Catastrophe Alert

daveOS

Jedi
I'm completely unqualified to represent anything about Astrology but I stumbled across the "Global Catastrophe Alert" article (reproduced below) in a couple of places that are giving it serious consideration, and with all of the details it provides it seems pretty well qualified. Additionally, Gordon Duff of Veterans Today posted an analysis today subtitled "Israel To Use Iranian and Pakistani Dupes in Dirty Nuke Ploy" which when considered in tandem to this "Global Catastrophe Alert" article makes for some serious thinking about what my plans might be this Friday. Perhaps folks more knowledgeable than I will be able to debunk. (Just posting the link to Duff's analysis, but reproducing the full article on the astrological analysis of pending catastrophe).


FALSE FLAG NUKE ATTACK ON U.S. JUSTIFIED….”KING TORAH”
ISRAEL TO USE IRANIAN AND PAKISTANI DUPES IN DIRTY NUKE PLOY

_http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/08/02/gordon-duff-false-flag-nuke-attack-on-u-s-justified-king-torah/



=================
Global Catastrophe Alert...
By: Clive Maund | Sat, Jul 31, 2010


Originally published July 25th, 2010.

We don't normally mention Astrology on _http://www.clivemaund.com because although Clive Maund has a good working knowledge of Astrology and has used it for many years in his personal life and found it most helpful, applying it to markets is another ball game and requires a special talent. So we have stuck to Technical Analysis and left applying Astrology to the markets to others. However, the planetary alignment that is set to reach maximum intensity during the next two weeks is of such immense power and has such major implications, that we would be foolish to ignore it. To those reading this who would scoff at applying Astrology to the markets and world affairs I would merely point out two undeniable facts. One is that the widely known Arch Crawford, who uses Astrology extensively amongst other tools to make his predictions in his Crawford Perspectives, was ranked #1 Stock Market Timer for the period October 1 2007 through October 31, 2009, and you don't do that by coincidence. Secondly, many seriously wealthy people, who are above and beyond peer group pressure and don't have to give a damn what other people think, openly use Astrology in their lives. In addition the Royal Bank of Scotland produced a 12-page report on Astrology and the markets early this month, but laughably tried to apologise for doing so at the same time by giving the article the cringing title "Sheer Lunacy staring at the Heavens". Companies are of course subject to peer group pressure big time. That's enough justification - we will shortly proceed to examine exactly what is going on, but first a very quick lesson in the most important planetary harmonics, even the most basic understanding of which will give you a glimpse of the enormity of what is going on.

In Astrology the most disharmonious and stressful aspects between planets are the square (90 degree aspect) and the opposition (180 degree aspect), while the most harmonious and flowing aspects are the trine (120 degree aspect) and the sextile (60 degree aspect) which in degrees is half a Trine. The reason that the trine is so harmonious is that it normally connects signs that are of the same element, as the 3 signs associated with each of the 4 elements of Fire, Earth, Air and Water are naturally separated by 120 degrees, for example the Fire sign Aries is separated from the Fire sign Leo and the Fire sign Sagittarius, in the opposite direction, by 120 degrees. Persons born with a lot of squares and oppositions in their horoscopic charts start life with "a bad hand" and usually face a long struggle to attain inner harmony and success in life, while those born with a lot of trines and sextiles in their charts lead lives of relative ease and privilege. These planetary aspects also have a macro effect on the world at large, determining the destiny of countries and economies etc and also correlate with natural disasters and wars. While it is tempting to label the stressful aspects as "bad", particularly if you feel that you have been getting the "rough end of the stick", in developmental terms they are necessary. Just as we know that pain is necessary to prevent us causing inadvertent damage to our bodies, times of stress and crisis are necessary to bring about needed changes that would not otherwise occur. There are millions and millions of people who would not lift themselves out of their comfy armchairs at all, were it not for the need to earn the money to pay the bills to prevent the ever threatening extreme stress that would be caused by not being able to buy food and having the utilities such as electricity cut off. Take a good look around any city center on a weekday morning - it doesn't take much to figure out what motivates people. We will now take a look at a visual representation of the principal harmonious and stressful aspects that fall within the circle representing the heavens.

The two pictures below show the most complete and extreme harmonious and stressful harmonics respectively that are possible. The first picture shows what is called a Grand Triangle or Grand Trine, which is made up of a series of trines spanning the heavens. The second picture shows the Grand Square or Grand Cross, which is made up instead of a series of 4 square aspects spanning the heavens, which of course involves 2 oppositions at 90 degrees to each other. In both of these pictures the more planets that are involved and the closer the aspects between them, the stronger the pattern and the more powerful the energy involved.

