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Tuesday, 23 December 2014

Excessive snow removed from ski slopes in Norway


Too much snow around the ski lifts.

20 Dec 2014 - "During the last two days we've got more snow than we had in the last two years together," says a victorious Vegar Sårheim. "I had never believed we would experience this."


Late Saturday night he worked together with the trail crew in Breimsbygda Ski Centre Utvikfjellet feverishly removing the snow around the ski lifts.


We face the greatest challenges around the lifts, because for security reasons there must be two feet clearance. So we need shoveling away large amounts of snow, says Sårheim. - We have received about 1.5 meters of snow in a short period of time. And the forecast until Christmas is that there will come much more. So once we have cleared away this snow, we will face a fantastic Christmas.


Sårheim sees the humor in that slopes actually need to remove snow. - Yes, this I had never imagined that I would experience that.


Thanks to Argiris Diamantis for this link


Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog


Monday, 22 December 2014

US: Chicago on track to break sunshine shortage record


If the thought of entering another Chicago winter isn't depressing enough, meteorologists say the city is on track to have one of the gloomiest Decembers in its history.

There has been no direct sunshine recorded in Chicago for 15 days this month, according to Frank Wachowski, who mans the official North West Side Midway Airport sunlight observatory.


Since Dec. 12, the city has seen only 33 minutes of sunshine, which peeked through the clouds Thursday.


That puts December 2014 on track to break the record for darkest December since 1975, when the National Weather Service recorded 19 percent sun exposure. As of Monday, Wachowski had recorded 16 percent sun exposure this month.


The record for darkest month ever in Chicago was November 1985, when sunlight hit the city for 16 percent of the month.


Percentages are determined by dividing the total number of hours between sunrise and sunset by the minutes of exposed sunshine recorded with monitoring equipment, Wachowski said.


Wachowski, 77, is a retired meteorologist, but since 1980 he has recorded sunshine data with official transistor sensors mounted atop his home in southwest suburban Burbank. He set up his home operation after the National Weather Service abandoned sunshine monitoring in the early 1980s, allowing him to keep the equipment and monitor data independently.


Wachowski said that in part, the lack of snowfall could be to blame. If a snowstorm blows through Chicago, the tightly packed cloud cover might dissipate. In the meantime, the clouds have been locked between a layer of cold air close to the ground with warmer air above the clouds.


"When you have an inversion, you have low clouds that stick around," Wachowski said. "Lack of wind contributes to giving us this situation," he said, along with unseasonably high temperatures, which this year have been 2 degrees to 2.5 degrees above average for December.


Essentially, "winds blew clouds in early in the month, and they stayed there," said Bill Nelson, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service who monitors the Chicago area.


Meteorologist Frank Wachowski and the National Weather Service graphed this month's sunshine exposure data in the Chicago area.


Wachowski said there's an interest in tracking the sunshine shortage in part because of how extended periods of darkness can effect people.


"When it's cloudy like this, it does have an effect on people," he said. "It is kind of gloomy, you feel tired all the time."


Limited exposure to sunlight and Vitamin D common during the winter months can trigger a subtype of depression called seasonal affective disorder, according to a statement from Northwestern Medicine psychiatrist Pedro Dago, who studies the effects of sunlight deprivation at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine.


"SAD is not just a case of the winter blues, but a serious problem for many people, and it can be treated," he said.


Dago said treatments include sleeping more, eating healthily and exercising, and increasing exposure to sunlight, which might be tricky this month.


Wachowski also hypothesized that the temperature inversion - warm air below the clouds with cold air above them - could be contributing to the flu outbreak that's sickened Chicagoans and especially CPS students in large numbers this season.


"There seems to be a correlation, because when you have temps in the teens, you kill all the viruses and germs. Here, we have more moisture in the air," making it easier for germs to linger and spread, he said.


Weather patterns suggest that if any sunlight does peek out this month, it would be on Christmas Day, when a storm system might pass through Chicago, breaking up some of the cloud cover.


Still, Wachowski said it's "quite conceivable" that December 2014 will break the record set in 1975. So we've got that going for us, which is nice.


Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog


Insanely dangerous! Anti-gun public service announcement encourages kids to steal parents' guns and turn them in to teachers

kid_gun

© Youtube



A provocative public service announcement released by a San Francisco-based production company encourages children to put themselves at risk and commit a slew of crimes by stealing their parents' guns from home and turning them in at school.

In the anti-gun ad, published Dec. 13 by Sleeper 13 Productions, a boy who appears to be in his early teens is shown walking up the stairs of his home and wandering into his mother's bedroom.


