| WWIII is not going to be an accident. It will not be caused by an unfortunate chain events that the U.S. struggles to avoid. It is a goal, a specific objective that must be reached in order to force a cultural shift that the population would otherwise never accept. It is only from this context that the events unfolding in the world right now make any sense. |  |
 | LIFE IN THE USA IN THE SQUALOR OF WWII: IMAGINE WWIII |
The squalor of World War II from London to LeningradTowards the end of 1942, British housewife Nella Last reflected on the state of her war and had to admit that, despite the Blitz and the shortages, it had inflicted little real hardship or suffering on her. Especially, she noted, when compared with what was going on in the Soviet Union, where at that moment every inch of besieged Stalingrad was a wasteland. ‘We have had food, shelter and warmth when millions have had none,’ she conceded.
Pinta cheer: A milkman delivering milk in a London street devastated during a German bombing raid. Firemen are dampening down the ruins behind him Mrs Last was unusually sensitive. Most of her compatriots on the Home Front were too preoccupied by their own troubles to concern themselves with the larger, but remote, miseries of others. Housewife Phyllis Crook wrote to her husband serving in North Africa: ‘Christmas is going to be a beastly time, and I’m hating the thought of it. Life seems too mouldy for words. I wonder when we shall see you again. It all seems horribly far away, and doesn’t bear too much thinking about.’ Separation from her husband, the necessity to occupy lodgings far from her London home and the drab monotony of wartime seemed to her, like many others, sufficient causes for unhappiness. Ten days after writing that letter she became a widow when her husband was killed in action.Yet Mrs Crook’s woes would seem trivial, her self-pity contemptible, to many people of war-ravaged nations. Her life and those of her children were not threatened and they were not even hungry.
Orphans of the storm: Two young children either abandoned or orphaned, at a convent in Rome, where they were cared for by nuns in 1945 On the Home Front during World War II, the British endured six years of austerity and spasmodic bombardment. The night-time blackout promoted moral as well as physical gloom. Accidents in the blackout killed more people than the Luftwaffe. Defence regulations were so stringently enforced that two soldiers leaving the dock at the Old Bailey after being condemned to death for murder were rebuked for failing to pick up their gas masks. Yet the circumstances of Winston Churchill’s islands were much preferable to those of Continental societies, where hunger and violence were endemic. In many places, civilians suffered more than soldiers. Globally, more non-combatants perished than uniformed participants, notably in China and the Soviet Union.
Real hardship: Refugees flee starvation and the war front in Russia in 1943 In Russia’s war with Germany, from the very start there was no such thing as a separate Home Front. The violence of war rushed inexorably towards them and engulfed them. Tens of millions of civilians found themselves in the condition described by a Ukrainian partisan as he surveyed the remains of one of countless hamlets caught up in the fighting. ‘What is left of it? Heaps of ruins, chimneys sticking out, scorched chairs. Where there were roads and paths, there are thorns and weeds. ‘A family of refugees stands in front of me. They are so thin and gaunt, one can see through them. These people have suffered as much as us, the soldiers, or even more.’ Even those Russians who did not suffer siege or bombardment spent the war in conditions of extreme privation. ‘We had no life of our own,’ said Moscow woman Klavdiya Leonova, who worked 12-hour shifts making army tunics and camouflage netting. They were fed badly baked bread and kasha — a porridge made with burned wheat. Their intake of food amounted to 500 calories a day less than their British or German counterparts were getting and 1,000 fewer than Americans. Russians suffered widespread scurvy and other diseases associated with hunger and overwork. Production lines operated around the clock. ‘Sunday was in theory a day off, but the factory Party Committee often called on us for outside work, such as digging trenches or bringing in timber from the forest.’
Under siege: Suffering after a bombing raid in the encircled city of Leningrad In the unoccupied Western nations, life was cushy by comparison and some people even prospered. Industrialists made enormous profits, many of which somehow evaded windfall taxes. Criminals exploited demand for prostitutes, black-market goods and stolen military fuel and supplies. Privileged Britons remained privileged. ‘The extraordinary thing about the war was that people who really didn’t want to be involved in it were not,’ the novelist Anthony Powell wrote afterwards. This was true of a limited social milieu. The week before D-Day, as 250,000 young American and British soldiers prepared to hurl themselves at Hitler’s Atlantic Wall, in London Evelyn Waugh wrote in his diary: ‘Woke half-drunk and had a long, busy morning — getting my hair cut, trying to verify quotations in the London Library, visiting Nancy [Mitford]. At luncheon I again got drunk . . . ’ Waugh was untypical, and many of the friends with whom he caroused away his war were on leave from active service. Several were dead a year later. But even so, Londoners were vastly better off than the inhabitants of Paris, Naples, Athens or any city in the Soviet Union or China.
Ruined: In Liverpool, 68-year-old Sarah Manson sits outside her bombed home with her grandchildren after a Nazi bombing raid All over the world, millions of people were on the move, forced in one way or another from their homes. Half the population of Britain moved in the course of the war, some because they were evicted to make way for servicemen, others because their houses were destroyed, most because wartime duties demanded it. Elsewhere in Europe, more brutal imperatives intervened. In January 1943, a British nurse found herself giving birth in the maternity ward of a hospital in Germany rather than her native Channel Islands. She was one of 834 civilians on occupied Guernsey deported to the Reich in September 1943 to spend the rest of the war in an internment camp as hostages. There should have been 836 of them, but an elderly major and his wife from Sark slashed their wrists before embarkation. We should not make light of the hardship felt by Britons on the Home Front. News of the violent and premature deaths of distant loved ones was a pervasive feature of the wartime experience. Countless families struggled to come to terms with loss.
Fragments: A sailor lends a hand in recovering belongings from a house in Bath during the Baedeker Blitz Sheffield housewife Edie Rutherford was preparing tea when her young neighbour, the wife of an RAF pilot, knocked on the door and said: ‘Mrs Rutherford, Henry is missing.’ ‘I just opened my arms and let her have a good weep while I cursed this blasted war.’ The girl was close to hysteria and babbling that he couldn’t be dead because ‘he was home only last Wednesday’. Another housewife tried to comfort a neighbour who received the news of her son’s death on the day he had been expected home on leave. She’d got some rabbit in especially for his dinner. He was a 19-year-old officer, ‘such a nice boy’. In every war-torn land, they were all ‘nice boys’ to those who mourned.
Safety first: A family wheel all their bedding in a pram, as they make their way to an air raid shelter where they will spend the night More than any other aspect of the war, food or lack of it emphasised the relativity of suffering. Overall, far more people suffered serious hunger or died of starvation than in any previous conflict. This was because an unprecedented number of countries became battlefields, with consequent loss of agricultural production. Even the citizens of those countries that escaped famine found their diets severely restricted. Britain’s rationing system ensured that no one starved. Indeed, the poor were better nourished than in peace-time. But few found anything to enjoy about their fare. Derek Lambert, then a small boy, remembered a morning when a jar was put on the breakfast table and his father spread the contents on his bread. ‘He bit into it, frowned and said: “What was that?” ‘ “Carrot marmalade,” said my mother. My father picked up the jar, took it into the garden and poured it on to the compost heap.’ Any Russian or Asian peasant would have deemed it a luxury. On their Home Front, the German population ate well enough, at least until the war neared its end, largely because the Nazis starved conquered nations to keep their own citizens fed. To be fair, every nation with power to do so put its people first, heedless of the consequences for others at their mercy. The U.S. insisted that its people and armed forces abroad should receive fantastically generous allocations of food. The Japanese also adopted draconian policies throughout their empire to provide food for their own people, which caused millions to starve in South-East Asia. But the Germans behaved the most brutally. Nazi policy was explicitly directed towards starving subject races, and even though people in occupied regions displayed extraordinary ingenuity in hiding crops, millions died with empty stomachs. Meanwhile, back in Germany, housewives complained about the dreariness of rations. One fantasised in her diary about ‘large juicy beefsteaks and long asparagus with lumps of golden butter’, the sort of meal Nazi functionaries continued to enjoy. They had privileges in food as well as in everything else. The same thing happened in the communist Soviet Union. Conditions for the citizens of Leningrad during the 900-day siege were horrendous. ‘Life has been reduced to one thing — the hunt for food,’ one resident wrote. ‘We have returned to prehistoric times.’ People made soup and bread with grass. Pigeons vanished from the city squares, caught and eaten, as were crows, gulls, then rats and household pets.
