The Raw Story

Monday, 26 January 2015

Frostquake or something more sinister? Mysterious loud booms rattling North America

Cold booms? Frost quakes? A winter-time meteorological phenomenon has scientists debating whether blasts heard across North America are, indeed, cryoseisms. Most agree that the loud, inexplicable booms are associated with cold, rainy conditions.

These ice booms have rattled houses in Georgia , caused the earth to shake in Montreal , and led law enforcement from several Oklahoma counties on an unfruitful search to locate the ruckus.

"It was this very loud boom that happened all of a sudden," Marjorie in Idaho, who asked that her last name be withheld, told RT. "My son and I went to look to see where it came from. It sounded like a door slamming very hard or something big falling down on the patio. But we couldn't find anything. We watched the news later to see if anyone knew what it was, but no one did."

"It was so loud the house shook. My kids ran in yelling, 'what was that mommy?'" Tracy Walker, of Kennesaw County, Georgia, told WAGA.

Residents in these areas thought the booms could be fireworks, gun shots, or blown transformers. But meteorologists have offered a less threatening, more fascinating explanation.

A 'frost quake' is what's known as a cryoseismic boom, which happens when temperatures rapidly fall below freezing after a rainfall.

"All of a sudden that ice starts to expand - it's like having a lid on top of a bottle, that pressure builds and builds until finally something gives, the ice expands, the pressure is released, the ground cracks and we hear what sounds or even feels like a very localized earthquake," said Jay Scotland, meteorologist for CBC in Toronto.

"This is not an earthquake. It's ice expanding under the ground, and it leads to a loud boom and gets folks pretty scared when it happens in the middle of the night. Very rare, very cool but very scary."

"The pressure grows until it breaks out and is released," said David Phillips, a senior climatologist at Environment Canada. "That's the big boom. It's all that energy."

According to The Weather Channel's website, cryoseismic booms are "generally harmless, causing nothing more than small cracks in the ground and a bit of confusion" from people nearby.

Yet National Weather Service meteorologist Matthew Day told the Associated Press he's not completely convinced the booms heard around North America are part of cryoseismic activity.

"There are some stories going around that's what it was, but based on the research we've done here, it doesn't appear what people heard is related to the cryoseism phenomena," he said. "There's not enough moisture, and the temperatures are not cold enough. That happens in areas where you have a lot of water flowing through a lot of rock."

But he added that he does not have an explanation for what, exactly, causes the ice booms.

"We don't know what it was, we just know what it is not," he said.

Chomsky: We Are All – Fill in the Blank.

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The crash scene at Albacete air base today

Ten people have died in a fighter jet crash at an air base in central Spain, the defence ministry says.

The Greek F-16 jet "lost power" during take-off, crashing into other planes and exploding at Los Llanos airbase in Albacete, the ministry said.

One of the pilots performed a wrong manoeuvre during take-off, according to local media. Both pilots were killed.

One French person was among those killed and five others were injured, France's defence ministry confirmed.

In a statement (in French), the ministry said French jets were stationed at the base.

Late on Monday evening, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said eight French personnel and two Greeks had been killed.

Contacted by BBC News, the French air force said it could neither confirm nor deny the information given by Mr Rajoy for the time being.

Reports suggest that many of the injured are Italians while details of the other fatalities have not been given.

Personnel from the US, Denmark, Germany, Belgium and the UK are said to be stationed at the base.

Maidan's biggest cookie distributor.

10. Both use made up names. Stalin's family name was Jugashvilli, Nuland's ancestor's name was Nudelman. The ancestors of both Nuland and Stalin came from the Russian empire, which probably gave them both the idea that they have a special knowledge of how to handle Russia.

9. Nuland's right hand man happens to be her husband, Robert Kagan. Stalin's right hand man was a fellow communist, named Lazar Kagan(ovich). Kagan co-authored "Project for a New American Century" and he obviously wants to realized his vision for Ukraine by implementing what might be called, "amerikanizatsiia," that is, the process of bringing in the officials from US and other countries to run Ukraine along the American lines. In his turn, Kaganovich was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Ukrainian SSR from 1925-1928 and was expected to usher in "New Soviet Century" through the politics of "ukrainizatsiya": creating a new ruling Soviet elite for Ukraine, the elite brought in primarily from other places.

8. Both are clear ideologues: Nuland of "neocon movement", Stalin of bolshevism. Both went to schooling with the masters and chief ideologues. Nuland worked closely with Rumsfeld and Cheney, starting as Vice President's senior aide, and eventually serving as his deputy national security adviser. In his essay for , Geoff Dyer quotes an former colleague in the Obama administration State Department , who observed that "I have no doubt that when she sits down for a family dinner, she is the biggest neocon at the table." While Lenin's widower, Krupskaia, joked that had Lenin re-appeared when Stalin was already in charge, he would have had Lenin put to jail for deviating from the party course.

