Tuesday, October 6, 2009


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World Bank welcomes new economic order from the ashes of crisis

Is the American Dollar being systematically devalued so the new currency of the North American Union can be successfully introduced?

The lingering recession should provide the necessary impetus to introduce the new regional currency of the North American Union - the AMERO!



UN calls for new reserve currency
The United Nations called on Tuesday for a new global reserve currency to end dollar supremacy which has allowed the United States the “privilege” of building a huge trade deficit.

Report claims oil states plotting to end dollar trade
US Cedes Economic Independence To IMF
Gold Jumps to Record as Inflation Outlook Fuels Investor Demand





Right Out Of Masonic Doctrine: World Bank Welcomes "New Economic Order From The Ashes Of Crisis"

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'New World Order' Emerging At G-20 Summit

RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty - Heather Maher - ‎Sep 25, 2009‎
PITTSBURGH -- A new world order is emerging at the G-20 Summit in Pittsburgh with a decision by the group to become the premier ...



The wrenching financial crisis of the past two years will provide the catalyst for a profound change in the global economy – which, according to the man running the World Bank, will see China and India become established centres of power, the dollar eclipsed as the sole reserve currency, and Latin America, south-east Asia and Africa emerge as new sources of growth.

But as he surveys the wreckage caused by what the bank and its sister organisation, the International Monetary Fund, agree is the most severe crisis since the devastation caused by the second world war, Robert Zoellick is surprisingly upbeat about the future.

Asked by the Observer how he envisages the global economy in 20 years’ time, Zoellick says: “There will certainly be a larger role for the emerging powers, there will be multipolar sources of growth, there will be more south-south trade between developing countries.

“The crisis gives us the opportunity to hasten this process. If we are concerned about the past reliance for growth on the US consumer, we have to make sure consumers in developing countries have enough finance to buy.”


Video: IMF WORLD BANK DIRECTOR IN ISTANBUL ECONOMY RECOVERY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBDPGkW6SCU&feature=player_embedded

Zoellick says that, while this does not mean the end of the US as a big player on the world stage, it has brought the curtain down on the unipolar world that followed the collapse of communism 20 years ago.

Developing countries were on the rise before the credit crunch and, as the latest snapshot of the global economy released last week illustrates, their position has been strengthened by their ability to keep growing as the west teetered on the brink of a 1930s-style Depression.

“We have reached a tipping point in global economic affairs,” says Stephen King, chief economist of HSBC. “While there are some encouraging signs of recovery in the developed world, the real economic action is taking place elsewhere. For both cyclical and structural reasons, the emerging nations are set to dominate world economic activity in the years ahead.”

America, Zoellick says, can no longer rely on the dollar ruling the roost. The euro and the Chinese renminbi are candidates to become reserve currencies.

Tellingly, this year’s annual meetings of the Bank and Fund take place in Istanbul, the point where Europe meets Asia and for almost two millennia a melting pot for cultures and religions. The view of both Zoellick and Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the IMF, is that there is a discernible shift in power and influence eastwards.

Video: Robert Fisk on the Gulf 'ditching the dollar' in oil trade

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v17yjtPc6nU&feature=player_embedded

“These annual meetings take place at a defining moment in global governance,” Strauss-Kahn says. “We have experienced unparalleled economic co-operation in the last 12 months. It has never happened in history.”

While noting that there is a risk of the consensus vanishing now the immediate threat of economic meltdown has receded, Strauss-Kahn says it is the will of world leaders to continue collaborating in the years ahead. The days of the G7 – an elite gathering of policymakers from the US, Britain, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and Canada – are over. Power has shifted to the G20, which includes the G7 plus a number of leading developing countries such as China, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa.

John Hawksworth, head of macro-economics at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in the UK, says political influence will result from the increased economic clout of the big developing countries. Within two decades, he says, China may have overtaken the US as the world’s biggest economy once the lower cost of living is taken into account. “The E7 [Emerging Seven] – China, India, Brazil, Russia, Turkey, Indonesia and Mexico – could be a lot bigger than the current G7,” he adds.

PwC estimates that the global economy will double in size by the end of the 2020s to $143tn (£90tn) at today’s prices, with the E7 accounting for almost 40% of GDP and the G7 30%. “The E7 is already not that far behind the G7 and that process has been accelerated by the current crisis, which has hit the developed world harder than the big emerging economies,” says Hawksworth.

Like Zoellick, he thinks the dollar will no longer be the dominant currency. “The dollar, the euro and the renminbi will form a basket of currencies. The world will be different. The recession has accelerated that process.”

The IMF and the World Bank are still set in their original mould, he says. “Voting shares are going to have to change and it will be a gradual process. But it is possible that there will be a Chinese head of the fund or bank by that time.”

Such an outcome would symbolise the changing of the guard. There has been a gentlemen’s agreement that the head of the World Bank should be chosen by the Americans, the single biggest shareholder in the two institutions, while the managing director of the fund is picked by the Europeans. Zoellick is a former US trade representative; Strauss-Kahn was once France’s finance minister.

“There is an inevitability about this [shift in power to Asia],” says Hawksworth. “You can already see it in the business world, as witnessed by the HSBC decision. The centre of economic gravity is shifting and will continue to shift.”

Zoellick says the spread of prosperity to the poor parts of Asia, Latin America and Africa will be accelerated by investment in infrastructure, social safety nets and manufacturing.

Critics say the bank and the fund have too rosy a view of the future. One threat, recognised by the IMF, is that the 3.1% growth pencilled in for 2010 following the first year of global economic contraction since 1945 will prove a false dawn. Once the artificial stimulus of public borrowing wears off, the fear is that a rationing of credit by enfeebled banks will prevent the private sector from taking up the baton.

Another issue is the willingness of the old world to cede power. The IMF and World Bank were set up at the Bretton Woods conference in 1944 and their governance still reflects the dynamics of the 1940s. Reforms are being undertaken, but they are neither radical nor rapid enough to satisfy campaigners.

Peter Chowla of the Bretton Woods Project, a London-based NGO, says the changes amount to a “lick of paint on rotten foundations”.

Finally, there are those who believe the determination of the bank and fund to return as quickly as possible to the high levels of growth seen earlier this decade ignores the elephant in the room – that, by 2029, traditional fossil fuel stocks will be running dry.

US Cedes Economic Independence To IMF


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbTCmSdHvrk&feature=player_embedded

Dick Morris discusses how the United States, at the G20 conference, put itself under the guidance and, ultimately, control of the International Monetary Fund even as it succeeded in turning more power in that organization over to debtor nations. The Declaration of Independence is being repealed before our eyes.