Privation: Residents of Leningrad try to go about their daily lives following a German bomb attack in the winter of 1941 Yet party officials ate prodigiously. Bread, sugar, meatballs and other cooked food remained readily available at a special canteen, which also gave access to a private heated cinema. It was a characteristic of Russia’s war that corruption and privilege persisted, even as tens of millions starved and died. A protester who put out pamphlets denouncing ‘the scoundrels who deceive us, who stockpile food and leave us to go hungry’ was tracked down by secret police and shot. The least affected Home Front, of course, was the U.S., though that didn’t stop its citizens moaning about hardship. ‘My Dad just came back from the store and all he could get was blood pudding and how I hate that,’ a housewife complained in a letter to her soldier husband. The war was a boom-time for the U.S. and its people, as everything grew in scale to match the largest war in history. There was plenty of work. The average American’s wealth almost doubled. ‘People are crazy with money,’ said a Philadelphia jeweller. ‘They buy things just for the fun of spending.’ In 1939, the U.S., had 4,900 super- markets; by 1944, there were 16,000. The remoteness of the U.S. from the fighting fronts and its security from direct attack or even serious hardship militated against the passion that moved civilians of nations suffering occupation or bombardment.  After Pearl Harbor, Americans hated the Japanese, but few felt anything like the animosity towards the Germans that came readily to Europeans. It proved hard even to rouse American anger about Hitler’s reported persecution of the Jews. A behaviourist noted for his work with rats suggested that Americans at home could be more effectively galvanised into a fighting mood by cutting off their petrol, tyres and civil liberties than by appealing to their ideals.
Carrying on: A greengrocer remains open for business at a market in Lambeth Way in London after a V-2 Bombing raid As the war progressed, it was Germany’s Home Front that increasingly suffered as the horrors the nation had visited on the rest of Europe rebounded on its own people. Its cities experienced a scale of terror and devastation far beyond anything the Luftwaffe inflicted on Britain from 1940 to 1944. ‘For two whole hours this ear-splitting terror goes on and all you can see is fire,’ a resident of Hamburg recorded. In Darmstadt, a young girl remembered the ‘stench of roasted flesh’ after a raid killed 9,000 inhabitants. ‘Not a bird, not a green tree, no people, nothing but corpses,’ one resident recalled. Germany’s city-dwellers were obliged to spend up to 12 out of 24 hours in cellars and shelters. Nazi officials’ exploitation of privileged access to the best-protected refuges caused resentment. In one public shelter, party members were reported to have ‘made themselves comfortable with crates of beer’ while less fortunate citizens were exposed to the fury of the bombardment.
[caption Hitler devoted vast resources to his personal safety. A million cubic metres of concrete — more than the weight of materials employed throughout 1943-44 on all Germany’s public shelters — were expended on his East Prussian headquarters and Berlin bunker. By the end of the war, half the country’s housing stock had been destroyed. ‘Nuremberg is a city of the dead,’ an American reporter wrote. Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg were worse. The victorious Soviet army added to the woes of the German people with the appalling wholesale murder and rape of its citizenry. None of this was right. The killing of civilians must always be deplored. But Nazi Germany represented a historic evil. Hitler’s people inflicted appalling sufferings upon the innocent. The destruction of their cities and large numbers of their inhabitants was the price they had to pay for the horrors they unleashed upon Western civilisation. But it was no wonder that in Britain, housewife Nella Last, while counting her blessings, felt a dreadful sadness and pessimism about the whole business of war. ‘I saw a neighbour’s baby today,’ she recorded in her diary, ‘and I felt a sudden understanding for all those women who refuse to bring babies into the world now.’ 
Unknown number: A rare colour photo shows a nurse tending to German wounded during the blockade. No official figures show how many German soldiers or airman died during the siege
Opening up: The Soviet destroyer Opytny fires one of its main guns during the siege. The Opytny served as a floating battery in Leningrad and, despite being an obvious target, survived the blockade. WWIII is not going to be an accident. It will not be caused by an unfortunate chain events that the U.S. struggles to avoid. It is a goal, a specific objective that must be reached in order to force a cultural shift that the population would otherwise never accept. It is only from this context that the events unfolding in the world right now make any sense.  WARNING IMMINENT FALSE FLAG IN DAYS TO COME
Several warnings of an imminent “false flag” attack by the Israeli-influenced United States on one of its own warships, which will be attributed to Iran, have been reported by several reliable sources. In recent years “false-flag” terrorism has been utilized multiple times by US and Israeli political actors to provide pretexts for otherwise unjustifiable, anti-Islamic military excursions. The plan is to justify an all-out assault on Iran based upon a new fabricated “Pearl Harbor”. Israel is the primary motivator behind the attempts to destabilize Iran. US traditional foreign policy was one of attempting to foster stability in the Middle East for oil markets. The Zionist impulse, conversely, is to destabilize all potential regional hegemons and carve the Middle East up into ethno-religious statelets. Thus, since the fraudulent events of 9/11, we’ve seen a policy of Middle East disintegration being pursued by Israeli-influenced American politicians. Indeed, recently released CIA memos reveal that Mossad agents have been posing as CIA agents and conscripting anti-Iranian terrorists.
Perry asserts: “[an] Iranian attack on an American military vessel will serve as a justification and a pretext for a retaliatory move by the US military against the Iranian regime.” However, Perry identifies “a US aircraft carrier” as the likely target of this imagined Iranian attack.
USS Vincennes returns to San Diego (October 1988) We beg to differ. There are major indications that the vessel of choice is to be theUSS Vincennes. The fourth USS Vincennes (CG-49) is a US Navy Ticonderoga class Aegis guided missile cruiser. On July 3, 1988, the ship shot down Iran Air Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing all 290 civilian passengers on board, including 38 non-Iranians and 66 children. This would be an ideal vessel for the staged provocation as it could be easily sold to the world as having been Iranian retribution for the 1988 downing of Flight 655. That way the evident lack of motive for Iran to provoke the US and Israeli military titans will be replaced by a perceived “motive.” No one will stop to ask themselves why Iran would thereby invite its own national annihilation. If we were to believe the Wikipedia version of history, the Vincennes has already been scrapped. The Wikipedia article for the Vincennes states, “The Vincennes was completely scrapped by 23 November 2011.” If that were true it could not be used as the target of this “false-flag” attack. Yet we have photographic and testimonial evidence suggesting otherwise.
The USS Vincennes afloat in Puget Sound. The ship has an orange hue.
