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Snowman

Winter Wonderland in October?! Snow hits West Virginia, US

Meghan Evans
accuweather.com
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 13:58 UTC
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Snow falling at Snowshoe Mountain Resort in West Virginia on Oct. 1, 2011. Photo from the ski resort's facebook page.
Parts of the Appalachians looked like a winter wonderland during the few two days of October with snow and gusty winds howling.

Elevations of 3,000 to 3,500 feet in West Virginia got 1-3 inches of snow Saturday night into Sunday morning. Snowshoe Mountain in West Virginia picked up nearly 4 inches of snow through Sunday afternoon!

Other snow totals across the Appalachians include: 1 inch in Ebensburg, Pa., 1.2 inches in Philipsburg, Pa., and 0.7 inches at Laurel Summit, Pa.

More snow will continue through this evening at the highest elevations, but little additional accumulations are expected with the ground still remaining warm this time of year.

Snow also whitened some mountains all the way down to North Carolina late on Friday and early on Saturday morning.
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Play

ManBearPig, Climategate and Watermelons: A conversation with author James Delingpole


ReasonTV
Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:28 UTC
James Delingpole is a bestselling British author and blogger who helped expose the Climategate scandal back in 2009. Reason.tv caught up with Delingpole in Los Angeles recently to learn more about his entertaining and provocative new book Watermelons: The Green Movement's True Colors. At its very roots, argues Delingpole, climate change is an ideological battle, not a scientific one. In other words, it's green on the outside and red on the inside. At the end of the day, according to Delingpole, the "watermelons" of the modern environmental movement do not want to save the world. They want to rule it.

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Igloo

Coldest Arctic Start To Autumn Since 1996


Robert Felix
Mon, 26 Sep 2011 13:23 UTC
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Daily mean temperatures for the Arctic area north of the 80th northern parallel, plotted with daily climate values calculated from the period 1958-2002.
Temperatures north of 80N have been normal to below normal for five months,obliterating global warming theory.

"The early and fast start to winter in the Arctic is due to cold temperatures not seen since 1996," says this article on Real-Science.com

Source of graph

See real-science.com

Thanks to Marc Morano for this link
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Butterfly

Palestine State Quest Wins First Victory in UNESCO Vote

Gabriela Calotti
Agence France-Presse
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:28 UTC
palestine
© unknown
Palestine won a first diplomatic victory in its quest for statehood on Wednesday when the UNESCO executive committee backed its bid to become a member of the cultural body with the rights of a state.

Palestine's Arab allies braved intense US and French diplomatic pressure to bring the motion before the committee's member states, which passed it by 40 votes in favour to four against, with 14 abstentions.

The Palestinian bid will now be submitted to the UNESCO general assembly at the end of the month for final approval, a victory for a territory already seeking recognition as a state from the United Nations Security Council.

This request, which Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas presented to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on September 23, is being studied by council members, who are expected to vote in the coming weeks.

The United States wields a veto on the Security Council, and has said it will veto any statehood bid before Palestine comes to an agreement with US ally Israel over their longstanding territorial standoff.
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Stormtrooper

Human Rights Going Downhill in Britain

Ismail Salami
Press TV
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 07:34 UTC
police
The UK, which used to boast of being a cradle of democracy and human rights, has in recent months witnessed a terminally downward trend in human rights on internal and international planes.

True to God, the Old Imperialist could have seen better days. Until recently, the history of human rights abuse in Britain pertained to its impish role in other countries but the violation of human rights in recent months has sufficed to put Britain high on the black list of countries with deplorable human rights abuse.

The first instance of such violation is the brutal crackdown on the peaceful student protests against the inconsiderate Tory-Liberal Democrat cuts and the massive cuts to third level education which shoved the British government closer to the verge of collapse as far as human rights are concerned. Tens of thousands of students took to the streets of London in November 2010 and protested against plans by the government to raise tuition fees by up to three times. However, the protests were received with the heavy-handed brutality of the British police who used the notorious technique known as kettling. Also known as containment or corralling, kettling is a violent tactic used by British police for controlling protesters. The tactic consists of forming large cordons of police officers who move onto the crowd to limit their movement or escape to the extent that the protestors are denied access to toilet, water or food.
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Star of David

US Walks Out After Syria Charges Genocide


Press TV
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 02:40 UTC
Image
© unknownSyrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar Ja'afari
Syria has bluntly alleged that the US manipulates its veto power at the UN Security Council (UNSC) chiefly to protect the Israeli regime, prompting the American UN envoy to lead a walkout from the chamber.

