Massive solar flare narrowly misses Earth, EMP disaster barely avoided -

Massive solar flare narrowly misses Earth, EMP disaster barely avoided - 



The earth barely missed taking a massive solar punch in the teeth two weeks ago, an "electromagnetic pulse" so big that it could have knocked out power, cars and iPhones throughout the United States.

Two EMP experts told Secrets that the EMP flashed through earth's typical orbit around the sun about two weeks before the planet got there.

"The world escaped an EMP catastrophe," said Henry Cooper, who lead strategic arms negotiations with the Soviet Union under President Reagan, and who now heads High Frontier, a group pushing for missile defense.

"There had been a near-miss about two weeks ago, a Carrington-class coronal mass ejection crossed the orbit of the Earth and basically just missed us," said Peter Vincent Pry, who served on the Congressional EMP Threat Commission from 2001-2008. He was referring to the 1859 EMP named after astronomer Richard Carrington that melted telegraph lines in Europe and North America.

"Basically this is a Russian roulette thing," added Pry. "We narrowly escape from a Carrington-class disaster."

Pry, Cooper, and former CIA Director James Woolsey have been recently demanding that Washington prepare the nation's electric grid for an EMP, either from the sun or an enemy's nuclear bomb. They want the 2,000-3,000 transformers in the grid protected with a high-tech metal box and spares ready to rebuild the system. Woolsey said knocking out just 20 would shut down electricity to parts of the nation "for a long time."

But Washington is giving them the cold shoulder, especially the administration. Woolsey told Secrets that some in Congress are interested in the issue, but the administration is just in the "beginnings" of paying attention.

Woolsey said that Air Force One and aircraft used by the Strategic Air Command to control nuclear-tipped missiles are hardened against an EMP.

The EMP effect is not rare. One occurred in Canada in 1989, knocking out Quebec's electric transmission system. And North Korea is reportedly testing a device to attack the U.S. with an EMP attack.

Read more - 

http://washingtonexaminer.com/massive-solar-flare-narrowly-misses-earth-emp-disaster-barely-avoided/article/2533727

'Microbeads' latest pollution threat to Great Lakes -

'Microbeads' latest pollution threat to Great Lakes - 



Tiny plastic beads from beauty products are showing up in North America's Great Lakes, and an environmental group is calling upon companies to stop using the plastic particles.

Scientists have already found the particles, known as microplastic, floating in the oceans but recently reported the same contamination in the largest surface freshwater system on the Earth. The particles are often less than a millimeter (0.04 inch).

A team of researchers with 5 Gyres Institute, a non-profit California-based environmental activist group, collected samples from lakes Erie, Superior and Huron last summer and found large quantities of round, plastic pellets.

"They matched the same size, color, texture and shape of the microbeads found in popular consumer products," said the group's executive director, Marcus Eriksen. He said the group plans to publish the research in a peer-reviewed journal later this year.

Microbeads are tiny plastic balls used in products like facial scrubs, body washes and toothpastes. They scrub away dead skin, similar to using a sponge, and are designed to wash down the drain.

Scientists captured the tiny samples using "manta trawl," a net system resembling a manta ray, which is towed behind the boat.

The organization presented their research to Proctor & Gamble Co and Johnson & Johnson, expecting a battle for urging them to stop using microbeads in their products.

A Johnson & Johnson spokeswoman said they have already begun the phase out of polyethylene microbeads in their existing products and are currently developing an environmentally friendly alternative for future products.

"We won without having to go through a legislative battle, which no one wants to do," Eriksen said.

Proctor & Gamble did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters. Eriksen said a company spokesperson told 5 Gyres they will phase out microbeads in products by 2017.

The pollution damage will continue in the meantime. The plastic particles are now added to an already long list of threats to the fish population, Eriksen said.

Microplastic is easily confused with natural food found in lakes. The beads can remain in fish and be ingested by humans, the group said.

"We don't know if the problem stops with the fish or if we eat the fish, the problems are with us now," said Lorena Rios-Mendoza, a chemist with the University of Wisconsin-Superior who was on the 5 Gyres boat expedition.