It cannot have been "completely scrapped" and still be afloat in Puget Sound. A reliable source interviewed by one of us has brought us up to speed on the latest developments:
Since the ship left Puget Sound in the dead of night about two months ago, it’s most probable location today is at the 5th Fleet Headquarters in Bahrain for safe keeping until the time comes for its deployment. The ship would have been refurbished and repainted and provided with remote control capabilities.
Former Israeli false-flag attacks, such as on the USS Liberty in 1967, and the Argentine attacks in 1992 and in 1994, demonstrate Israel’s willingness to attack US targets, on the one hand, and its own people, on the other. It’s highly probable that, having shipped the Vincennes into an acceptable location, that the Mossad, which has also been implicated in the events of 9/11, would do the rest of the dirty work. Or the United States, which has become Israel’s lackey, might blow up one of its own ships, which would be a literal and a figurative sign of how low the US has sunk. In light of recent “deep political events” in Iran, including the recent murder of Iranian nuclear physicist Professor Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, it would not be surprising if the US and Israel were to raise the ante by implementing a fraudulent trigger incident, which may very well ignite World War III.
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Hell on earth: Horrors of Second World War II
He longed for his mother. William Crawford was a 17-year-old Boy Second Class serving aboard the storm-tossed British battle cruiser Hood in 1941, from where he wrote home with a heartfelt plea. ‘Dearest Mum, I can’nae eat and my heart’s in my mouth. We struck bad weather today and waves as big as houses came crashing over our bows. ‘I wonder if it would do any good, Mum, if you wrote to the Admiralty and asked them if there was any chance of me getting a shore job.’ Crawford, however, was still aboard Hood when she was sunk with almost all hands, including him.
After WWII, men and women from scores of nations struggled to find words to describe what they had been through. Many resorted to a familiar mantra - 'All hell broke loose' On the far side of Europe, Red Army Private Samokhvalov was in an equally wretched condition as young Crawford. He was lining up for battle at Kursk, where the Soviet and Germans armies were about to clash in the biggest battle of the war and a million men would be killed or wounded. ‘Mama,’ he wrote in a letter. ‘I have not known such fear in all my 18 years. Mama, please pray to God that I live. When I was at home I did not believe in God, but now I think of him 40 times a day. I don’t know where to hide my head. ‘Papa and Mama, farewell, I will never see you again, farewell, farewell, farewell.’ Here were two teenagers from different lands, different cultures and thousands of miles apart but with a single thought. Like the vast majority of the millions drawn into World War II, they hated it.There were many, of course, who fought bravely, proud and happy to serve — and die if necessary. ‘I suppose our position is about as dangerous as is possible in view of the threatened invasion,’ Lt Robert Hichens of the Royal Navy wrote in July 1940, one of the most perilous times in British history. ‘But I couldn’t help being full of joy.
'I wonder if it would do any good, Mum, if you wrote to the Admiralty and asked them if there was any chance of me getting a shore job': But William Crawford, 17, was still aboard Hood (above) when she was sunk with almost all hands, including him ‘Being on the bridge of one of His Majesty’s ships, being talked to by the captain as an equal. Who would not rather die like that than live as so many poor people have to, in crowded cities at some sweating indoor job?’ He was killed two years later but the heroic Hichens was that comparatively rare commodity even in wartime — a happy warrior. For such people, bearing their share of their nation’s struggle for conquest or freedom rendered their sorrows tolerable and ennobled loneliness and danger. Others were not so keen. ‘I am absolutely fed up with everything,’ a British officer wrote to his wife from the Mediterranean. ‘The dirt and filth, the flies — I’m having a hideous time and I wonder why I’m alive.’ What was it really like to be at war in a world that was tearing itself apart? When, afterwards, men and women from scores of nations struggled to find words to describe what they had been through, many resorted to a familiar mantra — ‘All hell broke loose.’ ‘I am absolutely fed up with everything,’ a British officer wrote to his wife from the Mediterranean. 'The dirt and filth, the flies - I’m having a hideous time and I wonder why I’m alive' We may be tempted to shrug off the banality of this phrase. Yet it captures the essence of what the struggle meant to vast numbers of people as they were plucked from peaceful, ordered existences to face ordeals that, in many cases, lasted for years, and for at least 60 million were terminated by death. All hell did indeed break loose. Many people witnessed spectacles comparable with medieval visions of hell — human beings torn to fragments; cities blasted into rubble; ordered communities sundered. Almost everything that civilised peoples take for granted was swept aside. The war was fought on many fronts by many different nations. Some battlefronts were worse than others. Russians and Germans were at each other’s throats continuously for almost four years on the Eastern Front in far worse conditions than British and American forces ever encountered, and with vastly heavier casualties. ‘Death is everywhere here,’ a Private Ivanov, of the 70th Army, wrote despairingly to his family. ‘I shall never see you again because death, terrible, ruthless and merciless, is going to cut short my young life. Where shall I find strength and courage to live through all this?’ He probably didn’t. One in four Russian and one in three German combatants died in the War — against one in 20 British and one in 34 American servicemen. But the fact that, statistically, the suffering of some individuals was less terrible than that of others elsewhere was meaningless to those concerned. It was no consolation for a British soldier facing a mortar barrage on D-Day to be told that Russian casualties were many times greater. Pain and suffering were universal, as were fear and grief. Everywhere, young men and women were obliged to endure new existences utterly remote from those of their choice, often under arms and at worst as slaves.
It was no consolation for a British soldier facing a mortar barrage on D-Day to be told that Russian casualties were many times greater. Pictured, medics tend to U.S. soldiers on Utah Beach, 1944 Most of those suddenly thrown into these extremes of excitement, terror and hardship were conscripts, who clung stubbornly to their amateur status. They saw themselves as performing a wholly unwelcome duty before returning to their ‘real’ lives. An American war reporter looked at U.S. marines on the blood-soaked Pacific island of Guadalcanal and concluded that ‘the uniforms and the bravado were just camouflage. They were just boys — ex-grocery boys, ex-bank clerks, ex-schoolboys, boys not killers.’ Life in the military was a shock for these youngsters from the moment they were called up. Many had never lived away from home before and hated the indignities and discomforts of military discipline and communal barrack-room living. Some were upset by swearing and crudity they had never encountered before. Among Americans, everything seemed to be ‘tough sh*t’ and no sentence was complete without its obscene expletives — the effing officers made them dig effing foxholes before they received effing rations or stood effing guard. ‘Death is everywhere here,’ a Private Ivanov, of the 70th Army, wrote despairingly to his family. ‘I shall never see you again because death, terrible, ruthless and merciless, is going to cut short my young life. Where shall I find strength and courage to live through all this?’ Even the most delicately reared recruits acquired this universal military habit of speech. British soldier William Chappell never ceased to ache for the civilian world from which he had been torn. He missed his home and his friends and bemoaned the loss of his career. His feet hurt, he was ‘sick of khaki, and all the monotonous, slow, fiddle-de-dee of Army life.’ But if service life was bad enough before going into action, then combat itself was an infinitely worse experience. ‘With our tent and clothing wet and half-frozen,’ wrote one soldier, ‘I felt numb to the point of almost not caring what happened to me.’ Trench foot was endemic, dysentery commonplace. Eugene Sledge, an American marine, recoiled from the brutish state to which the battlefield reduced him. ‘The personal bodily filth was difficult to tolerate. I stank! It bothered almost everyone I knew.’ Excretory processes became an obsession. In battlefield conditions, many never made it to a latrine. But as one soldier recalled: ‘No one said anything about how you smelt, because everyone smelled bad.’ And then there was fear, an ever-present sensation, for all that some tried to deny it. Sledge was terrified when his unit came under shell fire. ‘Every muscle in my body contracted. I braced myself but felt utterly helpless. My teeth ground against each other, my heart pounded, my mouth dried, my eyes narrowed, sweat poured over me, my breath came in short irregular gasps, and I was afraid to swallow lest I choke. ‘I always prayed, sometimes out loud. To me, artillery was an invention from hell. To be killed by a bullet seemed clean and surgical. But shells would not only tear and rip the body, they tortured one’s mind almost beyond the brink of sanity. 'After each shell I was wrung out, limp and exhausted.’ Lieutenant Peter White of the King’s Own Scottish Borderers recalled a youngster in his troop reduced to ‘whimpering misery’ as bombs fell. ‘He grovelled in the sand moaning: “Oh God! Oh God, when will it stop, sir?” I felt a wealth of sympathy for him, but dared not show it for he would just collapse the more. ‘No one mocked him or made fun. We had all tasted too vividly of the ordeal ourselves to feel anything but great compassion.’
