than 2000 people had been evacuated throughout the state.

Evacuation warnings were issued this afternoon for the towns of Bridgewater, Carisbrook, Newbridge, Dadswell Bridge, Malmsbury and Durham Ox.

Residents had previously evacuated parts of Beaufort, Halls Gap, Great Western, Charlton and Glenorchy following the heaviest rains in years.

Most centres recorded an entire summer’s worth of rain in one night, the heaviest fall occurring at Mt William, which recorded 133mm in the 24 hours to 9am on Friday, with Stawell, Rupanyup and Ararat all recording close to 90mm.

Read more

Latest updates: Queensland floods

5.54pm
Defence Minister Stephen Smith says he was surprised at the rate at which the Brisbane River receded and hopes the cleanup will take weeks rather than months.

He said operations would soon be transitioning from a focus on search and rescue to cleaning up and recovery.

The current number of troops is more than sufficient, he said, but additions could be considered.

5.40pm
Hundreds of electricians from interstate are lining up to help Queenslanders.

National Electrical and Communications Association boss James Tinslay said more than 500 electricians from across Australia have registered to inspect the properties.

“I’m overwhelmed that so many electrical contractors have expressed an interest in travelling to Queensland to help,” Mr Tinslay said in a statement.

“We have had electrical contractors from as far away as Perth and Adelaide put up their hands to help out.”

Current legislation prevents interstate contractors from working in Queensland without a local licence.

NECA is in talks with the attorney-general and the Electrical Safety Office on suspending the regulation.

5.30pm
Coles and Woolworths say they’ve collected more than $4 million in donations from shoppers so far, while big business has also rushed to help flood-affected Queensland.

The latest running tally puts Coles donations at $2.3 million, while Woolworths is fast approaching $2 million.

The fresh food people have also pledged to match shopper donations dollar for dollar, which is likely to make it the biggest corporate donor so far, ahead of the Commonwealth Bank with its offering of $1.35 million.

5.12pm
An ultralight plane has crashed into floodwaters near Goondiwindi.

The plane crashed near Cemetery Rd, about four km east of the Queensland – New South Wales border town.

The pilot sustained no significant injuries.

5pm
One of Brisbane’s major arterial roads may be at risk of falling into the river, Lord Mayor Campbell Newman says.

Mr Newman said on Friday that Coronation Drive, which connects the CBD with the western suburbs, has been slow to reopen because of structural concerns.

He said the high river level and silt has made it difficult to inspect potential damage, but that council engineers were concerned the lanes closest to the river could fall into the water because of the unsteadiness of the river bank.

4.36pm
The number of defence personnel involved in the Queensland flood operation will double to 1200.

“This will be the biggest deployment for a natural disaster since Cyclone Tracy,” Prime Minister Julia Gillard said.

Cyclone Tracy struck Darwin at Christmas in 1984.

She said specialist defence psychologists would also be available to Queenslanders.

3.58pm
Supply routes to Queensland’s isolated regional and flood devastated regions are reopening as the water covering vital highways subsides.

Moggill Road is now open between Bellbowrie and Kenmore. The Carnarvon Highway from Injune to Rolleston is now open to vehicles with a gross vehicle mass of 5 tonne or less from approximately 65km north of Injune to the Rolleston Township.

Visit http://www.131940.qld.gov.au for the latest information.

The Bruce Highway, the primary link between Brisbane and Queensland’s major population centres, reopened at Gympie on Thursday.

The highway will open to heavy vehicles at Rockhampton from 4pm local time on Friday afternoon, meaning supermarkets across central and northern Queensland will be able to restock.

Rockhampton has been cut off to the south for two weeks, forcing retailers across the northern parts of the state to resort to airlifts to get in emergency supplies.

Emergency supplies are also being trucked to devastated communities across the Lockyer Valley and Darling Downs, often under police escort due to the poor state of roads in the area.

