As the stock markets around the globe plummet due to the downgrading of US credit rating, president Obama steps up to the podium today in a special address to the nation. I thought I'd listen in...

The president begins with an explanation that even though the US credit rating was downgraded from AAA, it is not so much that the agency doubts our ability to pay our debt, but, rather, they doubt our political system's ability to act. The markets think our credit rating is AAA. Warren Buffet, a man who knows something about the market, would give the US a AAAA rating if possible, or so the president says.

In other words, pay no attention to the reality of our current credit rating - pay attention to the IDEA of our credit rating. As an insider in the Bush White House said not so many years ago, "we're an empire now, so we create our own reality" and the reality the president wants you to believe in is that our credit rating is not what it actually is. He repeats that we are a AAA country.

In this new Sott Perspectives podcast, Laura, Anna, Juliana, and Gaby discuss cults, cult accusations, and interview two former membernIf you are the victim of a cult or any other form of psychological abuse, you can learn more about the Éiriú Eolas Stress Control, Healing & Rejuvenation Program at eiriu-eolas.org

Running Time: 01:14:25

Download: MP3

Norway is understandably in deep shock following the horrific shooting spree and bomb attack in Oslo last Friday 22 July. The worst terrorist atrocity in Europe since the 2004 Madrid train bombings has left the country reeling. An enormous bomb exploded somewhere within a complex of government buildings at 3.30 in the afternoon. The offices of Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg appear to have been the main target, although the Oil Ministry's building across the road was also destroyed. The blast was so powerful that windows were blown out along several blocks. Seven people were killed and many more injured by flying glass and debris. The perpetrator(s) chose a public holiday to carry out the deed, so most government employees were not working that day. But the open layout of government buildings in Norway, reflecting of the relatively open nature of Norwegian society, meant that security is very low compared to anything most countries' citizens are used to in this totalitarian age.

In response to the media's leading questions about this being 'Norway's 9/11', the Associated Press quoted a Norwegian police official as saying that the terror attack was more like the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing than the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. It's a curious comparison to make because, as Stephen Lendman explained in an interview he gave to Press TV, the Oklahoma bombing was blamed on a right-wing extremist and his huge car bomb, but the explosives evidence later pointed to something else entirely:


There have been numerous mass shootings in recent years, but the massacre on Utoya island is the worst yet. The camp on this tiny island, which lies just 700 meters from the shore, was organised by the AUF, the youth wing of the ruling Labour Party. In fact, the island was owned by this organisation; it has held regular summer camps there for decades and is well known to Norwegians. Most of the attendees were 14 to 19 year olds with an interest in politics attending seminars, partying, taking part in debates, playing music and listening to speeches on everything from local issues to international politics. In attacking the government's headquarters in downtown Oslo and then the gathering place of the country's political future, those responsible have managed to pierce the beating heart of Norwegian society.

The latest issue of The Dot Connector Magazine is now available. This issue deals with the Corruption of Science in all its forms. Don't miss out on this intensely informative magazine. Get your copy today!

With Earth Changes now clearly happening and time pressing, the editors of Sott.net are faced with the urgency of catching up with an avalanche of significant news items and trying to make sense of things! Recent weather events have been unprecedented: both spring and early summer have been bizarre across the globe, to say the least.

You name the weather or geological type of phenomenon; someone in the world had it: volcanoes, earthquakes, torrential rain, floods, sinkholes, tornadoes, droughts, wildfires ... even summertime snow! Let's review them all as best as we can, starting from the top: the cosmic factor.

Cosmic Changes Are Under Way

Changes on planet Earth comprise such a wide variety of phenomena, from extreme weather anomalies to volcanoes and earthquakes, so perhaps it's a good idea to zoom back and see if we can make sense of any changes in the cosmic climate that may be affecting us. Yes, we are aware that this approach goes against the sanctioned narrative claiming that these changes are caused by carbon-burning human beings living in an isolated bubble that can only grow warmer. But the pieces of the puzzle on the table point to a different, larger picture.

A huge central piece is our sun, which is not surprising, since this ongoing explosion in space is what brings order to our corner of the universe and to life to Earth. For the last couple of years the sun was expected to go into high activity in accordance with its usual 11-year sunspot cycle. But scientists were left scratching their heads as our local star remained quiet. Now it's giving off such a display of flares that it has NASA scientists going 'ooh and ahh'.

Oy! Where to start?

It seems there is a veritable fever going around at the moment, all centered on Comet C/2010 X1 (Elenin) and the possible connection it may have to Nibiru - or Planet-X as it's known in some circles. This is the supposed "12th planet" that's been prophesied to come plowing through the Solar System causing a doomsday scenario for us earth-dwellers. Right now, YouTube is awash with videos on Comet Elenin, making this and that claim. Last I checked, a search for "Comet Elenin" returned over 5,000 results on YouTube alone (and that says nothing about what's going on in the blogosphere).

As we've noted here on SOTT over the years, when the noise starts to overpower the signal, that's when there's usually something brewing behind the scenes. The Powers That Be don't just put resources into obscuring certain topics for nothing; and it seems that their disinfo machine is cranked into high gear for this one. Due to all this noise surrounding these topics many questions abound: Is there something special about Comet Elenin? Does Elenin have anything to do with Nibiru/Planet-X? Is Elenin related to the chaotic weather we've experienced lately? Is Comet Elenin really a spaceship from another galaxy? Is all of this somehow related to the end of the Mayan Calendar and the 2012 doomsday prophecies? These questions are understandable given all the lies we're swimming in and the frantic nature of the material we're dealing with. Hopefully a lot of these questions will clear up towards the end of this article.

