On Recognizing Jerusalem As The Capital Of Israel

I see the Arabs and Europeans are denouncing our recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, claiming it will affect peace negotiations. A problem I have with that assertion is that I don’t think the Arabs have ever negotiated in good faith, nor do they intend to do so. Ever.

If you haven’t read the Hamas Covenant of 1988, still in effect, doing so may enlighten you. The Covenant states that Hamas exists for the purpose of wiping Israel from the face of the earth and exterminating the Jews. Their founding document says so in as many words. They also plan on retaking all the lands once taken by the sword. Read Spain and Eastern Europe. They also plan on extending sharia to the rest of the world: again, they say so in as many words, Angela Merkel, et al.

Quote: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it"

Quote: “This Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (HAMAS), clarifies its picture, reveals its identity, outlines its stand, explains its aims, speaks about its hopes, and calls for its support, adoption and joining its ranks. Our struggle against the Jews...is a step that inevitably should be followed by other steps. The Movement is but one squadron that should be supported by more and more squadrons from this vast Arab and Islamic world, until the enemy is vanquished and Allah's victory is realised.”

Quote: “The Islamic Resistance Movement is a distinguished Palestinian movement, whose allegiance is to Allah, and whose way of life is Islam. It strives to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine”. Doesn’t sound like they intend to leave a lot of room for Israel. At least not to me it doesn’t.

Quote: “The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.” So kill the Jews or else.

Quote: “The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. ...

This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.”

I hope you’ll pardon me for thinking that Hamas has no intention whatsoever of leaving Israel in existence. Nor the Iberian Peninsula as a non-Muslim land. Nor Eastern Europe. Hi Angela Merkel, et al.

Quote: “Any procedure in contradiction to Islamic Sharia, where Palestine is concerned, is null and void.” No negotiating in good faith for the continued existence of Israel. Or Europe.

Quote: “Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the cse when an enemy should tread Moslem land. Resisting and quelling the enemy become the individual duty of every Moslem, male or female.” Remember: Spain and Eastern Europe are Muslim land, folks. Once conquered, always consecrated. Just like Israel.

Quote: “There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.”

Aka negotiating in good faith is a waste of time.

Quote: “The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.”

Moslem land: all of Israel, all of Iberia, all of Eastern Europe, and eventually all of the world, Angela Merkel.

There is lots more, but if you read this far you probably get the idea: there never was and never will be any negotiating in good faith. They intend to not merely exterminate Israel but retake all parts of Europe once under their control, and to extend that control to the entire world.

So the assertion that our recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel will impede negotiation is a joke upon the credulous, Angela et al.

You can find the entire Hamas Covenant at the site of the Yale Law School Library. HERE.

8 U.S. Code § 1182 - Inadmissible aliens

Yes, President Trump DOES have the legal authority to stop people coming in from other countries. Any people, all people, any country, all countries.

That pesky 8 U.S. Code § 1182 - Inadmissible aliens
"(f) Suspension of entry or imposition of restrictions by President.
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. Whenever the Attorney General finds that a commercial airline has failed to comply with regulations of the Attorney General relating to requirements of airlines for the detection of fraudulent documents used by passengers traveling to the United States (including the training of personnel in such detection), the Attorney General may suspend the entry of some or all aliens transported to the United States by such airline."
This is not a new law: It was enacted in 1952. IIRC, Jimmy Carter used pesky 8 U.S. Code § 1182 (f) to prohibit the entry of certain Iranians aka "any class of aliens", and to track down some lranians aka "any class of aliens" already here legally and deport them.

Source

Barack Obama: Manchurian Candidate

Once upon a time I accepted that, as Barack Obama's supporters claimed, he was exceptionally bright, highly educated, highly informed, and that I merely disagreed to a polar degree with almost everything he said.

Given that I still accept he is bright, highly educated, and well-informed, I cannot cut him any slack for being stupid or ignorant, but given his actions over more than 7 years, I now accept that he is and always has been working for the other side.