U.S. troops of the 16th Infantry Regiment, injured while storming Omaha Beach, wait for evacuation to a field hospital in this photo taken at Collville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France, June 6, 1944 As Lt Norman Craig waited for the Battle of Alamein to begin in the North African desert, he, too, reflected on the universal nature of fear. ‘The popular belief that in battle there are two kinds of person — the sensitive, who suffer torment, and the unimaginative few who know no fear and go blithely on — is a fallacy. Everyone is as scared as the next man, for no imagination is needed to foresee the possibility of death or mutilation. It is just that some manage to conceal their fear better than others.’ But officers like him could not afford to show their feelings. ‘We had to feign a casual and cheerful optimism to create an illusion of normality and make it seem as if there was nothing in the least strange about what was going on.’ Fear could be contagious if it took hold, spreading faster than a fire. ‘Once the first man runs,’ said an American paratrooper, who witnessed it happening to fellow Americans in the Battle of the Bulge, ‘others follow. Soon there are hordes of men running, all of them wild-eyed and driven by fear.’ With experience, men overcame their initial delusion that all those beneath an artillery barrage or manning a foxhole on the front line were doomed to die. They discovered the truth — that most soldiers survive most battles. ‘He disintegrated, leaving only patches and puddles of flesh and bone spattered in the mud. I sat and ate my food. I had not known him' Thereafter, it became a matter of personal taste whether an individual decided that he himself was going to be among the fortunate, or condemned to join the dead. ‘Fate, not the Germans, was our undiscriminating enemy,’ wrote a Royal Engineer corporal in the thick of the fighting in Sicily. Some men resigned themselves to the inevitability of death, and were all the calmer for it: ‘Strangely, the giving-up of hope re-instills hope in you. You concentrate on little things — the next meal, the next bottle of booze, the next sunrise, the next bath.’ Comradeship was fundamental. ‘Nobody has the courage to act in accordance with his natural cowardice with the whole company looking on,’ said a Luftwaffe NCO named Walter Schneider. But there was much to unnerve them. In combat, the grotesque became normal. An American infantryman watched a shell hit a fellow soldier: ‘He disintegrated, leaving only patches and puddles of flesh and bone spattered in the mud. I sat and ate my food. I had not known him.’ Another young GI was stuck in a foxhole when his buddy was ripped by a machine-gun burst from the thigh to the waist and through the stomach. ‘We were cut off and by ourselves, and we both knew he was going to die. We had no morphine to ease his pain, so I tried to knock him out. I whacked his jaw as hard as I could with a helmet, because he wanted to be put out. It didn’t work, and he slowly froze to death and bled to death.’ A different soldier in the same battle became so desperate in his misery that he found himself gazing with envy at corpses. ‘They looked peaceful. The War was over for them.’ Horrific experiences like these opened a chasm between those who went through them and those who did not. In all armies, soldiers serving with forward units shared a contempt for the much larger number of men in the huge logistics ‘tail’ at the rear, who faced negligible risk. The gulf was even greater with loved ones back at home. Canadian Farley Mowat wrote to his family from the Italian front: ‘We are in different worlds, on totally different planes. I don’t really know you any more.’
It is unthinkable that British people would have eaten each other rather than surrender London or Birmingham - as happened during the 900-day siege of Leningrad (above) To cope with the horrors they were experiencing, most men under fire focused upon immediacies and loyalties towards each other. ‘Life was free of all its complexities,’ Norman Craig recalled. ‘To stay alive, to lead once more a normal existence, to know again warmth, comfort and safety — what else could one conceivably demand. To be allowed to continue to live — nothing else mattered.’ Although soldiers often talked about women, under the stress and unyielding discomfort of being at war most craved simple pleasures, among which sex scarcely featured. It was home they wanted, whether that was in London, New York, Berlin or Tokyo. A U.S. Marine officer in the South Pacific fantasised about what he would do if he got back in one piece. His dreams were surprisingly mundane. ‘I’m going to start wearing pyjamas again. I’m going to polish off a few eggs and several pints of milk. A few hot baths are also in order. ‘But I’m saving the best for last — I’m going to spend a whole day flushing a toilet, just to hear the water run.’ ‘Nobody has the courage to act in accordance with his natural cowardice with the whole company looking on,’ said a Luftwaffe NCO named Walter Schneider Another American officer, 25-year-old Captain Henry Waskow, yearned for toast. ‘When we get back to the States, I’m going to get me one of those smart-aleck toasters where you put the bread in and it pops up,’ he declared. A few seconds later, he was mortally wounded by a fragment from a German shell. No wonder a powerful sensation among millions of people was that of injustice. They did not believe they merited the plagues of peril, privation, loneliness and horror that had swept them away from their familiar lives into alien and mortally dangerous environments. Some didn’t mind. The Wehrmacht’s Captain Rolf-Helmut Schröder remembered his campaign experience ‘with gratitude’, despite being wounded three times. ‘We were proud to belong to the German army,’ said another officer, who ended up as a prisoner-of-war in Russia. But few soldiers were actually eager to join battle. A 19-year-old American recruit was not unusual in openly admitting he had no lust for glory. He and his comrades went to war in the hope that ‘somehow we wouldn’t be in harm’s way’. It was a tough job for their officers to turn at least some of them into fighters with the guts and the tenacity to close with the enemy, which was the only way to win battles. That meant, ‘conditioning them to enjoy killing’, according to one battalion commander, and it was no easy task with men from democratic nations. Such qualms did not seem to affect recruits to the armies of totalitarian regimes. Germany and the Soviet Union produced formidable citizen soldiers who again and again fought more convincingly than their Anglo-American counterparts. With more freedom of choice, British and American soldiers were less willing to accept sacrifice. They expended prodigious quantities of ammunition to secure even modest local objectives and required far larger quantities of food and comforts than other armies deemed necessary. For every pound of supplies the Japanese transported to their garrisons, the U.S. shipped two tons to its own forces. The same reluctance to endure went for civilians. It is unthinkable that British people would have eaten each other rather than surrender London or Birmingham — as happened during the 900-day siege of Leningrad. The inhumanity of the war on the Eastern Front was beyond the imaginings of those in the West. A Soviet fighter plane landed back at its base with human flesh adhering to its radiator grille, after a German ammunition truck exploded beneath it. ‘Aryan meat!’ the squadron commander pronounced to laughter as he picked off fragments. ‘This is a pitiless time, a time of iron,’ a war correspondent who observed this wrote in his diary. Another met a Russian peasant carrying a sack of frozen human legs, which he proposed to thaw on a stove in order to remove their boots A people who could endure such things displayed qualities of endurance the Western Allies lacked. Those qualities were an essential aspect of the hell let loose in World War II and, like it or not, they were indispensable to the destruction of Nazism.