17678_a.png


Grand Trine and Grand Cross

Now here's where it gets really interesting. If you understand that the Grand Cross represents a blocked energy pattern that is characterized by extreme disharmony, discord, opposition, and stress, all of which are of course a breeding ground for conflict, then you at once grasp the immensely powerful symbolism of the Christian cross, which is associated with the suffering of Christ, and you also comprehend the horrific negativity of the Nazi Swastika made up of a cross with tails, made more ominous by its thick black lines and the surround of blood red. This was a flag which dripped evil and just by itself revealed the intentions of the regime which spawned it and went on to create carnage.

What was Neville Chamberlain (the British Prime Minister before the 2nd World War) thinking? - did he really believe he could make a "gentleman's agreement" with a regime that had a flag like this? ...

17678_b.png


Nazi Swastika

Even to the most objective and unbiased observer this flag is a disturbing sight, and with good reason. In addition to the threatening heavy black lines and blood red, the Swastika is derived from the most negative of astrological patterns, the Grand Cross, which as we have observed above is a pattern of maximum stress and conflict. This flag meant trouble and signified a regime that could only be stopped by one thing - force.

At the other end of the scale we have the 6-pointed star, the Star of David (see below), which represents pure harmony, being as it is two Grand Trines overlaid, whose points make a chain of harmonious sextiles (60 degrees) around the circle. Very few people alive truly grasp just how positive this star is. Please note here that this observation is wholly apolitical - I am commenting here solely on the geometry and astrological symbolism of the the 6-pointed star, not on the actions or politics of the Jewish state.

17678_c.png


Star of David

As a fine example of the beneficence and harmony of the Grand Trine finding expression in the life of an individual, we have the English singer Robbie Williams, whose chart (just showing the planets involved in the Trine) is shown below. Robbie could barely comprehend his meteoric rise to stardom and once said with incredulity "I'm rich beyond my wildest dreams" - it sure helps to have fate on your side. For a bit of light relief after reading this, here is a song by Robbie.

17678_d.png


Robbie Williams Chart

Likewise, Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones has many trines and sextiles in his birth chart although not a Grand Trine. He has a Sun-Jupiter-Pluto conjunction on his Ascendant conferring charisma, fortune (Jupiter) and power (Pluto). A young female reader of the UK Sun newspaper recently commented, somewhat uncharitably, that Jagger "looks like a walking corpse", but if you had packed at least 100 times as much into your life as most people experience, would you really expect not to look a bit weathered??

The reason that stars become stars is that they "constellate an archetype" and provide something for people to aspire to and look up to. Prominent people in all walks of life generally have these beneficent aspects in their horoscopes, although there are often more difficult aspects in their charts too that provide the motivation to succeed - if there were only these harmonious aspects they would probably lounge about and do nothing. The writer's own brother, who has a Grand Trine in his horoscope, is a prominent businessman in the UK. Olders readers will recall "Tricky Dicky" Richard Nixon, a President in the US in the early 70's who resorted to subterfuge in an effort to assist his reelection chances - he got caught out and impeached. Nixon had a stressful opposition from Neptune to the Sun on his chart, which gave him a tendency to be a deceptive S.O.B. but as leading US astrologer Robert Hand pointed out "I feel that Nixon was sincere in denying that he was a crook, that is, he did not see himself as one".

Alright, so what have we got coming up in the sky right now? - this is what we have got...

17678_e.png


Cardinal Climax August 6, 2010

The chart is for the 6th August this year when the planetary aspects are at their tightest and the moon swings into position to complete a Grand Cross pattern. Note, however, that the fast moving moon makes a fleeting appearance in this pattern, what really matters is the "T-square" part of the pattern involving many planets in the early degrees of Cardinal signs, as of course when the moon is not involved the point of the pattern completing the Grand Cross is missing. These aspects are starting to come into effect in a big way this coming week and will intensify until their early August peak. Because this pattern is forming in the very early degrees of what are called Cardinal signs, starting with the Jupiter - Uranus conjunction around the start of the zodiac circle at the beginning of Aries, it is known as the Cardinal Climax, and its significance is amplified. It is very important to understand that such configurations are EXTREMELY RARE EVENTS - according to Crawford, it is most powerful aspect in Earth's written history. Note that not everything can be explained here, as I am trying to write an article, not a book.