Red Diaper Baby? Yes.
Had a Communist Party of Hawaii mentor in high school? Yes.
Introduced to the political community by bomb building revolutionary communists? Yes.
Spent 20 years in the church of a man who shouts "God DAMN America"? Yes.
Describes his grandmother as "a typical white person"? Yes.
Before he has any reliable information, claims "The police acted stupidly"? Yes.
Told all American entrepreneurs: "You didn't build that"? Yes.
Suggested we would be a better country if Henry Ford through Bill Gates had quit work when they had amassed several million dollars, and devoted their lives to community organizing? Yes.
Turned Iraq over to ISIS? Yes.
Allowed ISIS to take over large swaths of Syria and Libya? Yes.
Allowed ISIS to capture enormous quantities of US military gear? Yes.
Condemns Christians for the Crusades? Yes.
Demands we allow ever more Muslims into the country? Yes.
Sent guns to the Mexican Drug Cartel, some at taxpayer expense? Yes.
Turned over $150 billion to the world's biggest sponsor of terrorism? Yes.
Looks at Muslim Supremacist slaughter across the country and demands we disarm all potential victims? Yes.

What does it take to break through our denial of what the man is: An anti-American, pro-Islamist, Manchurian Candidate?

Barack Obama is working for the other side.

“Less Hamas, more hummus”

It was ‘very poorly received’ in Beirut, he concludes.

Some people don't have much of a sense of humor, I guess, unless they think burning people alive, raping them, or cutting off their heads is just plain funny.

The rest is predictable, from the Muslim faction known as the Religion of Peace or I'll Kill You:

A French street artist was severely beaten up in Paris after refusing to remove a work of art calling for coexistence between Islam, Judaism and Christianity.

Street artist Combo was physically assaulted in eastern Paris on Saturday after refusing to take down one of his artworks, French newspaper Le Monde reported.

On a wall in the Porte Dorée neighbourhood, the 28-year-old put up a picture of himself wearing a djellaba (a full bodied outer robe common in Arabic-speaking countries) and then painted the word “co-exist” next to it, replacing the “c” with the Islamic crescent, the “x” with the Star of David, and the “t” with the Christian cross.

Four men approached the artist and insulted him, demanding that he remove the painting. The artist wrote on his Facebook page that when he refused to comply, all four of them beat him up severely, leaving him with a dislocated shoulder and bruises.

More here.

BTW: Making it illegal to carry weapons, for practical purposes puts the government -any government which does so- squarely on the side of the criminals. Disarming the victims while being unable or unwilling to arrest and lock up criminals who attack the decent members of society is unequivocally pro-criminal.

Marine Le Pen, in the New York Times

Pigs Soar: The New York Times published an opinion piece by Marine Le Pen.

I continue to be baffled by the use of the term Right Wing, both here and in Europe. It is applied to Nazis, who were socialists, and to Libertarians, who are Classical Liberals. A term which includes both genocidal proponents of big government and proponents of small government which protects people's rights hardly seems like a useful term, except as one of abuse for "people with whom I disagree".

Any thoughts on that?

Jimmy Carter On The Charlie Hebdo Slaughter

Mr. Carter was on Jon Stewart's comedy show:

...former President Jimmy Carter asserted that the recent violence in France could be attributed to the failure to reach a solution to the Palestinian problem and the terror attacks are a reflection of and a reaction to how Arabs are treated in Israel. He also blamed unemployment in Islamic countries....

His formula, he said, is for Israel to give up the West Bank, Gaza and Jerusalem and for the Palestinians to promise Israel security.t (sic) should be noted that the terrorists who perpetrated both of the attacks had absolutely no connection with Palestinian organizations, nor did they express any outrage towards Israel.

In light of Mr. Carter’s comments, it might also be noteworthy that he turned ninety-years old last October.

Of course, Jimmy Carter also has said Hamas should be recognized as 'legitimate': :

Former president and international peace activist Jimmy Carter is urging the U.S. government to recognize Hamas as a “legitimate political actor”

Just why is such a position an obscenity? Why does his position put Jimmy Carter squarely on the side of anti-Jewish genocide? Because the genocide of the Jews is exactly the stated purpose for the existence of Hamas.

