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Blackbox

Sunspots could soon disappear for decades

Lin Edwards
PhysOrg
Wed, 15 Sep 2010 12:21 UTC
Image
© NASA/TRACE
Sunspot formation is triggered by a magnetic field, which scientists say is steadily declining. They predict that by 2016 there may be no remaining sunspots, and the sun may stay spotless for several decades. The last time the sunspots disappeared altogether was in the 17th and 18th century, and coincided with a lengthy cool period on the planet known as the Little Ice Age.

Sunspots are regions of electrically charged, superheated gas (plasma) on the surface of the sun, formed when upwellings of the magnetic field trap the ionized plasma. The magnetic field prevents the gas from releasing the heat and sinking back below the sun's surface. These areas are somewhat cooler than the surrounding sun surface and so appear to us as dark spots.

Sunspots have been observed at least since the early 17th century, and they are known to follow an 11 year cycle from solar maximum to solar minimum. The solar minimum usually lasts around 16 months, but the current minimum has already lasted 26 months, which is the longest minimum in a hundred years.

Comment: The reader may also be interested in reading Fire And Ice - The Day After Tomorrow

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Stormtrooper

U.S. "Enhancing Terror" - An Interview with Noam Chomsky

Evan Solomon
Information Clearing House
Tue, 21 Sep 2010 16:06 UTC
Noam Chomsky explains the reality of Israel's actions to Canadian interviewer Evan Solomon.

The show is Hot Type on CBC

Comment: Widely considered one of the foremost intellectuals of the 21st Century, Noam Chomsky is a textbook example of why it is never a good idea to get your information from only one source.

His view of U.S. and Israeli imperialism, historically and presently, is definitely a view that we at sott endorse. But Chomsky's belief in the official story of the 911 attack on America shows a major blind spot on his part.

Given his ability to gather information and accurately asses it, it is a very strange stance for him to take, and one which affects the people who trust his assessments in an ultimately negative way.

As always, the best disinformation is often 80% truth.

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Coffee

The Angry Rich

Paul Krugman
New York Times
Mon, 20 Sep 2010 20:06 UTC
Ponerology
© SOTT.net
Anger is sweeping America. True, this white-hot rage is a minority phenomenon, not something that characterizes most of our fellow citizens. But the angry minority is angry indeed, consisting of people who feel that things to which they are entitled are being taken away. And they're out for revenge.

No, I'm not talking about the Tea Partiers. I'm talking about the rich.

These are terrible times for many people in this country. Poverty, especially acute poverty, has soared in the economic slump; millions of people have lost their homes. Young people can't find jobs; laid-off 50-somethings fear that they'll never work again.

Yet if you want to find real political rage - the kind of rage that makes people compare President Obama to Hitler, or accuse him of treason - you won't find it among these suffering Americans. You'll find it instead among the very privileged, people who don't have to worry about losing their jobs, their homes, or their health insurance, but who are outraged, outraged, at the thought of paying modestly higher taxes.
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Eye 2

Israeli-linked organ dealers busted in South Africa's largest healthcare firm


Press TV
Sat, 18 Sep 2010 16:25 UTC
Image
© n/a
South Africa's biggest healthcare company Netcare has been implicated in Israel's international organ trafficking racket
The biggest health care firm in South Africa has been charged with cooperating with an Israeli-linked organ trafficking syndicate.

The South African government said that the head of the Netcare company and a director of the St. Augustine's Hospital in Durban, Richard Friedland, had been aware of illegal kidney trade at the hospital, but "nevertheless permitted these operations" to take place, South African daily The Times reported on Wednesday.

The police said that wealthy Israelis paid organ dealers between 2001 and 2003, the year when the ring was exposed, the German Press Agency (DPA) reported.

"Israeli citizens in need of kidney transplants would be brought to South Africa for transplants at St. Augustine's Hospital," read the charge sheet.

Comment: U.S. Hospitals Secretly Promote Black Market Trading of Harvested Organs for Transplants

Another organ trafficking ring surfaces in Israel

Jenny Tonge: Investigate IDF stealing organs in Haiti

Hamas to take Israel to court over organ thefts

Is Israel a State or An Organ-Stealing Mafia?

Top Pathologist Says Doctors Also Involved in Organ Stealing - Israeli Video Confirms Theft of Palestinian Organs

Ukrainian Kids, New Victims of Israeli "Organ Theft"

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Light Saber

BOYCOTT ISRAEL! Netherlands cancels tour by Israeli mayors over settlers' presence

Jonathan Lis
Haaretz.com
Mon, 20 Sep 2010 16:15 UTC
Image
© Unknown
Dutch Foreign Ministry cancels tour because participant list includes settlement representatives.

The Netherlands on Sunday cancelled a tour of the country by a forum of Israeli mayors because their group included representatives of West Bank settlements.

The professional delegation, funded by the Joint Distribution Committee, a Jewish-American charity, was supposed to fly to the Netherlands next month to study public policy and local governance.