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| THE REST OF THE USA |
| These incredible pictures depict the life of black tenant farmers and their families who lived and worked in the rural South as the Great Depression drew to an end. The colour photographs show African American men and women working in cotton plantations and tobacco farms, as well as pictures of them fishing and relaxing. Taken during the World War II, the series of photos capture the life of workers and their families across several states, including Mississippi and Louisiana.
Heads bowed: This 1941 photograph shows workers chopping cotton on rented land in Georgia, with a young child in the background
Labourers: A small child watches as women pick cotton on a plantation in Mississippi, 1939
Farm workers in 1940: The pictures were taken in the South during World War II The photographs were taken by Marion Post Walcott and Jack Delano for the Farm Security Administration between 1939 and 1941. Despite the efforts of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU), living conditions for these men and women were often deplorable.
Family life: Marion Post Walcott took this photo of a Louisiana family in 1940
Ramshackle homes: Migratory worker's shacks in Florida, 1941
Deep South: A Louisiana dwelling of African American labourers
Downtime: Men relax and gather outside 'Juke Joint' in Florida, 1941 |
Tobacco farmers: Men cut Burley tobacco in Kentucky 1940 - as the Great Depression was coming to an end and World War II was underway There are also pictures from Florida, Georgia and Kentucky which show snap shots of the farmers' everyday life, as well as their modest homes with corrugated iron roofs. The photographs successfully capture young children playing on the ground outside their humble dwellings and the youngsters as they watch the adults working cutting and picking cotton on the plantations. One 1939 photograph shows two women working on a cotton plantation in Mississippi while a young boy in denim dungarees looks on.
Mississippi: Children play on the ground as clothes hang to dry in the southern sun
Playing on the porch: Marion Post Walcott captured this moment on the Marcella plantation in Mississippi in 1939
Rural life: Men and women fish in a Mississippi creek, October 1939 Another shot shows four women and a man, all wearing straw hats to protecting themselves from the sun, chopping cotton on a plantation in Louisiana. In one picture, taken in August 1940, a family from Louisiana sits on their porch staring straight at the camera.
Hard Times: The pictures, taken between 1939-1941, show African American life towards the end of the Great Depression 
Local store: Despite the efforts of the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, living conditions were often deplorable |
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A cross roads store, bar, "juke joint," and gas station in the cotton plantation area, Melrose, Louisiana, June 1940. [Library note: Photograph shows sign on left building: Frenchies Beer Garden; above porch: Frenchies Bar.] (Photo by Marion Post Wolcott, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Bean field under cultivation, Seabrook Farm, Bridgeton, N.J. June, 1942? (Photo by John Collier, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C) # View from the Skyline Drive, Virginia, ca. 1940. (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C) # A woman painting a view of the Shenandoah Valley from the Skyline Drive, near an entrance to the Appalachian Trail, Virginia, ca. 1940.(Photo by Jack Delano, color slide Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # A mountain farm along the Skyline Drive in Virginia, ca. 1940. (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Cornshocks in mountain farm along the Skyline Drive in Virginia, ca. 1940. (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Mountain farm along Skyline Drive, Virginia, ca. 1940. (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Burning the autumn leaves in Norwich, Connecticut, November 1940. (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # A view of the old sea town, Stonington, Connecticut, November 1940. (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Potato farm in Aroostook County, Maine, after the potatoes had been harvested, October 1940. (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # A starch factory along the Aroostook River, Caribou, Aroostook County, Maine, October 1940. (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Factory buildings in Lowell, Massachusetts, December 1940 or January 1941. [Library note: Photo shows buildings later converted to a residential unit complex known as the Massachusetts Mills at the confluence of the Merrimack and Concord rivers, in Lowell, MA.] (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Brockton, Massachusetts, second-hand plumbing store, December 1940. (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) #
Railroad cars and factory buildings in Lawrence, Massachusetts, January?, 1941. [Library note: Identified as Ayer Mill clock tower, Lawrence, Massachusetts. Previously identified as Lowell.] (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Douglas Shoe Factory, Spark St., Brockton, Massachusetts, ca. December 1940. (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Train and several sets of railroad tracks in the snow, Massachusetts, December 1940 or January 1941. (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Industrial town in Massachusetts, possibly New Bedford, ca. January 1941. (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Landscape on the Jackson farm, vicinity of White Plains, Georgia, June 1941. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) #
Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands. Catholic [i.e. Anglican] Church, December 1941. [Library note: Photo shows St. John's Anglican Church, 27 King St.] (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Christiansted, St. Croix? Virgin Islands, December 1941. (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) #
On the coast of Puerto Rico?, December? 1941. (Photo by Jack Delano, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Apartment houses near the cathedral in old part of the city, San Juan, December 1941. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Llano de San Juan, New Mexico, Catholic Church, July or October 1940. (Photo by Russell Lee, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Farmland in the vicinity of Mt. Sneffels, Ouray County, Colorado, October 1940. (Photo by Russell Lee, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Ouray, Colorado, October 1940. (Photo by Russell Lee, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Looking down the valley toward Ouray from the Camp Bird Mine, Ouray County, Colorado, October 1940. (Photo by Russell Lee, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Home of a fruit tree rancher, Delta County, Colorado, October 1940. (Photo by Russell Lee, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Flour mill, Caldwell, Idaho, July 1941. (Photo by Russell Lee, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # On main street of Cascade, Idaho, July 1941. (Photo by Russell Lee, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Milk and butter fat receiving depot and creamery, Caldwell, Idaho, July 1941. (Photo by Russell Lee, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Cherry orchards, farmlands and irrigation ditch at Emmett, Idaho, July 1941. (Photo by Russell Lee, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Wheat farm, Walla Walla, Washington, July 1941. (Photo by Russell Lee, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Shasta dam under construction, California, June 1942. (Photo by Russell Lee, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Lincoln, Nebraska, 1942. (Photo by John Vachon, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Church near Junction City, Kansas, 1942 or 1943. (Photo by John Vachon, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Road out of Romney, West Virginia, 1942 or 1943. (Photo by John Vachon, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Wisdom, Montana, April 1942. (Photo by John Vachon, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Cabin