The boy is shown opening the drawer to his mother's dresser, where a handgun is hidden.


The boy takes the gun from the dresser and leaves the room. The ad then flashes to his school. Sitting in a classroom, the boy ventures up to his teacher's desk after the rest of his classmates have left.


The tension building in the scene breaks, and the boy produces the gun from his backpack, slamming it on his startled teacher's desk.


"Can you take this away? I don't feel safe with a gun in my house," the boy says.


What the ad-makers are encouraging is highly illegal and invites danger.


The boy would be guilty of weapons theft, illegal concealed carry and carrying a weapon on school property.


The ad's director, Rejina Sencic, took to Twitter to taunt those she says are "afraid to share" her ad.




Lot of people are afraid to share my PSA! If you are not a coward please share https://t.co/q2sisRKCN1 ... ... #gunviolence


- Rejina Sincic (@QueenSincic) December 17, 2014




Requests for comment made to Sleeper 13 Productions and to Sincic were not immediately returned.

WATCH:


[embedded content]


Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog


Insanely dangerous! Anti-Gun public service announcement encourages kids to steal parents' guns and turn them in to teachers

kid_gun

© Youtube



A provocative public service announcement released by a San Francisco-based production company encourages children to put themselves at risk and commit a slew of crimes by stealing their parents' guns from home and turning them in at school.

In the anti-gun ad, published Dec. 13 by Sleeper 13 Productions, a boy who appears to be in his early teens is shown walking up the stairs of his home and wandering into his mother's bedroom.


The boy is shown opening the drawer to his mother's dresser, where a handgun is hidden.


The boy takes the gun from the dresser and leaves the room. The ad then flashes to his school. Sitting in a classroom, the boy ventures up to his teacher's desk after the rest of his classmates have left.


The tension building in the scene breaks, and the boy produces the gun from his backpack, slamming it on his startled teacher's desk.


"Can you take this away? I don't feel safe with a gun in my house," the boy says.


What the ad-makers are encouraging is highly illegal and invites danger.


The boy would be guilty of weapons theft, illegal concealed carry and carrying a weapon on school property.


The ad's director, Rejina Sencic, took to Twitter to taunt those she says are "afraid to share" her ad.




Lot of people are afraid to share my PSA! If you are not a coward please share https://t.co/q2sisRKCN1 ... ... #gunviolence


- Rejina Sincic (@QueenSincic) December 17, 2014




Requests for comment made to Sleeper 13 Productions and to Sincic were not immediately returned.

WATCH:


[embedded content]


Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog


US families prepare for 'modern day apocalypse'




This old nuclear missile facility has been turned into an apocalypse refuge.



An increasing number of Americans seem to think so, and they're preparing for the end.


They call themselves preppers. Mainstream suburban Americans hoarding supplies and weapons while leading otherwise perfectly normal lives.


Video: Prepping For The End Of The World




It's a national phenomenon and it's supporting a doom boom industry worth many millions.

Braxton Southwick is a typical father-of-six in Salt Lake City, who believes the nice suburban neighbourhood he lives in could soon be swept away by some kind of modern day apocalypse.


Video: What Is Prepping?




Like other preppers, he's afraid of some impending catastrophe but also what that will do to American society.

"I think that is what I'm scared of the most," he told , "Not the actual events. I've already prepared for that. It's the aftermath, when there are no police, there are no military to protect us, we're going to be protecting ourselves."


The trigger could be a terrorist attack, a monetary collapse, cataclysmic failure in power generation, or a natural disaster. Preppers fear what comes next and have no faith in either their government or human nature.


"Once people use up all their resources, they're going to come after the people that prepared and had more resources. So basically we have to take care of ourselves."


Braxton and his wife Kara have a basement that will see them through Armageddon, literally. Enough dried and canned food to last six months. Enough guns and ammunition to turn their family into a small army.


And they have trained each of their six children, including the youngest aged 15, how to defend themselves with guns to see off the mobs of marauding looters they predict could come after them after their world collapses.


At the other end of America, another family are preparing in exactly the same way. In Virginia, Jay and Holly Blevins hoard food and weapons and run a network of like-minded families.


Video: Preppers Teach Kids To Shoot Guns




"We're not talking about folks walking around wearing tin foil on their heads," Jay tells . "We're not talking about conspiracy theorists. I'm talking about professionals: doctors and lawyers and law enforcement and military. Normal, everyday people. They can't necessarily put their finger on it. But there's something about the uncertainty of our times. They know something isn't quite right."

Jay is a celebrity in the strange but increasingly mainstream world of preppers, writing prepper books and touring America, speaking at prepper expos where a bewildering range of survival supplies and techniques are on offer.