Think I'm a nut case? Of course you do. How could Hamas be in favor, much less dedicated to, genocide? How could Jimmy Carter call them 'legitimate'?

Read the Hamas Covenant, available at the web site of the Yale University Law School Library, and then tell me I'm a nut. Until you have read Hamas' founding document, which is still in effect, you might think they are legitimate.

And that is exactly what genocidal anti-Semites want you to think.

Hi, Jimmy.

PS: My comments on excerpts from the Hamas Covenant are here.

Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers Applauded By The Canadian House of Commons

The Pincushion Man Cartoon

I remember watching this on an old 8mm film down in our basement when I was little.

ISIL Infiltrating The US Across The Southern Border?

Thanks to the federal government, it would soooooo difficult.

A senior Homeland Security (DHS) official confirmed to Congress on Wednesday that militants associated with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) are planning to enter the United States via the porous southern border.

A bit more here.

I have trouble believing they are not already here.

Historian William Forstchen, author of "One Second After" has a new novella out about the consequences of ISIL infiltrating the country. "Day of Wrath" is all too believable.

Mitt Romney On The Disruption Of Trade Routes

Mitt Romney has an opinion column in the Washington Post, in which he advocates for a stong US military force, in part because:

The history of the 20th century teaches that power-hungry tyrants ultimately feast on the appeasers — to use former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour’s phrase, we would be paying the cannibals to eat us last. And in the meantime, our economy would be devastated by the disruption of trade routes, the turmoil in global markets and the tumult of conflict across the world.

Funny that disrupting trade routes is a point I hardly ever see, but it has been an issue ever since the Muslims cut off European trade routes to the East, leading to Europeans exploring both the west coast of Africa to find a new route to the Indies, and Columbus searching for new routes by sailing west. The Soviets targeted specific places for revolution, like South Africa because it controlled the trade and naval route around the Horn of Africa, and Kenya and others which could close the Suez Canal route and the Persian Gulf.

The great farm houses designed by Andrea Palladio in the 16th century were built for Venetian merchants who saw their trade routes through Turkey about to be cut off, so they bought swamp land, drained it, and replaced their trading income with agricultural income. The rise of European power and agriculture in Malta and later in the West Indies and Brazil were a direct response to the Muslim conquest of the Middle East, where Europeans had had huge sugar plantations.

Funny how disrupting trade routes can have world wide effects which last for centuries.

David Cameron On MultiCulturalism

OK, can any of you who are not doing serious mind-altering drugs imagine President Barack Obama saying anything like this?:

We cannot stand by and allow our openness to be confused with a tolerance of extremism, or one that encourages different cultures to live separate lives and allows people to behave in ways that run completely counter to our values. Adhering to British values is not an option or a choice, it is a duty for those who live in these islands, and in the end, it is only by standing up for these values that we will defeat this extremism, protect our way of life, and keep all our people safe.

Unless, of course, President Obama were to be referring to Republicans or Tea Partiers.

In the Land of the Formerly Free, Stay Away From Bagpipes

Mark Steyn's column reminds me of this quote from a now-dead radical:

“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
― H.L. Mencken, Prejudices: First Series

Be that as it may, Steyn has this:

My fellow Granite Staters - 17-year-old Campbell Webster and Eryk Bean, of Concord and Londonderry, New Hampshire - understood that if you go to a highland fling a couple of hours north in Quebec you're now obligated to get your bagpipes approved by US Fish & Wildlife.

Because that's just the way it is in the Land of the Free.

So Messrs Webster and Bean got their CITES certificate and presented it to the US CBP agent at the Vermont border crossing.

Whereupon he promptly confiscated their bagpipes on the grounds that, yes, their US Fish & Wildlife CITES paperwork was valid, but it's only valid at 28 ports of entry and this wasn't one of them.

Nor is any other US/Canadian land crossing. So, if you're a piper in, say, Pittsburg, New Hampshire and you want to play in a competition in La Patrie, Quebec 20 minutes north, you have to drive four-to-five hours south to Logan Airport in Boston, fly to Montreal and drive two hours east to La Patrie.

