Welcome to Sott.net
Sat, 23 Oct 2021
The World for People who Think

Society's Child
Map

Control Panel

A Warning Sign For The World


The Intel Hub
Fri, 17 Feb 2012 12:25 UTC
Image

Riots have ramped up again in Athens. Now it's just a matter of waiting for the other shoe to drop...
Any financial system that is based on debt is doomed to fail. Today, we are living in the greatest debt bubble that the world has ever seen, and if all of a sudden people could not use credit to buy things our economy would immediately ground to a halt.

Unfortunately, no debt bubble can last forever. When this current debt bubble finally bursts, faith in the financial system is going to disappear, credit is going to freeze up and there is going to be a massive wave of bank failures.

Right now, Greece is a warning sign for the world. Nobody wants to lend money to Greece, the Greek banking system is dying, one out of every four businesses has already shut down, unemployment is soaring and the Greek economy has now been in recession for five years in a row.

Sadly, the economic implosion in Greece is rapidly accelerating.
      Read More...
Info

Think You'll Live Long? Think Again

Emily Sohn
Discovery News
Fri, 17 Feb 2012 06:00 UTC
Acturial Data
© Corbis
The findings could affect calculations that determine Social Security payments, life insurance premiums, retirement savings strategies and more.

Despite great medical advances that have lengthened human life spans, your chances of living a very long life may be lower than you'd hoped.

That's the conclusion of a study by two longevity experts who reviewed the standard models that predict mortality rates and turned up a major error. Instead of confirming that death rates drop once people reach their 80s or 90s - as experts have assumed for many decades -- results showed that the risk of dying continues to increase each year, no matter how old people are.

The findings, if confirmed, could affect calculations that determine Social Security payments, life insurance premiums, retirement savings strategies and more.

"It all started as routine work on validation of previous studies, with more reliable data and methods. No discoveries were expected," said Leonid Gavrilov, who studies aging, mortality and longevity at the University of Chicago. "We were very much surprised [by the results], and for this reason, we delayed our scientific publication for almost seven years, trying to find mistakes and flaws in our approach."

In 1825, British actuary and mathematician Benjamin Gompertz made an interesting discovery: Starting at age 30, a person's chances of dying doubles every eight years. In 1939, economists revised Gompertz's law to accommodate people older than 80, whose rate of mortality seemed to level off. Ever since, actuarial tables and calculations have depended on that assumption.
      Read More...
Attention

The 2010 MIVILUDES report on cults available in English

Prof. Regis Dericquebourg
Freedom of Conscience
Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:06 UTC
Image
HRWF (16.02.2012) - The report of MIVILUDES has been translated in English on: link

The translation of this report is a positive step because many people outside France and French-speaking countries will have access to first-hand material showing how social panic can be artificially created in a European democracy. The latest attempt is to instrumentalize a prediction based on the Maya calendar that the end of the world would take place in December 2012.
      Read More...
Star of David

Results Removed from Google Search of "Israelis Celebrate Death of Palestinian Children Killed in Accident"

SOTT Editor
SOTT
Fri, 17 Feb 2012 09:41 UTC
Let's watch the Israeli spin doctors work.

At about 8am PST, a google search of "Israelis Celebrate Death of Palestinian Children Killed in Accident" (no quotes) returned "497 related articles" in the "News" category.
Image
However, clicking on the "497 related articles" link yielded this message:
No articles related to Israelis Celebrate Death of Palestinian Children Killed in Accident were found.
Image
      Read More...
Hourglass

US: Northampton "Opts Out" of Federal NDAA Law

Heidi Voight
WWLP.com
Fri, 17 Feb 2012 00:21 UTC
Nat'l Defense Authorization Act "unconstitutional"

Massachusetts - The city of Northampton is once again taking a bold stance against a controversial federal law. It became the first city in New England to pass a resolution rejecting the National Defense Authorization Act Thursday night.


President Obama signed the NDAA back in December. Two particular sections of the Act ignited a firestorm of controversy. Sections 1021 and 1022 allow the indefinite military detention of any person, including a U.S. citizen, without a trial. That applies to any person "who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners," or anyone who commits a "belligerent act" against the United States or its allies.

At a city council meeting Thursday night, city leaders and advocacy groups came together to demand a "restoration of due process and the right to trial."

The American Civil Liberties Union maintains that the NDAA flies in the face of Constitutional rights.
      Read More...
Dollar

US: Citigroup whistleblower: I have no regrets

Jonathan Stempel & Robert Birsel
Reuters
Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:09 UTC
Image
© Reuters/Shannon Stapleton
A woman walks into a Citi Bank branch in New York Jan. 17, 2012.
It wasn't Sherry Hunt's original intent to go public on the shoddy quality control at a mortgage unit at Citigroup Inc, her employer since 2004.

But by March 2011, as it became apparent to her that the problems were getting worse and not being addressed, the Missouri quality assurance manager decided enough was enough.

"I set up an appointment with human resources and ethics and told them everything," Hunt recalled in a telephone interview. "They did some cursory investigation. The sad part is, they never ever told me, 'Sherry, you were right,' or 'Sherry, you're looking at this wrong.' There were no assurances."

Instead, Hunt, who got her start in the mortgage industry in 1975 at age 18, filed a whistleblower lawsuit against Citigroup, the third-largest U.S. bank by assets.

The United States joined the civil fraud case, which raised claims under the False Claims Act, a federal law designed to recover money taken from the government by fraud, and discourage further wrongdoing. Whistleblowers can receive up to 25 percent of settlement amounts in such cases.

