| 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 – ASIA – A North Korea missile launch could send the missile over the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell is reported to have asked the three countries to condemn the launch. North Korea says the rocket will take a new southern trajectory instead of a previous route east over Japan. Japan is readying anti-missile defenses around the southern islands of Okinawa, which could be under the flight path. North Korea says the rocket is intended to put a satellite in space, but the U.S. and others say the launch is a cover for a long-range missile test – a potential delivery system for nuclear weapons. The launch is expected to dominate a security summit on Monday in the South Korean capital Seoul, which will be attended by U.S. President Barack Obama. Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald said Mr. Campbell had briefed Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr on Friday on the rocket’s southward trajectory. “If the missile test proceeds as North Korea has indicated, our judgment is that it will impact in an area roughly between Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines,” the paper quoted Mr. Campbell as saying. “We have never seen this trajectory before. We have weighed into each of these countries and asked them to make clear that such a test is provocative and this plan should be discontinued.” North Korea’s last rocket launch in 2009 triggered UN sanctions BBC Asia analyst Charles Scanlon says Pyongyang appears to be trying to soften the political impact of its planned rocket launch. It has chosen a new southerly route mainly over open sea, avoiding what is regarded as a more provocative easterly trajectory over the main Japanese island. North Korea’s state-run KCNA news agency said: “A safe flight orbit has been chosen so that carrier rocket debris to be generated during the flight would not have any impact on neighboring countries.” North Korea has shown a growing mastery of ballistic technology during its three previous long range tests. However, experts say that none has succeeded in reaching orbit, and debris has fallen to earth at various stages during the launches. –
March 24, 2012 – MALTA - A magnitude 3.2 earthquake was registered in Libyan waters at 10.28 am yesterday, and felt in Gozo. According to the University of Malta Seismic Monitoring and Research Unit, its epicenter was 177km southwest of Malta. Other seismic activity was recorded in Crete, on Thursday. The Italian website Meteoweb.eu, also reported the tremor, although the information it gave was different to that officially issued. It said the earthquake’s epicentre was in Gozo and that it had a magnitude of 2.9 on the Richter Scale. According to the same website, the tremor was felt in Gozo. No damage was caused. The last significant seismic activity in Malta, was recorded over the weekend of 23 and 24 April, last year. A series of five earth tremors, with the first occurring at around midnight, were felt in various localities in Malta and people reported objects moving on the shelves. The tremors had a magnitude of between 2.5 and 4.0. –
March 24, 2012 – CHICAGO – Tornadoes touched down in a half-dozen states on Friday, killing one woman whose mobile home was flipped by a twister and causing damage to homes and businesses, authorities said. The 60-year-old woman died in Jefferson County, Illinois, when a suspected tornado flipped her mobile home and blew it across a road into a farm field, said county coroner Eddie Joe Marks. There was at least one other person injured in the county, located in the southern tip of Illinois. “A young boy had just stepped into his home when the storm hit. He got away with minor scrapes and bruises but went to the hospital,” Marks said. The tornadoes appeared to be smaller and touched down only briefly as compared to a deadly tornado outbreak in the region early this month, authorities said. A few homes sustained damage from a suspected tornado in Fern Creek, Kentucky, a town southeast of Louisville, emergency management official Monica French said. In Alabama, a suspected tornado damaged three homes and some chicken houses in the town of Troy, emergency management spokeswoman Yasamie August said. Georgia, Indiana, and Missouri also had tornadoes touch down, with no reports of injuries. “There have been a lot of tornado reports but they’ve all been brief touchdowns or rope-like tornadoes, not large tornadoes,” said Steve Weiss of the Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Oklahoma. Tornadoes have caused 55 U.S. deaths so far this year, most of them on February 29 and March 2 when swarms of tornadoes wreaked havoc across the Midwest and the South. Tornadoes were blamed for 550 deaths in the United States last year, the deadliest year in nearly a century, according to the Weather Service. The storm front bringing rain and severe weather to the nation’s midsection broke a spell of record-breaking, summer-like temperatures. Among the southern Illinois towns in the severe weather zone that was pelted by hail on Friday was Harrisburg, where seven people were killed when a powerful tornado February 29 flattened part of the town. –