Andrew Simms, head of policy at the New Economics Foundation thinktank, says: “One major thing that will describe the landscape in 2029 is that we will be beyond the point of peak oil. That will be the trigger for so many dominoes to fall.” Decisions made in the next few years, he adds, will be critical. “There is the risk of enormous knock-on effects on trade and food supply, with the food price volatility of the last year looking like a vicar’s tea party.”

He believes food security will replace gross domestic product as the yardstick of success, and there will be an emphasis on the new “three Rs” – reduce, repair, recycle.

In one respect, Zoellick, Strauss-Kahn and Simms are in full agreement: decisions taken in the next two or three years will shape the next two or three decades.

“We are balanced on a knife edge,” Simms says. “The potentialities are wonderful; the probabilities deeply disturbing.”

US economic decline forges new world order

Sin Chew Jit Poh - ‎Oct 3, 2009‎
ISTANBUL, Oct 4 (AFP) -- The crisis is redrawing the world map of economic power as the influence of US consumer spending declines and major emerging ...


Hamish McRae: As a new world order dawns, the big institutions will have to ...

Independent - ‎Oct 3, 2009‎
Last weekend it was the Group of Twenty in Pittsburgh, this weekend the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in Istanbul. ...

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The International Monetary Fund took on a bigger global role Sunday as its 186 member nations accepted the mantle of guiding a lasting economic recovery from the 20 largest economies. The IMF's steering committee endorsed the Group of 20 summit plan for sustainable growth after the worst economic crisis in decades, including an increase in voting rights of at least five percent for under-represented countries. At their Pittsburgh summit a little more than a week ago, the G20 largest rich and emerging-market economies, asked the IMF to help them shape a robust global economy and reform the fragile financial system. The International Monetary and Financial Committee (IMFC), representing all members, backed the plan at a meeting in Istanbul ahead of the annual meetings of the IMF and World Bank that open Tuesday.

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International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn is using the IMF's annual meeting here to campaign for turning the fund into a kind of global central bank with at least $1 trillion for lending developing nations in a crisis. But a very different reality is taking shape: The IMF is essentially being turned into the staff of the Group of 20, an organization of industrialized and developing nations that doesn't have a headquarters, staff or rules for membership. With the leaders of the G-20 effectively functioning as the board of directors of the global economy, they need the IMF's help to carry out their role. While the IMF's new assignment was discussed at the G-20 leaders' summit in Pittsburgh recently, it was more fully fleshed out -- and widely endorsed by non-G-20 countries -- in Istanbul over the weekend. It was also backed by finance ministers from some of the world's largest industrialized countries and won a nod from an IMF policy committee that convenes at the annual meeting. And while Mr. Strauss-Kahn would like the IMF to do more, he too has embraced the emerging G-20 role.

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In my emails to you over the past couple of weeks, I’ve shown you why Washington has no choice but to devalue the dollar — and how global leaders and even the United Nations have joined the attack on the greenback by demanding it be replaced as the world’s reserve currency. Now, just this week, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have begun adding their voices to the international choir calling for a new global reserve currency: Last week, World Bank President Robert Zoellick warned that the dollar’s status will be challenged and shouldn’t be taken for granted.

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U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Tuesday called on the International Monetary Fund to provide rigorous surveillance to spot new investment bubbles and keep country foreign exchange policies in line with goals to rebalance the global economy. In remarks prepared for delivery to the IMF and World Bank annual meetings here, Geithner said the IMF needed to help police economic and currency policies among the Group of 20 developed and emerging countries. "The IMF will need to be a truth-teller," Geithner said in the remarks, which were to be delivered by Treasury Acting Assistant Secretary Mark Sobel. "For the IMF, this means that rigorous surveillance must help us shed light on trends that could lead to the next unsustainable boom," Geithner said. "Under the new G20 framework for strong, sustainable and balanced growth, the IMF must provide forward-looking analysis of whether the world's major countries are implementing economic policies, including exchange rate policies, which are collectively consistent with G20 objectives."

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Forbes: Group Of Seven Fights Irrelevance In New World Order
After decades in charge, the club of rich, industrialised nations is fast losing sway as a share of global economic power shifts towards big developing countries. That was a lesson of the Group of Seven's meeting in Istanbul at the weekend, when the absence of China showed the G7 could no longer tackle the world's economic problems on its own. Finance ministers and central bank chiefs from the G7 implored China in a diplomatically worded statement to let the Chinese currency rise, as they have done for several years. But China showed no sign of complying, and the G7 spent much of its time to discussing whether it should meet less often, with less pomp and perhaps with fewer public statements. G7 statements have all too often "interested nobody because there's no follow-up most of the time", said Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund. Marco Annunziata, chief economist at UniCredit bank in London, said: "Istanbul is being seen by many as the G7's swan song, before it relinquishes power.

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Rockefeller, Vatican of Rome, House Rothschild Pyramid ...

aho Tevin,

here are the following four pages of the article:

http://one-evil.org/acts global depression/acts global depression 02.htm

http://one-evil.org/acts global depression/acts global depression 03.htm

http://one-evil.org/acts global depression/acts_global depression 04.htm

http://one-evil.org/acts global_depression/acts_global depression 05.htm

and note that the author overlooked the principal wealth of the Vatican, on the order of $200 Trillion, is stocks and bonds (not the traceable real estate and gold) --

that is in the OWNERSHIP of you and I, and all peoples ...