Woolworths spokeswoman Claire Buchanan said the company had already begun restocking stores between Brisbane and Gladstone with northern centres to follow from tonight.

However, she warned it would still take some days to restock some centres, especially in the state’s far north, and some supplies would be unavailable due to supplier issues.

“It’s going to take weeks to get back to normal levels,” she said.

She said the town of Kingaroy, north west of Brisbane, still cut off by floodwaters, was now the primary point of concern as the local store was running short on supplies.

3.50pm
St George residents affected by last week’s inundation are delaying their clean-up efforts with more floodwater on its way to the town.

Balonne Shire Mayor Donna Stewart told the Toowoomba Chronicle water was expected to peak at up to 13.2 metres early next week.

“There won’t be much cleaning up going on,” Cr Stewart said.

“People are waiting for the next peak to come.”

3.42pm
Roads in and around the Brisbane CBD are beginning to re-open today, prompting a reminder from police for drivers to exercise caution.

There have been reports of minor traffic crashes as people return to work, their homes and businesses.

“We’d like to remind motorists that road conditions are not at their best with pot holes, wash outs and slippery surfaces not to mention debris that may be across the roads,” said disaster coordinator assistant commissioner Peter Martin.

“All non-essential travel in flood affected areas should be limited.”

3.30pm
Gold Coast United’s clash against the Newcastle Jets on January 22 will be free to all, with supporters asked to make a donation to the flood relief appeal.

Tickets will be available from Ticketek, according to the Courier Mail.

Gold Coast United vice-captain Michael Thwaite said he felt privileged that the team could play a part in the relief effort.

“If we can help to put a few smiles back on people’s faces and raise some money then we will all be delighted about that.”

3.23pm
Dalby’s fuel supplies have been replenished after a convoy of supply trucks rolled into town under police escort.

Three large fuel tankers from Toowoomba delivered thousands of litres of fuel to waiting service stations, which led to the local disaster co-ordination group lifting enforced restrictions on fuel purchases.

3.18pm
More than 200 people are involved in searching the Lockyer Valley and the search will continue into next week.

Mayor Steve Jones said the town of about 300 to 400 people looked as if it had been hit by a tsunami.

“You’ve got cars up in the trees, metres off the ground, whole buildings taken off the stumps and moved in some cases almost kilometres,” he told Channel Ten.

2.43pm
One of the 15 people killed in the floods was found 80km downstream from where they were reported missing, which authorities say demonstrates the complexity of emergency operations.

Queensland Emergency Services Minister Neil Roberts made the announcement at a press conference this afternoon.

He has also issued a stern warning against looting. Under the criminal code, the penalty doubles to 10 years in a disaster situation.

2.20pm
Police are asking members of the public to stay out of the Ipswich CBD unless absolutely essential.

Emergency workers have reported heavy traffic congestion which is hampering their efforts.

2.11pm
A Bundaberg man has told of finding human ashes in the wake of the Queensland flooding.

Clayton Morris, a resident of Riverdale Caravan Park, discovered an urn containing the remains and hopes to find its owner.

“I was trying to see what I could save before the water came up again this morning,” he told the NewsMail.

“I kicked something very hard and as I went to pick it up, I saw that it was an urn of someone’s ashes.”

It is believed the ashes belonged to a male resident of the park.

“It’ll mean the world to him – that was his wife.

2.06pm
Dalby residents remain on the toughest water restrictions, after the town’s water treatment plant was flooded for the second time in three weeks and has been shut down.

The Condamine River flows from Warwick and Toowoomba, and is continuing to rise despite floodwaters receding in Dalby.

Western Downs Mayor Ray Brown advises residents that Level Six restrictions remain in force, with use limited to absolutely essential purposes with no outside use or flood clean up permitted.

“This is slightly lower than the previous flood, but will still severely impact upon the town’s water supply and Council again desperately requires residents to cut back their water use.”

He strongly urged Dalby residents to use water for essential purposes only until further notice.