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. –
March 24, 2012 – SAUDI ARABIA – A tremor has hit three villages in Sabya governorate in Jizan region – Mashlaha, Al-Hayja and Al-Wajeeh. The Director General of the National Center for Earthquakes and Volcanoes Hani Zahrani said the earthquake, which measured 3.1 on the Richter scale and was felt in Al-Kudmi took place 80 km from Jizan. He insisted it was ordinary and did not cause any damage or casualties. The area in which the tremor occurred is seismically active and is regularly hit by tremors of different intensities. The Director of Civil Defense in Jizan region Brig. Hassan Bin Ali Al-Qufaili said “there are plans readied by the Directorate of Civil Defense to deal with damage that occurs because of earthquakes. These plans include coordination with authorities affiliated to Civil
Defense. The plans will be implemented in case damage occurs, God forbid.” The Acting Spokesman of the Directorate of Civil Defense in Jizan region, First Lt. Musslih Al-Ghamdi revealed that the Command and Control Center in the Civil Defense received a report from the National Center for Earthquakes and Volcanoes on the occurrence of an earthquake northeast of Jizan measuring 3.05 on the Richter scale at 1.19 AM Wednesday. He said: “Some of the residents of Al-Kudmi felt the earthquake. Immediately, Civil Defense teams were dispatched to inspect the location. Thanks to Allah, there was no damage to property or any casualties.’ A resident of Al-Kudmi Muhammad Al-Najmi told Okaz/Saudi Gazette that he and his family were asleep when they heard a terrifying explosion at 1:00 A.M. followed by an earthquake. Expatriate Abdul Qader said: “When the earthquake hit the area, some of the furniture toppled. Fortunately, no cracks occurred in the building. Some citizens came rushing out of their homes for fear that they might collapse especially since these homes are not strongly built.” –
March 23, 2012 – MONTSERRAT - A “noticeable” increase in seismic activity at the Soufirere Hills Volcano has resulted in the closure of the Zone C area near the volcano, which had been reopened for daytime entry in December. Dr Paul Cole, director of the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, told a radio station Friday that it was a precautionary measure as authorities continue to monitor the volcano. “Following two volcano-tectonic swarms on the March 22 and 23, 2012 involving 49 and 54 events respectively, mild ash venting began at Soufriere Hills Volcano at around 8:00am local time on March 23,” the MVO said in a statement. “The venting was sourced from the floor of the Feb. 11, 2010 collapse scar, immediately south of the old English’s crater wall and to the west of the long-lived hottest fumarole previously identified.” The Zone C area, which is comprised of Cork Hill, Weekes, Foxes Bay, Richmond Hill, Delvins and extends 500 meters out to sea is part of the island’s exclusion zone. It reopened in Decem
ber 2011, after the hazard level in the area was lowered. The level will likely not be lowered, however, despite the area’s closure. According to the statement, the ash venting was “clearly pulsatory,” and sent ash 6,000 feet above sea level. It sent black jets of ash rising a few hundred meters above the floor of the collapse scar. The activity was described as “phreatic,” meaning activity formed when superheated rock meets groundwater, causing the rocks to fragment and generate ash. “[Volcano-tectonic] earthquakes are related to fracturing rocks probably as a result of increases in pressure,” the statement said. “It is likely that these increases and the resulting earthquakes are related to uprising magma below the volcano.” Similar types of activity have apparently occurred at the volcano up to several months prior to magma extrusion, both in 2005 and 2008. –
March 23, 2012 – JAPAN – The Japanese parliament has approved a resolution condemning North Korea’s planned missile launch, and the country is also preparing contingencies should the missile veer off course and pose a threat to Japan. Speaking in Tokyo Friday, Defense Minister Naoki Tanaka said the Japanese military will be prepared for any eventuality. Tanaka says he is ordering officials to prepare deployment of PAC-3 surface-to-air missiles and Aegis destroyers carrying a state-of-the-art anti-missile system that could attempt to shoot down the rocket. Pyongyang says it will place an earth observation satellite into a polar orbit in mid-April to honor the 100th birth anniversary of its late founder and perennial president, Kim Il Sung. Members of the international community say the launch is a pretext for a long-range missile test, which North Korea is forbidden from conducting under U.N. sanctions. South Korean and Japanese diplomats met in Seoul to share their responses to the upcoming launch. Japan’s nuclear envoy, Shinsuke Sugiyama, says Tokyo and Seoul are also in contact with other capitals. “We agreed we should keep coordinating our positions and comparing notes between ROK [South Korea] and Japan, and also including those in Washington, and of course we should be ready to talk to the Chinese, which I will do, and Russians too as a member of the six-party talks,” said Sugiyama. The six-party talks were intended to negotiate an end to North Korea’s nuclear programs. But in 2009 Pyongyang announced it would “never again” participate after the U.N. Security Council moved to condemn North Korea for a failed launch that year. -