ThePyramid
-- On
Wed, 7/10/09, Chet Chideste wrote:
Great post Here...everyone should read this...
it explains everything.
A free and kind world, Tevin

~~~

Millennium wrote:

Responding to a question about the $200 -$300 Trillion World-Assets of the Vatican ... placing them between House Rothschild ($450 Trillion) and the US Mafioso Rockefeller ($150 Trillion) ... this is a pretty thorough analysis (but caution, it is heavy on the uneccessary fear factor, short on the healing positive-change possibilities) ...

Millennium Twain


The Global Financial Crisis - the whirlwind of astounding real estate foreclosures, stock market crashes, business bankruptcies and disappearing credit has now hit every single country around the planet. What once was simply called the "Sub-Prime Crisis" has now suddenly mutated into a monster we fearfully call "global recession". So what is really going on? Who has caused this? Why are things suddenly getting so much worse so quickly? And what does the immediate future over the next few years hold?
Pyre-Amid

text truncated ...

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Top US officials are reported to have been selling US nuclear weapons secrets around the world as part of a spy ring which includes members of Congress from both parties. These and other accusations are broadly substantiated, but only by the American Conservative and newspapers around the world, including significant revelations about a 9/11 coverup. How can this be done in a "free country?" Massive penetration of, not only Congress, but the Pentagon and State Department are outlined in detail, naming those involved and how it was done. Foreign intelligence agencies from Israel, Turkey and Pakistan, regularly accessed highly classified information and sold it around the world, even to terrorist organizations. If 9/11 was a terrorist attack, inside job or planned to drag the US into an endless war in the Middle East for some other purpose, the information needed to plan the attacks was sold or given away by high ranking Americans who were under investigation by the FBI until 2001.


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Police Chiefs Endorse Community Terror Watch Initiative

DENVER — A store clerk’s curiosity about why Najibullah Zazi was buying large quantities of beauty supply products indicated that something about the transaction wasn’t quite right — and it’s an example of the kind of citizen vigilance that can combat terror, a police commander said Saturday.

Los Angeles police Cmdr. Joan McNamara cited this summer’s incident as police chiefs meeting in Denver adopted a model for a nationwide community watch program that teaches people what behavior is truly suspicious and encourages them to report it to police. Los Angeles police Chief William Bratton, who developed the iWatch program with McNamara, called it the 21st century version of Neighborhood Watch.

The Major Cities Chiefs Association, headed by Bratton and composed of the chiefs of the 63 largest police departments in the U.S. and Canada, endorsed iWatch at the group’s conference Saturday. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Bush administration proposed enlisting postal carriers, gas and electric company workers, telephone repairmen and other workers with access to private homes in a program to report suspicious behavior to the FBI. Privacy advocates condemned this as too intrusive, and the plan was dropped.

Bratton and McNamara said privacy and civil liberties protections are built into this program.

“We’re not asking people to spy on their neighbors,” McNamara said.

If someone reports something based on race or ethnicity, the police will not accept the report, and someone will explain to the caller why that is not an indicator of suspicious behavior, McNamara said.

I can’t help but to remember stories my family told about relatives in communist Romania, and how an anti government uttering in the local bar could result in their disappearance in the middle of the night, never to be seen again. Thank God that could never happen here, in the land of the free.


Police chiefs endorse anti-terror community watch

The Associated Press - Eileen Sullivan, Solomon Banda - ‎Oct 3, 2009‎
DENVER — A store clerk's curiosity about why Najibullah Zazi was buying large quantities of beauty supply products indicated that something about the ...

I'll be watching you...

American Thinker - Jake Keller - ‎Oct 4, 2009‎
A new and improved version of Neighborhood Watch called iWatch was recently rolled out by its founders, Chief Bratton and Commander Joan McNamara of the Los ...

21st Century Version of Neighborhood Watch Engages Communities in Fight ...

Century City News - ‎Oct 3, 2009‎
Los Angeles Police Chief William J. Bratton, acting in his capacity as President of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, unveils the community component of ...


"It's really just commonsense types of things," Bratton said, adding that his department is providing technical assistance to other agencies that want to adopt the program.
more by William Bratton - Oct 3, 2009 - The Associated Press (160 occurrences)


Big police depts back anti-terror citizen watch

KGAN - ‎Oct 3, 2009‎
He or she can learn by participating in iWATCH, the new anti-terrorism community watch program developed by the Los Angeles Police Department. ...

Colorado

Police OK anti-terror citizens watch

The Durango Herald - Eileen Sullivan, Solomon Banda - ‎Oct 4, 2009‎
AP Writers DENVER – A store clerk's curiosity about why Najibullah Zazi was buying large quantities of beauty-supply ...

Be watchful, top cops say at Denver session

Denver Post - Eileen Sullivan, Solomon Banda - ‎Oct 3, 2009‎
APs Los Angeles Police chief William Bratton talks to the media during a news conference introducing iWatch, ...

Denver, CO

New iWatch program hopes to collect tips on possible terrorist actions

Denver Post - Eileen Sullivan, Solomon Banda - ‎Oct 4, 2009‎
AP Los Angeles police Chief William Bratton talks Saturday in Denver about the iWatch program. ...

A store clerk's curiosity about why Najibullah Zazi was buying large quantities of beauty supply products indicated that something about the transaction wasn't quite right - and it's an example of the kind of citizen vigilance that can combat terror, a police commander said Saturday. Los Angeles police Cmdr. Joan McNamara cited this summer's incident as police chiefs meeting in Denver adopted a model for a nationwide community watch program that teaches people what behavior is truly suspicious and encourages them to report it to police. Federal authorities allege Zazi, 24, tried to make a homemade explosive using ingredients from beauty supplies purchased at Denver-area stores. He has been jailed in New York on charges of conspiracy to detonate a weapon of mass destruction in a plot that may have targeted New York City. Zazi has denied the charges.

A new anti-terrorism community watch program, iWATCH, beginning this weekend in Los Angeles, advises the public that these nine suspicious signs should be reported to police: —People drawing or measuring important buildings. —Strangers asking questions about security or building security procedures. —Briefcase, suitcase, backpack or package left behind. —Cars or trucks left in "No Parking" zones in front of important buildings. —Intruders in secure areas where they are not supposed to be. —A person wearing clothes that are too big and too heavy for the weather. —Chemical smells or fumes that worry you. —Questions about sensitive information such as building blueprints, security plans or VIP travel schedules without a right or need to know. —Purchasing supplies or equipment that can be used to make bombs or weapons or purchasing uniforms without having proper credentials...