So, what does this extremely tight and tense astrological configuration mean for the world? In interpreting this pattern it helps to understand that disharmonious aspects to planets can bring about the following negative manifestations - Mars: aggression, conflict and war, Jupiter: inflation and excess, overreaching, Saturn: authoritarianism, austerity, privation, poverty, Uranus: sudden developments, revolution and anarchy, Pluto: chaos and mass destruction leading to fundamental transformation. All of these planets are involved in this tight grouping, and for clarity planets that are not involved in it are not shown, which includes the Sun. Looking around at the world today we have a number of threatening disasters or catastrophes. One possibility is that Israel or the US could attack Iran, although this looks more likely to happen later. They would like to do this but are scared of the consequences and the US is spread thin militarily with its occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, but on the other hand it would be a good way to get unthinking people to rally round the flag and forget their economic woes. With regard to the natural world major earthquakes and flooding and other natural disasters would also be typical manifestations. Finally this terrible configuration hardly augers well for the stockmarket, which could crash with very little warning, and it is certainly in position to do so. The fortunes of the Precious Metals depend on what disaster or combination of disasters manifests - for example an attack on Iran would be expected to drive them higher, whereas a self-feeding stockmarket crash would probably take them lower in the absence of such an attack.

Do the negative implications of this extreme planetary configuration have to manifest immediately? Not necessarily, although they probably will, but there could be some time lag. For example Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in July - August 1990, between a solar and lunar eclipse and just before an extremely malefic Grand Cross in the heavens in fixed signs, see lunar eclipse chart below, but was not kicked out until the next pair of eclipses 6 months later, in Operation Desert Storm. The symbolism of this Grand Cross could not be more apt, with Mars, the god of war, and Pluto standing for catharsis and mass destruction being involved - six months later Saddam Hussein's army was humiliated and sent packing and the Kuwaiti oil fields were set ablaze.

The following pattern, which shows a lunar eclipse squared by a Mars - Pluto opposition, symbolizing violence and destruction, appeared in the sky at the time Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait...

17678_f.png


Kuwait Invasion Chart

...and led to apocalyptic scenes at the next pair of eclipses 6 months later...

17678_g.jpg


Kuwait War Fires

We have seen that periods of stress and strife are inevitable - they are built into the clockwork of the heavens and are thus unavoidable - yet it is these times of crisis that provide the motivation and the necessity to set things straight or to make needed changes. For example, the Apollo 1 disaster in the 60's in which 3 astronauts died in a fire at the top of a spacecraft resulted in a radical safety overhaul that may well have prevented a much more serious accident during the moon missions, just recently the Gulf oil disaster has exposed grave shortcomings that will result in a dramatic tightening up of safety and security on drilling platforms, A much more extreme example is the Second World War which vented a tremendous amount of negativity and thus ushered in the long period of relative peace and prosperity that lasted for decades. Earthquakes are described as disasters, as if they are negative, but the main reason that people suffer from them is that they insist on building flimsy dangerous structures in known earthquake zones - the earth is not responsible, it is just "doing its thing", and in fact the same of true of all so-called natural disasters - much of the misery resulting from flooding is the result of stupid selfish humans chopping down the forests which naturally hold much more water, thus exposing themselves to massive runoff and landslides. Nature itself is fully adjusted to these natural "disasters", which is why palm trees can bend to the ground and have slatted leaves. The main reason for the massive fires in Yellowstone National Park in 1988 was that the authorities put out the regular small fires started by lightning, instead of letting them run their course. The result was a disastrous build up of dead dry underbrush. They made the same mistake of interfering with nature in Australia, where in fact fires are necessary to trigger germination of some Eucalypyus trees, and the result was massive devastating fires. In recent years we have seen the same kind of dangerous meddling in natural economic cycles by the likes of Greenspan and the US Fed and Treasury - N.B. - if you read all of this article on Greespan, you probably have serious time management issues. They decided that recessions are politically undesirable and unwelcome, so they obstructed them with their "financial engineering", and while they have succeeded in stopping them up to now, the distortions and excesses that these recessions would have cleansed from the system have now snowballed into an unstoppable monster which is bearing down on the financial system. Even at this 11th hour, people have been duped into thinking that they are are going to be able to continue playing the same old game of keeping the system limping along by creating more money, monetizing bonds and suppressing interest rates etc. We are now thought to have arrived at the point where this isn't going to work any more - the forces of deflation (for which read a long series of impeded natural recessions) have built up a massive head of steam, and all the averted past recessions, like the one that should have happened in 2003-4, are going to suddenly turn up on the doorstep, rolled into one. What the world needs now is an economic depression, not for the widespread suffering and privation that it will cause, but to cleanse the world of debt, which has become a massive millstone and drag at all levels of society, personal, corporate and State. This contraction will also serve to rid the system of distortions, and strip out the parasitic elements that have bred like flies in this cesspool of debt, especially the peddlers of debt and derivatives, and have caused their host, i.e. the world at large, to become chronically ill, a process which got underway big time in 2007-8. Small wonder then that the banks and Wall St are going to extreme lengths to try to prevent it. Economic collapse now looks inevitable, but when you truly grasp the reasons for it, you understand that in developmental terms it is actually necessary to purge the system so that we can later move forward again freed of the drag of all this debt baggage. It is thought that the extraordinarily tight and tense planetary aspect pattern in the sky right now, which concurs with numerous conventional technical indications, likely portends such a severe economic contraction. An economic storm is believed to be about to break, but as those familiar with Beethoven's 6th Symphony know, after it has wrought its worst, the sun will come out again and birds will start to sing.