It gets worse.

More here.

As you may note from the labels I have attached to this, I do believe we live in a police state, I do believe that our government is engaging in terrorism against our fellow citizens, and I do believe that such government rulers are in fact committing treason.

They all deserve fair trials and long prison sentences. I shant hold my breath.

Belgian Nuclear Power Plant Sabotage

According to this Reuters report, the sabotage was not to the nuclear portion of the facility, may have been committed by an insider, and appears serious enough to take the facility offline until the end of the year.

Electrabel said on Thursday the Doel 4 reactor had shut automatically on Aug. 5 following an oil leak in its steam turbine in the non-nuclear part of the plant. The firm said the leak had caused major damage to the turbine's high-pressure section.

"Based on this partial analysis, Doel 4 will certainly not be available before Dec. 31, 2014," Electrabel said....

Energy experts have raised the spectre of possible blackouts this winter...

Nothing like winter blackouts to make them more dependent on foreign countries.

In Their Own Words: Excerpts From The Hamas Covenant of 1988

The Yale Law School has a translation of the Hamas Charter, aka the Hamas Covenant. It's pretty interesting. You can find the complete thing here.

Article Seven:...the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah's promise, no matter how long that should take. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, has said:

"The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.

So Hamas aspires to realize Allah's promise that once the Muslims kill all the Jews, the Day of Judgement shall come about? That sounds remarkably like proposing genocide. Or am I missing something here? Hamas did, after all, choose this specific saying to put in their covenant.

Article Eleven:

...This is the law governing the land of Palestine in the Islamic Sharia (law) and the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.

So, am I to take it that Spain and all of that part of Eastern Europe once conquered by the Religion of Peace remains consecrated to Islam, and must fall again to the swords of the conquerors?

Article Twelve:

Nationalism, from the point of view of the Islamic Resistance Movement, is part of the religious creed. Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land. Resisting and quelling the enemy become the individual duty of every Moslem, male or female. A woman can go out to fight the enemy without her husband's permission, and so does the slave: without his master's permission.

Sounds like Spain and Eastern Europe are in trouble...I mean, scheduled for liberation. If I read this correctly, the mere fact of their being non-Muslim in once Muslim lands makes the inhabitants enemies.

Article Thirteen:

Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. "Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know."

Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards Moslem problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realising the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed. These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbitraters. When did the infidels do justice to the believers?

"But the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians, until thou follow their religion; say, The direction of Allah is the true direction...There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors. The Palestinian people know better than to consent to having their future, rights and fate toyed with.

So much for peaceful solutions.

It strikes me that Hamas finds it unacceptable that Jews or Christians will "not be pleased" until all convert, but that these Islamists will not be pleased until Jews and Christians convert to Islam.

Article Fourteen:

... liberation of Palestine is then an individual duty for very Moslem wherever he may be. On this basis, the problem should be viewed. This should be realised by every Moslem.

That sounds like "Israel Must Be Eliminated."

Article Fifteen:

The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem.

There goes Iberia. And Eastern Europe.

Article Seventeen:...

The enemies (give) these attempts constant attention through information campaigns, films, and the school curriculum, using for that purpose their lackeys who are infiltrated through Zionist organizations under various names and shapes, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, espionage groups and others, which are all nothing more than cells of subversion and saboteurs. These organizations have ample resources that enable them to play their role in societies for the purpose of achieving the Zionist targets and to deepen the concepts that would serve the enemy. These organizations operate in the absence of Islam and its estrangement among its people. The Islamic peoples should perform their role in confronting the conspiracies of these saboteurs. The day Islam is in control of guiding the affairs of life, these organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated.

Freemasons and Rotary Clubs: Lackeys of Zionism. They will be obliterated.

Article Twenty-Two:

For a long time, the enemies have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained....With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others....They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.

...They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.

The Joos are always to blame. They instigated World War Two to make a profit. I guess they installed Hitler to turn a profit. How well did that work out for them? Could it be that the Joos aren't so all powerful? Oh, wait: the Holocaust never happened. I do wonder what happened to those 6,000,000 or so who stopped collecting their bank dividends, though.

