for comparison

Abrupt Climate Change Could be Brought About by Leaking Methane

Significant amounts of methane found to be leaking from permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf could push the world closer to the tipping points for abrupt climate changes. According to a study published in Science journal this week, about 7-8 million tonnes of methane are being released from the Shelf each year – about the same amount that the entire world’s oceans release annually. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas considered to be one of the largest contributors to climate change.
The fear is that should these leaks turn out to be new, due to rising temperatures, it’s possible that considerably larger pockets of methane will be released from thawing permafrost. Further studies will be necessary to determine whether the methane leaks are due to global warming.

WIKI

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Eric Margolis: Wars sending U.S. into ruin

Washington’s Blog: More Empires Have Fallen Because of Reckless Finances than Invasion

API: Iran anniversary ‘punch’ will stun West: Khamenei

Max Keiser, on the FSB Media outlet, RT:

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_Island

(PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti) — A powerful new earthquake struck Haiti on Wednesday, shaking buildings and sending screaming people running into the streets only eight days after the country’s capital was devastated by an apocalyptic quake.

The magnitude-6.1 temblor was the largest aftershock yet to the Jan. 12 quake. It was not immediately clear if it caused additional injuries or damage to weakened buildings.
(See more about the Haiti earthquake.)

Wails of terror rose from frightened survivors as the earth shuddered at 6:03 a.m. The U.S. Geologic Survey said the quake was centered about 35 miles (56 kilometers) northwest of Port-au-Prince and was 13.7 miles (22 kilometers) below the surface.

Spaceweather.com:

SOLAR FLARES: On Jan. 19th at 1340 UT, Earth-orbiting satellites detected the strongest solar flare in almost two years. The M2-class eruption came from old sunspot 1039 behind the sun’s eastern limb. NASA’s STEREO-B spacecraft recorded this extreme ultraviolet movie of the blast: LINK

Considering the fact that the sunspot was not even visible from Earth at the time, the flare was probably much stronger than its M2 classification would suggest. This active region has produced at least four significant eruptions since Jan. 17th (including this notable flare) and it is showing no signs of cooling off.

Today, for the first time since the fireworks began, the active region is visible from Earth. It is emerging over the sun’s southeastern limb as shown here. Readers with solar telescopes are encouraged to monitor developments.

IONOSPHERIC DISTURBANCE: Yesterday’s M2-class solar flare bathed Earth’s upper atmosphere in X-rays and caused a wave of ionization to sweep over Europe. This actually improved the propagation of low-frequency radio signals, which use the ionosphere as a reflector to skip over the horizon. A SID monitor operated by Rudolf Slosiar in Bojnice, Slovakia, recorded the surge in signal strength:

Related:

http://www.electricquakes.com/

Relationship between global seismicity and solar activities

Solar activity and global seismicity of the earth

Solar activity as a triggering mechanism for earthquakes

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US (9/11)
UK (7/7)
Spain (3/11)

. . .have closed their embassies in Yemen:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk

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“Hope for the best, prepare for the worst”.

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Michael Hudson responds to Paul Krugman, asking “When did Economics become a PR tool of the rentier class?” LINK

Business Insider’s 10 Countries That Will Survive The Sovereign Credit Meltdown Of 2010

Washington’s Blog: Economists are trained to ignore the real world

FDIC All your shit are belong to us – FDIC repo booty includes a tour bus that reeks of THC: Bloomberg

John Galt on the latest Wall St. spin johngaltfla.com The yield curve is steepening, and that’s not necessarily a sign of recovery.

ZeroHedge: The clowns at the BEA circus are now waterboarding GDP data to get it to say what the Obama Administration wants. Or at least that’s the underlying theory here. LINK

Why is 50% of the US land mass under snow? Have a read of this: NASA Shows Quiet Sun Means Cooling of Earth’s Upper Atmosphere

According to a White House Press release, INTERPOL is expanding operations inside the US.

Why did Silvio Berlusconi get popped in the kisser? This article might explain it: LINK

While You Were Sleeping… The Economy Collapsed – neithercorp.us

Wiki

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But why? I wonder if this has something to do with Obama’s travels to Norway to accept the Nobel Peace Prize.