March 23, 2012 – ISRAEL - Discussions between Iran and the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany over the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program will begin on April 13, senior U.S. and EU officials informed Israel on Tuesday. The talks are likely to take place in Geneva. Officials in Jerusalem estimate that Israel will allow at least three months for discussions, until the oil embargo on Iran comes into full effect in the beginning of July. Meanwhile, former Mossad head Meir Dagan said he believes Israel will be aware when Iran moves to the stage of nuclear weapon production – for example, enriching uranium to a degree of 90 percent. Dagan said that at that stage, Israel would have to attack the Iranian nuclear sites if the international community did not stop its program. Speaking at an event in a Haifa hospital, Dagan said that currently Israel must not attack Iran, and that a strike on its nuclear facilities should be the last re
sort. Dagan said he believed the Israeli Air Force has the capability to significantly damage Iran’s nuclear sites, yet warned that such a strike will have serious repercussions. He added that in case of an Israeli attack, hundreds of missiles will be launched at Israel, together with barrages from Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iranian-linked organizations in Gaza. President Barack Obama made a direct appeal on Tuesday to the Iranian people, saying there was “no reason for the United States and Iran to be divided from one another.” In a video message marking the Persian new year, known as Nowruz, Obama said the U.S. seeks a dialogue with the Iranian people in order hear their views and understand their aspirations. And he sharply rebuked the Iranian government for setting up an “electronic curtain” around its people that the U.S. says blocks access to much of the outside world. –
March 23, 2012 – ARMENIA – The number of earthquakes has recently increased in Armenia and the region. The National Seismic Protection Service (NSPS) of Armenia on Wednesday registered a magnitude-3 tremor, whose epicenter was 13 kilometers southeast of Martuni city. Thirteen earthquakes measuring 3 magnitude or higher have occurred in the region. In an interview with Armenian News-NEWS.am Ashkhen Tovmasyan, representative of the National Seismic Protection Service, said According to her, seismic risks are growing with urban development and with population growth. Risk increases in Armenia when new buildings are built and population grows, if there was no urban development there would be no risks. As Ashkhen Tovmasyan mentioned, currently there are no serious anomaly indicating earthquakes, so there is no need to worry about any earthquake. There are often all the indicators of an earthquake but no quake happens. The expert advised to build buildings in safe places and avoid blocking the main entrances. –
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
ock and Poultry Commission Veterinary Diagnostic Lab show that red-winged blackbirds died from massive body trauma. The trauma was mainly in the front breast tissue of each bird. Officials say the birds suffered internal bleeding and blood clots in the body cavity. The veterinarians also examined the major organs and found them healthy, normal and not effected by disease. The gizzards and stomachs of the birds were empty. According to the report, “Further tests will be done to rule out other causes, but the birds suffered from acute physical trauma leading to internal hemorrhage and death. There was no sign of any chronic or infectious disease.” What caused the trauma is not yet known. Meteorologists reported a heavy thunderstorm over Beebe earlier in the day. It is possible that the birds were sucked into the updraft of the storm and then either struck by lightning or pummeled by hail within the storm. Fireworks were also being launched around the town just before the birds began falling. Since blackbirds have poor night vision, they may have suffered extreme anxiety and become disoriented. –