“Town water definitely must not be used for flood clean up.”

Water carting will commence today to supplement the town supply.

2pm
The Wivenhoe Dam on the Brisbane River will be releasing a high volume of 3,500 cubic meters per second for the next five to six days in preparations for next Friday’s king tide, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh says.

In Goondiwindi, 62 airlifted from hospitals and nursing homes and a helicopter is pre-positioned in the area. 100 residents are in evacuation centres.

Search and rescue continues in the Lockyer Valley, with the majority of properties anticipated to be resupplied with electricity today.

1.47pm
A central Queensland man is warning others not to enter floodwaters lest they become ill like him.

Trevor Breadley told ABC he is among four people from Theodore, west of Bundaberg in southern Queensland, who have been hospitalised with flood-related infections.

“I’d like to warn people not to go in flood water unnecessarily – that’s how I got this bug,” he said.

“Doctors are fighting frantically trying to find a name on it and a cure for it – it’s some soil-borne, water-carrying infection.”

1.42pm
A Sunshine Coast animal rehabilitation centre has been inundated with babies, the Noosa News reported.

The Eumundi Wildlife Rehabilitation Centre is caring for about 300 birds, lizards, turtles, possums and joeys among the animals that have been rescued.

Gill Brownhill, who runs the rehabilitation centre, told the Noosa News many animals were ready to be released but disastrous weather had hindered those plans.

Ms Brownhill said there had been a huge inundation of baby kookaburras with about 40 brought dropped off in recent weeks.

1.30pm
Police deputy commissioner Ian Stewart says three people – two men and a woman – were arrested overnight for looting.

The trio were caught loading goods into a boat in Brisbane.

Mr Stewart said it was “very disturbing” that people were looting, but said police were proactively patrolling the state’s streets and waterways.

He reiterated that civilians should not risk their safety in floodwaters.

Protecting property from potential looters was a job for police, he said.

1.21pm
An evacuation centre has been opened at Goondiwindi and residents in low-lying areas are being advised to make their way to the showgrounds.

Bureau hydrologist Ian Rocca told the Brisbane Times water levels were at 10.64 metres and will continue to rise to a record peak level of 10.85 metres and possibly higher after noon.

Goondiwindi mayor Graeme Scheu told AAP he was confident the flood levees would hold.

But it will be a case of wait-and-see.

“The levee bank is designed for 11 metres. We are expecting this to hold but we are in uncharted territory,” Mr Scheu said.

1.15pm
A mine sweeper has been requested from the Australian Defence Force to search Morton Bay for debris that has washed down the Brisbane River, Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said.

Around 600 military personnel have been brought into the state, where they are helping to resupply isolated towns and assisting police. More personnel are to be deployed in Brisbane and Ipswich.

The Bremer River is falling – it is currently at 10.1m at Ipswich.

1.05pm
Premier Anna Bligh is urging people to wear their gumboots and be aware of hidden dangers in floodwater.

Even in ankle-deep water, broken glass and other dangerous items could cause serious injury and infection, she warned.

She said 900 people were still in evacuation centres in Ipswich. Efforts are underway to open Ipswich Motorway.

In Moggill many have been isolated and cut off from power.

The southern Queensland town of Dirranbandi, west of Goondiwindi, has been cut off by flood waters and will be isolated until next month.

The town has not yet been flooded, she said.

12.59pm
Flood waters at Condamine will peak in the weekend, the second largest flood on record.

The Queensland border town of Goondiwindi is also preparing for record flood levels that threaten to breach its levees.

Some evacuations have already began at Goondiwindi, which has a population of 6000.

In Brisbane, the River has receded to 2.5m and below. Ten buildings remain without power in the CBD. It is unlikely to be operational until next week.

12.20pm:
Queensland police have advised flood-affected residents and businesses to have a licensed gas fitter check their lines and connections.

Disconnections may have occurred for safety reasons before the floods.