There is no practical way to remove the plastic debris already floating in the lakes, Eriksen said. Particles will float to shore, drift out to the ocean or absorb chemicals from the water, which weigh the particles down and cause them to sink to the bottom of the lakes.

The lifespan of microplastics is unknown so it can take years for it to completely leave the ocean or lake, if it ever does.

"Plastic doesn't biodegrade so once it's in the water, it doesn't just disappear," Rios-Mendoza said.

The scientists are expanding their search this summer to lakes Michigan and Ontario.

Read more - 

http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/2013/07/31/microbeads-latest-pollution-threat-to-great-lakes

US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew cooking the books on the national debt? - frozen at $16.699T for the last 70 days -

US Treasury Secretary Jack Lew cooking the books on the national debt? - frozen at $16.699T for the last 70 days - 



According to theDaily Treasury Statement for July 26, which the Treasury released this afternoon, the federal debt has been stuck at exactly $16,699,396,000,000.00 for 70 straight days.

That is approximately $25 million below the legal limit of $16,699,421,095,673.60 that Congress has imposed on the debt.

The portion of the federal debt subject to the legal limit set by Congress first hit $16,699,396,000,000.00 at the close of business on May 17. At the close of every business day since then, it has also been $16,699,396,000,000.00, according to the official accounting published by the Treasury Department.

If the debt had increased by even $30 million at any time during those 70 days, it would have exceeded the statutory limit. But, according to the Treasury, the debt did not do that. Instead, it remained precisely $16,699,396,000,000.00.

Even though the government's official accounting of the debt has not budged for 70 days, the Treasury has continued to sell bills, notes and bonds at a value that exceeds the value of the bills, notes and bonds it was redeeming.

In fact, according to the Daily Treasury Statement for May 17, the Treasury had by then already redeemed approximately $4,776,995,000,000.00 since the beginning of the fiscal year (which started on Oct. 1, 2012). As of that same day, the Treasury had already sold $5,354,508,000.000.00 new bills, notes and bonds during the fiscal year. That represented a net increase in publicly circulating U.S. government debt instruments of $577,513,000,000.00 for the fiscal year.

As of July 26, according to the latest Treasury statement, the Treasury had already redeemed approximately $6,128,368,000,000.00 in bills, notes and bonds during this fiscal year. But, at the same time, according to the statement, the Treasury had sold an additional $6,759,148,000,000.00 bills, note and bonds--for a net increase of $630,780,000,000.00 for the year.

Thus, the value of U.S. Treasury debt instruments circulating in the public has increased $53.267 billion since May 17--even though the Treasury says the debt has remained exactly at $16,699,396,000,000.00 during that time.

How could the value of extant U.S. Treasury securities increase by $53.267 billion during a 70-day period when the federal government’s debt subject to the legal limit has remained constant at $16,699,396,000,000.00—just $25 million below the legal limit?

On May 17, the day the debt began its long stay at $16,699,396,000,000.00, Treasury Secretary Lew sent a letter to House Speaker John Boehner. In the letter, Lew said the Treasury would begin implementing what he called “the standard set of extraordinary measures” that allows the Treasury to continue to borrow and spend money even after it has hit the legal debt li


Read more - 

http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/70-straight-days-treasury-says-debt-stuck-exactly-1669939600000000

Secret Sex Tape: Monica Lewinsky Caught On Explicit Recording Telling Bill Clinton, ‘I Could Take My Clothes Off…’ -

Secret Sex Tape: Monica Lewinsky Caught On Explicit Recording Telling Bill Clinton, ‘I Could Take My Clothes Off…’ - 



A sex tape that Monica Lewinsky recorded for Bill Clinton at the height of their scandalous affair has leaked, during which the former White House intern is heard planning a secret sexual rendezvous with the president and declaring she is “too cute and adorable” to be ignored.

On the audio tape obtained by The National Enquirer, Lewinsky at one point tries to seduce the commander in chief: “I could take my clothes off and start… well… I know you wouldn’t enjoy that? I hope to see you later and I hope you will follow my script and do what I want.”

