Wave of bomb threats prompts hundreds of evacuations in four countries

 

Police agencies in the United States and Canada said that most of the threats were emailed, but some were phoned in by unknown individuals. They warned that devices containing explosive compounds such as tetryl or trinitrotoluene would be detonated unless funds were deposited into an international account using the virtual currency bitcoin. The messages also warned that the alleged devices would be detonated if “any police activity or unusual behavior” were detected. A deadline of one business day was given to deposit the funds. Throughout the day, police agencies across three continents issued notices cautioning people to remain aware of their surroundings and report suspicious messages or behavior. It was eventually determined that virtually all bomb threats were not credible.

The NSA’s Hidden Spy Hubs in Eight U.S. Cities

A VERY long read that is worth your while.

It reminds you of how well you don’t know your city if you’re living in one of these eight.

 

420 South Grand Avenue, Los Angeles

 

The secrets are hidden behind fortified walls in cities across the United States, inside towering, windowless skyscrapers and fortress-like concrete structures that were built to withstand earthquakes and even nuclear attack. Thousands of people pass by the buildings each day and rarely give them a second glance, because their function is not publicly known. They are an integral part of one of the world’s largest telecommunications networks – and they are also linked to a controversial National Security Agency surveillance program.

Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. In each of these cities, The Intercept has identified an AT&T facility containing networking equipment that transports large quantities of internet traffic across the United States and the world. A body of evidence – including classified NSA documents, public records, and interviews with several former AT&T employees – indicates that the buildings are central to an NSA spying initiative that has for years monitored billions of emails, phone calls, and online chats passing across U.S. territory.

The NSA considers AT&T to be one of its most trusted partners and has lauded the company’s “extreme willingness to help.” It is a collaboration that dates back decades. Little known, however, is that its scope is not restricted to AT&T’s customers. According to the NSA’s documents, it values AT&T not only because it “has access to information that transits the nation,” but also because it maintains unique relationships with other phone and internet providers. The NSA exploits these relationships for surveillance purposes, commandeering AT&T’s massive infrastructure and using it as a platform to covertly tap into communications processed by other companies.

Chinese Defense Ministry Confirms Rail-Mobile ICBM Test

Storage missile trains

 

Spokesman dismisses Beijing’s first nuclear missile sub patrols as ‘media hype’

China’s Defense Ministry confirmed on Thursday that its military recently conducted a test of a new rail-mobile ICBM capable of hitting any part of the United States with nuclear warheads.

Defense Ministry spokesman Col. Yang Yujun also did not dispute U.S. reports that its nuclear missile submarines began conducting sea patrols for the first time, giving China a potent new submarine-based strategic nuclear strike capability.

Red tide: Massive, ‘incredibly thick’ toxic algae bloom in Pacific now stretches from California to Alaska

SEATTLE — A vast bloom of toxic algae off the West Coast is denser, more widespread and deeper than scientists feared even weeks ago, according to surveyors aboard a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel.

This coastal ribbon of microscopic algae, up to 64 kilometres wide and 200 metres deep in places, is flourishing amid unusually warm Pacific Ocean temperatures. It now stretches from at least California to Alaska and has shut down lucrative fisheries. Shellfish managers on Tuesday doubled the area off Washington’s coast that is closed to Dungeness crab fishing, after finding elevated levels of marine toxins in tested crab meat.

So-called “red tides” are cyclical and have happened many times before, but ocean researchers say this one is much larger and persisting much longer, with higher levels of neurotoxins bringing severe consequences for the Pacific seafood industry, coastal tourism and marine ecosystems.

When Scary Headlines Don’t Scare – Climbing The Wall Of Complacency

From “Scary Headlines Don’t Deter Investors” by Bernard Condon, originally posted by Associated Press,

The U.S. economy is growing at a painfully slow pace. Greece still threatens the euro. Chinese stocks have just pulled out of a frightening free-fall. Big companies in the U.S. are struggling to boost profits.

You might think it’s been a rough year for investors, but it’s mostly been a smooth ride – and a profitable one.