Source: Spaceweather.com

WHAT’S UP OVER NORWAY? This morning in Norway, people saw a strange and still-unexplained phenomenon. Eye-witness Nick Banbury of Harstad reports: “We are used to seeing lots of auroras here in Arctic Norway, but on my way to work this morning I saw something completely unexpected. Between 7:50 and 8:00 a.m. local time, there was a strange light in the sky,” shown here in a photo taken by Jan Peter:

“It consisted initially of a green beam of light similar in colour to the aurora with a mysterious rotating spiral at one end,” continues Banbury. “This spiral then got bigger and bigger until it turned into a huge halo in the sky with the green beam extending down to the earth. According to the press, this could be seen all over northern norway and must therefore have been very high up in the atmosphere to be seen hundreds of km apart.”

“[A popular] suggestion at the moment is that it was a rocket shot up by a Russian submarine in the white sea, but the Russians deny this apparently. A big mystery indeed!”

Press reports:
#1
#2
#3 < -- several photos

Stay tuned for updates.

VIDEO < - notice that it's not a static phenomenon.

From Wikipedia:

RELATED: UK astronomers to broadcast adverts to aliens

Mystery as spiral blue light display hovers above Norway

Daily Mail: LINK to videos, photos

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Most global banks are still unsafe, warns S&P

IMF warns second bailout would ‘threaten democracy’

St. Louis Fed Says Fed Should Keep Asset Program Past March

Société Générale tells clients how to prepare for potential ‘global collapse’

Bloomberg

Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) — Tiger Woods is in good condition after a car crash in front of his Florida home that left the world’s No. 1-ranked golfer with cuts on his face.

Woods, 33, was hospitalized after the crash yesterday, according to a news release from the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles. The crash is under investigation, the Highway Safety agency said. Alcohol was not a factor.

Bloomberg:

Nov. 26 (Bloomberg) — Dubai World, with $59 billion of liabilities, is seeking to delay debt payments, sending contracts to protect the emirate against default surging by the most since they began trading in January.

The state-controlled company will ask creditors for a “standstill” agreement as it negotiates to extend maturities, including $3.52 billion of Islamic bonds due Dec. 14 from its property unit Nakheel PJSC, Dubai’s Department of Finance said in an e-mailed statement. Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s cut the ratings on several state companies, saying they may consider the plan a default.

Kansascity.com:

Woods and Dubai crash the same day

By Tom Ryan, Kansas City Star Reader Advisory Panel

In America economists stared at the sales numbers. In Florida, Tiger Woods is injured in a one car crash. And in Dubai news that Dubai World cannot pay on its $59 (some say up to 80) billion of loans. They may get a six month reprieve on interest payments. Woods is heavily invested in Dubai, at least in name.

The Tiger Woods Dubai Golf Course and Community is owned by Tatweer LLC part of a new conglomerate of oil production companies, not doing very well right now. How much money has Tiger lost in the desert? Are these crashes linked in any way? Lots of speculation out there, financially and about Tiger’s early morning mishap. Any link? A call from a broker? Are both Woods and Dubai too big to fail?

Hopefully an empty link but the links in Dubai remain quiet with plenty of available tee times.

Related:

Tiger Woods’ golf course design deal in Dubai is put on hold – head for the hills

Tiger Woods Tees off From the Top of the World

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Bonus: What would Jesus Buy?

Double Bonus: As Americans Rack Up Billions More On Their Credit Cards The U.S. Economy Is Coming Apart Like A 20 Dollar Suit

Pay Extra Close Attention to the Dollar – Seeking Alpha

Thar’s no more gold in them hills!! – Miners say we’re running out of Gold. RawStory

Why the US is broke – EconomPicData

Jeff Rubin – Why the US and China are about to get divorced – G & M

The SEC is changing its reserve disclosure rules for oil and gas companies – AAPG Mayer Brown VE Law SPEE (ppt)

The first graph is the number of deaths per million population. This is by no means a measure of the rate of infection, but a means of benchmarking the number of deaths from H1N1 in relation to the size of the population. Click to enlarge.

The second graph takes the one-week increase in H1N1 infections in relation to the previous cumulative total. It might illustrate which provinces are experiencing the fastest rate of infection from November 19-24. But then again, this is deaths data, not infection rate data. It does suggest H1N1 has peaked in Ontario. Click to enlarge.

The notable standout is New Brunswick, where the pre-November 19th number of deaths (2) has doubled in the past week. PEI and Nunavut had no deaths Over the Nov19-24 period.

Some recent research on MS might prove a Canadian “quack” doctor right about one thing: That many diseases are merely symptoms of ministrokes, possibly caused by over-vaccination. In the case of MS research, one Italian doctor is finding that build-up of iron and “other unwanted cell” in blood vessels leads to restricted blood flow in the brain. This idea has the same mechanism in common with one Canadian (ex) doctor who sees it from the perspective of a different trigger. In his case, vaccines are the trigger instead of iron.