Alright for some - wildflowers take advantage of the leafless canopy in 1989 in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, following the massive 1988 wildfires, demonstrating how disaster leads to opportunity. Notice, however, that they come out after the fire rather than before or during the fire, which would not be advisable. In the same way we will look to go long gold and silver after the crash, rather than before or during it, when they are both likely to be smashed down along with most everything else.

Yellowstone Park growing back after 1988 wildfires

First published on _http://www.clivemaund.com on Sunday 25th July. Since this article was first posted we have seen the WikiLeaks episode, which may have major implications for Pakistan, the Pakistan air disaster in which 152 people died, massive flooding in Pakistan, continued flooding in China, and a heatwave and major fires in Russia. Pakistan does seem to be a nexus of expression for the energy in the astrological T-square, so this is a part of the world where major change is to be expected.


Clive Maund
Author: Clive Maund

Clive Maund,
_CliveMaund.com

The above represents the opinion and analysis of Mr. Maund, based on data available to him, at the time of writing. Mr. Maunds opinions are his own, and are not a recommendation or an offer to buy or sell securities. No responsibility can be accepted for losses that may result as a consequence of trading on the basis of this analysis.

Mr. Maund is an independent analyst who receives no compensation of any kind from any groups, individuals or corporations mentioned in his reports. As trading and investing in any financial markets may involve serious risk of loss, Mr. Maund recommends that you consult with a qualified investment advisor, one licensed by appropriate regulatory agencies in your legal jurisdiction and do your own due diligence and research when making any kind of a transaction with financial ramifications.

Copyright © 2004-2010 CliveMaund.com All Rights Reserved.
 
I'm not an astrologist, but my understanding is that predictions tied to specific dates is generally disinfo.

It could be that something catastrophic happens in August, in which case it will confirm the prediction here. Then people will go on looking for the next big catastrophic prediction and the whole cycle will repeat itself. Or it could be that no significant catastrophe happens in August, in which case people will just go on to finding the next catastrophic prediction and the whole cycle will repeat itself.

All the while, the people reading and believing these are none the wiser about the reality that we live in.
 
[quote author=RyanX]
I'm not an astrologist, but my understanding is that predictions tied to specific dates is generally disinfo.

It could be that something catastrophic happens in August, in which case it will confirm the prediction here. Then people will go on looking for the next big catastrophic prediction and the whole cycle will repeat itself. Or it could be that no significant catastrophe happens in August, in which case people will just go on to finding the next catastrophic prediction and the whole cycle will repeat itself.

All the while, the people reading and believing these are none the wiser about the reality that we live in.
[/quote]

Thanks for the sober thinking. For the most part I agree with the insight about the cyclical nature of catastrophe's and resulting cycles of concerns they raise that then try to predict them. Perhaps it is just an over anxious attempt at divining the future coinciding with all the intelligence analysis surrounding possibilities with Iran.
 
daveOS said:
[quote author=RyanX]
I'm not an astrologist, but my understanding is that predictions tied to specific dates is generally disinfo.

It could be that something catastrophic happens in August, in which case it will confirm the prediction here. Then people will go on looking for the next big catastrophic prediction and the whole cycle will repeat itself. Or it could be that no significant catastrophe happens in August, in which case people will just go on to finding the next catastrophic prediction and the whole cycle will repeat itself.

All the while, the people reading and believing these are none the wiser about the reality that we live in.

Thanks for the sober thinking. For the most part I agree with the insight about the cyclical nature of catastrophe's and resulting cycles of concerns they raise that then try to predict them. Perhaps it is just an over anxious attempt at divining the future coinciding with all the intelligence analysis surrounding possibilities with Iran.
[/quote]

If the cyclical nature of earth changes is linked to human experience, then the geometry of astrology may not be nearly complex enough to predict anything but linear results after the facts (except for maybe real crop circles, but those are really just adding more questions).
 