Money is flowing into bonds issued by the riskiest of companies, home prices in some big U.S. cities are soaring, shares of technology companies are still near all-time highs – even after a drop this week – and auction houses are enjoying record sales of art. A Picasso painting sold at Christie’s for $179 million in May, the highest ever for an artwork at auction, prompting one dealer to exclaim, “I don’t really see an end to it.”

The Really Big One

An earthquake will destroy a sizable portion of the coastal Northwest. The question is when.

When the 2011 earthquake and tsunami struck Tohoku, Japan, Chris Goldfinger was two hundred miles away, in the city of Kashiwa, at an international meeting on seismology. As the shaking started, everyone in the room began to laugh. Earthquakes are common in Japan—that one was the third of the week—and the participants were, after all, at a seismology conference. Then everyone in the room checked the time.

Seismologists know that how long an earthquake lasts is a decent proxy for its magnitude. The 1989 earthquake in Loma Prieta, California, which killed sixty-three people and caused six billion dollars’ worth of damage, lasted about fifteen seconds and had a magnitude of 6.9. A thirty-second earthquake generally has a magnitude in the mid-sevens. A minute-long quake is in the high sevens, a two-minute quake has entered the eights, and a three-minute quake is in the high eights. By four minutes, an earthquake has hit magnitude 9.0.

Los Angeles’ $15/Hr Minimum Wage Hike to Ruin Southern California’s Economy

Of course this will eliminate poverty wages because it’s designed to kill businesses, therefore there will technically be no poverty wages. Even college finance students know wage hikes have to be covered somehow otherwise the business is liquidated.

 

The city of Los Angeles ruled to hike the minimum wages by 30% in less than 5 years, a move rendering local businesses less competitive and sustainable, while benefitting unions, illegal aliens and governmental bureaucrats.

Kristian Rouz – On Saturday, the mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti enacted the law, authorizing an increase in the city’s minimum wage from the current $9/hr to $15/hr by the year 2020.

…

In a long-term perspective, such a move has potentially hazardous consequences, possibly undermining the economic competitiveness of LA-based enterprises, and disrupting business activity in the city.

Spetsnaz’s First World War

Train wrecks, random oil spills, bird flu outbreaks and other pestilence seeping into America today…

As a reader, you should do yourself a favor by reading this (full version at the source) and asking yourself how much of this looks eerily familiar today and what in the near-term can potentially happen. There just might be a further underlying cause and it isn’t random.

It’s long, but very much worth your time and is highly encouraged.

The entire book is also worth your read and is crucial to understanding this chapter presented. All this is written by Viktor Suvorov, a Soviet Army Cold War-era Soviet military intelligence officer who defected to the United Kingdom.

 

I was standing on the top of an enormous skyscraper in New York when I saw King Kong. The huge gorilla surveyed Manhattan triumphantly from a dizzy height. Of course I knew it wasn’t real. But there was something both frightening and symbolic in that huge black figure.

I learnt later that the gorilla was a rubber one, that it had been decided to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the showing of the first film about King Kong by creating a gigantic inflatable model of the beast and placing it high above New York. The rubber monster was hauled up and swayed about in the wind. From the technical point of view the operation had been a real triumph by the engineers and workmen who had taken part in it. But it was not an entire success. The monster turned out to be too huge, with the result that holes appeared in its body through which the air could escape. So the gigantic muscular frame quickly collapsed into a shapeless bag. They had to pump more air into it, but the harder they pumped the bigger the holes became and the quicker the air escaped from the monster. So they had to keep on pumping….

The Communist leaders have also created a rubber monster and have hauled it up to a dizzy height. The monster is known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the Soviet leaders are faced with a dilemma: to expand or to decline rapidly and become a flabby sack. It is interesting to note that the Soviet Union became a superpower in the course of the most destructive war in the history of civilisation, in spite of the fact that it suffered the greatest loss of life and the greatest destruction on its own territory. It has become a military superpower and perhaps war is essential for its existence.