7. Both are willing to see through numerous deaths in Ukraine to get the territory under their influence. Stalin together with Kaganovich unleashed forced collectivization upon Ukraine, resulting in mass death of peasants, known as Holodomor. Nuland's and her fellow neocons' forced "americanization" resulted in the civil war between Donbass and Kiev, that so far has claimed thousands of lives, destroyed infrastructure, and produced hundreds of thousands of refugees.

6. They both tend to be aggressive and demanding and refuse to take no for an answer. Consequently, they prefer to squeeze their opponents till they break. Geoff Dyer's quotes Dimitri Simes, president of the Center for the National Interest in Washington DC who observed: "It is clear that her whole approach is to push Russia so hard that it has no choice but to accommodate the US." Stalin's ability to squeeze his opponents is, of course, proverbial.

5. According to Stalin's critic, Abdurakhman Aftorkhanov, Stalin made two mistakes during the WWII. He showed Europe to Russians (soldiers who saw how prosperous it was and realized that they were duped). And he showed Russians to Europe - which got scared, and started NATO, and other programs. The fate of Russia and the rest of the world has changed as the result of these mistakes. Someday, Nuland's critics will charge her with accomplishing a similar feat. She has fully exposed to the Western world Ukraine's lawlessness, corruption, and neofascism. And she has amply demonstrated Western World to both Ukrainians and Russians, who will never trust it again: seeing its unscrupulous meddling into their affairs.

4. Both are too arrogant and impatient to waste their time of diplomacy, and prefer to cut to the chase. They dismiss the possible opposition or obstacles with the similar terms. "F..k EU," famously observed Nuland, in response to the questions about EU attitude toward the regime change in Ukraine. Stalin never hesitated to resort to the foul language, calling Lenin's wife, "syphilitic whore," or bragging that in the course of WWII he managed to outsmart Great Britain: "Stalin could always raise a laugh from his courtiers by saying, as he often did: 'We f***ed England!'"

3. Both prefer to rule by decree and appoint the people to the offices. While Nuland boldly proclaimed from the comfort of her office that Yatseniuk will be the future leader of Ukraine: "Yats is the man," Stalin, of course, went even further, not only assigning Kaganovich, Khrushchev, and others to run Ukraine, but threating Lenin's widow, Krupskaia, that if she continues to challenge him, he'll appoint another woman as Lenin's widow.

2. Similarly to Stalin, who for the sake of strategic purposes made the deal with Nazis (Ribbentrop), Nuland held various meetings with Ukraine's Right Sector and other ultra-nationalist, neo-fascist organizations; and seems to be very cozy with Svoboda leader, Oleh Tyahnybok.

1. And finally, both Stalin and Nuland tend to present themselves in stunning visual imagery as the good caring parents of the new nation, easily duping the gullible locals. Here is Stalin surrounded by admiring Soviet children who are forever grateful to him for their happy childhood, and here is Nuland, surrounded by happy Ukrainians, whom she feeds with pastry as they are ready to embark on the path toward the new statehood.

A giant flock of birds invaded the sky in a Houston neighborhood.

It was like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's movie .' A giant flock of birds invaded the sky in a Houston neighborhood.

The birds covered the utility wires and the edges of roofs.

The man who shot the video was driving by when he spotted the amazing sight.

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In the morning of January 24 the Eastern outskirts of Mariupol were attacked near the UAF checkpoint, writes Internet news resource Donetsk Republic News. But junta fighters were not injured, because according to local residents, they left the fortification a few hours before the strike.

"In a huge number of homes there is broken glass, the situation is very serious. There is no water and electricity, it was disabled half an hour or an hour before the fire, I have not noticed the time. They have been preparing for this situation, knew about it," - said a resident of Mariupol. He stressed that the situation is similar to a false flag.

Lifenews interviews Mariupol resident

"They wanted to create a huge reaction to set the population against our militia. We thought at first that it was a mistake, but then I realized that it was intentional. Past our windows was driving a new rotation of these banderites... They immediately turned around and pulled back", - says a local resident, reports Lifenews.

Comment: Local residents are reporting that the Grad volley was fired from the north and/or west, NOT the east/northeast, as the OSCE concluded after a hasty 'investigation'. Other sources are saying there were actually 3 strikes, from different directions. If that's the case, the NAF could not be responsible.