I am also not an astrology expert, but based on my own anecdotal experience with date-specific predictions, I would tend to take the astrological forecast with a grain of salt. Having said that, however, it does not take an astrological view to recognize the world is sitting on many potential powder kegs at this time.
Gordon Duff's article is alarming, but I would tend to give his analysis a bit more credence, since he is using more verifiable data to make his case. Note also he is not making any date-specific predictions. I have heard him say in interviews that one of his aims in publishing stories like this is to try to blow the cover on secret plans in order to possibly prevent them from taking place.

It is a bit of a stretch to connect the article and the astrological prediction, but we'll see.
 
I read this article and wondered if this will be the precipitating event:

AP said:
NKorea threatens to retaliate against SKorea
AP

By KWANG-TAE KIM, Associated Press Writer Kwang-tae Kim, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 42 mins ago

SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea's military threatened "strong physical retaliation" against planned South Korean naval drills near their disputed sea border and warned civilian ships should stay away from the area.

South Korea plans to hold five-day naval drills in the Yellow Sea, including exercises near the border, beginning Thursday in response to the deadly March sinking of a South Korean warship blamed on North Korea. Forty-six sailors were killed.

Pyongyang vehemently denies downing the 1,200-ton Cheonan, and has asked to send its own investigators to examine the results of the probe into the sinking. Seoul has rejected the requests.

North Korea will "counter the reckless naval firing projected by the group of traitors with strong physical retaliation," the military said Tuesday in a statement carried by Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency.

The military also warned civilian ships to stay away from the maritime border.

The western maritime boundary has long been a flash point between the two Koreas because the North does not recognize the border unilaterally drawn by the United Nations at the close of the 1950-53 Korean War.

North and South Korea have fought three bloody skirmishes near the maritime border in recent years, most recently in November 2009.

South Korean defense officials said they had no comment on North Korea's latest threat.

In Washington, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley urged North Korea not to take further provocative steps. "We certainly don't want to see a conflict in the region," Crowley said Tuesday. "We would hope that North Korea, for its part, will avoid any further provocative actions."

North Korea routinely issues such threats, especially when the South holds joint military drills with the U.S., as they did last month. Pyongyang sees the exercises as a rehearsal for an invasion. The U.S. has 28,500 troops in South Korea to protect the longtime ally.

The North had threatened to respond to those exercises with "nuclear deterrence" but South Korean military officials said there was no sign of unusual North Korean military activity.

Washington and Seoul say their exercises are purely defensive, but the recent naval drills off South Korea's east coast were intended to warn the North that further provocations will not be tolerated.

U.S. forces are not taking part in the drills planned to start Thursday.

Meanwhile, North Korean Foreign Minister Pak Ui Chun called Tuesday for peace on the Korean peninsula and repeated Pyongyang's long-standing demand for a peace treaty to replace the cease-fire signed in 1953.

"We are pressing for a peace treaty to get rid of the root of constant threats against peace and stability in the region and to ensure permanent peace on the Korean peninsula," he said in a speech in Jakarta, Indonesia.

Pak denied North Korea sank the Cheonan and said during talks Monday that Pyongyang was ready to return to nuclear disarmament talks, Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said.

North Korea walked away from nuclear talks hosted by China in 2009.

I know that North Korea's statements tend towards bombastic bluster, but you never know what truly crazy people might do. The current chain of events seems to be "going unstable".
 
rs said:
I know that North Korea's statements tend towards bombastic bluster, but you never know what truly crazy people might do. The current chain of events seems to be "going unstable".

And we have Ahmadinejad beating war drums about Iranians taking up arms,...

Ahmadinejad makes a call to arms
_http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/LG31Ak01.html

... while Israel crashed the helicopter in Romania carrying out simulations of an attack on Iran, ...

Israel simulating attack on Iran
_http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=137052&ionid=351020101

... but honestly I'm somewhat embarassed to have conflated this astrological prediction with Gordon Duff's brave disclosures. I was originally taken by the "sacred geometric" representation and assertion the date represented some sort of "geometric climax" but talking with folks more knowledgeable than I found that those geometric patterns are happening all the time and there's disparity amidst astrological camps on which heavenly bodies qualify for formulating any given pattern and assignments of meaning are inconsistent. So, I don't doubt the severity of geopolitical circumstances and their potential volatility but I don't put much stock in this date setting astrological assessment.
 
daveOS said:
... but honestly I'm somewhat embarassed to have conflated this astrological prediction with Gordon Duff's brave disclosures. I was originally taken by the "sacred geometric" representation and assertion the date represented some sort of "geometric climax" but talking with folks more knowledgeable than I found that those geometric patterns are happening all the time and there's disparity amidst astrological camps on which heavenly bodies qualify for formulating any given pattern and assignments of meaning are inconsistent. So, I don't doubt the severity of geopolitical circumstances and their potential volatility but I don't put much stock in this date setting astrological assessment.