Article Twenty-Four:

The Islamic Resistance Movement does not allow slandering or speaking ill of individuals or groups, for the believer does not indulge in such malpractices.

Except of course Jews, and Christians, and Hindus, and some others.

Article Twenty-Seven:

The Palestinian Liberation Organization...Because of the situations surrounding the formation of the Organization, of the ideological confusion prevailing in the Arab world as a result of the ideological invasion under whose influence the Arab world has fallen since the defeat of the Crusaders and which was, and still is, intensified through orientalists, missionaries and imperialists, the Organization adopted the idea of the secular state. And that it how we view it.

Secularism completely contradicts religious ideology. Attitudes, conduct and decisions stem from ideologies.

That is why...we are unable to exchange the present or future Islamic Palestine with the secular idea. The Islamic nature of Palestine is part of our religion and whoever takes his religion lightly is a loser....

The day The Palestinian Liberation Organization adopts Islam as its way of life, we will become its soldiers...

So: the PLO: Ideological wimp sell-outs to Western secular infiltrationists. Glad to get that clarified.

Article Twenty-Eight:

The Zionist invasion is a vicious invasion. It does not refrain from resorting to all methods, using all evil and contemptible ways to achieve its end. It relies greatly in its infiltration and espionage operations on the secret organizations it gave rise to, such as the Freemasons, The Rotary and Lions clubs, and other sabotage groups. All these organizations, whether secret or open, work in the interest of Zionism and according to its instructions. They aim at undermining societies, destroying values, corrupting consciences, deteriorating character and annihilating Islam. It is behind the drug trade and alcoholism in all its kinds so as to facilitate its control and expansion.

I had no idea the Freemasons, The Rotary and Lions clubs were all Zionist stooges. And drug dealers to boot.

Article Thirty-One:

The Islamic Resistance Movement...care of human rights and is guided by Islamic tolerance when dealing with the followers of other religions....

Under the wing of Islam, it is possible for the followers of the three religions - Islam, Christianity and Judaism - to coexist in peace and quiet with each other....
It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region

OK, so we can be at peace, if we would only just submit. Sort of like good slaves submitting to the yoke. Accept that Islam is the Master, and the heathens will be accepted. As inferiors.

Article Thirty-two...

The Zionist plan is limitless. After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the "Protocols of the Elders of Zion"

The Protocols. Check!

The Zionist plan is limitless, unlike the Islamist plan.

Oh, wait...

But not too long.

I wonder what John Kerry, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama would say if pressed for their opinions about the Hamas Covenant.

Recreating the 1918 Flu: What Could Go Wrong?

In real life, maybe nothing. In apocalypse fiction: Oh, oh...

An international team of researchers led by a University of Wisconsin-Madison scientist created a life-threatening virus in a high-containment lab in Madison nearly identical to the 1918 "Spanish flu" pandemic that killed a staggering 50 million people worldwide, according to an article published Wednesday in a major science journal.

The controversial research, intended to show that bird flu viruses currently circulating in nature have the same potential for pandemic, is drawing sharp criticism around the world as highly risky.

Some people in apparently responsible positions really don't sound sanguine:

"The work they are doing is absolutely crazy," Lord May, the United Kingdom's former chief science adviser, told the Guardian this week. "The whole thing is exceedingly dangerous. Yes, there is a danger, but it's not arising from the viruses out there in the animals, it's arising from the labs of grossly ambitious people."

A virologist at the renowned Pasteur Institute in Paris referred to it as "madness, folly."

"It shows profound lack of respect for the collective decision-making process we've always shown in fighting infections, Simon Wain-Hobson told the Guardian. "If society, the intelligent lay-person, understood what was going on, they would say, 'What the F are you doing?'"

Well, then. I guess I'm glad we have a small stock of N95 face masks.

LA Times on a Recent Coronal Mass Ejection AKA a Carrington Event

It could have been Deep Kim Chee time if it had taken place a bit over a week earlier: It would have hit Earth and done trillions of dollars damage, plunging much of Earth into darkness.