Lewinsky, who turned 40 last week, made the three-minute, 47 second recording in November 1997 and addressed it to “handsome.”

Details of the sexually explicit tape are in the new issue of the Enquirer, which hits newsstands Thursday.

It was believed to have been destroyed years ago, but a copy was secretly made and has subsequently surfaced.

Lewinsky is the only voice heard.

On it, she tells the 42nd President: “Since I know you will be alone tomorrow evening, I have two proposals for you, neither of which is you not seeing me.”

Lewinsky then orders the leader of the free world to use his secretary, Betty Currie, as a go-between and plan the presidential schedule so they could covertly meet without a formal record of her visit.

“Now the first thing that has to happen is that you need to pre-plan with Betty that you will leave the office at, I don¹t know, at 7, 7:30 so that everyone else who hates me that causes me lots of trouble goes home,” she tells Clinton.

“Then you quickly sneak back and then in the meantime I quickly sneak over and then we can have a nice little visit for, you know, 15 minutes or half an hour. Whatever you want.”

Lewinsky also bemoans how their previous “60 seconds” encounter “was just not enough ­ even though you did look very handsome.”

“Maybe we could go over and watch a movie together and just have kind of, I don¹t know, boxed dinners or something like that,” she says.

“And then that way we don’t have to deal with the problem of me… of there being a record of me going upstairs and we can spend some time together and see a good movie.

“So I don’t know, those are two proposals and you can’t refuse me because I’m too cute and adorable and soon I won’t be here anymore to pop over.

“I’m hoping you will hear this and you will choose which one you want to do and go tell Betty and then she can call me and let me know so I don¹t have to stress out all day and I don¹t have to call her every two hours and bug her because, I know you will find this very hard to believe, but I can be a pain in the ass sometimes.

“I’m very persistent, but um… I really want to see you.”

According to The Enquirer, Lewinsky originally played the tape for Linda Tripp — the woman whose secret telephone tapes of Lewinsky ultimately led to Clinton’s impeachment — on Nov. 20, 1997.

The cassette was delivered to the Oval Office the next day, according to a report by the Office of Independent Counsel Ken Starr.

The tape and other racy mementoes, including love letters Lewinsky wrote to Clinton, were obtained by an individual who was hired as a “cleaner” by individuals close to Lewinsky.

The source kept the sensational material private for the past 15 years and the Clintons reportedly thought the evidence had been destroyed.

“First, I forgot to tell you that the Gingko Blowjoba, or whatever it’s called, was from me,” Lewinsky wrote in one romantic note to Clinton.

“I also included those new Zinc throat lozenges which are rumored to be great.”

In a series of pleading notes, a clearly distraught Lewinsky pestered Clinton to make time for her and begged him to explain why he ended their illicit romance.

The Enquirer reports the emergence of the tape could torpedo Hillary’s expected run for the White House.

“The Clintons thought this sex tape was dead and buried,” said one source. “If this tape and other material are surfacing now, imagine what else must be out there?

“This could be just the tip of theiceberg and the most embarrassing ‘bimbo eruption’ of all for the Clintons.”

Read more - 

http://radaronline.com/exclusives/2013/07/bill-clinton-sex-tape-monica-lewinsky/

44 Facts About The Death Of The Middle Class That Every American Should Know -

44 Facts About The Death Of The Middle Class That Every American Should Know - 



What is America going to look like when the middle class is dead?  Once upon a time, the United States has the largest and most vibrant middle class in the history of the world.  When I was growing up, it seemed like almost everyone was “middle class” and it was very rare to hear of someone that was out of work.  Of course life wasn’t perfect, but most families owned a home, most families had more than one vehicle, and most families could afford nice vacations and save for retirement at the same time.  Sadly, things have dramatically changed in America since that time.  There just aren’t as many “middle class jobs” as there used to be.  In fact, just six years ago there were about six million more full-time jobs in our economy than there are right now.  Those jobs are being replaced by part-time jobs and temp jobs.  The number one employer in America today is Wal-Mart and the number two employer in America today is a temp agency (Kelly Services).  But you can’t support a family on those kinds of jobs.  We live at a time when incomes are going down but the cost of living just keeps going up.  As a result, the middle class in America is being absolutely shredded and the ranks of the poor are steadily growing.  The following are 44 facts about the death of the middle class that every American should know…

1. According to one recent survey, “four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives”.

2. The growth rate of real disposable personal income is the lowest that it has been in decades.

3. Median household income (adjusted for inflation) has fallen by 7.8 percent since the year 2000.

4. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the middle class is taking home a smaller share of the overall income pie than has ever been recorded before.