FWIW, I agree with you here. Don't feel bad, you're not the first person to get sucked into the dazzle of sacred geometry. It seems that the human mind has a knack for wanting to put events in some nice tidy order, something that looks "pretty". Maybe at some level of reality one can place events this way, but that doesn't seem to be the case for the current reality we experience.
 
Well, it IS strange considering the astrological "prediction" I wrote for the Dot Connector. I don't do astrology the way those folks do it (at least not anymore), but seems we are saying similar things: that something is going to happen. I think the way I wrote it was a lot more "open."
 
I also think it's interesting comparing this to a chart published on HalfPastHuman earlier this summer:

2010chart1.JPG

_http://halfpasthuman.com/Mistake.html

The most recent ALTA report goes into this period in more detail, but a brief excerpt from this article:

One can also allow monkey mind to speculate that the 12 days of torment for the Obama administration minions over the first 12 days of August *could* be provoked by the israeli mistake having been initiated in the weeks prior.

Clif was wrong about an Israeli connection (to the best of my knowledge), but that was also his own speculation and interpretation -- what stands out is the window of the first 12 days of August that appears in the dataset independently. In her DCM article, Laura mentions strong reactions in the public sector of the working class from early to mid-August -- kind of interesting, and we're in the beginning of that period now, so it will be interesting to see how things go over the next couple of weeks and through the end of the month.
 
Stumbled upon this article whilst browsing economic news articles from ZeroHedge:

VIPS Sends Memo To Obama Warning Israel May Bomb Iran "As Early As This Month"
from _http://www.zerohedge.com/article/vips-sends-memo-obama-warning-israel-may-bomb-iran-early-month
(original link from _http://www.truth-out.org/obama-warned-israel-may-bomb-iran61992?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter)

The Steering Group of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) which consists of Phil Giraldi, former CIA (20 years), Larry Johnson, former CIA; DoS, (24 years), W. Patrick Lang, Col., USA, Special Forces (ret.); Director of HUMINT Collection, Defense Intelligence Agency (30 years), Ray McGovern, US Army Intelligence Officer, CIA (30 years), Coleen Rowley, FBI (24 years), and Ann Wright, Col., US Army Reserve (ret.), (29 years); Foreign Service Officer, Department of State (16 years), have penned a memo to the president in an attempt to alert him "to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war." Read on for the full memo by the activist group.

First appearing in TruthOut
Obama Warned Israel May Bomb Iran

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President

FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

SUBJECT: War With Iran

We write to alert you to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war.

Israel’s leaders would calculate that once the battle is joined, it will be politically untenable for you to give anything less than unstinting support to Israel, no matter how the war started, and that U.S. troops and weaponry would flow freely. Wider war could eventually result in destruction of the state of Israel.

This can be stopped, but only if you move quickly to pre-empt an Israeli attack by publicly condemning such a move before it happens.

We believe that comments by senior American officials, you included, reflect misplaced trust in Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu.

Actually, the phrasing itself can be revealing, as when CIA Director Panetta implied cavalierly that Washington leaves it up to the Israelis to decide whether and when to attack Iran, and how much “room” to give to the diplomatic effort.

On June 27, Panetta casually told ABC’s Jake Tapper, “I think they are willing to give us the room to be able to try to change Iran diplomatically … as opposed to changing them militarily.”

Similarly, the tone you struck referring to Netanyahu and yourself in your July 7 interview with Israeli TV was distinctly out of tune with decades of unfortunate history with Israeli leaders.

“Neither of us try to surprise each other,” you said, “and that approach is one that I think Prime Minister Netanyahu is committed to.” You may wish to ask Vice President Biden to remind you of the kind of surprises he has encountered in Israel.

Blindsiding has long been an arrow in Israel’s quiver. During the emerging Middle East crisis in the spring of 1967, some of us witnessed closely a flood of Israeli surprises and deception, as Netanyahu’s predecessors feigned fear of an imminent Arab attack as justification for starting a war to seize and occupy Arab territories.