in southern U.S., ca. 1940. (Photo by Marion Post Wolcott, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Copper mining and sulfuric acid plant, Copperhill, Tennessee, September 1939. (Photo by Marion Post Wolcott, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # A train bringing copper ore out of the mine, Ducktown, Tennessee. Fumes from smelting copper for sulfuric acid have destroyed all vegetation and eroded the land, September 1939. (Photo by Marion Post Wolcott, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Planting corn along a river in northeastern Tennessee, May 1940. (Photo by Marion Post Wolcott, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Natchez, Mississippi, August 1940. [Library note: Photograph shows store or cafe with soft drink signs: Coca-Cola, Orange-Crush, Royal Crown, Double Cola, and Dr. Pepper.] (Photo by Marion Post Wolcott, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Field of Burley tobacco on farm of Russell Spears, drying and curing barn in the background, vicinity of Lexington, Kentucky, September 1940. (Photo by Marion Post Wolcott, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Row houses, corner of N and Union Streets S.W., Washington, D.C., between 1941-1942. (Photo by Louise Rosskam, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Field with tree stumps, between 1941 and 1942. (Photographer unknown, color slide, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # General store, near Questa, Taos County, New Mexico, Spring 1943. (Photo by John Collier, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Cerros, near Costilla, New Mexico, Spring 1943. (Photo by John Collier, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Placita, New Mexico, on the Rio Pueblo, Spring 1943. (Photo by John Collier, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Romeroville, near Chacon, Mora Co., New Mexico, Spring 1943. (Photo by John Collier, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Plaza of Costilla, near the Colorado line, New Mexico, Spring 1943. [Photo shows the plaza of Costilla, New Mexico, on the east side of Route 522.] (Photo by John Collier, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Chapel, Vadito, near Penasco, New Mexico, Spring 1943. (Photo by John Collier, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # A farm, Bethel, Vermont, June 1943. (Photo by John Collier, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Church along the Delaware River, New York, July 1943. (Photo by John Collier, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # White Mountains National Forest, New Hampshire, June 1943. (Photo by John Collier, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # General view of a classification yard at C & NW RR's Proviso yard, Chicago, Illinois, December 1942. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # The giant 10 million bushel grain elevator of the Santa Fe R.R., Kansas, March 1943. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # General view of the city and the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, Amarillo, Texas. Santa Fe R.R. trip, March 1943. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Grain elevators along the route of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad, Amarillo, Texas. MArch 1943. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Farm land in Texas panhandle near Amarillo, Texas. Santa Fe R.R. trip, March 1943. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Amarillo, Texas, general view, Santa Fe R.R. trip, March 1943. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Santa Fe R.R. yard, Gallup, New Mexico, March 1943. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Passing a section house along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad, Encino vicinity, New Mexico. March 1943. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Indian houses and farms on the Laguna Indian reservation, Laguna, New Mexico. In the background is Mount Taylor. The Santa Fe R.R. crosses the reservation, March 1943. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Santa Fe R.R. line leaving Cadiz, California. This town is a junction point with a branch going to Phoenix, Arizona. March 1943. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency,Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Mojave Desert country, crossed by the Santa Fe R.R., Cadiz, California. March 1943. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Illinois Central R.R., freight cars at the South Water Street freight terminal, Chicago, Illinois The C & O and Nickel Plate Railroads lease part of this terminal from the I.C.R.R. April 1943. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Freight Depot of the U.S. Army consolidating station, Chicago, Illinois. April 1943. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Loading a freighter with coal at one of the three coal docks owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad, Sandusky, Ohio. May 1943. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Pennsylvania R.R. ore docks, unloading ore from a lake freighter by means of "Hulett" unloaders, Cleveland, Ohio. May 1943. (Photo by Jack Delano, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Partly finished open hearth furnaces and stacks for a steel mill under construction which will soon be producing vitally needed steel, Columbia Steel Co., Geneva, Utah, November 1942. (Photo by Andreas Feininger, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Old lead mines here have been reopened, Creede, Colorado. Creede for many years was "a ghost town," but has resumed the activities that made it an important lead producing center years ago, and is now producing much vitally needed metal for the war effort, December 1942. (Photo by Andreas Feininger, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Street scene, with building of the Southington News, Southington, Connecticut, May 1942. (Photo by Fenno Jacobs, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Street corner, Dillon, Montana. Dillon is the trading center for a prosperous cattle and sheep country. August 1942. (Photo by Russell Lee, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # First snow of the season in the foothills of the Little Belt Mountains, Lewis and Clark National Forest, Meagher County, Montana. August 1942. (Photo by Russell Lee, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Development at the site of the mill for the Mouat Chromite mine, Stillwater County, Montana. August 1942. (Photo by Russell Lee, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) # Looking north on Woodward Ave., from the Maccabee[s] Building with the Fisher Building at the far left, and the Wardell Hotel at the middle right, Detroit, Michigan. July 1942. (Photo by Arthur Siegel, color transparency, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.) The way it was: Rare colour photographs of Main Street in the 1940s capture the cafes, general stores and corner shops that were the heartbeat of small town AmericaA nostalgic collection of photographs has offered a fascinating glimpse of the American Main Street in the early 1940s. As the nation recovered from the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, and prepared for World War II, Main Street was a place where communities came together and the entrepreneurial spirit was able to flourish. The romantic pictures, from a range of rare 1930s and 1940s shots on the Library Of Congress' Flickr gallery of vivid color photography, show family-run stores and cafes lining dusty suburban streets.
Eagle Fruit Store and Capital Hotel, Lincoln, Nebraska in 1942 They capture old-fashioned cars parked out front bars, drug stores and general stores and the town's residents going about their daily lives, which often centred around the iconic hub. The photographs show some of America's most loved brands, including Coca Cola, Rice Krispies and 7UP, advertised in shop windows, and fresh produce including oranges and potatoes selling for as little as 1c.Before there was a Walmart on every corner and suburban malls inhabited most of the nations cities and towns, these photographs show Main Street as it always was, and in some places still is -- the heartbeat of small town America.