G&M: Researcher’s labour of love leads to MS breakthrough

It was 1995 and her husband, Paolo Zamboni, a professor of medicine at the University of Ferrara in Italy, set out to help. He was determined to solve the mystery of MS – an illness that strikes people in the prime of their lives but whose causes are unknown and whose effective treatments are few.

What he learned in his medical detective work, scouring dusty old books and using ultra-modern imaging techniques, could well turn what we know about MS on its head: Dr. Zamboni’s research suggests that MS is not, as widely believed, an autoimmune condition, but a vascular disease.

< snip >

Dr. Zamboni looked for answers in the medical literature. He found repeated references, dating back a century, to excess iron as a possible cause of MS. The heavy metal can cause inflammation and cell death, hallmarks of the disease. The vascular surgeon was intrigued – coincidentally, he had been researching how iron buildup damages blood vessels in the legs, and wondered if there could be a similar problem in the blood vessels of the brain.

Using ultrasound to examine the vessels leading in and out of the brain, Dr. Zamboni made a startling find: In more than 90 per cent of people with multiple sclerosis, including his spouse, the veins draining blood from the brain were malformed or blocked. In people without MS, they were not.

He hypothesized that iron was damaging the blood vessels and allowing the heavy metal, along with other unwelcome cells, to cross the crucial brain-blood barrier. (The barrier keeps blood and cerebrospinal fluid separate. In MS, immune cells cross the blood-brain barrier, where they destroy myelin, a crucial sheathing on nerves.)

Relate this to:

Dr. Andrew Moulden (Interview): What You Were Never Told About Vaccines

What is the basic information underlying your claims and what is the foundation of your beliefs?

Germs simply are not the only root cause of death, disease, and disorder. I have now conclusively shown that ALL vaccines, from infancy to geriatric, are causing the exact same brain damages irrespective of what disease or disorder comes out. The damages are specific to end vascular “mini strokes” that are beneath the resolution of our neuroimaging, but measurable in a before/after vaccination protocol. They are also directly measurable in real time – however, this involves techniques and technology I have not disclosed to the public as yet.

Remarkably, wild polio, pre-natal German measles, measles, tetanus, “Spanish flu”, etc.. all caused the exact same damages in the pre-vaccine era. We simply did not appreciate that a generic response in the human body was causing the paralysis and respiratory failure and more in from a non-specific immune response and instability of microscopic blood flow hemodynamics.

We have weakened viruses and bacteria, injected them into all of us and caused chronic illness and disease in an attenuated form, this is how these pathogens have always caused harm. It is the bodies response to foreign things entering it, especially under hypersensitivity states, that is causing neurodevelopment disorders and chronic illness and much more.

VIDEO

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1. November 11th
2. November 16th
3. November 17th

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The particular brand of vaccine being used in Canada (Arepanrix™) is made by GlaxoSmithKline, and it uses an “Adjuvant system” called AS03. The adjuvant system includes the controversial adjuvant, squalene. This “adjuvant system” is fairly new, and while there have been no clinical trials with this particular system, it has been in use in Europe for several years without much fuss.

My concerns with this are threefold. First, there seems to be some resistance to the AS03 adjuvant system in Germany. Its government recently made the adjuvant-free version (Made by Baxter in the US) available to government employees, while leaving the Pandemrix (squalene) version for the rest of the population. Of course a government is going to make up some official rationale, but their actions suggest the government may believe the adjuvant-free version will result in fewer side effects. So, regardless of the fact that vaccines containing AS03 have been in use in Europe for years, doesn’t it seem a bit odd that there’s some backlash? Am I supposed to believe that, just because a bunch of euros took it, then it must be safe? Perhaps the EU has lower standards when it comes to adjuvants, and people are starting to become aware of the risks. This puts a dent in the oft-cited excuse that the vaccines have been in use for years in Europe, and are therefore safe. Only a lemming would buy that argument.

Secondly, adjuvants containing squalene are not approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Why does the FDA not approve it, while other jurisdictions do, and the WHO even attests to its safety?
according to some quotes I’ve been able to pull of the internet. A recent article in Wired magazine quotes Patricia El-Hinnawy, a spokesperson for the US Food and Drug Administration: “There is no squalene in any FDA-approved vaccine in the US. There is no squalene in any kind of seasonal flu vaccine or in the H1N1 vaccine.” While the US FDA recently did approve Cervarix, a vaccine containing adjuvants, it was the AS04 adjuvant, which contains alum instead. Nevertheless, the WHO has attested to the safety of squalene. My main questions here are whether or not the Americans know something the Europeans and the WHO don’t know. It’s possible the FDA keeps well away from squalene for political reasons, due to the recent furor over its alleged role in Gulf War Syndrome. That’s a whole other can of worms, and I’m going to side with the FDA: squalene was not present in high enough concentrations to cause side effects.