A network of private and public surveillance cameras, license plate readers and weapons sensors already established in Lower Manhattan as an electronic bulwark against terrorist attacks will soon expand to a large patch of Midtown Manhattan, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said Sunday as they announced the allocation of $24 million in Homeland Security grants toward the effort. Mr. Bloomberg said the expanded monitoring network would cover the areas between 30th and 60th Streets, from the Hudson to the East River. “We cannot afford to be complacent,” he said, noting that Midtown includes landmarks like Grand Central Terminal, the Empire State Building and the United Nations. Like the system downtown, the expanded surveillance network would feed streams of data for analysis to a coordination center at 55 Broadway. Mr. Bloomberg, who made the announcement at the center with Mr. Kelly, said work on the Midtown system would begin next year and be completed in 2011. Behind the mayor, a 40-foot video wall displayed maps, incoming data from a police precinct and more than a dozen video...


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VISTA ("Virtual Instant Surveillance Tactical Application"): NSA Had Access Built into Microsoft Windows

NSA Had Access Built into Microsoft Windows
Duncan Campbell on 27 March, 2008 13:33:00 | 34522 times read

Heiss - A CARELESS mistake by Microsoft programmers has revealed that special access codes prepared by the US National Security Agency have been secretly built into Windows. The NSA access system is built into every version of the Windows operating system now in use, except early releases of Windows 95 (and its predecessors) . The discovery comes close on the heels of the revelations earlier this year that another US software giant, Lotus, had built an NSA "help information"trapdoor into its Notes system, and that security functions on other software systems had been deliberately crippled.

The first discovery of the new NSA access system was made two years ago by British researcher Dr Nicko van Someren. But it was only a few weeks ago when a second researcher rediscovered the access system. With it, he found the evidence linking it to NSA.

Computer security specialists have been aware for two years that unusual features are contained inside a standard Windows software "driver" used for security and encryption functions. The driver, called ADVAPI.DLL, enables and controls a range of security functions. If you use Windows, you will find it in the C:Windowssystem directory of your computer.

ADVAPI.DLL works closely with Microsoft Internet Explorer, but will only run cryptographic functions that the US governments allows Microsoft to export. That information is bad enough news, from a European point of view. Now, it turns out that ADVAPI will run special programmes inserted and controlled by NSA. As yet, no-one knows what these programmes are, or what they do.

Mass Control » New FTC Thing Is A Bigger Deal Than You Might Think

Dr Nicko van Someren reported at last year's Crypto 98 conference that he had disassembled the ADVADPI driver. He found it contained two different keys. One was used by Microsoft to control the cryptographic functions enabled in Windows, in compliance with US export regulations. But the reason for building in a second key, or who owned it, remained a mystery.

A second key

Two weeks ago, a US security company came up with conclusive evidence that the second key belongs to NSA. Like Dr van Someren, Andrew Fernandez, chief scientist with Cryptonym of Morrisville, North Carolina, had been probing the presence and significance of the two keys.

Then he checked the latest Service Pack release for Windows NT4, Service Pack 5. He found that Microsoft's developers had failed to remove or "strip" the debugging symbols used to test this software before they released it. Inside the code were the labels for the two keys. One was called "KEY". The other was called "NSAKEY".

Fernandes reported his re-discovery of the two CAPI keys, and their secret meaning, to "Advances in Cryptology, Crypto'99" conference held in Santa Barbara. According to those present at the conference, Windows developers attending the conference did not deny that the "NSA" key was built into their software. But they refused to talk about what the key did, or why it had been put there without users' knowledge.

A third key?!

But according to two witnesses attending the conference, even Microsoft's top crypto programmers were astonished to learn that the version of ADVAPI.DLL shipping with Windows 2000 contains not two, but three keys. Brian LaMachia, head of CAPI development at Microsoft was "stunned" to learn of these discoveries, by outsiders. The latest discovery by Dr van Someren is based on advanced search methods which test and report on the "entropy" of programming code.

Within the Microsoft organisation, access to Windows source code is said to be highly compartmentalized, making it easy for modifications to be inserted without the knowledge of even the respective product managers.

Researchers are divided about whether the NSA key could be intended to let US government users of Windows run classified cryptosystems on their machines or whether it is intended to open up anyone's and everyone's Windows computer to intelligence gathering techniques deployed by NSA's burgeoning corps of "information warriors".

According to Fernandez of Cryptonym, the result of having the secret key inside your Windows operating system "is that it is tremendously easier for the NSA to load unauthorized security services on all copies of Microsoft Windows, and once these security services are loaded, they can effectively compromise your entire operating system". The NSA key is contained inside all versions of Windows from Windows 95 OSR2 onwards.

"For non-American IT managers relying on Windows NT to operate highly secure data centres, this find is worrying", he added. "The US government is currently making it as difficult as possible for "strong" crypto to be used outside of the US. That they have also installed a cryptographic back-door in the world's most abundant operating system should send a strong message to foreign IT managers".

"How is an IT manager to feel when they learn that in every copy of Windows sold, Microsoft has a 'back door' for NSA - making it orders of magnitude easier for the US government to access your computer?" he asked.

Can the loophole be turned round against the snoopers?

Dr van Someren feels that the primary purpose of the NSA key inside Windows may be for legitimate US government use. But he says that there cannot be a legitimate explanation for the third key in Windows 2000 CAPI. "It looks more fishy", he said.

Fernandez believes that NSA's built-in loophole can be turned round against the snoopers. The NSA key inside CAPI can be replaced by your own key, and used to sign cryptographic security modules from overseas or unauthorised third parties, unapproved by Microsoft or the NSA. This is exactly what the US government has been trying to prevent. A demonstration "how to do it" program that replaces the NSA key can be found on Cryptonym's website.

According to one leading US cryptographer, the IT world should be thankful that the subversion of Windows by NSA has come to light before the arrival of CPUs that handles encrypted instruction sets. These would make the type of discoveries made this month impossible. "Had the next-generation CPU's with encrypted instruction sets already been deployed, we would have never found out about NSAKEY."

[end excerpt]


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Criminalizing everyone

"You don't need to know. You can't know." That's what Kathy Norris, a 60-year-old grandmother of eight, was told when she tried to ask court officials why, the day before, federal agents had subjected her home to a furious search.

The agents who spent half a day ransacking Mrs. Norris' longtime home in Spring, Texas, answered no questions while they emptied file cabinets, pulled books off shelves, rifled through drawers and closets, and threw the contents on the floor.

The six agents, wearing SWAT gear and carrying weapons, were with - get this- the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Kathy and George Norris lived under the specter of a covert government investigation for almost six months before the government unsealed a secret indictment and revealed why the Fish and Wildlife Service had treated their family home as if it were a training base for suspected terrorists. Orchids.