Boys looking at store window display of toys at Christmas time in either 1941 or 1942
Shulman's Market
Cars and American flags line the main street of Lincoln, Nebraska, in 1942
Main Street at the mouth of Willow Creek Canyon, Creede, Colorado, in December 1942
A store in Natchez, Mississippi, advertises Coca-Cola, Orange-Crush, Royal Crown, Double Cola, and Dr Pepper
Farmers and townspeople gather outside 'Tyler's Place' on Court day in, Campton, Kentucky around 1940
A collection of photos from circa the 1940's America collection on the Library of Congress Flickr page
On the main street of Cascade, Idaho, in July 1941
A street corner in Brockton, Massachusetts, in January 1941
Grand Grocery Co., Lincoln, Nebraska in 1942 shows Rice Krispies cereal boxes in window below oranges
Grocery store operated by C.A. Long, Main and High streets, Mount Orab, Ohio, in either 1942 or 1943
Main Street, Pie Town, New Mexico, in October 1940
Laundry, barbershop and stores, Washington, D.C. between 1941 and 1942
Filling station and garage at Pie Town, New Mexico, in October 1940
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U.S. steps up pressure on North Korea over planned missile launchPosted on March 24, 2012 by The Extinction Protocol
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March 24, 2012 – CHILE - A moderate earthquake of 5.3 magnitude (5.1 USGS) on the Richter scale struck near Santiago on Saturday morning in the central area of the country, according to the Seismological Service of the University of Chile. The epicenter of the quake, which occurred at 4:28 am was located 43 kilometers northeast of the town of Casablanca, on the border regions of Valparaiso and Santiago, at a depth of 68.9 kilometers. It was in the capital and the fifth region where the earthquake was felt more strongly. According to reports received by the National Bureau of Emegencia (Onemi), the quake reached an intensity of V degrees on the Mercalli scale in Santiago, the Andes, Talagante, Tiltil, Valparaiso, Viña del Mar, Quintero, San Antonio, San Felipe, and German Village. V grades also recorded in Los Vilos, in the Coquimbo Region. In the Region of O’Higgins, meanwhile, the earthquake was felt with a force of IV degrees in Rancagua and III degrees on Christmas, Pichilemu, San Fernando and Santa Cruz. In the El Maule reached II degrees in Curicó and Order. It reached in the Fourth Region II degrees in La Serena. The Onemi received no reports of damage or injured as a result of the earthquake. –
within a 40km radius of the epicenter. Geoscience Australia seismologist David Jepsen said the quake was the biggest in Australia in 15 years. “There are a number of Aboriginal communities near the epicenter and they would have felt the earthquake strongly,” he said. “It is possible there could be some minor damage up there. One of these in a major city would be a different story. “People as far north as Alice Springs and as far south as Coober Pedy and Oodnadatta could have felt this.”An SA Police spokesman said there had been no reports of damage or injuries. Dr. Jepsen said a 4.3 magnitude earthquake struck near the same location about a week ago. The earthquake was the most powerful in Australia since a 6.3 magnitude quake off Collier Bay, on Western Australia’s north coast, on August 10, 1997. It is the second largest quake to be recorded in South Australia. The biggest was a 6.5 magnitude jolt near Beachport in the South East in 1897, which caused chaos at the nearby town of Kingston and was felt in Adelaide. A magnitude 3.3 quake rumbled through Adelaide on October 19 last year. –
March 23, 2012 – ARKANSAS - Remember New Year’s Eve 2010 when thousands of birds mysteriously dropped from the sky over Beebe, Arkansas? Well, the mystery has been solved. Last May, a crew from the National Geographic Channel dropped by the NewsChannel5 Weather Office. They wanted to see what important information we had found regarding the bird deaths over Beebe. Indeed, my research indicated a unique radar signature several thousand feet above the birds just as the mass deaths were occurring. With the help of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a unique weather phenomenon was blamed for startling the birds and causing the mayhem that resulted in the demise of thousands of birds that night. On Thursday, an all-new National Geographic Special will debut explaining the Beebe event as well as several other mass animal deaths that occurred last winter. The show, “Omens of the Apocalypse,” airs on the National Geographic Channel at 10 p.m. Results from preliminary testing released today by the Arkansas Livest
March 23, 20112 – WISCONSIN - Sharon Binger cracked basement floor was testament that something actually happened. Now authorities say a minor earthquake occurred this week near the eastern Wisconsin city where researchers have been investigating a series of unexplained booming sounds, federal geologists said Thursday. The U.S. Geological Survey said the 1.5 magnitude earthquake struck Tuesday just after midnight in Clintonville, a town of about 4,600 people about 40 miles west of Green Bay. Geophysicist Paul Caruso told The Associated Press that loud booming noises have been known to accompany earthquakes. It’s possible the mysterious sounds that town officials have been investigating are linked to the quake, he said. Earthquakes can generate seismic energy that moves through rock at thousands of miles per hour, producing a sonic boom when the waves come to the earth’s surface, Caruso said. “To be honest, I’m skeptical that there’d be a sound report associated with such a small earthquake, but it’s possible,” he said. Those reservations didn’t stop Clintonville City Administrator Lisa Kuss from declaring ‘the mystery is solved” at a news conference Thursday evening. She said USGS representatives described the event as a swarm of several small earthquakes in a very short time. “In other places in the United States, a 1.5 earthquake would not be felt,” she said. ‘But the type of rock Wisconsin has transmits seismic energy very well.” The U.S. Geological Survey says earthquakes with magnitude of 2.0 or less aren’t commonly felt by people and are generally recorded only on local seismographs. Caruso said the Tuesday earthquake was discovered after people reported feeling something, and geologists pored through their data to determine that an earthquake did indeed strike. Local residents have reported late-night disturbances since Sunday, including a shaking ground and loud booms that sound like thunder or fireworks. -
March 21, 2012 – OKLAHOMA - It woke up sleepy Tulsans, set-off car alarms and freaked out the family pet. Many people thought it was an earthquake that hit Tulsa at 3:33 this morning. Instead, says National Weather Service Meteorologist Steve Amburn, is was a “Super Bolt.” Amburn says a super bolt is a positively-charged cloud-to-ground stroke of lightning. Computer records indicate a single “super bolt” struck in the heart of South Tulsa just after 3:30. No damage from the super bolt is reported. -
March 20, 2012 – Mexico City (CNN) — A 7.6-magnitude earthquake hit Mexico Tuesday, the U.S. Geological Survey said. The earthquake’s epicenter was about 15 miles (25 km) east of Ometepec, Guerrero, the agency said, and its depth was about 11 miles (17 km). The agency earlier reported the magnitude of the quake at 7.9, but later revised that figure. Residents rushed into the streets after feeling the temblor in Mexico City. Tourists and residents also felt the earthquake in the resort city of Acapulco. Mexican President Felipe Calderon said in a Twitter post that there were no immediate reports of serious damage. In Mexico City, Mayor Marcelo Ebrard sent tweets saying that there was no visible damage in the capital and that the sprawling city’s strategic services and water system were functioning. Regardless, he tweeted, numerous buildings were being evacuated. -
March 19, 2012 – ARIZONA – Heavy winds and blowing dust forced the closure of parts Interstate 10 in southern New Mexico due to low visibility, but the road was back open later in the day. Brandon Neuman of Flagstaff produced a time-lapse video of about a foot of snow falling on his backyard deck in seven hours. “The other day it was 65 degrees, next day it is snowing, so it’s been crazy,” Neuman said. “It killed a lot of people’s travel plans because the highways are a mess.” The winter storm forced officials to temporary close Interstate 40 in both directions and parts of Interstate 17. Both highways later reopened Sunday afternoon. Arizona Snowbowl reported 19 inches of snowfall, and the Flagstaff Nordic Center has measured 12 to 18 inches of fresh snow overnight. Low temperatures also caused a hard freeze on roads, making them extremely slippery. A number of truck drivers were forced off the roads and waited out the storm at travel centers, according to a number of television reports. The National Weather Service said Flagstaff and surrounding area were under a winter storm warning until midnight Monday. More snow was expected overnight into Monday. Storm totals range from between 12 to 22 inches above 7,000 feet. In addition, Northern Arizona University, Coconino Community College and the Flagstaff Unified School District canceled classes Monday to allow students an extra day of safer travel to return from spring break. Coconino County offices delayed Monday’s opening until 10 a.m. Meanwhile, much of New Mexico remained under a high wind advisory with damaging winds expected to reach up to 60 mph. The New Mexico Environmental Health Department’s Air Quality Division issued a fugitive dust/high wind notice until Monday that warned residents who are sensitive to blowing dust, such as those with asthma, chronic bronchitis and other respiratory and heart diseases, to limit outdoor activity. Children and older adults also could be affected by particulate pollution, the agency said. Dan Ware, state forestry spokesman, said high winds were the blame for a fire west of Silver City in the Wind Canyon area. He said crews contained a fire Sunday afternoon. He said burned less than 7 acres, and was not a threat to any structures. –