Wednesday, Citigroup agreed to pay $158.3 million to settle. Hunt said her share will be $31 million, before taxes and attorney fees. Her lawyer declined to disclose those fees.
      Read More...
Sherlock

Didn't Disintegrate: World Trade Center work site; load of steel plunges 40 stories

Joe Kemp, Greg B. Smith & Corky Siemaszko
New York Daily News
Fri, 17 Feb 2012 07:03 UTC
Image
© Jeff Bachner/New York Daily News
A load of steel fell at the WTC construction site Thursday morning after a crane cable snapped.
Workers at the World Trade Center got a scare Thursday when a crane cable snapped - and thousands of pounds of steel fell 40 stories down on a flatbed truck.

The metal beams demolished the vehicle and just missed crushing the crane operator, who was rattled by his near-death experience but otherwise unhurt.

"It's a miracle" nobody was killed, said steamfitter Mark Sherank, 45, who was in the middle of a safety meeting in nearby Building 4 when the steel fell.

"I looked outside I saw the truck t's a pancake now," he said. "A noise like that, you know something's wrong."

Another steamfitter, 43-year-old Erid Redd, said "the whole building shook."

The impact sent up a cloud of dust and "the scene was chaos," added an ironworker in Building 4.

Comment: Obviously steel does not evaporate..

      Read More...
Pills

France, the world's most depressed nation?

Sophie Pilgrim
France 24
Mon, 22 Aug 2011 06:30 UTC
Image

Photo courtesy of 'bloowitt' under the Creative Commons license
France was proclaimed "world champion of misery" by its own press this week after a report published in the US rated the French as most likely to suffer from clinical depression. The statistics are there, but is the reality?

A World Health Organisation (WHO) report published in the US last week signalled French people as the most likely to suffer from a "major depressive episode" in their lifetimes, provoking sensational headlines among the more neurotically-inclined members of the Gallic press.

The study, which was conducted by researchers from the State University of New York at Stony Brook as part of the WHO's World Mental Health Survey Initiative, was published on July 26 by esteemed American journal BMC Medicine. Some 90,000 people were probed on their mental health histories in 18 low- and high-income countries. It has been touted as the first international survey of its kind.

The results are impressive - while participants from low-income countries appeared less likely to suffer from depression at some point in their life, those from high-income nations seemed far more likely to suffer. France topped the list by one percentage point.

Comment: The 2010 MIVILUDES report states that 'natural' treatments with no side effects, which are inexpensive compared to conventional treatments and heavily criticized by the pharmaceutical industry, are often "implemented by cults and their doctors and practitioners," deriding natural practitioners who point out the obvious ties between government and pharmaceutical companies hawking their products as "deluded and dangerous". You see, suggesting ties to Big Pharma is a 'conspiracy theory' resulting from delusions ... and is also evidence of being in a cult!

It appears that France is a country where millions suffer and not only are their sufferings created by their government, they are discouraged from the simplest things that could help them become fully well, physically and psychologically: eating the foods or undertaking the therapies and stress-relieving methods that would ease their lives. French people are afraid to think for themselves because of a parasite that has been eating its way through the fabric of society, quietly subduing the population into depression.

French government encourages doctors to report suspicious and cultish behaviour of alternative and traditional therapists

France: Deviations of MIVILUDES: Raid of 70 policemen on a biodynamism centre

MIVILUDES: The most dangerous 'sect' in France

      Read More...
Star of David

Israelis Celebrate Death of Palestinian Children Killed in Accident

Al-Akhbar, Wafa
Akhbar
Thu, 16 Feb 2012 00:00 UTC
Ten Palestinian children were killed and at least 20 were wounded on Thursday morning after an Israeli truck carrying a fuel tank crashed into the school bus transporting the kindergarten children near the Qalandia checkpoint in Ramallah.

Israelis on Facebook were celebrating the deaths of the Palestinian children, writing derogatory statements on a wall of a news post regarding the accident
Image
© Abir Kopty
Benny Dazanashvili: Relax, they are Palestinian Children.
Tali Biton: It seems these are Palestinians...God willing
Tal Simhon: God willings they are Palestinians
Ajala Cali: Great! Less terrorists!!!!
Eliya Eliza: Only Palestinian children were hurt, about ten.
Itai Vitzig: Thank God [these are] Palestinians. I hope every day there is a bus like this [that crashes]
Aliya A'mrani: Relax, this is a bus with Palestinian children. Pray for deaths, or at least critically injured..Great news to start the weekend with.
The bus carrying the children collided with the truck at an intersection in Jaba'a, overturned, and caught on fire.

Ten children immediately died, while a further eight remain in a critical condition, according to medical officials with the Palestinian Red Cross.

      Read More...
Arrow Down

China: Scam Artists Profit Off Teenage Girl's Time Travel Fantasy

Joel
China Smack
Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:11 UTC
Mandarin Serial
© China Smack
In modern China, few television tropes have been as popular as dramas featuring time travel to ancient dynasties and simpler days - cultivating legions of naive escapist youth longing to live out the fantasy they witness on screen. Unfortunately for one young teen, the pursuit of her fantasy led her directly into the clutches of scammers.

This particular teen, Xiao Dan, was especially enthralled with traveling back to the Qing and Tang Dynasties and was therefore quite pleased with herself when she managed to make contact with an "Immortal Sister" on the internet who claimed she could help. Over a few days of chatting online, Xiao Dan discovered that this Immortal Sister happened to know an "expert" in time travel and would be willing to help Xiao Dan realize her dreams - for a nominal fee, of course.

Later, the two met in person, and discussed the matter of paying for the time travel "technology." Xiao Dan only had 1,800RMB but Immortal Sister claimed it would be enough for one trip, and eagerly arranged the "departure" date.
      Read More...
Amazon Smile
Revolt! T-shirts