I do not know how or when World War Three will start. I do not know exactly how the Soviet high command plans to make use of spetsnaz in that war: the first world war in which spetsnaz will be a major contributor. I do not wish to predict the future. In this chapter I shall describe how spetsnaz will be used at the beginning of that war as I imagine it. It is not my task to describe what will happen. But I can describe what might happen.

* * *

The last month of peace, as in other wars, has an almost palpable air of crisis about it. Incidents, accidents, small disasters add to the tension. Two trains collide on a railway bridge in Cologne because the signalling system is out of order. The bridge is seriously damaged and there can be no traffic over it for the next two months.

Media reports on warm ‘blob’ in Pacific Ocean pretend it can’t be related to huge plume of radioactive waste

 

(NaturalNews) Media outlets are widely reporting on two recent studies in the journal Geophysical Research Letters describing a giant “blob” of warm water that may be responsible for recent ecological and weather anomalies across the United States — from California’s drought to the East Coast’s severe winter to the thousands of dying sea lions washing up along the West Coast.

The “blob” — more precisely, the “warm anomaly” — is a patch of ocean water just off the coast of the Pacific Northwest that is about 1,000 miles across, 300 feet deep, and 3 degrees Celsius (5 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than usual. It received its nickname from Nick Bond of Washington State University, lead author of one of the new studies.

Radio Silence

Pentagon, State Department silent on threatening reports outlining Chinese plans for nuclear attacks on U.S. cities

…

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf and Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith would not respond when asked about the highly unusual Chinese reports published Oct. 28 in numerous major Communist Party-controlled television and newspaper outlets.

The Chinese reports included maps showing nuclear strikes on Los Angeles and the Pacific Northwest, along with the resulting radiation plumes stretching thousands of miles across the western United States.

Inside China: Nuclear submarines capable of widespread attack on U.S.

Keep in mind that these are official quotes from officially approved state-run media. This is not some fantasy war game or conspiracy. They are displaying their capability in the open.

Chinese state-run media revealed for the first time this week that Beijing’s nuclear submarines can attack American cities as a means to counterbalance U.S. nuclear deterrence in the Pacific.

On Monday, leading media outlets including China Central TV, the People’s Daily, the Global Times, the PLA Daily, the China Youth Daily and the Guangmin Daily ran identical, top-headlined reports about the “awesomeness” of the People’s Liberation Army navy’s strategic submarine force.

Occupy prepares nationwide may day mayhem – ‘Direct action’ to shut down economy, block bridges, tunnels

Occupy’s plans for nationwide May Day chaos are going full-speed ahead, with the movement boasting of “direct action” schemes that include protest marches, shutting down the financial sector, and blocking bridges and tunnels.

The group’s official websites announce plans to “occupy” Manhattan-bound bridges and tunnels as well as the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco Tuesday

Besides street protests, sympathizers are asked to engage in a U.S. general strike to “shut it down,” referring to the country’s economy.

…

In the San Francisco Bay Area, protests are slated to kick off with Occupy activists congregating at 6 a.m. Pacific Time to “Occupy the Golden Gate Bridge.”

The Bay Area schedule is replete with “anti-capitalist” events such as an “anti-patriarchy” protest and actions to protest “gentrification.”

…

The plan to shut down the U.S. economy is reminiscent of plans first hatched in March 2010 by Stephen Lerner, a controversial anti-capitalist SEIU organizer. Lerner visited the Obama White House at least four times.

WND was first to report Lerner was the brain behind some of the economic protest templates being used by the Occupy Wall Street campaign.

Lerner last year laid out a mass economic protest plan intended to bring down the stock market. He boasted it could be used to cause a new financial crisis. His ideology prompted some conservative critics to go so far as to label him an economic terrorist.

…

Lerner outlined his campaign to “stoke simmering discontent into concrete, concerted direct action to challenge corporate extremism.”

Lerner’s campaign was intended to sow “the seeds of a movement that turns the tables on [Wall Street].”

Full article: Occupy prepares nationwide may day mayhem – ‘Direct action’ to shut down economy, block bridges, tunnels (WND)