Here's South Front's latest update on the situation:

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SOTT Exclusive: Schizophrenia alert! The West wails and bemoans the death of a cruel tyrant and state sponsor of Terrorism and ISIL

One sometimes wonders if one has woken up in a psychedelic 'Alice in Wonderland' type world with a mad queen shouting "Off with the heads" at anyone daring to criticise her.

You are excused if you are feeling a little schophrenic over our Western leaders' utterings of late. It is a sign of a good mental health in the bizarro world that we currently inhabit.

Just two weeks after the Paris shooting, where all the Western heads of states gathered to march for freedom of speech and formed a coalition to fight the Islamic State (IS), the ruler of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah Al Saud died at the age of 90. Considering that he really has ruled Saudi Arabia for 20 years since the stroke of his half-brother, and given the things that I will outline shortly, one would think that the Western mass media would be overjoyed and jubilant at this fact. I know you would think those words jubilant and overjoyed are a little over the top, but Western media and leaders actually quite enjoy the killing of its foes and make no disguise of it. The lynching of Colonel Gaddafi by Western sponsored goons in Libya was greeted by Hillary Clinton with the upbeat words: "We came, we saw, he died:"

But no, Western media lamented the death of this *great leader and reformist" as they wrote. The British queen was saddened by his death, the flag at Whitehall in Britain was on half mast and as I write the leaders from all over the world, including Obama, Cameron, Hollande, the prince of Wales, the crown prince of Denmark and numerous others are flocking to Saudi Arabia to pay their last respect. John Kerry tweeted that Abdullah was "a man of wisdom and vision". Joan Smith in a an excellent opinion piece in the wrote in response to the drivel coming from head of the IMF Christine Lagarde:

So what the hell was the IMF boss, Christine Lagarde, thinking about when she described Abdullah as a "strong advocate of women"? She did add "in a very discreet way".

Yes, you can say that again!

CNN wrote in their piece on his death:

Most Saudis will remember him fondly.

One can rightfully ask, what basis they have for making such a statement.

Okay, now lets get back to reality and give the sickbags a rest.

As mentioned above King Abdullah was at the helm for 20 years, enough time for any leader to have a real effect on a country and thus a criticism is justified. Take a look at the following and see if you would qualify those as being that of a visionary and reformist in line with the values that we allegedly fight to defend:

Wahhabism is the state religion in Saudi Arabia. It supports the ruling dynasty and the dynasty supports Wahhabism. This is a holy alliance dating back to 1744 between Muhammad bin Saud and a conservative puritan preacher Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab. Thus the state religion is Wahhabism, an aberrant and extreme form of Islam and in no way representative of the worlds 1.6 billion Muslims. Sharia law applies, women are to be completely veiled, and a strict adherence to the Wahhabi version of Islam rules the kingdom.

Wahhabism is also the religion of Islamic State (IS) and Saudi Arabia has been the key supporter of IS, who not surprisingly have the same liking for misogyny, beheadings, floggings and violence etc.

Saudi Arabia has been hellbent on regime change in Syria and have armed and trained all kinds of terror groups for this purpose. Quite a lot of this has been coordinated with the governments of the West and Israel. Numerous clerics have actively been recruiting willing believers and even prisoners on deathrow have been pardoned, if they would fight Bashar Al-Assad and the Syrian people.

Saudi Arabia has funded thousands of radical relgious schools, madrassas, all over the world in the vein of Wahhabism. Schools that teach wahhabism and jihad. Schools that provide ample cannonfodder, when the Empire of chaos wishes to activate patsies or a private army, in order to manufacture an enemy to hate and fight. As Vali Nasr said:

... In order to have terrorists, in order to have supporters for terrorists, in order to have people who are willing to interpret religion in violent ways, in order to have people who are willing to legitimate crashing yourself into a building and killing 5,000 innocent people, you need particular interpretations of Islam.

Those interpretations of Islam are being propagated out of schools that receive organizational and financial funding from Saudi Arabia. In fact, I would push it further: that these schools would not have existed without Saudi funding. They would not have proliferated across Pakistan and India and Afghanistan without Saudi funding. They would not have had the kind of prowess that they have without Saudi funding, and they would not have trained as many people without Saudi funding.

Beheadings are a common practice and happens on average every fourth day in Saudi Arabia.

Free speech is No-GO territory and a blogger Raif Badawi who crossed the line in his blog, was sentenced to 1000 lashes of the whip, which is being administered at 50 lashes per week. To show their humanity, the court allowed the second set of flogging to be postponed as the wounds from the first set of floggings had not healed sufficiently.

Saudi Arabia sent in its military 2011 to quell an uprising in the neigbouring Bahrain, where the ruling Al-Khalifa clan were being challenged by the people as it wanted reform and democracy. But Bahrain is home to the US fifth fleet, so a compliant dictator is very handy.