That's right. Orchids.

By March 2004, federal prosecutors were well on their way to turning 66-year-old retiree George Norris into an inmate in a federal penitentiary - based on his home-based business of cultivating, importing and selling orchids.

Mrs. Norris testified before the House Judiciary subcommittee on crime this summer. The hearing's topic: the rapid and dangerous expansion of federal criminal law, an expansion that is often unprincipled and highly partisan.

Chairman Robert C. Scott, Virginia Democrat, and ranking member Louie Gohmert, Texas Republican, conducted a truly bipartisan hearing (a D.C. rarity this year).

These two leaders have begun giving voice to the increasing number of experts who worry about "overcriminalization." Astronomical numbers of federal criminal laws lack specifics, can apply to almost anyone and fail to protect innocents by requiring substantial proof that an accused person acted with actual criminal intent.

Mr. Norris ended up spending almost two years in prison because he didn't have the proper paperwork for some of the many orchids he imported. The orchids were all legal - but Mr. Norris and the overseas shippers who had packaged the flowers had failed to properly navigate the many, often irrational, paperwork requirements the U.S. imposed when it implemented an arcane international treaty's new restrictions on trade in flowers and other flora.

The judge who sentenced Mr. Norris had some advice for him and his wife: "Life sometimes presents us with lemons." Their job was, yes, to "turn lemons into lemonade."

The judge apparently failed to appreciate how difficult it is to run a successful lemonade stand when you're an elderly diabetic with coronary complications, arthritis and Parkinson's disease serving time in a federal penitentiary. If only Mr. Norris had been a Libyan terrorist, maybe some European official at least would have weighed in on his behalf to secure a health-based mercy release.

Krister Evertson, another victim of overcriminalization, told Congress, "What I have experienced in these past years is something that should scare you and all Americans." He's right. Evertson, a small-time entrepreneur and inventor, faced two separate federal prosecutions stemming from his work trying to develop clean-energy fuel cells.

The feds prosecuted Mr. Evertson the first time for failing to put a federally mandated sticker on an otherwise lawful UPS package in which he shipped some of his supplies. A jury acquitted him, so the feds brought new charges. This time they claimed he technically had "abandoned" his fuel-cell materials - something he had no intention of doing - while defending himself against the first charges. Mr. Evertson, too, spent almost two years in federal prison.

As George Washington University law professor Stephen Saltzburg testified at the House hearing, cases like these "illustrate about as well as you can illustrate the overreach of federal criminal law." The Cato Institute's Timothy Lynch, an expert on overcriminalization, called for "a clean line between lawful conduct and unlawful conduct." A person should not be deemed a criminal unless that person "crossed over that line knowing what he or she was doing." Seems like common sense, but apparently it isn't to some federal officials.

Former U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh's testimony captured the essence of the problems that worry so many criminal-law experts. "Those of us concerned about this subject," he testified, "share a common goal - to have criminal statutes that punish actual criminal acts and [that] do not seek to criminalize conduct that is better dealt with by the seeking of regulatory and civil remedies." Only when the conduct is sufficiently wrongful and severe, Mr. Thornburgh said, does it warrant the "stigma, public condemnation and potential deprivation of liberty that go along with [the criminal] sanction."

The Norrises' nightmare began with the search in October 2003. It didn't end until Mr. Norris was released from federal supervision in December 2008. His wife testified, however, that even after he came home, the man she had married was still gone. He was by then 71 years old. Unsurprisingly, serving two years as a federal convict - in addition to the years it took to defend unsuccessfully against the charges - had taken a severe toll on him mentally, emotionally and physically.

These are repressive consequences for an elderly man who made mistakes in a small business. The feds should be ashamed, and Mr. Evertson is right that everyone else should be scared. Far too many federal laws are far too broad.

Mr. Scott and Mr. Gohmert have set the stage for more hearings on why this places far too many Americans at risk of unjust punishment. Members of both parties in Congress should follow their lead.

Brian W. Walsh is senior legal research fellow in the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation.

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U.S. Senate candidate: Martial law needed in Chicago


"U. S. Senate candidate Andy Martin calls for the imposition of martial law in Chicago ... In response to the senseless slaying of another Chicago child, Andy Martin asks: Where is Mayor Daley? Where is Governor Quinn? Where is President Barack Obama?"

"The latest slaying of an innocent African-America child should be a wake-up call to the Chicago Mayor and Illinois Governor. If the city and state cannot provide African-Americans with basic personal safety—the ultimate human right—why are these officials in power? If necessary, President Barack Obama should send federal troops to protect the right to life of every Chicago child. There cannot be two standards of life, one for minority neighborhoods and another for non-minority neighborhoods' ."

While this appeal may simply be campaign rhetoric, public officials must refrain from conditioning people to believe that Martial Law is an acceptable solution to a crime-ridden city. Such calls only condition people to believe that they would benefit under Martial Law, when the opposite is true. When the time does come for the Illuminati to impose Martial Law, they will do so ruthlessly and without mercy.

Listen to the type of Martial Law which is someday soon going to be forced upon the entire country:

"... while the peoples of the world are still stunned by the accomplished fact of the revolution, still in a condition of terror and uncertainty, they should recognise once for all that we are so strong, so inexpugnable, so super-abundantly filled with power, that in no case shall we take any account of them, and so, far from paying any attention to their opinions or wishes, we are ready and able to crush with irresistible power all expression or manifestation thereof at every moment and in every place, that we have seized at once everything we wanted... Then in fear and trembling they will close their eyes to everything, and be content to await what will be the end of it all." [[Protocol #11 -- The Totalitarian State]

When this brutal Martial Law is declared, dissidents will be arrested in unparalleled numbers, filling the prisons which have been prepared for them. The "FEMA Prison System" will quickly flow to overfilling!

Patriots and/or Christians will be the first to be thrown into this coming prison system. That time is quickly coming. Are you spiritually prepared? Have you warned your loved ones, your relatives, co-workers and friends that these are the very special End Times, of which Scripture fortold 2,500 years ago?

You had better warn before the "night falls, when no man shall work". That "night" will be the New World Order, the new system ruled by Antichrist.


Andy Martin says emergency measures are needed to stem the tide of violence in Chicago.

U. S. Senate candidate Andy Martin calls for the imposition of martial law in Chicago

Martin says Mayor Daley and Barack Obama look stupid campaigning for the Olympics when they lack the resources to protect the city’s existing residents

NEWS FROM:
ANDY MARTIN /2010