I guess I’m trying to figure out if the AS03 adjuvant system is the same squalene that has been given to 22 million people in Europe “without incident”, as the WHO claims.

Third, there is a problem with self-reported data. Many people other than myself ought to be suspicious of industry-based science, because there is a possibility that “you get the science you pay for”. Economic incentives can drive the outcomes and interpretation of data. Having vaccine-makers assess the effectiveness of their vaccines could be akin to cigarette manufacturers assessing the health benefits of tobacco. While I certainly hope pharmaceutical companies rely on maintaining their reputations through honest science, that element of distrust remains.

So what do we know about any clinical data available on the H1N1 vaccine? It appears most of the data relies on the Pandemrix vaccine for H5N1, a different strain of influenza:

From: Health Canada’s website:

A number of clinical studies are currently underway in Europe and North America to evaluate the safety and immunogenicity of a two-dose schedule of the Arepanrix™ H1N1 vaccine as well as the Pandemrix™ vaccine. Results from these studies will be assessed by Health Canada as soon as they become available. The preliminary results of two studies with Pandemrix™ have been submitted to Health Canada for review. The first study, D-Pan-H1N1-021, is a Phase II, multicentre, observer-blind, randomized study, while the second study, D-Pan-H1N1-007, is a Phase III, single-centre, observer-blind, randomized study.

Preliminary results from both studies indicate that at Day 21, following one dose of vaccine, both the adjuvanted and non-adjuvanted vaccines met the internationally accepted immunogenicity criteria. A strong immune response was observed, for both formulations, after one single vaccine dose. Given the short amount of time that has elapsed since the initiation of these studies, the persistence of this response cannot be determined at this time, nor is it possible to determine if a second dose or a booster dose will be required at a later date.

In Study D-Pan-H1N1-007, general systemic reactions were more common in the adjuvanted-vaccine group but were considered generally mild. The most common reactions were fatigue, headache, and pain at the injection site (in both the adjuvant and the non-adjuvant groups), and muscle ache (in the adjuvanted-vaccine group). A small percentage (~2%) of Grade 3 (severe) reactions was reported for headache and muscle ache in the adjuvanted-vaccine group and fatigue and shivering in the non-adjuvanted vaccine group. Fever was not reported in either vaccine group.

Clinical data for the use of the Arepanrix™ H1N1 vaccine or the AS03-adjuvant component in pregnant women are not available at the time of publication of this Notice of Decision. In addition, no data are available in breast-feeding women or in children under the age of 3 years.

That doesn’t encourage me.

Immunity from Liability.

If you exempt a car-maker from liability regarding the safety of its product, does it have any incentive to make the product as safe as it possibly can? Would it make sense to exempt car makers from liability altogether, and have taxpayers pay for any injuries sustained by drivers whose cars spontaneously combust or drive off the road? Some measure of liability is necessary, and I believe zero liability is too low. So why has the government of Canada granted GlaxoSmithKline a special immunity from liability when it comes to their vaccine?

Let’s go back a couple of decades to 1984, when vaccine makers found the business too cost-prohibitive, because the levels of liability created too many expensive lawsuits coming from the tiny fraction of people who are adversely affected by any vaccine. It’s clear that placing too much liability on vaccine makers would result in fewer vaccines being made, fewer entrants to the market, and higher prices paid for less innovative products.

Infection with the novel influenza A H1N1 virus has the potential to cause serious and life-threatening disease which has been associated with several fatalities. It will likely not be possible for a manufacturer of the vaccine to collect evidence of safety and clinical effectiveness necessary for a notice of compliance to be issued under the Food and Drug Regulations in time to provide the public with protection against the spread of the virus during the current flu season. There is a need to balance timely access to the vaccine with the time needed to assess the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. Therefore, an Interim Order is required to provide an alternate pathway to allow for the authorization for sale of the vaccine.
Under this Interim Order, the manufacturer is required to submit all the safety and effectiveness data available at the time of the vaccine submission as well as a plan to allow for the collection, assessment and reporting of information about the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness. This plan is reviewed as part of the vaccine submission process and the manufacturer is required to adhere to the plan once the vaccine is authorized for sale under this Interim Order.