We had long since concluded that Israel had been exaggerating the Arab “threat” — well before 1982 when former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin publicly confessed:

“In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President] Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him.”

Israel had, in fact, prepared well militarily and also mounted provocations against its neighbors, in order to provoke a response that could be used to justify expansion of its borders.

Given this record, one would be well advised to greet with appropriate skepticism any private assurances Netanyahu may have given you that Israel would not surprise you with an attack on Iran.

More of the letter in the links at the top.
I was immediately reminded of this thread and thought that the article/letter may be relevant to this thread's "predictions". Wasn't sure about truthout.org's track record so I disabled the link with the prepended underscore.
 
Here's another news item that is potentially catastrophic. If it leads to food shortages and high food prices in nations dependent on Russia's wheat, it can facilitate revolutions.

_http://www.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idUSTRE6750XJ20100806

Wheat near 2-year high on Russia export ban

By Aleksandras Budrys

MOSCOW | Fri Aug 6, 2010 11:12am EDT

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Wheat prices in both the United States and Europe retreated on Friday but held just below two-year highs as markets reacted to the sudden imposition of a ban on grain exports from drought-hit Russia.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin moved on Thursday to halt grain and flour exports to head off inflation following Russia's worst drought in 130 years, and the railroad monopoly said Friday it would stop loading grain for export from Saturday.

The introduction of the export ban from August 15 to the end of the year may be revised depending on results of the harvest season, First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov said on Friday.

Clouds of smoke from peat and forest fires sparked by ferociously high temperatures choked Moscow on Friday as Shuvalov made his comments.

U.S. wheat futures on the Chicago Board of Trade fell 5 percent on Friday after surging more than 20 percent earlier this week and nearly doubling since early July to $8.41 a bushel.

The rise has revived memories of the surge in prices in early 2008, when U.S. wheat rose above $13 a bushel, which helped to fuel food inflation and led to rioting in many countries across the world.

Analysts, however, downplayed the link, adding that world stocks have grown steeply during the last couple of years which saw the two biggest wheat crops in history.

"Stocks are close to 50 percent higher today (than they were during the last price spike in early 2008). You had a completely different scenario then," said Barclays Capital analyst Sudakshina Unnikrishnan.

Shares in Danish brewer Carlsberg (CARLb.CO), which faces a sharp rise in input costs, lost 4.5 percent, while food companies such as Nestle (NESN.VX) and Danone (DANO.PA) also saw their shares decline in value.

Shares of Flowers Foods (FLO.N), one of the largest U.S. food makers, were down 2 percent at $23.05 and shares of General Mills (GIS.N) were down almost 1 percent at $33.50. but shares of other U.S. food companies, including Kraft Foods (KFT.N), which reported better-than-expected quarterly earnings

on Thursday afternoon, rose.

Persistent high prices could, however, drive fear of food inflation in key buyers such as Indonesia and the Philippines, analysts said.

"If prices remain elevated for a sustained period, then the probability of upward adjustment in retail price of wheat and its derivatives goes up," Barclays Capital said in a report.

"However, food prices tend to be politically sensitive, so we can expect some action from Asian governments."

Top consumers China and India are largely insulated from rising prices by sufficient wheat reserves.

Russia had been the world's third largest wheat exporter last year but is set to slide down the table this season with the worst drought since records began devastating crops.

"Effectively, a big chunk of the global market is off-line -- there's going to be something like 5 million tonnes that aren't going to be available for export," said Matthew Kaleel, a commodities specialist at fund manager H3 Global in Sydney.

FORCE MAJEURE?

Trading companies that have sold Russian wheat to millers in Asia are considering declaring force majeure on supply contracts that could involve up to 1 million tonnes of wheat.

Force majeure clauses in supply contracts free firms from their obligations without penalty due to events beyond their control. They are often used in response to natural disasters.

"If the contract says Russian wheat, it is straight away force majeure," said one trader with an international trading company in Singapore. "We haven't heard but it will happen, even my company will do it."

Two suppliers scrapped deals to ship 65,000 tonnes of Black Sea wheat to Bangladesh, while in the Philippines a leading importer of feed wheat from the Black Sea, buyers were waiting to hear from suppliers.

"Those with supply contracts are a bit nervous, even the buyer," said a grains trader in Manila.

"The contracts are written with optional origins but it means the sellers will also have to pay through their noses and those noses will bleed really bad."
 
I wanted to add a possible "data point", though this is more of just an observation/speculation on my part.
I was not sure if I should place this post in the "Movies, Trivia" section or in "What's on your mind" but I remembered this thread ("Catastrophe Alert") and thought it might be more apt here. Please relocate this post if it is out of place in this thread.