And Brisbane City Council is asking people not to bring sandbags back into council depots just yet. Instead they should hold on to them for now and the council will organise facilities in the next few days.

12.15pm:
Queensland Premier Anna Bligh told ABC Radio this morning 60 schools and 86 kindergartens and childcare centres across the state have been damaged in the floods.

“We are determined to have schools open on the normal day one of the school year,” she said.

12.08pm:
Health authorities and the grocery industry have warned residents returning to their homes to bin tainted food.

The same advice applied to food that had been in a refrigerator for more than 24 hours during power cuts.

“The other thing that is important to do is to get rid of any food that has come into contact with floodwaters,” Queensland Health chief Jeanette Young told ABC Television .

“Because we don’t want people to get food poisoning after everything else.”

The Australian Food and Grocery Council provided the same advice.

“Anything that’s being flood-affected, gone under water has to be thrown out,” chief executive Kate Carnell said.

Authorities are providing skips in suburban streets to take bags of tainted food.

12.05pm:
There are still 66,000 properties without power in Brisbane and surrounding areas – power has been restored to 170,000.

Today buses are running today on a modified Sunday timetable. More than than 160 routes are running while 25 routes have been suspended. Check translink.com.au for more.

12pm:
Queensland police say additional police are being deployed to the flood-hammered Lockyer Valley town of Grantham to assist the community as people start to return home.

And Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman is appealing for owners of plant and equipment to volunteer in the clean-up of the city’s streets as the floods recede.

The job would take all day at least, Mr Newman said.

“The priority is the main arterials today.”

Work on the back streets would probably start in earnest on Saturday and Sunday.

“I’m calling on people who want to volunteer private plant and equipment,” he said.

“We’ll pay for the diesel if you’ll volunteer your time. Email me – lordmayor@brisbane.qld.gov.au – we’ll contact you, hopefully today, and we’ll try and then give you a job. We’d appreciate offers of support.”

11.54am:
Bread is proving to be as precious as gold in Marlborough, the Fraser Coast Chronicle reported this morning.

A convoy of supplies was escorted through back routes by police, on the way north to restock towns suffering shortages.

But the trucks had been stuck by the side of the road south of Gympie for days, so any perishables like fruit, vegetables and milk did not make it through.

Foodworks manager Nick Henselheit told the Fraser Coast Chronicle his store managed to get a delivery of mixed groceries including flour, toilet paper and pet food, but no bread.

“The Buttercup bread factory in Brisbane is under water, and their Burleigh factory can’t produce enough; Tip-Top still can’t get their bread through,” Mr Henselheit said.

“It could be a couple of days before we work out where it will come from.”

The bread shortage is working in favour of local bakers, however, who told the paper they are selling it straight from the oven.

“Our bread is going out the door red hot,” one baker said. “We can’t even slice it before it’s sold.”

In Gladstone, the in-demand item is milk, the Gladstone Observer reported.

A milk truck was being unloaded at the Woolworths in Goondoon Street yesterday afternoon, but as staff were loading it on the shelves, customers were taking it off again.

Customers were restricted to two bottles each.

11.39am: The Goondiwindi Regional council says businesses in the town will trade as normal today, despite flood waters creeping slowly higher this morning.

At 8am (11am NZST) the MacIntyre River was at 10.64m at Goondiwindi. The Bureau of Meteorology (BoM) has projected the river will reach 10.85m or higher later today.

Mayor Graeme Scheu told ABC Radio he was confident the 11m levee along the river, built in 1958 would hold.

“That to me was never a great problem,” he said.

The previous flood peak record at the town is 10.6m, which was reached during a 1996 flood.

“This is the greatest volume of water that has ever flown down the MacIntyre River,” Mr Scheu said this morning.

The flood level upstream at Kildonan was at 12.97m and falling at 7am (10am NZST), the BoM said, down from a peak of 13.05m last night.