Republican for U. S. Senator

“He works for all
the People of Illinois”
Suite 4406
30 E. Huron Street
Chicago, IL 60611-4723
(312) 440-4124
www.AndyforUSSenator.com
www.AndyforUSSenator.blogspot.com
www.AndyforUSSenator.wordpress.com

www.MarkKirk.us

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

ATTENTION DAYBOOK/ASSIGNMENT EDITORS

ANNOUNCEMENT OF WEDNESDAY NEWS CONFERENCE IN CHICAGO

In response to the senseless slaying of another Chicago child, Andy Martin asks: Where is Mayor Daley? Where is Governor Quinn? Where is President Barack Obama?

Martin questions, “If the City cannot protect minority residents, how are we going to protect millions of Olympic visitors?

Martin says the headquarters of the Chicago Police Department should temporarily be moved to ground zero in the war against crime

(CHICAGO)(September 30, 2009) Republican U. S. Senate candidate and insurgent “Internet Powerhouse” Andy Martin will hold a Chicago news conference Wednesday, September 30th to call for the imposition of martial law on the city of Chicago.

“The latest slaying of an innocent African-America child should be a wake-up call to the Chicago Mayor and Illinois Governor. If the city and state cannot provide African-Americans with basic personal safety—the ultimate human right—why are these officials in power?

“If necessary, President Barack Obama should send federal troops to protect the right to life of every Chicago child. There cannot be two standards of life, one for minority neighborhoods and another for non-minority neighborhoods.

“I find it incongruous that on a day when Illinois National Guard soldiers were returning from Afghanistan, we needed our Guard personnel in Chicago to restore order here at home.

“With due respect to Superintendent Jody Weis, he has to ratchet up the war on crime and wage relentless war on the gangs and predators who are preying on Chicago’s African-American children. Weis has to take personal ownership of this war, and start leading from the streets, not the safety of his office.

“If newspaper reporter Mark Brown can see where the gangs are lurking, why are police not attacking these encampments and arresting these gangsters?

http://www.suntimes.com/news/brown/1795973,CST-NWS-brown29.article

“If the City cannot protect existing citizens, how are we going to guarantee the safety and security of millions of Olympic visitors?

“I propose that the mayor, governor and president adopt a five-point program to return safety to Chicago’s streets:

“First, I want Superintend Weis out on the streets, personally supervising field operations. He needs to lead from the front, not his headquarters office.

“Second, I want the CPD to put every sworn officer on the streets, and replace desk officers with temps if necessary. Any officer who is authorized to carry a gun should be working outside, on the streets. We need to regain control of this city.

“Third, Cook County needs to hire an emergency allotment of prosecutors and prison guards, and create space for thousands of new prisoners, as well courtrooms for prosecution of these predators. We need to disrupt, disable and destroy the gang elements and criminal elements in minority neighborhoods.

“Fifty years of anti-gang efforts have failed. Failure is no longer an acceptable option.

“Maybe Tod Stronger should fire some of his relatives, and well as other Daley Machine payrollers, and replace them with prosecutors and jail guards. State Attorney Alvarez needs to become more proactive; she has been much too passive.

“Fourth, Governor Quinn should mobilize the Illinois State Police and the Illinois National Guard, and have these forces start patrolling the streets of any neighborhood with excessive crime.

“Fifth, President Obama should order the deployment of part of our ready reserve forces to duty in Chicago. It was a Republican President, Dwight Eisenhower, who sent the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas to enforce the constitutional rights of African-American students. Republicans were in the forefront of protecting African-Americans then. Republicans should lead again.

“The Daley Machine’s failure to protect minority children is a disgrace to humanity. If the City refuses to do its job, federal troops should be used to protect Chicago’s minority neighborhoods. Republicans need to start raising hell about the hellish conditions in minority neighborhoods. Children living in these areas have a right to life and a right to live. Their lives should not be snuffed out by gangsters operating in plain sight of a Sun-Times reporter.

“As for Barack Obama, the latest tragedy took place in the Altgeld Gardens area, where he was a so-called ‘community organizer’ 25 years ago. Obviously, Obama’s efforts left no lasting impression in the neighborhood. It is time for America’s first African-American president to start taking the protection of Chicago’s African-American children seriously,” Martin will state. “Daley and Obama should be flying to Chicago, not Copenhagen.

”The bottom line: we need martial law in Chicago until the safety and security of every schoolchild is ensured. I realize that these endless, random killings are an emergency situation; they are intolerable. Why can’t Chicago’s and Illinois’s leaders do the same and respond to this unacceptable reality?”

September 30th news conference details:

WHO:

U. S. Senate candidate and Internet Powerhouse Andy Martin

WHERE:

Sidewalk news conference, SE corner of Huron and Wabash,
Chicago

WHEN:

Wednesday, September 30, 2009 1:00 P.M.

WHAT:

Internet Powerhouse and U. S. Senate candidate Andy Martin calls for martial law in Chicago to end the violence in African-American neighborhoods.

MEDIA
CONTACT:

(866) 706-2639; Cell (917) 664-9329 (not always turned on)

WEBSITE:

http://www.AndyforUSSenator.com

E-MAIL:

AndyforUSSenator@aol.com
-----------------------------
Readers of Obama: The Man Behind The Mask, say the book is still the only gold standard and practical handbook on Barack Obama's unfitness for the presidency. Buy it.Book orders: Amazon.com or http://OrangeStatePress.com. Immediate shipment from Amazon.com or signed copies (delayed for signing) from the publisher are available.
-----------------------------
URGENT APPEAL: The Committee of One Million to Defeat Barack Obama raises money to oppose President Barack Obama's radical agenda and also to support www.BoycottHawaii.com.www.CommitteeofOneMilliontoDefeatBarackObama.com Please give generously. Our ability to fight and defeat Barack Obama's political agenda is directly dependent on the generosity of every American."The Committee of One Million to Defeat Barack Obama has no bundlers, no fat cats and no illegal contributions. Obama is opposed to almost everything America stands for," says Executive Director Andy Martin. "But while Obama has raised a billion dollar slush fund, his opponents lack sufficient resources. Americans can either contribute now, or pay later. If we do not succeed, Obama will."
-----------------------------
Andy Martin is a legendary Chicago muckraker, author, Internet columnist, radio talk show host, broadcaster and media critic. He has over forty years of broadcasting background in radio and television and is the dean of Illinois media and communications. He is currently promoting his best-selling book, Obama: The Man Behind The Mask and producing the new Internet movie "Obama: The Hawai'i years." Andy is the Executive Editor and publisher of www.ContrarianCommentary.com. Martin comments on regional, national and world events with more than four decades of experience. He holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Illinois College of Law and is a former adjunct professor of law at the City University of New York.

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University of Florida Disaster preparedness for Zombie Attack

Photobucket

October 05, 2009 03:03 PM ET | Jessica Calefati | Permanent Link | Print

The University of Florida is prepared to respond to any disaster that might come its way—a hurricane, a dangerous criminal on campus, and even an onslaught of zombies—according to emergency-response plans the university posted online, the Independent Florida Alligator reports.