Why is it happening? Partly, no doubt, because it allows Americans to indulge in some of their favourite pastimes: consuming, camping and buying lots and lots of guns.


And partly because fear sells, drives up numbers for cable news, and increases sales for everything from dried food to assault rifles.


But it's also arguably a sign of a country coping with economic decline. The end of the American Dream has left people more uncertain about their future, and their country's.


Katy Bryson is in Jay's prepper network. Prepping, she says, puts Americans back in charge of their destiny.


Video: Why Are Americans Prepping?




"They're not in control of whether they lose their job or not but they are in control of whether they are prepared. So I feel like that's why the industry is just booming right now for preparedness," Katy added.

It is also a fundamentally American phenomenon. In a country built on the radical individualism of its founding fathers, people have an inbuilt mistrust in their government's ability to protect them.


Sociologist Barry Glastner wrote The Culture of Fear. He told : "Americans are fairly unique as world citizens in that we tend to believe that we control our own destiny as individuals to a much greater extent than we really do."


Ironically, he points out preppers may actually be reacting to their fears in the least effective way. Dangerous weather, terrorist attacks and economic collapses are all best dealt with by higher authorities, he said.




"Where there are real dangers, to take an individualistic approach is usually exactly the wrong thing to do. So the kinds of things that the preppers are preparing to protect themselves from are much better handled on a community-wide basis than they are in your own home."

Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog


The truth slips out: Whooping cough vaccine caused a surge in cases

vaccine fail

© unknown



So, you're trying to grow a plant. You take it inside, in a little pot. You feed it fertilizer, put it under lights, and when it starts to wilt, you prop it up with all sorts of sticks and tape, and when one fails, you add more. Eventually it dies. All it wanted was sun, fresh air, clean water, and the magic of natural soil. I think of this pathetic image when I reflect on the absurdity of our vaccination program. If it were only absurd, and not deadly, my reflections would be just that. Instead, I am here to speak to pregnant women about how to arm themselves with knowledge, to warn them so there are no regrets.


As I have declared, I take pregnancy interventions, epigenetic exposures , and maternal health very, very seriously. After my fellowship-level training in psychiatric treatment of these women, I understand, all too well, how flawed and nearly impossible to achieve, safety data is for pharmaceutical products in pregnancy. Passive reporting systems and industry-maintained registries don't cut it. I'd like to take you on a brief tour of one particular product that your OB may recommend, coerce, or bully you into, and then your child's pediatrician will take the torch and do the same for your tiny baby: the diptheria, tetanus, pertussis vaccine, also known as DTaP.


As of 2012, every woman, regardless of any individual considerations or risk/benefit, is recommended the DTaP vaccine after 20 weeks of gestation.


Here's how we got into this situation


Pertussis incidence was waning on its own until a 1980 mandate to vaccinate in 42 states. Since this time, and since the introduction of the seemingly "less dangerous" acellular pertussis vaccine (the whole cell vaccine was so clearly toxic that seizure activity and fevers drove parents away from vaccination, and it still took almost 50 years to change the product) was introduced in 1996, ten years after pharmaceutical companies were granted immunity through the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act ( ten years after there stopped being any incentive to produce safe vaccines).


Because of subsequent increasing incidence, more and more boosters were added to compensate for "waning immunity" and now children get 6 doses by 6 years old. Another stick thrown under that failing plant was the "cocooning" strategy which recommended that women and household members be vaccinated immediately after birth to "protect" the vulnerable newborn. This practice has been abandoned because of inefficacy and concerns for active spread to these infants. Now, the proposed solution is vaccinating before delivery. Seems to make sense, right? Vaccinate the mom so the antibodies pass to the baby before she's born, and then she'll be protected for a little while until we can start her lifelong vaccination program. The problem is that this idea, quaint as it is, has no basis in evidence and discussions in the literature have repeatedly pointed to this quandary:



"There is a lack of evidence that transplacental maternal antibody induced by Tdap administered during pregnancy will protect infants against pertussis."




"Because no correlate of protection is known for pertussis, it is uncertain whether this increase in antibodies can be considered clinically protective."



And, even from the horse's mouth, the CDC claims:

"In addition, a woman vaccinated with Tdap during pregnancy likely will be protected at time of delivery, and therefore less likely to transmit pertussis to her infant."



Unfortunately, all the "unknowns" and "likely"s and "uncertain"s and a frank admission that in prelicensure evaluations, the safety of administering a booster dose of Tdap to pregnant women was not studied do not stop the CDC from their recommendation that: We'd like our herd immunity back

The wisdom of the immune system is such that infection educates the body in ways that we do not completely understand (it's more than just antibody production!), and then passive exposure from infected individuals in the community, serves to continually reeducate and "boost" the potential response that keeps reinfection at bay.