March 23, 2012 – BRAZIL - Drought has spread from Argentina and Paraguay to Brazil and is hitting soy yields at a time of concerns that regional economic growth may suffer as pressures mount on commodity prices. Argentine yields of soy were affected by drought and labor disputes in that country are making farmers and grain traders jittery. Drought caused widespread economic dislocation in Paraguay, which was also hit by cattle disease. Analysts said drought-related developments in Brazil had led to lower yield estimates, slicing about 2.8 million tons off an original estimate of 67.1 million tons for this year’s harvest. The revised estimates are subject to further review, said the analysts. Soy oil has gained importance in the energy market as a feedstock for the booming international bio-fuels sector. Soy produced by Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay accounts for about half the world’s soy exports. Although current worries have caused spikes in prices and buoyed futures trade in Chicago, Latin America and elsewhere, underlying worries over the eurozone crisis and an economic slowdown in China continue to cloud the outlook. Some analysts predicted a 10 million ton shortfall in Brazil’s soy crop when compared with last year. –
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 22, 2012 – ONTARIO – A neighborhood in Barrie’s northwest end was rattled Tuesday night when a “sonic boom” brought residents out of their homes. Rob Higgins and his two sons were watching TV around 10 p.m. when a loud noise, described as jet plane breaking the sound barrier, ripped through the Wallace Drive home. “It was like a loud sonic boom. When I went outside, numerous neighbors came out to see what happened,” Higgins said. “No one could see anything. Some people said it sounded like a major car crash.” At least 10 neighbors were on the street looking around in curiosity when Higgins and his family were surprised by the sound. “Originally, I thought it was some huge thing was thrown at our house. Not a car, but maybe a big barrel or something large,” he said. “I went outside a realized everyone heard something and it couldn’t have just been our house.” Barrie police said there were no calls for service in the area at the time or reports matching a loud sound. If anyone heard the sound or knows what it is contact the Examiner at 705-726-6537, ext 282. –
March 22, 2012 – WISCONSIN – The strange sounds heard over three straight nights in Clintonville, Wisconsin, have now been reported 70 miles to the south in Montello. What are they? Also, officials in Montello are reporting an unidentifiable slimy sludge has invaded the waste water system, never seen before. Can it have something to do with the weird booming noises residents of both towns are reporting? In Clintonville this evening, a town meeting is being held with city officials doing their best to answer questions and allay fears. But, they admit, so far they have no explanation for the mysterious, thunderous booms shaking the ground in both far-flung towns. Residents are bracing for another sleepless night, even for those not in the affected areas, because of the unease and fear this phenomenon is causing. Why is it happening only at night? Are aliens starting to work the night shift? Some believe it indicates the strange sounds are a result of some human activity which someone is trying to shield from the public eye. Possibly for illegal reasons? It wouldn’t be the first time that greedy, uncaring people put others, and the environment, at risk purely for personal gain. Unfortunately, it’s a story which has repeated itself over and over. At least in some scenarios, aliens who visit the Earth in a UFO have benevolent reasons for disrupting the lives of unsuspecting citizens. If it’s found that a group of people is doing something harmful, without thought to serious consequences, sleepy towns in Wisconsin, like Clintonville and Montello may wake from peaceful slumber in a mighty nasty mood. –
March 22, 2012 – SAN SALVADOR – The National Service of Territorial Studies, which is known as SNET is reporting that 8 earthquakes have rattled the San Salvador Volcano which is located northwest of the capital city of San Salvador- a population of about 540,000 people. An emergency declaration has been declared at the volcano as a precautionary measure. The eight tremors felt by the population have reached levels of between 2.2 and 3.3 degrees on the Richter scale, according to the National Service of Territorial Studies (SNET), which has also recorded at least 25 micro-earthquakes. The Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources in a statement recalled that the last seismic swarm with epicenter in the San Salvador volcano was in 2007, when there were 142 micro-earthquakes, four of them felt by the population. The volcano last erupted in 1917. The volcano is believed to have sprung to life after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake struck the Oaxaca region of Mexico. According to the National Seismological Service (SSN), the massive Mexico earthquake unleashed more than 44 aftershocks as of Wednesday. Of the aftershocks recorded by the country, six were over 5.0 + magnitude on the Richer scale and 25 were of a 4.0 magnitude, with the rest 3.0 or smaller. Apart from the string of earthquakes in San Salvador, today SNET reported another quake of 4.3 on the Richter scale at 11.26 local time (17.26 GMT) in the Pacific Ocean, about 43 kilometers south of the estuary San Diego, in the department of La Libertad. This other quake had a focal depth of 34 miles and reached an intensity of three on the Mercalli scale in San Salvador. The Salvadoran authorities have reported no casualties or damage resulting from earthquakes. –