5. The home ownership rate in the United States is the lowest that it has been in 18 years.

6. It is more expensive to rent a home in America than ever before.  In fact, median asking rent for vacant rental units just hit a brand new all-time record high.

7. According to one recent survey, 76 percent of all Americans are living paycheck to paycheck.

8. The U.S. economy actually lost 240,000 full-time jobs last month, and the number of full-time workers in the United States is now about 6 million below the old record that was set back in 2007.

9. The largest employer in the United States right now is Wal-Mart.  The second largest employer in the United States right now is a temp agency (Kelly Services).

10. One out of every ten jobs in the United States is now filled through a temp agency.

11. According to the Social Security Administration, 40 percent of all workers in the United States make less than $20,000 a year.

12. The ratio of wages and salaries to GDP is near an all-time record low.

13. The U.S. economy continues to trade good paying jobs for low paying jobs.  60 percent of the jobs lost during the last recession were mid-wage jobs, but 58 percent of the jobs created since then have been low wage jobs.

14. Back in 1980, less than 30% of all jobs in the United States were low income jobs.  Today, more than 40% of all jobs in the United States are low income jobs.

15. At this point, one out of every four American workers has a job that pays $10 an hour or less.

16. According to one study, between 1969 and 2009 the median wages earned by American men between the ages of 30 and 50 declined by 27 percent after you account for inflation.

17. In the year 2000, about 17 million Americans were employed in manufacturing.  Today, only about 12 million Americans are employed in manufacturing.

18. The United States has lost more than 56,000 manufacturing facilities since 2001.

19. The average number of hours worked per employed person per year has fallen by about 100 since the year 2000.

20. Back in the year 2000, more than 64 percent of all working age Americans had a job.  Today, only 58.7 percent of all working age Americans have a job.

21. When you total up all working age Americans that do not have a job, it comes to more than 100 million.

22. The average duration of unemployment in the United States isnearly three times as long as it was back in the year 2000.

23. The percentage of Americans that are self-employed has steadily declined over the past decade and is now at an all-time low.

24. Right now there are 20.2 million Americans that spend more than half of their incomes on housing.  That represents a 46 percent increase from 2001.

25. In 1989, the debt to income ratio of the average American family was about 58 percent.  Today it is up to 154 percent.

26. Total U.S. household debt grew from just 1.4 trillion dollars in 1980 to a whopping 13.7 trillion dollars in 2007.  This played a huge role in the financial crisis of 2008, and the problem still has not been solved.

27. The total amount of student loan debt in the United States recently surpassed the one trillion dollar mark.

28. Total home mortgage debt in the United States is now about 5 times larger than it was just 20 years ago.

29. Back in the year 2000, the mortgage delinquency rate was about 2 percent.  Today, it is nearly 10 percent.

30. Consumer debt in the United States has risen by a whopping1700% since 1971, and 46% of all Americans carry a credit card balance from month to month.

31. In 1999, 64.1 percent of all Americans were covered by employment-based health insurance.  Today, only 55.1 percent are covered by employment-based health insurance.

32. One study discovered that approximately 41 percent of all working age Americans either have medical bill problems or are currently paying off medical debt, and according to a report published in The American Journal of Medicine medical bills are a major factor inmore than 60 percent of all personal bankruptcies in the United States.

33. Each year, the average American must work 107 days just to make enough money to pay local, state and federal taxes.

34. Today, approximately 46.2 million Americans are living in poverty.

35. The number of Americans living in poverty has increased by more than 15 million since the year 2000.

36. Families that have a head of household under the age of 30 have a poverty rate of 37 percent.

37. At this point, approximately 25 million American adults are living with their parents.

38. In the year 2000, there were only 17 million Americans on food stamps.  Today, there are more than 47 million Americans on food stamps.