Earth barely missed the "perfect solar storm" that could have smashed into our magnetic field and wreaked havoc with our satellite systems, electronics and power systems, potentially causing trillions of dollars in damage, according to data from NASA’s STEREO-A spacecraft...

...according to a study in the journal Nature Communications....It's a good thing this incredible blast wasn't pointed at us, scientists said....

"This record solar wind speed and magnetic field would have generated the most severe geomagnetic storm since the beginning of the space era, if the event had hit the Earth," the study authors wrote."...

If the solar onslaught had occurred just nine days earlier, it would have rivaled the 1859 Carrington event, a solar storm that zapped the telegraph system, delivering shocks to telegraph operators, and triggering aurorae -- a typically polar light show in the sky -- as close to the equator as Hawaii and the Caribbean. Today, such a storm would have caused far more damage in our now highly wired world, utterly dependent on electronics. (As further comparison, a much weaker geomagnetic storm in 1989 caused Quebec’s power grid to fail.)

More in the LA Times here. You can find a Lloyd's report, "SOLAR STORM RISK TO THE NORTH AMERICAN ELECTRIC GRID" here. There is another article, with many hard to see dark blue text links here.

Possibly it is time to crawl under the staircase, curl up in a ball,and suck one's thumb.

Or be at least somewhat prepared for a variety of issues, some of which are not hugely probable but pretty nasty if the do occur.

Stanford University Metadata Study: Lots of Personal Information Revealed

Jonathan Mayer, a graduate student leading the project, wrote...

“We did not anticipate finding much evidence one way or the other, however, since the MetaPhone participant population is small, and participants only provide a few months of phone activity on average. We were wrong. We found that phone metadata is unambiguously sensitive, even in a small population and over a short time window. We were able to infer medical conditions, firearm ownership, and more, using solely phone metadata.”

The 'more" include a likely abortion, preparations to grow illegal drugs, and relapsing multiple sclerosis.

Indiana University law professor Fred Cate is quoted as saying of the study:

“It highlights three key points. First, that the key part of the NSA’s argument—we weren’t collecting sensitive information so what is the bother?—is factually wrong. Second, that the NSA and the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] Court failed to think this through; after all, it only takes a little common sense to realize that sweeping up all numbers called will inevitably reveal sensitive information. Of course the record of every call made and received is going to implicate privacy. And third, it lays bare the fallacy of the Supreme Court’s mind-numbingly broad wording of the third-party doctrine in an age of big data: just because I reveal data for one purpose—to make a phone call—does not mean that I have no legitimate interest in that information, especially when combined with other data points about me.”

More here, here, and here.

My question: If large amounts of sensitive data are not revealed by metadata searches, why would the NSA perform metadata searches?

Emily Miller on Pro-Gun Police

Ronald Noble, Interpol’s secretary-general, made a surprisingly honest statement last October about the horrific multiday terrorist attack at a shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya.
“Ask yourself: If that was Denver, Colorado, if that was Texas, would those guys have been able to spend hours, days, shooting people randomly?”...

...(I)t was a tectonic shift in the gun rights movement when Detroit Police Chief James Craig said in January that legal gun owners can deter violent crime and that people with concealed-carry permits contributed to crime going down in his city last year.

Chief Craig spent almost 30 years in the Los Angeles Police Department, where he was indoctrinated with the belief that taking guns away from good people was the answer to crime.
His beliefs shifted, though, after becoming chief of police in Portland, Me., where the number of carry permit holders was high and crime was extremely low.

More here.

ABC News has more on Secretary-General Noble's comments here. I have seen very little follow up on it though.

Innocent Iranian Grad Student...

...burns himself making Molotov Cocktails in Georgia.

Media pretty much ignores. At least compared to a Tea Party supporter doing the same.

I have little idea how old this guy is, but most of us got past recreational Molotov Cocktails by the time we hit 8th grade.

He's a grad student, tho, so maybe he's socially stunted.

EMP Effects On Automobiles

If you are interested in this fairly esoteric subject, clik here.