March 22, 2012 – GOROKA, Papua New Guinea — A strong earthquake struck the island of New Guinea in Papua New Guinea on early Thursday morning, seismologists said, but there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties. The 6.6-magnitude earthquake at 8:15 a.m. local time (2215 GMT Wednesday) was centered about 63 kilometers (39 miles) east-southeast of Goroka, the capital of the Eastern Highlands Province in the Oceanian country. It struck about 105.9 kilometers (65.8 miles) deep, making it an earthquake with intermediate depth, according to the United States Geological Survey (USGS). There were no immediate reports of damage or casualties from the region, but the USGS estimated that approximately 147,000 people near the epicenter may have felt ‘strong’ shaking which could result in light to moderate damage. Another 3.5 million people may have felt light to moderate shaking. Because the earthquake struck fairly deep and on land, no tsunami warnings were issued. “A destructive tsunami was not generated based on earthquake and historical tsunami data,” the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said in a bulletin. Earthquakes in the mountainous nation of Papua New Guinea, which is on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire, do rarely cause damage or casualties as most structures in the region are light and flexible. This allows them to bend, rather than snap when a major earthquake happens. In December 2011, a powerful 7.1-magnitude earthquake struck near the town of Wau in Morobe province. The earthquake was felt as far away as the capital Port Moresby, about 221 kilometers (137 miles) south-southeast of the epicenter, but there were no reports of damage or casualties. In July 1998, a powerful 7.0-magnitude earthquake struck just off the north coast of the country’s island of New Guinea, causing a landslide which resulted in a local tsunami. The disaster left at least 2,183 people killed and thousands more injured. –
March 21, 2012 – CANADA - A barn on the 4000-block of Otter Point Road collapsed after a series of unexplained tremors rumbled through the region on Thursday, March 15. Barrie Hanslip, owner of the 35-acre property where the barn was located, said the steepled barn tumbled downward after a large “boom” and rumble at 11:30 a.m. The large tremor was preceded by two smaller shakes around 9:00 a.m. Hanslip wasn’t home at the time of the collapse, but her niece, Sandra Richardson, said two seconds after the large third rumble, she heard a creak and the barn collapsed. “I thought my aunt was underneath it and was screaming for her, but I ran up to the barn and saw her car was gone,” Richardson said. Richardson, whose residence is located adjacent to the dilapidated barn, said the earthquake-like rumbles shook the stove pipe in her home. Hanslip said although the barn was 50 years old, it would’ve stood erect if left undisturbed. “It’s fairly old. It was due to come down, but it certainly wouldn’t have fallen down on its own. It was well-braced,” she said. Alison Bird, seismologist with Natural Resources Canada, said there were no earthquakes in the region during that time, adding there were calls from other residents who reported shaking. –
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 21, 2012 – IRELAND – Roe Valley residents are mystified over strange late night noises high in the sky, which has left them scratching their heads. The late night noise surfaced recently in Drumsurn, according to local Sinn Fein councillor Brenda Chivers. “It’s very annoying. It starts around 7pm and can go on until 2-3am. People have been out searching to see what it is, but they see nothing. There’s no plane, just this constant drone, and nobody seems to know what it is; unless it’s flying saucers! It’s a mystery.”A similar noise was reported in Derry recently, but there was never any conclusion as to what it was. In the meantime, residents around the Roe have been “tormented” by late night “helicopter noise. People are telling me they are hearing this noise at a time when children are either going to or are in bed, and it has wakened some and prevented others from getting to sleep,” said DUP Colr. Alan Robinson, who said no one could tell him the source of the noise. “Someone knows the answer and I hope it will be discovered soon and the usual quiet Limavady nights return.” However, SDLP MLA John Dallat is convinced it is British Army helicopters. “It’s happened several times before and it’s time the Brits honoured the Good Friday Agreement and took their hardware home,” he said. “Everyone knows those helicopters are in training to kill people in Afghanistan. It’s an invasion of people’s lives and it has to stop.” –