Saudi Arabia has brutally suppressed dissidents in the Kingdom and especially in the Qatif province.

Women don't have the right to drive in Saudi Arabia. As the only country in the world this is the case and two women, who crossed the ban have been referred to a terrorism court.

Apostacy is punishable by death. See blasphemy laws in Saudi Arabia.

Torture is used in the Kingdom.

Gay rights. What gay rights?

The king ,who Christine Lagarde called a strong advocate of women has kept at least two of his daughers under house arrrest for the last 13 years. As the article about this affairs says:

Under Saudi law, girls and women are forbidden from travelling, conducting official business, or undergoing certain medical procedures without the express permission of their male guardians.

Sahar said that the sisters had enjoyed a pampered adolescence but that animosity towards her and her sisters had grown after they began to complain to their father about the poverty endured by most of the Saudi people.

Some of the young princes had also criticised them because of their party-loving lifestyle.

'We slowly watch each other fading away into nothingness'

But it was in the late Nineties that matters came to a head when Hala, who has a degree in psychology, complained that the regime's political opponents were being locked up in the psychiatric wards of the hospital where she worked.

Remember 9/11? Well if we go by "the official theory", then 15 of the 19 alleged hijackers were from Saudi Nationals. If Western governments believe this version, then isn't it strange that no repercussions or sanctions have occurred against Saudi Arabia, who at the time was ruled unofficially by Abdullah? Now had the attackers been of Iranian or Syrian or Venezualan or Russian nationalities, do you think Uncle Sam would have acted similarly? (As I said *the official theory", for a more likely scenario read .)

To sum it up, Saudi Arabia under the rule of Abdullah has been a misogynous autocracy and a key sponsor of state terrorism. Moreover, Saudi Arabia has played an important role by helping to orchestrate regime changes in a number of muslim countries, whether it be in Afghanistan, in the Middle Eastern countries or in Chechnya and the Caucasus region. It has fuelled the Western demonization of Islam with their Wahhabi religion and its many splintergroups that are meant to divide the Muslim world and pit Muslims against Muslims, Shia against Sunni. The same wahhabi cutthroats that Saudi Arabia sponsored in Chechnya met however their nemesis in Putin and Kadyrov as neither of these two leaders were willing to let some aberrant religious extremists destroy Russia or the peaceful communities within it.

So is there nothing positive to say about Abdullah. Surely there must be something AND there is. He was not listed on the 97 pages of phone numbers that convicted pedophile billionaire Jeffrey Epstein had of high flyers interested in his underaged sex slaves. At least not officially!

So when you see all the Western leaders on TV lamenting the loss of a 'great' leader and all having changed button pins from "JeSuisCharlie" to JeSuisAbdullah", I will not hold it against you if you feel like your head is spinning. Remember every fourth day on average the regime that Abdullah presided over screamed "Off with the head"!

Aeneas Georg

I work in the international transport sector in Europe. I've been reading SOTT since 2003 and first joined the editorial team in 2007 after realizing I had to do something about the deteriorating state of our world. Especially as I saw how our mainstream media has let us down. I'm particularly interested in 'following the money' to track the machinations of the deceptive ones in high places. I suppose you could say I've taken my chosen profession to a new level, and now with SOTT I'm "inspecting the flows" of people and money in more ways than one.

Kiev authorities have announced that the next wave of mass mobilization will begin on January 28. But Ukrainians seem less than enthusiastic. From TASS:

Experts said it would not be easy for the authorities to carry out mobilization, as the Ukrainian population realizes that Kiev's military operation in the east has no sense.

A Ukrainian analyst and the founder of the Research and Branding Group company, Yevgeny Kopatko, said more and more statements were heard in the Ukrainian society about readiness to sit in prison, but not to go to fight. In the situation, the decision on mobilization will be another test for the Ukrainian authorities, he said.

Mobilization will be carried out in Ukraine in three stages and will last from January to August. During the year, the Ukrainian armed forces plan to mobilize 200,000 citizens and also draft 40,000 young people for military service.

This local news report from Kiev seems to indicate that many citizens will resist mobilization:

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The Raw Story

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Monday, 26 January 2015

Frostquake or something more sinister? Mysterious loud booms rattling North America

Symbolic? Greek F-16 crashes into NATO base in Spain - 10 dead

Ten reasons why Victoria Nuland should be seen as Stalin of today

Huge flock of birds invade Houston neighborhood

Ukrainian troops left Mariupol checkpoint before strike on civilian area

SOTT Exclusive: Schizophrenia alert! The West wails and bemoans the death of a cruel tyrant and state sponsor of Terrorism and ISIL

War weary: Ukrainians voice resistance to new mobilization

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