The section on the university's response to a zombie invasion, meant as a joke, has since been taken down. But before that happened, the Alligator got a good look at just how a large, public university would respond to "flesh-eating, apparently life-impaired individuals."

The online guide advised members of the UF community to watch zombie preparedness documentaries like George Romero's Dead series. It also advised employees on their use of weapons to defend themselves.

"Some employees may prefer weapons such as chain saws, baseball bats, and explosives that have been shown to be effective against zombies," the plan stated.

UF spokesman Steve Orlando says the zombie plan was written by an employee of the Office of Academic Technology to "add a little bit of levity" to disaster-preparation discussions. Orlando told the Associated Press that the employee was not sanctioned for his actions.


No defense there against zombies

Charlottesville Daily Progress - ‎Oct 5, 2009‎
By The Daily Progress The University of Florida has removed a link to its zombie emergency plan from its Web site. No longer can you peruse the university's ...

Zombie Attack!

Tonic - Courtney Rubin - ‎Oct 5, 2009‎
Good news for students at the University of Florida: the school is fully prepared to handle a zombie ...

No Joke: UF Officials Remove Zombie Plan from Site

First Coast News - ‎Oct 5, 2009‎
GAINESVILLE, FL (AP) -- The University of Florida's response plans for a zombie apocalypse are no longer available for public consumption. ...


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Las Vegas airport to hold massive emergency exercise on Wednesday


From the BNO Newsroom.
LAS VEGAS (BNO NEWS) – Authorities in Las Vegas will be conducting a large-scale emergency exercise on Wednesday morning, involving nearly 200 fake victims from an aircraft crash, McCarran International Airport announced on Monday. The exercise will be coordinated by the Clark County Department of Aviation, and will involve hundreds of fake victims and emergency personnel. Numerous other agencies, facilities, vehicles and aircraft will also participate. On Wednesday morning, emergency teams will respond to a simulated accident involving multiple aircraft near one of McCarran's busiest taxiways. An MD-80 passenger jet and a Eurostar helicopter will be used in the realistic exercise, which took more than a year to plan. "Local fire, police and rescue personnel will coordinate their response just as they would during a real-world event, including the expected use of ambulances and rescue helicopters to shuttle victims to 12 participating Southern Nevada hospitals," said Chris Jones, a spokesman for the airport. Jones was not able to say what will happen during the simulated accident because the exercise will feature a progressive scenario that limits participants' advance knowledge of what's unfolding around them. The technique is meant to improve their abilities to react quickly and correctly during a stressful situation. Smoke, pyrotechnics and a busy on-airport setting will contribute to the realism of the drill. Nearly 200 high school students from four area trade schools will pose as victims. Prior to the drill, those students will undergo an extensive moulage process to replicate injuries that would likely result from an actual aircraft crash. "Medical responders will be asked to triage these patients to determine what care is needed before directing the injured to the appropriate medical facility," Jones said. Following the drill, authorities will also hold a mock press conference in which they will present details of the simulated emergency. The news media will also be given rare access to such a large emergency exercise, with airport representatives giving live interviews starting at 5.30 a.m. local time. Live television crews will also be allowed to cover the event on-scene. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) requires most U.S. airports to complete an emergency preparedness exercise every three years in order to maintain their certification.

BREAKING NEWS: Chemical leak at Imperial Oil

Sarnia Observer - ‎3 hours ago‎
This event is not part of the current emergency exercise in Corunna and is a real incident. Official have called for full traffic control in the area. ...

Meeting will focus on Oyster Creek emergency response

Asbury Park Press - Bonnie Delaney - ‎7 hours ago‎
BERKELEY — Results from tonight's county-wide emergency exercise for the Oyster Creek Nuclear ...

It was only a test: Drill simulates terrorist attack

Record Herald - ‎8 hours ago‎
It was like any high school football game. The players were on the field, and the stands were full of cheering students, parents and fans. ...

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* THE ACTUAL ASTRONOMY Of 2012 - Absolutely Amazing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQkhd_NebXc

All my 2012 essays are here: http://www.infinitelymystical.com/201...

Since the Maya calendar and mythology are both based on the underlying astronomy, it can be very helpful to understand this astronomy. This is fun and easy to do as long as we take it a little bit at a time. It won't take us very long to lay out all the information yet you may find yourself pondering this subject more deeply for quite awhile. For me personally, the more I dug into this material, the more mind-blowing it all became. Perhaps you will have a similar experience.

Note: This video was made before I double checked the published work of a French astronomer that indicated that 1998 would be a special year in the precession of the earth's axis of rotation. In March of 2009, I used the free astronomy software called CNebulaX and I found that the moment of the winter solstice and the moment of the annual galactic alignment would be closest together in 2048, not 1998!

Precession shifts the timing of these two events by one day over a 72 year period. If we center this 72 year period over 2048, we see that 2012 marks the beginning of this period.

It is my opinion that 2012 marks the beginning of what I call the period of the sacred triple rebirth of the sun. You can learn more from the essays on my website.

Here is the link to all my 2012 essays:

http://www.infinitelymystical.com/201...

Let the experts take the lead on climate challenges



Earth's poles were the same in the early days. Scientists have been studying the process of temperature change for years, including factors such as sunspot activity, the Earth's tilt and elliptical orbit around the sun, the Earth's albedo, atmospheric heat retention, ocean current cycles, land-mass distribution, both above and below the seas, etc. Journalists and politicians cannot be expected to understand these factors without specialized training. Krugman's training in economics is a far cry from the physical sciences, and leaves him just as dependent on the opinions of others as the public at large.

According to a new research, released by the paleomagnetists at the Princeton University, our planet had the same magnetic-field structure in the early days. The two-pole model of today is believed by some to be an evolution of an ancient, unstructured one, and experts on both sides have been debating this vigorously for quite some time. The new study brings this debate to a conclusion, showing that models on how the planet must have looked like millions of years ago are correct.

Volcanic activity and earthquakes hit Caribbean islands

MAP 4.6

13.855 -90.586 95.3 OFFSHORE GUATEMALA
The new investigation bears considerable implications for understanding old continental movements, which are in turn related to the climate change over various time frames. Planetary scientists hope that they will be able to use the newly found knowledge to devise better models of the Earth's climate history. This could, in turn, lead to a better understanding of the warming period we are going through today. In their research, the Princeton experts looked at the 1.1-billion-year-old volcanic rocks located on the north shore of Lake Superior, in North America.