March 21, 2012 – WISCONSIN – Mysterious explosions. Unexplained shaking. Something’s going on in Clintonville, Wisconsin, but nobody seems to know what it is. The sounds — variously described as rattling pipes, clanging metal, thunder or firecrackers — have continued on and off since early Sunday night in just one part of the small town of 4,600, located about 180 miles northeast of Madison. Accompanying the sounds are vibrations that have shaken homes and household objects in the northeast corner of town, city manager Lisa Kuss said. The sounds were loud enough Monday morning that a CNN journalist could hear them during a cell phone conversation with Kuss. The baffling phenomenon does not appear to have caused any significant damage or injuries, according to Kuss. Workers peered into manhole covers and utility crews tested for leaking natural gas and other problems, but no one has yet to find anything amiss, Kuss said. Geologists and the military don’t seem to have any quick answers, either, she said. U.S. Geological Survey records show no seismic activity anywhere in Wisconsin Sunday or Monday. “It’s like we’re imagining things but it ain’t, because we’re all out and talking to find out what’s going on,” Clintonville resident Verda Shultz told CNN affiliate WLUK. Absent any better explanations for the sounds and sensations that have, well, rattled, the town, residents were left to their own devices to come up with explanations. While the Wisconsin sounds have yet to be explained, mysterious booming noises are not all that unusual. Recent media accounts include reports from North Carolina, Idaho, Tennessee and others. U.S. Geological Survey scientist David Hill even published a paper in 2011 called, “What is That Mysterious Booming Sound?” In it, he said such sounds are so commonplace in upstate New York, they earned the nickname Seneca guns. They’re also well enough known to be named by residents of Belgium, the countries around the Bay of Bengal, Italy and Japan, among other places, he wrote. –
March 21, 2012 – IRAN - Tehran will retaliate against any attack by Israeli or American forces “on the same level,” Iran’s top leader said on Tuesday in a defiant address just moments after US president Barack Obama appealed directly to the Iranian people with a message of solidarity. The contrasting approaches highlighted the broad range of political posturing and tactics as the standoff deepens over Iran’s nuclear program. Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, speaking on state TV to mark the Iranian new year, repeated his claims that the country does not seek atomic weapons, but said all their conventional firepower was ready to respond to any attack. “We do not have atomic weapons and we will not build one. But against an attack by enemies – to defend ourselves either against the US or the Zionist regime – we will attack them on the same level that they attack us,” he said. Despite the hard-edged tone for most of the speech, there were hints of overtures toward America before a possible resumption of nuclear talks between Iran and world powers. He urged the U.S. to have a “respectful attitude” toward Iran – suggesting it could bring dividends. –
March 20, 2012 – ECUADOR – Another series of explosions has occurred early today at Tungurahua volcano in Ecuador, the Instituto Geofísico (IG) reports. The eruption was reported to be very noisy and caused minor ash fall in nearby villages, but no damage. From 23:39 (local time) on March 19, a rapid increase of tremor was detected and observers reported roaring noises from the volcano in up to 14 km distance. About an hour after the onset of tremor reports of ash fall came from El Manzano and Choglontús. At 00h22 today, there was an loud explosion whose cannon-shot like shock wave was heard in Choglontús, El Manzano and Puntzán. Incandescent lava bombs could be seen ejected from the summit crater and landing up to approx. 200 m distance on the upper slope. From the 01h08 (local time) tremor decreased and also the noises from the volcano. Cloud cover prevented detailed observations this morning. According to a first analysis, only the south-west sector received ash fall. In the Choglontús area, ash continued to fall until 07:00 (local time) and was measured to have accumulated 383 grams per square meter, corresponding to less than 1 mm of ash. –
