Tribulation Monday?

Preachers have been predicting “The Tribulation” for well over a thousand years, near as I can figure it, and they’ve been wrong…but only so far.  Here lately, even a skeptic, reading the “play list” for such times over in Wikipedia would have to sit up and take notice of some of our headlines.  I mean notice beyond the “third of the oceans bittered” stuff which the GOM Oil Spill and Fukushima are doing a nice job of, thank you very much.

But the End of the World is likely to work out a lot slower than most people reckon and it is evident when you consider the “wars and rumors of wars” angle.  We need more helpings of that…and oh, goodie, just looks what the headlines provide:

What has changed this weekend is that the Iranians have backed out of a proposed  nuclear deal and SecState John Kerry is a worried man it seems based on accounts like this one.

Proving that tribulating times can have their wryrony, though, Universe did rather thoughtfully arrange for one of the stumbling blocks to progress in Iran negotiations to be the Iranian heavy water facility at Arak, which is pronounced very nearly the same as that other oil principality to their immediate west.  Last time I checked, heavy water was not needed to run a peaceful reactor program, but I’d have to check with our consulting reactor engineer on what the “peaceful” uses are, exactly…

The French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius isn’t any too pleased with the heavy water project, either.

The New Moon isn’t here until the second of December, but one of these days – and we don’t know as Israel will have the patience to wait before striking at the nuclear facilities in Iran – patience with diplomacy and the Obama administration’s born-again “give peace a chance” crowd is going to run out or give up.

Already, the shift at the top of US foreign policy is apparent:  By trying to cozy up to Iran, it looked (momentarily) like the US might have figured out that it’s the Sunni division of Islam which is setting up new mosques and madrassas worldwide in prodigious numbers…so perhaps warming to the Shi’ites was an attempt at balance.  So much for that…

Not that it matters either:  Israel may not say much of anything (other than a modest kind of diplomatically-word m”Told you so…”.  So in coming weeks, we should get squarely into the “wars and rumors of wars” libretto after the mess in the Philippines begins to get cleaned up a bit.  But for now, its all eyeballs on…

10,000 Dead, Disasters Roll On…

That’s a lot of people, but the body counts after definitely off in that direction as life in the Philippines is nowhere near normal following the weekend lashing with 200-mile per hour winds from Typhoon Haiyan, which just missed the (paradoxically name) Chinese Hainan Island area.

Today, the storm is off to strike Vietnam, but the winds are diminishing and should continue to weaken as it rolls up into southern China as time marches on.

A curious bit of timing here, as the Chinese are planning to have “boots on the ground” in Hawaii tomorrow in joint planning for disaster relief operations. I wouldn’t be surprise to see this called off, since Ma Nature has just delivered a real-life training opportunity. 

Regardless of your views on Tribulation times, the current headlines and prospects for improvement seem a bit grim and dim at the moment.  It may not be an actual “tribulation Mondaybut it’s close enough for home use.

And this is just curious as hell: The word “messianic” has popped up out of the blue in this morning’s www.nostracodeus.com report.  Former Prez GWB to raise money for messianic Jews?  Hmmm…

More after this…

Market Going Up – And Such a Deal…

The Dow is poised to pack on a few points at the open this morning, but whether any gains will still be around by Friday is an interesting point to consider.  We have a number of economic items on tap including the balance of trade on Thursday and the Empire Manufacturing report Friday morning.

Overnight, we saw a major rally breakout in Asia, and that is likely to carry over into US trading this morning.  After all, with yields low (thanks to the ECB rate cut) stocks can mathematically support higher prices.  But, when yields begin to rise, stocks are set to quick reverse direction.  But for now, our Aggregate Index Model over on Peoplenomics has been amazingly accurate in remaining bullish since December with only one week’s hesitation in there.

Two stories in this news this morning, related to markets are worth mentioning.  One is the headline that “Obama stocks among best after re-election as Rally Tested: points out how well the market is doing under this administration.  The Washington Times notes that this weekend, Obama got in his 150th (!!!) round of golf.

All of which supports the notion that the president should play as much golf as possible, so the country can get about its business, unimpeded.