11.17am: The Australia Socceroos will wear black armbands and there will be a moment of silence before their Asian Cup football clash against Korea Republic in Qatar tomorrow morning (NZST Time), in memory of those who have lost their lives in the Queensland floods.

11.03am: Wear gumboots not “thongs”. That’s the message from Queensland Premier Anna Bligh as people get stuck into the big clean up across the flood-ravaged state.

Ms Bligh told ABC Radio the residing floodwaters will leave behind an “unbelievable stench”.

“It smells like that because it has bad things in it,” she said.

The flood waters will contain everything from farm run-off to storm water and sewage.

“You need to protect yourself when you get in there for the clean up,” she said.

Meanwhile, Michael Ross of the Royal Automotive Club of Queensland told ABC Radio there is no threat to fuel supplies in Brisbane so there is no need for people to panic buy.

10.33am: Rockhampton police have charged a 26-year-old Koongal man with two charges of unregulated high risk activity and two of obstructing police after he allegedly jumped into a flooded river in Rockhampton.

Police said the man climbed onto the Fitzroy Bridge and jumped into the Fitzroy River just before midnight last night.

Water police and Queensland Fire and Rescue Service Swift Water Rescue searched the river for the man, who was later seen running away.

The man is believed to have been involved in the same activity the night before, police said.

He will appear in Rockhampton Magistrates Court today.

10.03am: The Australian Business Traveller has contacted all the major airlines flying to and from Brisbane Airport to find out the exact details of their change policy following the Queensland floods.

Most airlines are waiving their fees for changing flights. Full policies can be read here.

9.52: Australia Post is advising mail delivery into and out of flood affected regions of Queensland has been “severely impacted and subject to major delays”.

Australia Post said it would continue to transport letters to the northern regions for delivery to those areas that are still accessible, but with air freight capacity limited, essential supplies will take precedence, so mail may take longer to get through.

“With major roads to the north blocked, we are using sea to ship parcels from Sydney to Townsville for all areas from Rockhampton north and west,” the company said on its website.

Letters are reaching Rockhampton and Mackay via air, as roads to the north are expected to be restricted for at least another week. Access to Toowoomba is also restricted, but deliveries of local products within the region are continuing.

Many parts of the Grafton catchment area cannot be delivered to due to the Pacific Highway being blocked, while delivery within Brisbane will be delayed where roads are blocked.

As of yesterday, more than 70 post offices in Queensland are closed.

9.34am: The Australian Institute of Architects has started a blog to enable its members from across the country to offer assistance and support to members in flood-affected Queensland.

“You may be able to offer office space, or accommodation, electrical equipment or internet access,” the blog reads.

“You may be able to head to Queensland and help with cleaning up after the water subsides.”

9.17am: Around 40 people are now feared to have died when a wall of water smashed into the tiny Lockyer Valley community of Grantham, The Queensland Times reported this morning.

The official disaster death toll is 15, but residents of the town and police sources have told the paper they expect the number of confirmed deaths to soar in the next few days.

The number of missing across the entire Lockyer Valley stands at 61. The Australian Defence Force arrived in the town yesterday to help the search for victims of the flood.

A local woman told The Queensland Times: “There are still dozens of people that haven’t been found”.

“After experiencing first-hand the ferocity of the water that came through here … it’s unlikely they are still alive.

It’s awful to say that. They are our friends and family, but we need to face the facts.”

9.11am: As flood levels subside in Ipswich the true extent of the damage is being revealed, with the repair bill tipped to pass the A$100 million (NZ$130m) mark.

Some residents who evacuated houses on Tuesday and Wednesday were yesterday able to see their homes and businesses for the first time with the Bremer River slowly starting to recede. As of 5.42am (8.42am NZST) today, the river was at 10.6m.

Ipswich Mayor Paul Pisasale told The Queensland Times the repair and clean-up bill for the city, including roads and infrastructure, would be in excess of $100 million.

9.01am: Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has announced the State Government will provide free public transport for a week from today to help with the initial flood recovery in South East Queensland.