March 20, 2012 – ALASKA, (Aleutian Islands) – Mount Iliamna is showing more seismic activity than normal, so scientists from the Alaska Volcano Observatory (AVO) are keeping an eye on it. AVO upgraded Iliamna to a code yellow at the beginning of March after an increase in earthquakes and gas emissions. It’s been about 16 years since Mount Iliamna has shown this kind of activity. The fumaroles, or gas vents, near the summit usually produce about 100 tons of carbon dioxide per day. Now that’s up to 1,000 tons per day. “This level of activity we’re seeing right now is very similar to what we saw at the beginning of that period in heightened activity in 1996, so right now we don’t know what’s going to happen,” said Cindy Werner, a research geologist with AVO. Volcanologists call the activity in 1996 a “failed eruption.” They say that’s likely what will happen this time as well. But there’s not a lot of history to predict what the volcano will do. Researchers say the last time it likely erupted was more than 300 years ago. “Worldwide when volcanoes become restless, or unrest develops, 50 percent of the time it culminates in some kind of eruptive activity and 50 percent of the time, it goes back to sleep. In 1996 it went back to sleep and we don’t have and indication it’s going to do anything different but you never know,” said Game McGimsey, a volcanologist with AVO.” -
March 20, 2012 – MEXICO – A major earthquake struck Mexico on Tuesday, damaging buildings and forcing evacuations in the capital and reportedly knocking down some homes in rural areas. Office buildings shook and office employees fled into the street when the 7.4-magnitude quake rattled Mexico City. Cell phone lines went down and traffic snarled in the capital moments after the quake, which lasted for more than a minute. The governor of the southwestern state of Guerrero, Angel Aguirre, said he had received reports of 500 homes damaged, with some of them knocked down, but he gave no more details. In the Pacific coast beach resort of Acapulco, tourists ran out of cafes and restaurants, a local resident said. “I swear I never felt one so strong, I thought the building was going to collapse,” said Sebastian Herrera, 42, a businessman from a Mexico City neighborhood hit hard in a devastating 1985 earthquake that killed thousands of people. Some buildings in the capital’s trendy district of Condesa were cracked by the earthquake on Tuesday, and residents raced out of their buildings with young children and dogs in their arms. Television images showed part of a bridge collapsed onto a vehicle on the outskirts of Mexico City, but Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said no one was injured and helicopter flyovers showed there was no sign of major damage in the capital. President Felipe Calderon also said on his twitter account there were no reports of serious damage. Mexico City’s international airport was operating normally and only a couple flights to the United States were temporarily grounded, a spokesman said.
The U.S. Geological Survey, or USGS, said the quake registered magnitude 7.4 and that its epicenter was in Guerrero state, near Acapulco. It also reported several aftershocks. More than two hours after the quake, some residents of the capital were still too scared to return to their homes, fearing powerful aftershocks. The quake cracked walls and knocked down roofs in Ometepec, the town closest to the epicenter, but there were no reports of casualties there, a state government spokesman said earlier. In Acapulco, schools were evacuated and some parents rushed to pick up their children, but there appeared to be no major damage to hotels or other buildings in the resort. The White House, which has declined to confirm reports that President Barack Obama’s daughter Malia was vacationing in Mexico, said the 13-year-old was safe. “In light of today’s earthquake, we can confirm that Malia Obama is safe and was never in danger,” said Kristina Schake, communications director to first lady Michelle Obama. “We would reiterate our request that the media respect the privacy and security of the Obama children and not report on or photograph the girls when they are not with their parents.” The quake was felt as far away as Guatemala City. Gabino Cue, governor of Oaxaca State, said via twitter that the quake had caused cracks in school buildings and damaged roofs in one part of the state. The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the inland earthquake would not generate a destructive widespread tsunami, but there was the possibility of some local tsunami effects. –
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 – STOCKHOLM - There are many, many things to dislike about analog money. Cash and coins are unwieldy. They’re heavy. They’re dirty. They leave no automatic record of the financial transactions that are made with them. Here in the U.S., despite Square and PayPal and other services that would seem to herald the end of cash, bills and coins still represent 7 percent of our total economy. In Sweden, however — which ranked first in this year’s Global Information Technology Report from the World Economic Forum — cash is scarcer. And it’s becoming, the AP reports, scarcer still. While Sweden was the first European country to introduce bank notes in 1661, it’s now come farther than any other country in the attempt to eradicate them. Even houses of worship are becoming increasingly friendly to cash-free transactions: At the Carl Gustaf Church in Karlshamn, southern Sweden, Vicar Johan Tyrberg recently installed a card reader to allow worshipers to tithe in digital form. This isn’t, right 