Mount Talang's activity increases in Indonesia's quake-hit West Sumatra

Xinhua - Li Xianzhi - ‎16 hours ago‎
JAKARTA, Oct. 6 (Xinhua) -- A 7.6 Richter-scale earthquake that hit West Sumatra province last Wednesday has triggered volcanic activity of Mount Talang as ...

Montserrat volcano shoots plume of ash into sky

The Associated Press - ‎Oct 5, 2009‎
The venting by the Soufriere Hills volcano has been accompanied by more than 30 tiny earthquakes since Sunday night, according to Paul Cole, director of the ...

They determined that the planet's magnetic structure was a geocentric axial dipole, which essentially resembled a large magnet bar. This bar is centered on the Earth's core, and is aligned with the planet's spin axis, the investigators reveal. Other investigations have shown that a six-pole, or even an eight-pole structure may have existed in the past, hinting at a more complex magnetic history. If they had turned out to be correct, these studies would have invalidated all the known models of continental evolution, which rely on paleomagnetic data related to just two poles.

“In this paper, we show that Earth's magnetic field has been more stable in the past than originally believed,” paper author and Princeton Assistant Professor of Geosciences Adam Maloof explains. “For the past 30 years, scientists have feared that the geometry of Earth's field was complex and varied. Such a complex field made it very hard for people to reconstruct the ancient geography of the planet because they could not rely on a predictable field. We show that these fears were unfounded – at least for 1.1 billion years ago – and that the evidence for a complex ancient field was an artifact of the way rocks had been sampled,” he adds.\
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Cosmic Ray Decreases Affect Atmospheric Aerosols And Clouds
ScienceDaily (Oct. 6, 2009) — Billions of tonnes of water droplets vanish from the atmosphere in events that reveal in detail how the Sun and the stars control our everyday clouds. Researchers of the National Space Institute in the Technical University of Denmark (DTU) have traced the consequences of eruptions on the Sun that screen the Earth from some of the cosmic rays -- the energetic particles raining down on our planet from exploded stars. "The Sun makes fantastic natural experiments that allow us to test our ideas about its effects on the climate," says Prof. Henrik Svensmark, lead author of a report newly published in Geophysical Research Letters. When solar explosions interfere with the cosmic rays there is a temporary shortage of small aerosols, chemical specks in the air that normally grow until water vapour can condense on them, so seeding the liquid water droplets of low-level clouds. Because of the shortage, clouds over the ocean can lose as much as 7 per cent of their liquid water within seven or eight days of the cosmic-ray minimum. "A link between the Sun, cosmic rays, aerosols, and liquid-water clouds appears to exist on a global scale," the report concludes. This research, to which Torsten Bondo and Jacob Svensmark contributed, validates 13 years of discoveries that point to a key role for cosmic rays in climate change. In particular, it connects observable variations in the world's cloudiness to laboratory experiments in Copenhagen showing how cosmic rays help to make the all-important aerosols. Other investigators have reported difficulty in finding significant effects of the solar eruptions on clouds, and Henrik Svensmark understands their problem. "It's like trying to see tigers hidden in the jungle, because clouds change a lot from day to day whatever the cosmic rays are doing," he says. The first task for a successful hunt was to work out when "tigers" were most likely to show themselves, by identifying the most promising instances of sudden drops in the count of cosmic rays, called Forbush decreases. Previous research in Copenhagen predicted that the effects should be most notice-able in the lowest 3000 metres of the atmosphere. The team identified 26 Forbush decreases since 1987 that caused the biggest reductions in cosmic rays at low altitudes, and set about looking for the consequences. Forgetting to sow the seeds The first global impact of the shortage of cosmic rays is a subtle change in the colour of sunlight, as seen by ground stations of the aerosol robotic network AERONET. By analysing its records during and after the reductions in cosmic rays, the DTU team found that violet light from the Sun looked brighter than usual. A shortage of small aerosols, which normally scatter violet light as it passes through the air, was the most likely reason. The colour change was greatest about five days after the minimum counts of cosmic rays. Why the delay? Henrik Svensmark and his team were not surprised by it, because the immediate ac-tion of cosmic rays, seen in laboratory experiments, creates micro-clusters of sulphuric acid and water molecules that are too small to affect the AERONET observations. Only when they have spent a few days growing in size should they begin to show up, or else be noticeable by their absence. The evidence from the aftermath of the Forbush decreases, as scrutinized by the Danish team, gives aerosol experts valuable information about the formation and fate of small aerosols in the Earth's atmosphere. Although capable of affecting sunlight after five days, the growing aerosols would not yet be large enough to collect water droplets. The full impact on clouds only becomes evident two or three days later. It takes the form of a loss of low-altitude clouds, because of the earlier loss of small aerosols that would normally have grown into "cloud condensation nuclei" capable of seeding the clouds. "Then it's like noticing bare patches in a field, where a farmer forgot to sow the seeds," Svensmark explains. "Three independent sets of satellite observations all tell a similar story of clouds disappearing, about a week after the minimum of cosmic rays." Huge effects on cloudiness Averaging satellite data on the liquid-water content of clouds over the oceans, for the five strongest Forbush decreases from 2001 to 2005, the DTU team found a 7 per cent decrease, as mentioned earlier. That translates into 3 billion tonnes of liquid water vanishing from the sky. The water remains the-re in vapour form, but unlike cloud droplets it does not get in the way of sunlight trying to warm the ocean. After the same five Forbush decreases, satellites measuring the extent of liquid-water clouds revealed an average reduction of 4 per cent. Other satellites showed a similar 5 per cent reduction in clouds below 3200 metres over the ocean. "The effect of the solar explosions on the Earth's cloudiness is huge," Henrik Svensmark comments. "A loss of clouds of 4 or 5 per cent may not sound very much, but it briefly increases the sunlight rea-ching the oceans by about 2 watt per square metre, and that's equivalent to all the global warming dur-ing the 20th Century." The Forbush decreases are too short-lived to have a lasting effect on the climate, but they dramatize the mechanism that works more patiently during the 11-year solar cycle. When the Sun becomes more active, the decline in low-altitude cosmic radiation is greater than that seen in most Forbush events, and the loss of low cloud cover persists for long enough to warm the world. That explains, according to the DTU team, the alternations of warming and cooling seen in the lower atmosphere and in the oceans during solar cycles. The director of the Danish National Space Institute, DTU, Eigil Friis-Christensen, was co-author with Svensmark of an early report on the effect of cosmic rays on cloud cover, back in 1996. Commenting on the latest paper he says, "The evidence has piled up, first for the link between cosmic rays and low-level clouds and then, by experiment and observation, for the mechanism involving aerosols. All these consistent scientific results illustrate that the current climate models used to predict future climate are lacking important parts of the physics".


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