“Our public transport network is vital to the region’s recovery,” Ms Bligh said.

“Many people don’t have cars, and many others have lost them in the floods.

“We want to help as much as possible and making the network free for a week will keep unnecessary cars off the road, help people do some shopping and get around to help others if needed.”

Minister for Transport Rachel Nolan said the measure was intended to assist the flood recovery.

“Let me be clear. This isn’t a ticket to rubberneck. It remains the case that non-essential travel is not encouraged,” she said.

Ms Nolan said planned fare rises would still go ahead on January 22 as additional state funds would be required to rebuild the damaged transport network.

– NZ HERALD STAFF

5 Simple Ways To Prepare For The Coming Food Crisis

Source : Pakalert Press

Activist Post

Recently there has been an incredible flurry of news reporting about food shortages and the pending global food crisis. Everyone who looks at the indicators would agree that this crisis is only likely to worsen.  It is estimated that the Australia floods alone could cause a 30% jump in food prices. Although the average shopper already can feel the food inflation, it is difficult to recognize the severity of the looming food shortages.  After all, there are still 15 types of colorfully-boxed Cheerios packing the isles, which gives us the illusion of abundance.

The truth is that we are headed for large food production shortfalls, manipulated or not, while middle-class food demand grows massively in the developing world.  For decades the world’s agriculture community produced more than enough food to feed the planet, yet some now believe we are reaching “Peak Food” production levels.  In turn, other experts believe the “food bubble” is about to burst, and not even the biotech companies can save us.

However, there are still vast unused stretches of fertile land that can be used around the globe, and the U.S. ethanol mandates that reportedly consume at least 25% of the corn harvest could be reduced to ease the burden. Therefore, it seems that despite the extreme weather and dwindling harvests, food production still has room to increase, but not without foresight and planning.

Additionally, the current systems for growing food are fully dependent on oil to achieve high levels of production, while livestock production is running at full concentration-camp capacity; the end product must then travel thousands of miles to get to store shelves.  Clearly we can see the fragile nature of this system, especially on human health and the environment.  Consequently, solving the so-called “food crisis” is far more complex than simply fixing statistical supply and demand issues.

Indeed, these are turbulent times where humanity appears to be nearing Peak Everything. Ultimately, solutions to the food crisis will begin at the local level. There are cutting-edge farming techniques gaining popularity that produce a large variety of crops by mimicking nature, as well as innovative techniques for small-scale food production at home or in urban buildings. These hold promise for easing local hunger.

Personal ways to protect yourself from food shortages may seem obvious to some, but many feel the task can be insurmountable. To the contrary, here are 5 simple ways to protect yourself from the coming food crisis:

1. Create a Food Bank: Everyone should have a back-up to the everyday food pantry.  In this environment, you should consider your personal food bank far more valuable than a dollar savings account.  Start by picking up extra canned goods, dried foods, and other essentials for storage each time you go to the store.  Also, hunt for coupons and shop for deals when they come up.  Devise a plan for FIFO (first in, first out) rotation for your food bank. It is advisable to acquire food-grade bins to store your bulk dried foods, and be sure to label and date everything. Besides the obvious store-able foods like rice and beans, or canned goods, some other important items to hoard are salt, peanut butter, cooking oils, sugar, coffee, and powdered milk.  If you don’t believe the food crisis will be too severe, then buy items that you would eat on a normal daily basis.  But if you believe the crisis will be sustained for some time, purchasing a grain mill to refine bulk wheat or corn may prove to be the most economical way to stretch your food bank.  Some emergency MREs are also something to consider because they have a long shelf life.