now, the end of cash — in Sweden or anywhere else. As Lars Nyberg, the deputy governor of Sweden’s central bank, put it last year: Cash will survive “like the crocodile, even though it may be forced to see its habitat gradually cut back.” But it may be the beginning of the end. Sweden’s innovations suggest a future in which cash is increasingly rare. A cash-reduced culture gives rise to new concerns — of cybersecurity and, of course, about privacy. Oscar Swartz, the founder of Banhof, Sweden’s first Internet provider, puts it like so: “One should be able to send money and donate money to different organizations without being traced every time.” But a cashless world could also lead to some significant social improvements. Swedish crime statistics, fascinatingly, seem to suggest a correlation between cash and crime. The number of bank robberies in Sweden has dropped from 110 in 2008 to 16 in 2011 – “the lowest level,” reporter Malin Rising notes, “since it started keeping records 30 years ago.” The Swedish Bankers’ Association also says that robberies of security transports are down. –
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.” –
March 13, 2012 – JAPAN – Sakurajima continued its second day of violent eruptions on Tuesday, spewing hot rocks and ash, but there was no major damage in the vicinity, the Japanese Meteorological Agency said. The agency said Monday’s powerful eruption was the most forceful since 2009. The volcano is located in the southern prefecture of Kagoshima. The Meteorological Agency added that the volcano has been erupting steadily for the last two years, but the eruption on Monday turned violent, throwing 50-centimetre (1 foot 6 inches) rocks nearly 1.2 miles away, the furthest since 2009. In response, the Meteorological agency extended the eruption warning to residents living further away from the mouth of the volcano. The volcano has already had over 300 eruptions this year. Sakurajima volcano, one of Japan’s more active volcanoes, resumed activity in 1955 and has been active ever since. Sakurajima volcano in Japan’s southern Kagoshima prefecture erupts violently in what officials say is the most powerful since 2009, though there has been no damage so far. –
March 13, 2012 – SOUTH AFRICA – An outbreak of Newcastle disease has killed more than 170 chickens in the North West, the provincial department of agriculture and rural development said on Friday. The outbreak in the Greater Taung Local municipality, Dr Ruth Segomotsi Mompati District has so far caused the death of about 140 chickens – belonging to five farmers – in the Pudimoe village, said spokeswoman Bonolo Mohlakoana in a statement. Additional cases were reported in Leshobo village where more than 25 chickens were reported dead within a week, according to IOL News. Agriculture MEC Boitumelo Tshwene has expressed his concern to the department’s state veterinarians and urged farmers to report any mortality cases immediately. “There is no need however, for other poultry farmers in the province to panic since measures have been taken to control the spread of the outbreak, in that the trading and movement of chickens and turkeys or their products within or between the affected villages is currently prohibited,” he said. Ms. Mohlakoana said vets would go to the affected areas on Friday to start a vaccination program. “There is no treatment for Newcastle disease currently, therefore prevention through vaccination is important,” she said. Newcastle disease is a contagious and fatal disease caused by a virus that affects domestic birds (chickens and turkeys) as well wild birds. -
March 12, 2012 – WORLD – We have all heard about several animal species becoming extinct, even in the modern world, humans have seen whole generations of some animals disappear. Will bees become one of them? Some experts believe that the bees could be about to die and at least one third of our food depends on pollination of flowering plants. Einstein once said: “If the bees disappear, mankind would have only 4 more years of life.” Over 3 million colonies of bees have died in the USA since 2006 and over a thousand millions of bees have died in this period in the world. Scientists believe that the main reason could be the pesticides (found more than 121 pesticides in samples of bees, pollen, and wax). Another phenomenon that has perplexed scientists is that many of the colonies are abandoned, but they are the bodies of bees, in what has been called the Mary Celeste Syndrome (as inexplicably abandoned ship). Some studies relate the effect produced by telecommunications towers with the disorientation of the bees, leaving them unable to return to their hive. Many of the companies engaged in beekeeping are facing serious economic problems while the research to find the causes of the disappearance of millions of bees has a number of funds proportionate to the seriousness of the problem. –
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