39. Back in the 1970s, about one out of every 50 Americans was on food stamps.  Today, about one out of every 6.5 Americans is on food stamps.

40. Right now, the number of Americans on food stamps exceeds the entire population of the nation of Spain.

41. According to one calculation, the number of Americans on food stamps now exceeds the combined populations of “Alaska, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.”

42. At this point, more than a million public school students in the United States are homeless.  This is the first time that has ever happened in our history.  That number has risen by 57 percent since the 2006-2007 school year.

43. According to U.S. Census data, 57 percent of all American children live in a home that is either considered to be “poor” or “low income”.

44. In the year 2000, the ratio of social welfare benefits to salaries and wages was approximately 21 percent.  Today, the ratio of social welfare benefits to salaries and wages is approximately 35 percent.

And not only is the middle class being systematically destroyed right now, we are also destroying the bright economic future that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have by accumulating gigantic mountains of debt in their names.  The following is from a recent articleby Bill Bonner…

Today, the U.S. lumbers into the future with total debt equal to about 350% of GDP. In Britain and Japan, the total is over 500%. Debt, remember, is the homage that the future pays to the past. It has to be carried, serviced… and paid. It has to be reckoned with… one way or another.

And the cost of carrying debt is going up! Over the last few weeks, interest rates have moved up by about 15% — an astounding increase for the sluggish debt market. How long will it be before long-term borrowing rates are back to “normal”?

At 5% interest, a debt that measures 3.5 times your revenue will cost about one-sixth of your income. Before taxes. After tax, you will have to work about one day a week to keep up with it (to say nothing of paying it off!).

That’s a heavy burden. It is especially disagreeable when someone else ran up the debt. Then you are a debt slave. That is the situation of young people today. They must face their parents’ debt. Even serfs in the Dark Ages had it better. They had to work only one day out of 10 for their lords and masters.

We were handed the keys to the greatest economic machine in the history of the planet and we wrecked it.

As young people realize that their futures have been destroyed, many of them are going to totally lose hope and give in to despair.

And desperate people do desperate things.  As our economy continues to crumble, we are going to see crime greatly increase as people do what they feel they need to do in order to survive.  In fact, we are already starting to see this happen.  Just this week, CNBC reported on the raging epidemic of copper theft that we are seeing all over the nation right now…

Copper is such a hot commodity that thieves are going after the metal anywhere they can find it: an electrical power station in Wichita, Kan., or half a dozen middle-class homes in Morris Township, N.J.Even on a Utah highway construction site, crooks managed to abscond with six miles of copper wire.

Those are just a handful of recent targets across the U.S. in the $1 billion business of copper theft.

“There’s no question the theft has gotten much, much worse,” said Mike Adelizzi, president of theAmerican Supply Association, a nonprofit group representing distributors and suppliers in the plumbing, heating, cooling and industrial pipe industries.

The United States once had the greatest middle class in the history of the world, but now it it dying.

This is causing a tremendous amount of anger and frustration to build in this nation, and when the next major wave of the economic collapse strikes, a lot of that anger and frustration will likely be unleashed.

The American people don’t understand that these problems have taken decades to develop.  They just want someone to fix things.  They just want things to go back to the way that they used to be.

Unfortunately, the great economic storm that is coming is not going to be averted.

Get ready while you still can.  Time is running out.