To summarize the situation, it seems that we have certain folks claiming that Comet Elenin is everything from an elaborate hoax, to a piloted alien spacecraft, to a stray neutron star, to Planet-X itself, and on and on... All the while, NASA and friends seem to be sitting back comfortably in their chairs saying, "nothing to see here, folks!" So who's figured it out? Or hasn't anyone really put all the pieces together yet? Clearly, there's a lot of truth being mixed with lies - that is for certain. The hope here is to dissect some of the noise and inject a little sanity into what is otherwise an insane discussion.

As regular readers of SOTT are aware, we collect weather reports from around the world which often point to weird weather occurring in locations experiencing unseasonable weather. This week there has been an especially weird spike in reports of sudden cold and snow affecting many areas of North America and Europe! We think this dramatically illustrates the alarming speed with which the weather can change from stable, warm and dry conditions to turbulent, cold and wet conditions. Global news networks are churning out endless reports on the UK election, the financial shockwaves hitting Europe and the Times Square hysteria over some fireworks left in a car. What is not being reported prominently are the unprecedented freak weather events happening around across the northern hemisphere: hail, sleet and snow slamming southern California, deluges devastating the central cities of Nashville in the US and Hunan in China, the Korean Peninsula shivering with a record-low spring chill and reports of snow in Mexico and France.

Are these just unseasonal conditions, an immediate knock-on effect from the recent volcanic eruption in Iceland perhaps? Or are we on the brink of entering an ice age as SOTT has been predicting for a number of years? Was the sudden flip this week - "as though a switch had been thrown" - a taster of the Ice Age to come? Is this 'mini Winter rebound' pointing out how suddenly glacial rebound can develop? When will we approach the tipping point as more volcanoes erupt and magma comes up from the ocean floor? Laura Knight-Jadczyk explains the mechanism that can precipitate sudden climate change towards an Ice Age:

That's the hard science. There's going to be the day. It's already happening. The magnetic field is degenerating. That means magma is going to start welling up under the oceans. It's already happening because it's heating the oceans up.

When the oceans start heating up, that means more evaporation. When that happens at the same time that the planet is being clouded by volcanic eruptions, which is cooling the atmosphere, you have precipitation that comes down as snow.

The geological record shows that the onset of every ice-age was so sudden as to be unbelievable. In other words, next winter could be the winter when a lot of undersea volcanoes begin to erupt and dump magma into the oceans. A lot of evaporation takes place.

If it happens in the winter time that means that snow can fall in amounts that are beyond your wildest imagining. It's happened! It's geologically a fact. It's happened repeatedly. Can you imagine 9 stories of snow in a single day?

"They call it 'The American Dream', because you have to be asleep to believe it" - George Carlin

When asked what I would like to write about for this issue of the Dot Connector, the first thing that came out of my mouth was "The Golden Age and how we got from there to where we are now and what it all means." That is the topic that has been exercising my thinking for a number of years and I gave it an overview in Witches, Comets and Planetary Cataclysms (DCM Issue 11), where the topic was how the feminine energy of our society was debased step-by-step over millennia, as a consequence of planetary cataclysm beginning with the Great Deluge, also known as the Flood of Noah. But noticing what has happened is not the same as explaining why and how it could happen sociologically speaking. In that article I wrote the following:

"Regarding the alleged Flood of Noah, we can say that at more than one point in our known history, civilizations and cultures have collapsed and/or disappeared or been destroyed by no-one-knows-what...

Researchers in the fields of archaeology and history are baffled by the lack of any direct archaeological or written explanations for the causes (as opposed to the effects), though there is a rich body of myth and folklore that very well might provide the answers if analyzed correctly...

Some decades ago, certain natural scientists became intrigued by the problem and, concentrating on the Bronze Age collapses listed above, realized that the range of evidence suggested natural causes rather than human actions like invasion or warfare. So, they all started talking about climate change, volcanic activity, and earthquakes. At present, these types of explanations are actually included in some of the standard historical accounts of the Bronze Age period, though many problems still remain: no single explanation appeared to account for all the evidence.

Immanuel Velikovsky upset everyone by suggesting that the Exodus - but only the Exodus - was caused by a bombardment of rocks, dust, carbons and so on as a result of Venus running amok in the Solar System. He collected an amazing assortment of myths and legends from around the world that strongly suggested that some sort of global cataclysm was being described, but when, where and how, exactly, it happened was rather iffy. There were others who wrote and talked about these matters before Velikovsky, including Ignatious Donnelly, who deserves an honorable mention for ascribing the myths to the Great Flood of Noah which he claimed was actually the destruction of Atlantis as described by Plato. Whether or not there was an advanced civilization known as Atlantis is not our concern here, but whether or not there was a flood, and when it may have occurred, is."

Probably More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Fat and Thought You Already Knew, But Didn't

Ideas seem to have a way of ingraining themselves in mass consciousness such that it is difficult, if not impossible, to uproot them. Get enough people behind an idea and the idea becomes "truth", even if it has no basis in objective reality. Like some kind of weed that grows in the gardens of people's imaginations, ideas, even if they're wrong, can be quite persistent. Gardeners of truth may work hard in the garden of the mind to remove these weeds, yet their deep roots may often evade the well-intentioned gardener. Tireless efforts often seem successful, only for the same tired idea to poke its head up through the undergrowth once more. This brings the stark realization that the weed was never gone at all, but its roots were merely hidden from view, growing ever more expansive beneath the surface.

After nearly a century of the 'fat is evil' weed, gardeners of truth may finally be making some headway in the garden of the collective mind. Since the inception of the 'lipid hypothesis', researchers, nutritionists and journalists alike have been pulling up this weed, exposing the logical inconsistencies of tying natural fats to disease.