Such a deal: Robin Handler, who publishes the Options Signal Service is offering an exclusive 50% deal to UrbanSurvival readers, if you’re interested in their weekly letter…

Thank You For Serving…

This is Veterans Day and we’d like to thank everyone in uniform (past and present) for defending our country and the Founder’s ideals.  Now, if we could just get Congress off it’s butt and so the same thing…

A whole host of activities is planned in Washington DC environs and this should make for plenty of eye treats come the early news shows.

If you’re wondering, no, banks are closed today, Stock market and liquor stores are open.  Federal offices are closed and the Post Offices are closed as well.

All of which leaves us wondering why – with all the critical services Veterans need, why VA offices are closed on Veterans Day – somehow just doesn’t seem quite right.

Speaking of the Mail

I should mention that special delivery mail will still be distributed today…but the REAL news is that the USPS has struck a deal and will be delivering Amazon packages on Sundays shortly.

Security State:  “You are a Rogue Device”

I don’t suppose you get around to reading some of the really good journalism that shows up in alternative press reports (of the ink and web sort, like the savory Seattle Stranger, but their report “You Are a Rogue Device” is thought-provoking.

No, don’t ask me why big cities spend bazillions on high-end mesh networks like the one going in up in Seattle.  Seems to me the old-fashioned UHF coms were doing just fine, and besides, until The Big One hits, every cop I know also carries a cell phone….duh!

Oh, wait:  I forgot – this is the Security State and we need to have mess networks so we can…er….uh….spy better…yeah, dats it!

Grappling With GridEx

We’ve been scanning through emails for reasonable/balanced thinking on this week’s GridEx exercise, which on Wednesday and Thursday will try to figure out what could take the power down up in the Northeast.  Reader Andy’s view is as good as any:

Although I haven’t seen the fear-mongering emails that you mentioned in Urban Survival recently, I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility of something nefarious happening during the timeframe of the exercise (Nov. 13-14), or even a day or two before.  History has shown that false-flag events can sometimes occur temporally coincident with planned gov’t exercises.  It’s also worth noting that some current and former government officials, as well as some scientists such as Michio Kaku, have been warning about the power grid going down, due to various causes (solar flare, man-made EMP, or cyber attack by a rogue nation, etc.).  See, for example, these threads on the MoA forum:

http://www.themistsofavalon.net/t6734-100-chance-of-a-severe-geo-magnetic-event-capable-of-crippling-our-electric-grid

http://www.themistsofavalon.net/t6828-power-grid-down-drill-to-be-conducted-by-us-government-on-nov-13th-14th

To be sure, the white hats will try to prevent adverse scenarios from developing, but it is advisable, in my view, to be vigilant and prepared, nonetheless.  Just my 2 cents.

I’ll see that and raise a dime… A reasonable outlook – expect nothing but be prepared for anything

One thing that may figure into the “exercise” timeframe will be the arrival of energy from a recent solar event, as outlined in this from the Solar Influences Data Center:

The X1.1 flare of November 10 was accompanied by a full halo CME first appearing in the SOHO/LASCO C2 field of view at 05:36 UT. The CME speed was around 800 km/s, and the bulk of the material was propagating southward of the ecliptic plane. We expect a non-central encounter of the Earth with the resulting interplanetary disturbance, probably only with the ICME-driven shock wave, late on November 13. Active to minor geomagnetic storm conditions may occur.

Got to admit the timing is curious.  Meanwhile, there’s a lot of talk percolating around on the net about how Europe could have big outages this winter, too.  Just a heck of a lot of power talk.

I should mention that the local power company up in the San Juan Islands got the Internet back up for the 15-20-thousand people who lost CenturyLink internet connectivity on the 5th (due to a quake/undersea land movement?). Kudos to the Orcas Power and Light Co-op for ‘getting ‘er done’.

My friend Gaye of www.backdoorsurvival.com was inconvenienced, but the website never missed a beat (except for a brief downtime at the onset) which is how things are supposed to work out.

Model Airplane Alert

If you’ve gotten into R/C planes and think there may be something of a future to it, you’ll be thrilled to note that 87-countries are now said to have drones.  And, it’s something the CIA is keeping an eye on.  Apparently, there are lots of bad things that can be done with drones and care to guess which country pioneered most all of them?

Hey! Hold on a minute…

I just realized that since this is half a day off….I shouldn’t be writing so much.  So I’ll shut up until tomorrow.  Unless something really earthshaking happens.