Read more - 

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/44-facts-about-the-death-of-the-middle-class-that-every-american-should-know

Doctor claims patients can someday be revived 24 hours after death -

Doctor claims patients can someday be revived 24 hours after death - 



Bringing the dead back to life may soon be a medical reality, with claims people may be able to be resuscitated up to 24 hours after their death.
Critical care physician Sam Parnia makes the claim in his book Erasing Death, saying resuscitation research is on the cusp of a major breakthrough within the next 20 years.
"With today's medicine, we can bring people back to life up to one, maybe two hours, sometimes even longer, after their heart stopped beating and they have thus died by circulatory failure. In the future, we will likely get better at reversing death," he told Germany's Spiegel magazine. "It is possible that in 20 years, we may be able to restore people to life 12 hours or maybe even 24 hours after they have died. You could call that resurrection, if you will. But I still call it resuscitation science."
Currently the average resuscitation rates for cardiac arrest patients in the US is 18 percent, while in the U.K. it is 16 percent. But at Parnia's research base in New York that rate is between 33 percent and 38 percent.
"Most, but not all of our patients, get discharged with no neurological damage whatsoever," he said.
Parnia said it is a "widely-held misconception, even among doctors", that the brain suffers massive oxygen-deprived damage after three to five minutes after the heart stops.


Read more: -

http://www.foxnews.com/health/2013/07/31/dead-can-someday-be-revived-24-hours-later-doctor-claims/?test=latestnews

Mega Advertising Corps Creating Database Comparable to the NSA -

Mega Advertising Corps Creating Database Comparable to the NSA - 



Privacy experts think that the merger of the world’s two biggest advertising agencies could create a massive database of information about consumers. The database would be similar to what the National Security Agency is amassing about phone and internet usage, and it could be used to greatly restrict your rights.

Omnicom Group and Publicis Groupe are two giant holding companies that own dozens of advertising agencies and marketing firms. The two companies have decided to merge into one titanic holding company. Part of this company’s holdings will be a giant database about consumer habits.

The database contains e-scores, or consumer valuation. This is information that retailers, credit card companies, search engines, and other organizations collect about you every time you visit a website or make a transaction.

BIG BUSINESS KNOWS ALL ABOUT YOUR LIFESTYLE

The problem is that such e-scores are increasingly being used to analyze your lifestyle and make decisions about you. A health insurance company might check the e-score to see if you eat at McDonald’s or buy liquor or cigarettes before writing you a policy. A bank might check to see if you gamble or go to casinos before writing you a loan. The bank might also check to see if you visit online casinos or have even purchased airline tickets to Las Vegas in the past.

In other words, these institutions know a lot about your personal lives. They track everything you do online and every purchase you make with your debit or credit or card.

A TOOL FOR DISCRIMINATION
That means they know what books you buy from Amazon, what videos you stream from Netflix, and what websites you visit. It wouldn’t be that hard to discern your political or religious beliefs from such metadata. The data could be used to discriminate against people that hold certain beliefs.

For example, bureaucrats could screen applicants to determine which ones would be more likely to question authority or criticize a government policy. They might not hire somebody who regularly visits The Guardian’s website because it often contains stories that contradict the official line coming out of Washington. Let alone an alternative news website like Storyleak.

Particularly bothersome is the fact that data is now sold in automated trading platforms for everybody to buy. The combined Omnicom and Publicis will be able to make a fortune selling this data.

Controls need to be placed on the kind of data companies can collect and how they sell it. Such private data mining is as big a threat to our privacy as the data mining done by agencies like the NSA.

Read more - 

http://www.storyleak.com/advertising-corps-creating-database-comparable-to-nsa/

14 month old toddler accidentally buys car on dad's smartphone -

14 month old toddler accidentally buys car on dad's smartphone - 



How old do you have to be to buy a car? Old enough to tap a button.

Sorella Stoute, 14 months old, was playing with her father’s smartphone at their Oregon home recently. After a few screen taps she wound up on eBay’s web app — and bought a 1962 Austin-Healey Sprite.

Her father, Paul Stoute, had no idea what she’d done until a confirmed email from eBay appeared in his inbox, congratulating him on his purchase.

Stoute told CBS News “my initial thought was panic.”

Fortunately, Sorella, who can’t even say “car” yet, is a shrewd bidder and scored the classic roadster for just $225, so he decided to keep it.

He intends to restore the scuffed-up car for her 16th birthday as a present she’ll never forget.

And yes, he has since added password protection to his phone to make sure she doesn’t accidentally buy him a Bugatti.

Read more -

http://www.wheels.ca/news/baby-accidentally-buys-vintage-car-on-dads-smartphone/