2. Produce Your Own Food: Having some capacity to produce your own food will simply become a necessity as the food system crumbles.  If you don’t know much about gardening, then start small with a few garden boxes for tomatoes, herbs, or sprouting and keep expanding to the limits of your garden. And for goodness sakes, get some chickens.  They are a supremely easy animal to maintain and come with endless benefits from providing eggs and meat, to eating bugs and producing rich manure.  Five laying hens will ensure good cheap protein for the whole family.  If you have limited growing space, there are brilliant aquaculture systems that can produce an abundance of fish and vegetables in a small area.  Aquaculture is a contained organic hydroponic system where the fertilized waste water from the fish tank is pumped through the vegetable growing trays which absorb the nutrients before returning clean water to the fish tank.  Set high goals for independent food production, but start with what’s manageable.

3. Learn Food Preservation: Food preservation comes in many forms such as canning, pickling, and dehydrating.  In every case some tools and materials are required along with a good deal of knowledge.  If you can afford a dehydrator, they all usually come with a preparation guide for most foods.  You can also purchase a vacuum sealer if you have the means.  A good vacuum sealer should come with thorough instructions and storage tips, and will add months if not years to many food items.  If you’re a beginner at canning, start with tomatoes first.  It’s easy and very valuable when all your tomatoes ripen at the same time and you want fresh pasta sauce in the winter.  A bigger ticket item that is nice to have for food preservation is a DC solar powered chest freezer.  It is the ultimate treasure chest.

4. Store Seeds: The government and the elite have seed banks and so should you.  Seeds have been a viable currency in many civilizations past and present.  They represent food when scarcity hits.  Before the rise of commercial seed giants like Monsanto, local gardeners were adept at selecting seeds from the healthiest plants, saving them, and introducing them to the harvest for the following year, thus strengthening the species. Through local adaptation to pests, genetic diversity was further ensured; it was long-term thinking at its finest. That is why it is important to find heirloom seed banks and learn to save seeds from each harvest.

5. Join or Start a Local Co-Op: Joining local cooperatives is very important, especially when food shortages occur. You may not be able to provide for yourself completely, especially in terms of variety, so having a community mechanism to spread the burden and share the spoils will be critical.  If you don’t know if you have a local food cooperative in your area you can search the directory at LocalHarvest.org.  You may also be able to get information from your local farmers market.  If your area doesn’t have a co-op, then start one.  These co-ops don’t have to be big or elaborate.  In fact, it may be more optimal to organize it with friends, neighbors, or co-workers.  Whether you join or start a cooperative, work to expand the participants and products.

Please tell us how you’re preparing by sharing your story in the comment section.

Huge ring appears over Australia, is HAARP involved ?

Source : Pakalert Press

colin andrews

After receiving an urgent e-mail from a contact in Australia informing me of bizarre weather on the weather satellite imagery, I checked out the data and just hours later more strangeness. I am waiting to hear from the Australian Government’s weather bureau for their own explanation.

“There is very strange weather happening here – please check”

A contact in Australia just alerted me to what he describes as “very strange weather taking place over the south west of Australia”. He told me to go to the national weather satellite images if I could not open the images he attached (See left). By the time I had discovered the e-mail and checked, the large clearly defined ring had mostly dissipated but still was just visible on a time loop which was spiraling counter clockwise (Low Pressure system).

The images above is what my contact sent which shows a wide band ring covering many hundreds of miles across the south west of Australia with a small dot (presumably cloud) shown just right of center.

I saved the loop of the area when I checked the site several hours later but unfortunately it was encrypted not to permit this. The loop is not now on the site but the satellite image taken at 16:30 UTC is also very interesting. It shows a very large rotating over the western Australia where the mysterious large ring appeared from which a small but brief condense trail formed off the coastline and from the center what had been the huge ring a series of what appears to be three mini spiraling arms are seen moving out of the area, moving north east. This is one of those rare occasions when I could buy weather experimentation effects or other experiments
being performed by HAARP are being observed. It is hoped to receive an explanation from the Australian Government Weather Bureau for these series of strange effects.

Only remains of the huge ring now moving away north east as several small spiraling arms. Satellite Image by Australian Government.

Other similar circles and rings seen on radar http://www.colinandrews.net/OtherCircles.html