But when the Dutch Foreign Ministry found out that regional council heads from the Judea and Samaria regions - including from the West bank settlements Efrat and Kiryat Arba - were due to participate, they decided to cancel the tour.
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MIB

Feds threaten man on oiled Florida beach: "Illegal to dig" -- No Sandcastles

OilFlorida
YouTube
Fri, 17 Sep 2010 22:32 UTC
Where You Can And Can't Dig At The Beach, WEAR ABC, September 17, 2010

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Magnify

Are Dreams an Extension of Physical Reality?

Robert Lanza
The Huffington Post
Thu, 16 Sep 2010 06:30 UTC
Image
© John Anster Fitzgerald
You spend a third of your life sleeping. What if your dreams are real? Perhaps our dismissal of dreams as "just dreams" is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of consciousness and physical reality.
"I am real" said Alice (in Wonderland). "If I wasn't real, I shouldn't be able to cry."

"I hope you don't suppose those are real tears?" Tweedledum interrupted in a tone of great contempt.
We take for granted how our mind puts everything together. Everything we experience is a whirl of information occurring in our heads. Biocentrism -- a new "theory of everything" -- tells us that space and time aren't the hard objects we think, but rather tools our mind uses to put everything together. They're the key to consciousness, and why in experiments with particles, space and time -- and indeed the properties of matter itself -- are relative to the observer. During both dreams and waking hours, your mind collapses probability waves to generate a physical reality, replete with a functioning body. You're able to think and experience sensations in a 3D world.
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Eye 1

People Power! Las Vegas drone trial makes history

Jason Whited
Las Vegas City Life
Wed, 15 Sep 2010 12:09 UTC
US Predator Drone
© U.S. Air Force
U.S. enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan have used off-the-shelf programs to intercept video feeds from Predator unmanned aircraft. They are being tested at a secret base near Las Vegas, Nevada.
Fourteen anti-war activists may have made history today in a Las Vegas courtroom when they turned a misdemeanor trespassing trial into a possible referendum on America's newfound taste for remote-controlled warfare.

The so-called Creech 14, a group of peace activists from across the country, went on trial this morning for allegedly trespassing onto Creech Air Force Base in April 2009.

From the start of today's trial, prosecutors did their best to keep the focus on whether the activists were guilty of allegations they illegally entered the base and refused to leave as a way to protest the base's role as the little-known headquarters for U.S. military operations involving unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones, over Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan.

But a funny thing happened on the way to prosecutors' hope for a quick decision.

Appearing as witnesses for the Creech 14 today were some of the biggest names in the modern anti-war movement: Ramsey Clark, former U.S. attorney general under President Lyndon Johnson; Ann Wright, a retired U.S. Army colonel and one of three former U.S. State Department officials who resigned on the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and Bill Quigley, legal director for the New York City-based Center for Constitutional Rights.
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USA

Bombshell from London Think-Tank - No Al-Qaeda Threat!

Eric Margolis
Toronto Sun
Tue, 14 Sep 2010 16:37 UTC
London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), is the world's leading think tank for military affairs. It represents the top echelon of defence experts, retired officers and senior military men, spanning the globe from the United States and Britain to China, Russia and India.

I've been an IISS member for over 20 years. IISS's reports are always authoritative but usually cautious and diplomatic, sometimes dull. However, two weeks ago the IISS issued an explosive report on Afghanistan that is shaking Washington and its Nato allies.

The report, presided over by the former deputy director of Britain's foreign intelligence agency, MI-6, says the threat from al-Qaeda and Taliban has been "exaggerated" by the western powers. The US-led mission in Afghanistan has "ballooned" out of all proportion from its original aim of disrupting and defeating al-Qaeda. The US-led war in Afghanistan, says IISS, using uncharacteristically blunt language, is "a long-drawn-out disaster".

Just recently, CIA chief Leon Panetta admitted there were no more than 50 members of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Yet US President Barack Obama has tripled the number of US soldiers there to 120,000 to fight Al Qaeda.
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Bizarro Earth

Say Goodbye to Sunspots? The Ice Age Cometh!

Phil Berardelli
Science Magazine.org
Tue, 14 Sep 2010 14:31 UTC
Sunspots
© William Livingston/NSO
Weaklings. Without penumbrae, which can be seen in the yellow image, today's sunspots are weakening magnetically.
Scientists studying sunspots for the past 2 decades have concluded that the magnetic field that triggers their formation has been steadily declining. If the current trend continues, by 2016 the sun's face may become spotless and remain that way for decades - a phenomenon that in the 17th century coincided with a prolonged period of cooling on Earth.

Sunspots appear when upwellings of the sun's magnetic field trap ionized plasma - or electrically charged, superheated gas - on the surface. Normally, the gas would release its heat and sink back below the surface, but the magnetic field inhibits this process. From Earth, the relatively cool surface gas looks like a dark blemish on the sun.

Astronomers have been observing and counting sunspots since Galileo began the practice in the early 17th century. From those studies, scientists have long known that the sun goes through an 11-year cycle, in which the number of sunspots spikes during a period called the solar maximum and drops - sometimes to zero - during a time of inactivity called the solar minimum.
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