Based on all of the information available, the Minister will authorize the sale of the vaccine if it is reasonable to believe that the vaccine may be effective in providing protection against the novel influenza A H1N1 virus, and the known and potential benefits of the vaccine outweigh the known and potential risks. The Minister may add terms and conditions to the authorization for sale respecting the manufacturer’s plan. The Minister may suspend the authorization for sale if the manufacturer does not comply with the plan.

The authorization for sale will be revoked if the Minister considers that the known and potential benefits of the vaccine no longer outweigh the known and potential risks. It will also be revoked if a notice of compliance is issued.

In order to facilitate timely access to the vaccine throughout Canada, this Interim Order also permits the Minister to allow the manufacturer to deliver the vaccine to locations specified by the Minister prior to its authorization for sale.

Related:

Food and Drug Regulations

Product Information Leaflet Arepanrix™ H1N1 AS03-Adjuvanted H1N1 Pandemic Influenza Vaccine

GSK: Product Information Leaflet

Calgary group aims to make city a global finance centre

Calgary – already a key hub in energy finance – wants to position itself as a global leader beyond oil and gas.

Over the next five years a new advisory committee loaded with financial sector heavyweights will leverage Calgary’s cachet as an energy capital to bolster its status as a global financial centre among other industries.

The Financial Sector Advisory Committee will focus its efforts on diversifying Calgary’s capital market base to attract global firms to the city to do more than just energy transactions, officials said Thursday.

The goal of the nearly two-dozen member committee, a collaboration between Calgary Economic Development and industry leaders, is to educate and to help facilitate the growth of the financial service sector, said George Gosbee, executive director, Macquarie Capital and committee co-chair.

“The financial service sector right now is predominantly based off of the backbone of the energy sector and what we would like to do is grow it from just energy to other industries,” he said following an event in Calgary to introduce committee members.

Positioning Calgary as a global financial centre is one of several goals arising from the 10-year Calgary Economic Development strategy.

NYPost: Tax Refugees Fleeing New York

New Yorkers are fleeing the state and city in alarming numbers — and costing a fortune in lost tax dollars, a new study shows.

More than 1.5 million state residents left for other parts of the United States from 2000 to 2008, according to the report from the Empire Center for New York State Policy. It was the biggest out-of-state migration in the country.

The vast majority of the migrants, 1.1 million, were former residents of New York City — meaning one out of seven city taxpayers moved out.

@atypicalalbertn If u ease up on the middle class’s taxes, they’ll have less reason to buy lotto tickets. That’s a huge chunk of revenue. in reply to atypicalalbertn #

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Watching: The Most Hated Family in America (1 of http://is.gd/4ca00 #

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The Dollar in Doubt?

WSJ, March, 2009: China Takes Aim at Dollar

U.S. Dollar as a Reserve Currency: Apres le Deluge

EconBrowser: The Newest Data on Foreign Exchange Reserves

Some interesting facts about the Currency Composition of Reserves in the World
IMF.org: Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER):

The COFER presentation
COFER data for individual countries are strictly confidential. The data presented in the attached tables (CSV and PDF) are aggregated data for each currency for three groupings of countries:

World
Advanced economies, and
Emerging and developing economies
In addition to the lines for the five major currencies and “other currencies” there are two other lines in the tables:

Unallocated Reserves, and
Allocated Reserves.
The Unallocated Reserves line captures the difference between the total reserves data reported to IFS (for the world table on Foreign Exchange) and to COFER, for each of the country groupings mentioned above. It consists of two components:

The total reserves of nonreporting countries, i.e., the countries within each grouping, which do not report currency composition data to COFER, and
any discrepancy between reporters’ data on total reserves as reported to COFER and to IFS.
The Allocated Reserves line equals the reporters’ data on total reserves as reported to COFER.
Very little estimation is used in producing the COFER tables. Estimation is undertaken only for data gaps of four quarters or less.

From IMF.org, Page 4:

The currency composition of official foreign exchange reserves as reported by countries, including minimal estimation undertaken mainly for late reporters. Reserves for which currency
compostion is not reported are shown under “Unallocated reserves.” Quantity changes are derived by multiplying the changes in official holdings of each currency from the end of one
quarter to the next by the average of the two SDR prices of that currency prevailing at the corresponding dates. This procedure converts the change in the quantity of national currency
from own units to SDR units of account. Subtracting the SDR value of the quantity change so derived from the quarterly change in the SDR value of foreign exchange held at the end of
two successive quarters and cumulating these differences yields the effect of price changes over the years shown.