Last night, I watched last Sunday's episode (08/15) of Hung, an HBO (fictional) series about the life of a male high school gym teacher in the middle of the current economic climate who enters into the "flesh trade". Well, my description doesn't do the show justice. You can read a short description of the series from the episode list on wikipedia here: _http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Hung_episodes

Anyway, I was kind of surprised with the content of last Sunday's episode. The episode description isn't up yet on the wikipedia page (the title is "The Middle East Is Complicated") but in a nutshell, there are two women in the protagonist's life in this episode, one is an arab (Palestine was mentioned, along with the some other neighboring regions like Lebanon, Syria, etc.) and the other is an Israeli. The protagonist is caught in the middle of the two women's "racial hate" of the other nation/race and is repeatedly told by each of them that he must choose between the two.

It seems a bit "too coincidental" that the episode airs at the same time when things are heating up and the conflict seems to be escalating in the middle east. Well, it is not surprising considering that all the networks (tv, radio, print media) are owned by a few large corporations. But it still catches me by surprise when it happens.

Mind you, the episode list, episode titles and the airing dates are determined way in advance, or at the very least, right before the first episode for the season airs. Talk about "cultural engineering". Taking into account the recent news articles on SOTT about that region, the prediction in the issue #10 of the Dot Connector magazine, and even Clif's most recent webbot reading (HalfPastHuman), I "fear"/feel the tension in the middle east will blow-up (or, in the context of the HBO series Hung, will 'climax') really soon...
 
Michael Martin said:
Anyway, I was kind of surprised with the content of last Sunday's episode. The episode description isn't up yet on the wikipedia page (the title is "The Middle East Is Complicated") but in a nutshell, there are two women in the protagonist's life in this episode, one is an arab (Palestine was mentioned, along with the some other neighboring regions like Lebanon, Syria, etc.) and the other is an Israeli. The protagonist is caught in the middle of the two women's "racial hate" of the other nation/race and is repeatedly told by each of them that he must choose between the two.

It seems a bit "too coincidental" that the episode airs at the same time when things are heating up and the conflict seems to be escalating in the middle east. Well, it is not surprising considering that all the networks (tv, radio, print media) are owned by a few large corporations. But it still catches me by surprise when it happens.

I appreciate the correlation and hear the urging of conflict between civilizations portrayed in the program. I don't doubt the potential the collision of civilizations stands to play in whatever catastrophic situation the PTB intends to induce to dose the masses with another round of PTSD. But like the latest release of Connecting the Dots: Whistling Past The Graveyard points out on Sott.net, the pathocrats inevitably suffer infighting amidst themselves, and combined with the fact that there's no bug-free engineering I tend to take the social engineering efforts in motion to be ripe for failure.

However they may stage the debate between the "civilizations" on TV, those popularized perceptions inherently neglect humanity in all its totality, so I think we have to stay hyper-aware when absorbing the pathocracy's programming, but I can't deny the Hegelian dialectic I'm also hearing the lame-stream push. Given all the urging of the need to attack Iran with Castro even telling us it won't be Israel -

Israel won't be the first to attack Iran: Fidel Castro
_http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/world/2010-08/12/c_13441469.htm

(leaving us with the antithesis of the US to do the dirty work for the synthesis that Iran must be attacked) - I don't doubt that the TV programming schedule is built to coincide with the hyping of tensions. But when I start considering all the PTB is in denial of given their inner discord amidst their fallible engineering further encumbered by all the lies they can't keep straight, I tend to think the PTB weren't counting on masses getting clued in to their bigoted agendas and their inept ways of pushing them. So despite some strong strides we're seeing towards catastrophic geopolitical conflict, I think we have to remember the "knowledge protects" jewel of truth we've been given and flex it in the right direction. How to transcend the thesis/antithesis/synthesis the PTB push?
 
Recently, I've been following video astrological forecasts by Barbara Goldsmith _http://www.youtube.com/user/barbaragoldsmith She seems level headed and without the new age flavor. And in her recent March forecasts she mentioned a major astrological shift of Uranus going into Aries on 12th of March, something that will cause dramatic changes in every aspect of human life and earth as well during the next 10-15 years (other sites mention until 2018). That things are speeding up, and there will be a lot more natural disasters and civil unrest. But we all know it already, just wanted to mention it here in relation to this specific astrological move.

Also, apparently last time Uranus was in Aries, it was from 1927 to 1935 when the stock market crashed and the great depression started.
 
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