The incident took place Tuesday, following the opposition of UNSC permanent members Russia and China to the US-led anti-Syria draft resolution, which triggered the openly-displayed US outrage.

Officially, the anti-Damascus resolution was drafted by US and Israeli allies, France, Britain and Germany, threatening sanctions against Syria over an alleged crackdown on protesters within the country.

The nine affirmative votes for the anti-Syria move were cast by the US, Britain, France, Germany, Portugal, Bosnia, Gabon, Nigeria and Colombia. While permanent UNSC members China and Russia opposed the motion, effectively vetoing it, South Africa, Brazil, Lebanon and India abstained from voting.

Following the vote, Syrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar Ja'afari accused the Western countries that perpetrated the UNSC effort of turning a blind eye on Israeli crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.
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Hourglass

Oil sands imports could be banned under EU directive

Fiona Harvey
The Guardian
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 09:12 UTC
Tar Sands
© Veronique De Viguerie/GettyOil sands projects have proved controversial as they produces greater greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil drilling.
Oil from controversial and environmentally destructive tar sands is likely to be all but banned from Europe after a decision on Tuesday. The move also casts doubt on the future of other controversial energy sources such as shale gas.

Tar sands (also known as oil sands) have been a target of green campaigners for several years, as the extraction of low quality oil from sands - chiefly in Canada to date - produces far greater greenhouse gas emissions than conventional oil drilling operations, and requires vast quantities of water. The exploitation of tar sands has also led to the destruction of swaths of forest and is blamed for water and air pollution.

In a victory for Connie Hedegaard, the EU's climate change commissioner, the commission has decided to back a new directive on fuel quality. This will set minimum environmental standards for a range of fuels, including tar sands, coal converted to liquid and oil from shale rock.
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Attention

Ignore David Cameron - dealing with our UK debt would be disastrous

Jonathan Portes
The Guardian
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 08:56 UTC
Cameron
© Phil Noble/ReutersDavid Cameron is to urge the public to pay off its credit card and store card debts.
In 1931 Andrew Mellon, then the secretary of the US treasury, advised President Herbert Hoover thus: "Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate ... it will purge the rottenness out of the system."

To our ears that sounds both callous and wrong. But that's partly hindsight - Mellon was speaking before Keynes wrote The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. David Cameron has no such excuse. He is set to tell us today in his conference speech that "the only way out of a debt crisis is to deal with your debts. That means households - all of us - paying off the credit card and store card bills".

But with fiscal policy set on what Martin Wolf has rightly described in the Financial Times as "kamikaze tightening", the UK needs the private sector to pick up the slack. If all sectors - the government, firms and households - increase saving simultaneously, in an effort to reduce debt, it will further depress domestic demand, reduce output and jobs, and we will end up in a downward spiral. This is what Keynes described as the paradox of thrift.
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Eye 1

US: Spy vs. Spy games come to New York for UN General Assembly


MSNBC
Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:57 UTC
International organization founded in name of peace and security is also a hotbed of clandestine operations

Image
© Unknown
When Iran's president accused the U.S. at the United Nations General Assembly last year of orchestrating the 9/11 attacks, American diplomats were not caught flat-footed by the tirade.

Even before President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad finished his incendiary rant, U.S. diplomats marched out of the cavernous U.N. hall in protest and were ready with a written statement condemning his comments.

It was as if the U.S. knew exactly what Ahmadinejad intended to say.

The walkout hinted at one of the well-known but seldom spoken truths about the United Nations: The international organization, which was founded in the name of peace and security, is also a hotbed of spying and clandestine operations, where someone might very well be listening to your conversations and monitoring your emails - or perhaps reading your speeches in advance.
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Arrow Down

US: Fed chairman says 'Recovery is close to faltering'

Roland Jones
Bottom Line / MSNBC
Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:46 UTC
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told lawmakers Tuesday that the economic recovery is close to faltering and recent economic indicators point to "the likelihood of more sluggish job growth" ahead.

Appearing before the Joint Economic Committee in Washington, D.C., Tuesday to deliver his outlook for the U.S. economy, Bernanke said recent data on jobless claims and surveys of hiring plans suggest job growth will continue to be weak.


The Fed chief also said the economy is growing more slowly than the Fed had expected and that the most significant factor depressing consumer confidence is poor job growth.

"The recovery is close to faltering," Bernanke told lawmakers, adding that the Fed is prepared to take further steps to prop up the recovery. "We need to make sure that the recovery continues and doesn't drop back and that the unemployment rate continues to fall downward."
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