Vaccines don't do this, have never done this, and will never do this. DTaP is a perfect example.


In the case of infants, they would inherit natural antibodies and then pass them onto their newborns for years of protection - by evolutionary design. The assumption that vaccine-induced antibodies that pass through the placenta would pass for protection has never been demonstrated, and, in fact, is just that - an assumption. We have also seen shifts of the burden of disease to more vulnerable populations, and in many cases, this population is the newborn, exactly who we were intending to protect.


This pseudoimmunity, as Dr. Suzanne Humphries calls it, is what now requires that women and baby be continuously vaccinated from in hopes of achieving something approximating natural immunity.


So the vaccine doesn't protect from disease?


Despite egregious efforts on the part of the media, and even medical authors (compare the abstract conclusion to the data, especially the image in this paper!) to blame the unvaccinated population, the truth is finally too obvious to ignore. After known outbreaks in Idaho, Cincinnati, California, and North Carolina where the majority to 100% of the infected population was vaccinated (no room for finger pointing there), we, just this week, have the crowning achievement appearing in the NY Times , of all places, stating:



"But scientists say the problem of surging whooping cough cases has more to do with flaws in the current vaccines than with parents' resistance. The new finding suggests yet another weakness of the vaccine - that even people recently vaccinated may be continuing to spread the infection without getting sick."



Whenever scientists actually bother to study these agents in primates, devastating signals of harm emerge. To explore the hypothesis that the currently mandated vaccine, may in fact, after almost 20 years, be ineffective AND contribute directly to spread of illness, researchers infected infant baboons with the whole cell and "modern" acellular vaccine and found:

"Together these data form the key finding of this study: aP vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission of Bordetella pertussis even 1 mo after completing the primary vaccination series."



And also noted abnormal patterns of immune response including:

"We also found that aP vaccination induces T helper 2 (Th2) and T helper 1 (Th1) immune memory responses, whereas infection and - to a lesser extent - wP vaccination induce Th17 and Th1 memory."



And, similar to this late-to-the-game news on Hep B vaccine, they boldly state that, because vaccine "trials" don't actually test for infection/colonization in recipients:

"Therefore, no experimental data exist on whether vaccination prevents B. pertussis colonization or transmission in humans."



They appear to be advocating for use of the old whole cell vaccine, and attribute declines in whooping cough incidence after the 1940s to this vaccine rather than to the post-vaccine redefinition of whooping cough (as was done with Polio) and underreporting by physicians.

Here's why the pertussis vaccine doesn't work:


It doesn't protect, it spreads disease, and wait, there's more?

I can never seem to get enough of these horror show ingredient lists, so let's start with these: filamentous hemagglutinin (FDA), pertactin, fimbriae, formaldehyde, polysorbate 80 (Tween 80), gluteraldehyde, 2-phenoxoyethanol, aluminum and thimerosal (mercury).


It is an unacceptable notion that any of my pregnant patients would inject metals, carcinogens, and neurotoxins into their muscle when we have spent hours upon hours helping to support their natural immunity, health and wellness through nutrient dense diets, pesticide and GMO elimination, elimination of endocrine modulating environmental chemical exposures, and stress management. Aluminum is an adjuvant implicated in neuroinflammation and autistic spectrum disorders, and may play a significant role in the process of molecular mimicry related to common peptides in B. pertussis and the human body that underlies the more devastating outcomes associated with this vaccines including sudden infant death, transverse myelitis, hemolytic anemia, and others documented on GreenMedInfo.


You can see what a mess of tape and sticks the CDC has made of the health and immunity of our population through even just this one DTaP vaccine mandate. Roping pregnant women into this concoction of half-baked ideas and neglect of harm is where we all need to draw the line, if you haven't already. It's time to take a step back, as citizens, to take a long, hard look at what is happening to our health as a population, and to appreciate that we cannot continue to take recommendations from doctors who trust companies who engage repeatedly in criminal behavior , and who refuse to acknowledge any role for lifestyle, diet, and individual genetics in infectious disease. We cannot wait for them to say "oops" after decades of unacceptable risk in a context of no appreciable benefit. Opt out of the experiment. None of the subjects leave healthy.


Want something else to read? How about 'Grievous Censorship' By The Guardian: Israel, Gaza And The Termination Of Nafeez Ahmed's Blog


US Embassy in Havana - The Cuba Caper


© Paul Schutzer/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

The U.S. Embassy in Havana was flooded with visa applicants at the time the U.S. broke diplomatic relations with Cuba in 1961.