March 19, 2012 – MEXICO - The Popocatepetl volcano registered 14 exhalations of low intensity accompanied by water vapor, gas and a low amplitude spasmodic tremor, reported the National Center for Disaster Prevention (Cenapred). In its latest report, the agency of the Ministry of the Interior (Interior Ministry) explained that the exhalations of greater intensity occurred yesterday 13:30 and 22:42 hours. He said that although during the night, a glow was observed in the crater, the other metrics do not show major changes, so the light status of volcanic alert remains at yellow stage two. Observers should expect more moderate exhalations, some with ash emissions, sporadic explosions are also likely to issue short incandescent fragments and slight glow in the crater can also be observed at night. –
March 19, 2012 – WASHINGTON – The following excerpt is from an Executive Order signed by U.S. President Obama on March 16, 2012. The Executive Order coordinates and mobilizes all national resources, technological and industrial, under Federal auspicies in the event of a national emergency. This sounds like a major preparatory step before a crisis eerily reminiscent of WWII. An excerpt from the document reads: “The United States must have an industrial and technological base capable of meeting national defense requirements and capable of contributing to the technological superiority of its national defense equipment in peacetime and in times of national emergency. The domestic industrial and technological base is the foundation for national defense preparedness. The authorities provided in the Act shall be used to strengthen this base and to ensure it is capable of responding to the national defense needs of the United States. Each resource department shall act, as necessary and appropriate, upon requests for special priorities assistance, as defined by section 801(l) of this order, in a time frame consistent with the urgency of the need at hand. This is to help foster cooperation between the defense and commercial sectors for research and development and for acquisition of materials, services, components, and equipment to enhance industrial base efficiency and responsivenessIn situations where there are competing program requirements for limited resources, the resource department shall consult with the Secretary who made the required determination under section 202 of this order. Such Secretary shall coordinate with and identify for the resource department which program requirements to prioritize on the basis of operational urgency. In situations involving more than one Secretary making such a required determination under section 202 of this order, the Secretaries shall coordinate with and identify for the resource department which program requirements should receive priority on the basis of operational urgency.” –
March 19, 2012 – ISRAEL – Lieberman arrived in Beijing on Thursday. On Saturday he met with Vice President Xi Jinping and his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi in hopes of persuading them to support tightening the sanctions on Iran. During the meeting, Israel’s top diplomat said next month’s talks between Tehran and the West represent the final opportunity to resolve the nuclear crisis peacefully. “If, God forbid, a war breaks out with Iran, it will be a nightmare. Everyone will be involved, including the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia,” Avigdor Lieberman told the Yedioth Ahronoth daily during an official visit to China. According to a report published by the International Atomic Energy Agency last month, Iran has expanded its nuclear enrichment activities, particularly at the Natanz plant. Lieberman is aware of China’s central role in resolving the crisis. “Israel is keeping all of its options on the table,” he told Yedioth, “but we believe that with a united international front the Iranians can be convinced to abandon their nuclear ambitions. If all five permanent Security Council members present Iran with an unequivocal demand – they (Iranians) will have no choice. The Chinese have a lot of influence over Iran, and their position during the negotiations in April will be crucial,” Lieberman stated. “Despite the differences of opinion, the Chinese treat (Israel) with respect. They are very pragmatic, and this gives me hope. They are very concerned by the Iranian issue as well, because Iran’s conduct is totally unacceptable. Such an irresponsible regime – if it obtains nuclear weapons – poses a threat to the entire world.” Asked whether he preferred a military strike over the possibility of existing alongside a nuclear Iran, the Israeli FM said “a country such as Iran does not seek nuclear weapons for peaceful purposes. Therefore, the alternatives we are facing are Iran using nuclear weapons against us, or we prevent such a scenario.” -
March 14, 2012 – COSTA RICA - During February, Poás activity consisted in strong high-temperature fumarolic activity and sporadic small phreatic explosions, reported by park rangers. The latest monthly bulletin of Costa Rica’s volcano observatory OBSICORI published a more detailed summary of Poás’ activity during February summarized as follows: The ultra-acid crater lake had a greenish-gray color with sporadic convection cells visible in the central part carrying sulfur in suspension. Lake temperature were measured at 44° C, which is a value significantly lower than those measured during most of 2009-2011. The pH value of the lake water was measured at 0.01, slightly “less” acidic than during November 2011 (pH -0.4). The lake volume continued to decrease and its level dropped by 1.16 m between 25 Jan and 24 Feb. Concentrations of sulphate and chlorine increased. The composite pyroclastic cone (the “dome”) has high-temperature fumarolic activity and a strong emissions of blue gas (SO2). Fumarolic activity in the northwest sector of the “dome” had temperatures between 685 and 725°C. In the northern part of the “dome”, temperatures were ranging between 640 and 727°C (at accessible points). –
March 14, 2012 – GREECE – The British Broadcasting Company named it the world’s best island in 2011. Santorini is a tourist magnet, famous for its breathtaking, cliff side views and sunsets. It’s also a volcanic island that has been relatively calm since its last eruption in 1950. Until now. The Santorini caldera is awake again and rapidly deforming at levels never seen before. Georgia Tech Associate Professor Andrew Newman has studied Santorini since setting up more than 20 GPS stations on the island in 2006. “After decades of little activity, a series of earthquakes and deformation began within the Santorini caldera in January of 2011,” said Newman, whose research is published by Geophysical Research Letters. “Since then, our instruments on the northern part of the island have moved laterally between five and nine centimeters. The volcano’s magma chamber is filling, and we are keeping a close eye on its activit
March 14, 2012 – INDIA - An earthquake measuring 3.5 on the Richter scale was felt in western Uttar Pradesh and parts of Delhi and the NCR on Tuesday. The earthquake took place at around 3.37 am. No serious damage has been reported. An official from the Meteorological Department (IMD) said it was a low intensity earthquake with the epicenter at Baghpat in western Uttar Pradesh. This is fifth tremor experienced in Delhi since the beginning of this year. On March 5, a 4.9 magnitude earthquake had shaken Delhi and its adjoining areas in the NCR. Its epicenter was Bahadurgarh on the Haryana-Delhi border. Tremors were felt on September 18 in 2011 too because of an earthquake with an intensity of 6.8 on the Richter scale and its epicenter near the Sikkim-Nepal border. Also, on September 8 in 2011, an earthquake of 4.2 magnitude on Richter Scale hit Delhi with Haryana’s Sonepat as its epicenter. The National Disaster Management Authority has planned a 10-day crash course on Rapid Visual Screening for over 300 engineers. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi and the Delhi Development Authority will help in completing this course. After their training the engineers will assess whether or not buildings in Delhi can withstand quakes. –
March 14, 2012 – BRAZIL – It was just another day at the beach–or so it seemed till dozens of dolphins suddenly swam in with the surf and got stranded in the sandy shallows. The dramatic video of the stranding in the Brazilian town of Arraial do Cabo–now a YouTube sensation–shows humans rushing to help their fellow mammals, pushing and pulling hard to help the animals reach deeper water. Were the dolphins saved? To find out, you’ll have to view the video. But what would lead seemingly healthy dolphins to swim onto shore? And what causes similar strandings of whales and other animals? “There is no single answer for marine mammal strandings, just as there is no single answer for what causes car crashes or traffic jams,” Dr. Darlene R. Ketten, senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass., told The Huffington Post in an email. After viewing the video, she speculated that “the pod may have been feeding very close to shore and then were caught in a strong current or wave area and pushed onto shore by the water…We do see feeding groups getting caught in the shallows in situations similar to this in many locations, and the tendency varies by species, seasons, and circumstances.” Strandings of dolphins and whales are more common than is commonly realized, according to Dr. Ketten–with 1,000 or so animals a year stranding themselves in U.S. coastal waters. Statistics show frequent strandings among seals and turtles as well as marine mammals. Dr. Ketten commended the people who tried to save the dolphins, pointing out that handing dolphins can be risky for both species–especially when the animals thrash wildly, as they do in the video. Overall, she said, it was certainly no “day at the beach.” –
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