WARNING: If you do not obey the lawful commands of police and military authorities, especially during an emergency, you may be subject to severe penalties, including summary execution. This post does NOT in any way suggest disobedience of lawful commands. It is about leadership by non-official, self-appointed people in an emergency situation.

Who Should You Trust in an Emergency Situation? My first knee-jerk reaction is, no one but yourself.

And that is true to some extent. Ever watch a disaster movie? There is always some self-promoting person who leads a group of people directly into the maw of whatever is waiting out there for them. And then the smart but unpopular hero leads a smaller group toward a semblance of safety, although many of them perish along the way.

Unfortunately, the movies mirror reality all too closely.

There is a type of person who really wants to take charge during an emergency and have everyone do exactly what they say. They’re just made that way. Some of them are idiots. A few have experience and good training and good judgement, and it would be a good idea to listen to them. Question is, how can you tell the difference? (more…)

Very curious, very odd.

As mentioned in the previous post, Iran announced today that they could enrich uranium “over 80 percent”, which is close to or perhaps is weapons grade. That is apparently the ’surprise’ they promised.

The response from the US? We don’t believe it, so we don’t have to pay any attention to it. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs curtly dismissed the announcement by saying it was “based on politics not on physics.”

Yet Reuters says that the main technical challenge is reaching a level of 3.5 percent , which the US accepted and IAEA inspectors were invited to witness. Reuters goes on to say that scaling up to  80 percent, is “relatively easy” after that.

The truth? I’m no nuclear scientist, so I don’t know.

Curiously, The Jerusalem Post website (more…)

It has been very difficult to connect with ‘alternate’ news sources in the Middle East this morning. I got the Mossad-sponsored site up earlier, but cannot repeat it. Iran’s official website is nowhere to be seen. So whatever is happening is not yet clear.

The bits and pieces I’ve been able to gather is that the ’surprise’ that the Iranians announced today via a speech their president made to a large crowd of supporters, is that Iran is now capable of enriching uranium to “more than 80 percent purity”. Which is perhaps another way of saying the 90 percent purity needed for a nuclear device.

Yet Iranian president Ahmadinejad reiterated once again that if “one day we wanted to build nuclear bombs”, the Iranians are brave enough to come right out and say it. But they don’t believe in having nuclear weapons.

On the other hand… the threat of being able to build a nuclear device is implicit in the way he said it.

Whatever the truth of it is, I’m pretty sure the West will take it as a bright red flag.

The question is what will the US or Israel, or both… do about it. Will Europe agree and the French launch a strike off the pride of their fleet, the nuclear powered aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle?

Or will everyone just make noise and do nothing? The stock market seems to be paying no attention to any of this. They are more concerned with the monetary crisis in Greece

Two interesting statements, containing information that the major media felt was unnecessary for the public to know about, were made on February 8. One was by our Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, and one by Iran’s spiritual ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

I’ll start with the second one first. The Iranian ruler said to an audience that included the commanders of the Iranian Air Force, “The Iranian nation with its unity and God’s grace will punch the arrogance [of Western powers] on the 22nd of Bahman (Thursday, Feb 11, or the night of the 10th in the US) in a way that will leave them stunned!”

Speculation is wild and wooly about what he could be talking about. (more…)

Most people are not awake.

We live in a time of comfort and safety. Despite all the warnings about threats, we live our daily lives expecting very little out of the ordinary.

Most of us live in our houses and cars and offices, and spend as little time ‘on the street’ as possible. That is reasonable, because going outside our comfort zone might be dangerous, or at least could result in some uncomfortable situation. We go to the store, get the stuff, get back asap. That’s about it for most people.

That’s not it for everyone. Some of you are very awake, and you easily enter a higher state of awareness. When you go out, you see the cat in the bushes, the guy that looks a little out of place for some reason, the car that is not acting quite right. That is very good. That is survival when the going gets rough.

The rest of us need to practicing being awake and aware. I have to admit (more…)

Political Officer Putin, reading out of the Bible that had belonged to the wife of Captain Ramius, commander of the Red October, a man with the power of launching nuclear missiles… and a nuclear war.

“Then they gathered the kings together to the place that in Hebrew is called Armageddon. And the seventh angel poured forth his bowl into the air, and a voice cried out from heaven, saying, ‘It is done!’” Putin looks up at the Captain. “A man with your responsibilities, reading about the end of the world…. Huh.”- the movie Hunt for Red October

It is disturbing that we have a President with Armageddon on his mind.

There are many ways to describe a snowstorm in Washington D.C., and to my knowledge no one has ever called it Snowmageddon. In fact, I’ve never heard that term used to describe any winter storm, not even one much more severe than this week’s weather. So far as I can tell, our President coined the term a couple of days ago. Very creative. And as I said, quite disturbing.

There are two ways to look at it, I think. (more…)

“We were joking Friday about people preparing as though it were going to be Armageddon — referring to the hordes of shoppers who emptied stores of milk, bread, shovels, driveway salt and other supplies.”    - Tihana Blanc , Washington D.C.

A winter storm. Sure, a severe winter storm, but something relatively normal and certainly predictable. It wasn’t even a record breaker. And people emptied the stores like they were ‘preparing for Armageddon.’

I haven’t written in a while because the mood of the country has been strangely euphoric despite the depression… I mean recession. The stock market went up, and the jobless were swept under the rug. No one - certainly not the media - paid any attention to the truly Armageddon-like buildup of new generation missiles, submarines and unmanned military drones around Israel.

But the military pacts between Iran, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas have been brought out into the open this week, with a message of destruction for Israel. You can see that for yourself if you search Google News for ‘Iranian Missile Airlift’.

The Middle East is poised to drop into war at the slightest provocation. (more…)