The lame duck, Obama, extending a conciliatory hand to Cuba by opening an embassy in Havana, by reopening, after 54 years of a criminal and crippling embargo, diplomatic relations? - At the same time Obama is making not a single concession in terms of lifting the blockade. This smells like a trap. Cuba beware!

Imagine - a US Embassy in Havana - it would open the floodgates for US NED (National Endowment for Democracy) funded 'NGOs', for Washington's spies and anti-Castro propaganda machine; it would have free hand to destabilize the country. And what would Cuba gain? - Zilch, zero, nothing. Not even a gradual lifting of the embargo had been announced. To the contrary, it would open Cuba's borders to the vultures of Florida Cubans, eventually to theirs and other foreign investments, subjugating the country's huge social gains over the last half a century - universal free education and health services, by far the best social system of the Americas - to the sledgehammer of neoliberal privatization.


Why would Cuba now need a US Embassy? After 54 years of struggling and surviving against Washington's nod? - In fact, nobody needs the empire - the empire's consent to financially and economically survive. Suffice it to look at the 'engineered' decay of the Russian ruble which eventually will leave Russia better off than before the downward slide of its currency and the likewise 'engineered' downward spin of the price of petrol. Everybody knows that the Middle Eastern oil producers, Obama's stooges, will not forever shoot themselves in the foot by flooding the petrol market and foregoing their oil revenues.


What Cuba needs is free access to international markets - outside and independent of the United States. Cuba needs to integrate into an independent financial and monetary system, detached from the corrupt casino dollar. Solidarity by the rest of the world which has already helped Cuba survive the illegal, inhuman US embargo is now more than ever of the order. The support of a unity of nations must now help stem the temptation to bend to Washington's offer of 'diplomacy'.


With the establishment of diplomatic relations, Cuba would be condemned to adopt the dollar as trading currency - no escaping the dollar, if ever Cuba wanted to hope for the good deeds of the empire - the lifting of the blockade.


Look what happened in Bolivia, Venezuela and Ecuador - once a US Embassy is established, all the nefarious destabilizing elements could sneak in, willy-nilly. Plus, economic 'sanctions', would be nearer than ever, if Cuba doesn't behave. Both Bolivia and Venezuela have learned their lessons the hard way. After they closed the US Embassy and sent US organizations and NGOs home, they could breathe again. Though Venezuela is still suffering from Washington's diabolical arm of propaganda and direct interference in domestic affairs, she has no longer the burden of maintaining a 'diplomatic' tie with the northern aggressor.


Most importantly, however - the US is vying for Cuban hydrocarbons, estimated today at 20 billion barrels of offshore oil reserves. Cuba, like Venezuela, is close to US Mexican Gulf shores, where the major refineries are waiting for the crude. During his tour of South America in July 2014, President Putin in a meeting with Cuban President, Raul Castro, signed an agreement whereby the Russian oil company, Rosneft, will assist the Cuban oil producer, Cupet, exploring and exploiting the island's offshore petrol.


Is it coincidence or sheer self-interest, that just now, when Russia is digging for oil in Obama's backyard that he is offering diplomatic ties with the 54 years embargoed Caribbean island? - Your guess.


Venezuela has the world's largest remaining hydrocarbon reserves, about 300 billion barrels. They are close to the US shores and would be the best bet for US mega-oil. But the White House's destabilizing efforts in Venezuela seem to fail. These efforts and other State Department blunders have helped increase US isolation in Latin America.


Why not trying another approach? - A well disguised lie; insinuating with the opening of an embassy in Havana that the deadly embargo might ease in some undefined future between the brutal Goliath of the north and castigated, downtrodden David of the Caribbean. An embassy in Cuba may also earn some much needed kudos with other Latin American neighbors which have been upset for years about the criminal strangulation by the empire of one of their brothers.


In fact, first reactions from Latin America to Obama's diplomatic initiative were positive. But more than caution is in order. - The establishment of a US embassy in Havana might be more than just a floodgate for US secret service agents and anti-Cuba propaganda. A US Embassy in Havana might begin breaking down US isolation in South America, especially in Brazil and Argentina. It might become a backdoor for Washington to gain access to these countries huge natural resources.


Knowing about Washington's agenda of world dominance, it would be difficult to imagine that there is even a shred of goodwill behind Obama's move to 'normalize' relations with Cuba. - Havana beware!


Global Research, ICH, RT, the Voice of Russia, now Ria Novosti, The Vineyard of The Saker Blog "Implosion - An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed"


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