Iran intends to boost the volume of its oil swaps to 200,000 barrels per day by March 20, 2012.
Iranian officials say that by using newly devised mechanisms, the demand for trading oil through barter deals, rather than using cash, is climbing.
The barters involve swapping oil related products, such as crude oil for refined fuel.
Iran is the second largest oil exporter within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Britain is not the place to live if you value your human rights. According to European Court of Human Rights, Britain has 107 guilty verdicts against it.
The findings range from violations of the rights of mental health patients to the failure to protect children from unlawful corporal punishment in the home.
The United Kingdom signed onto the European Convention on Human Rights, but recently Prime Minister David Cameron stated that he wants to tear up their current Human Rights bill, and write a new “British” version. Maybe it’s ’cause they keep losing court cases based on the current Human Rights bill.
The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has voted to recommend Palestine for full membership. According to Israeli media, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued a warning: “I…would urge the governing body of UNESCO to think again before proceeding with that vote because the decision about status must be made in the United Nations and not in auxiliary groups that are subsidiary to the United Nations.”
The United States has threatened to stop paying its portion of UNESCO funding if it recognizes Palestine as a full member.
UNESCO has the authority to give a country full membership, even if the state is not recognized by the United Nations Security Council.
UNESCO has 58 members. 40 voted in favor of putting the Palestinian matter to a vote. 14 abstained. The United States, Germany, Romania and Latvia voted no.
The U.S. has also threatened to end financial aid going to Palestinians, if they become a UN recognized state. Many Israelis are worried that the U.S. will use that to justify ending financial aid to Israel as well. Aid to Palestinians is a drop in the bucket compared to what the U.S. gives Israel.
Steve Jobs was a revolutionary. We wouldn’t have half the personal computer related products without him. I love my Mac, after decades of using crappy IBM based PCs I finally splurged and got me a Mac a few years ago. I’ve never had one problem that I’ve had with the IBM type PCs. I’ve had my Mac longer than any PC I’ve had in the past, which justifies what I paid for it.
Jobs was also proof you don’t need a college degree to succeed! “You have to trust in something: your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
Jobs’ secret to success? Do what you want, not what society tells you to do: “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on.”
And that’s exactly what the U.S. Declaration of Independence says you should do: “…that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
You read that? It says the people of the United States are supposed to base their lives on the pursuit of life, liberty and happiness, not following the orders of a society brainwashed by Corporate America, or the military industrial complex, or organized religion, or the Israeli lobby! It’s one of the reasons why the creation of the United States was so revolutionary (like Steve Jobs)!
I hope Apple doesn’t go astray. Steve Jobs died October 5, 2011.
“The government may only compel a citizen to assist in law enforcement when there is imminent danger. There was no imminent danger here, and therefore the Operator’s Fourth Amendment rights were violated.”-John Samuelsen, Transport Workers Union Local 100
On the day that thousands of protestors took the Brooklyn Bridge, the NYPD forced New York city bus drivers to off load their passengers, just so the buses could be used as Paddy Wagons. Police said they needed the buses to haul away the 700+ people they had arrested.
Now the New York city bus drivers are taking the cops to court! The bus drivers’ union says police can only take over vehicles in an emergency, and peaceful protesting is not an emergency: “…this was not such an emergency, and our members’ rights were violated. They are there to transport passengers, not be an arm of City Hall to squelch free speech!”-John Samuelsen
The union is asking the New York State Supreme Court for an injunction to keep the NYPD from forcing city buses to be used as Paddy Wagons.
Union members say they are now joining the Occupy movement: “They’ve really thrown a spotlight on issues that are bothering people, especially bothering workers like our members. Right now, we’re discussing how we’re going to give them material support, what we should do for them.”-Jim Gannon, Transport Workers Union
“The plan is to win. The plan is to be successful. So while some folks may hear that we are departing in 2014 as a result of the Lisbon conference and the transition, we’re actually going to be here for a long time.”-John Allen, General USMC
The original publicly, and loudly stated goal of invading Afghanistan was to get Osama bin Laden, and al Qaeda. A secondary goal was to topple the Taliban government. All those goals have been achieved, but General Allen says we’re not leaving.
The United States could be in Afghanistan for decades. Maybe we’ll even invade Pakistan, especially since the U.S. main stream media is now touting the Pentagon’s claims that the Taliban are using Pakistan as a base of operations.
There are Pakistanis that might call themselves Taliban, but the word means Student! So how many people are simply calling themselves a student, and U.S. intelligent agents are taking it as Terrorist?
Then there’s the Haqqani “network” which is nothing more than a family run freedom fighter operation (notice that any freedom fighter in Afghanistan is automatically labeled Taliban by the media), after all we invaded them, not the other way ’round! Once again, not one Afghan was involved with 9/11! Just as well, not one Pakistani was involved with 9/11!
Another thing, the majority of Afghans (42%) are Pashtun, they just happen to make up most of the members of the political organization called Taliban. Many of the people in northwestern Pakistan are Pashtun (second largest ethnic group in Pakistan). They are direct relatives of those in Afghanistan. That’s because northwestern Pakistan used to be part of the Kingdom of Afghanistan (before the British took control, in fact there was no Pakistan until after World War 2).
So, from the view point of the Pashtuns (who’re considered the dominant ethnic Afghans) they are not “using” Pakistan as a base, because they see that area of Pakistan as their ancestral Afghan territory to begin with. This is one of the reasons the Pakistani government is so hesitant to take direct military control over that region. Ever since the creation of Pakistan the northwestern territory has actually been under direct control of the Pashtuns.
Basically the United States has decided to wage war with the majority of the people in that region, in order to impose upon them a government run by a pro-U.S. minority. Sounds like Vietnam.
Towards the end of the war between the U.S. and Vietnam many people warned that the U.S. had to stay in Vietnam to prevent possible attacks against U.S. territories by Vietnamese commie terrorists. Gee, I guess we’re still waiting for those dreaded Vietnamese attacks, 36 years later!
Just because the main stream media isn’t reporting it, doesn’t mean it’s not happening. For months now U.S. supported Israel has been launching ground raids into West Bank and Gaza Strip, while also launching air strikes on Gaza Strip.
Now the United Nations is finally saying something about it! The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says the amount of violence brought against Palestinians, by the Israeli military, has increased in the past year.
The number of Palestinian civilians killed or injured is a third higher than last year. Add to that the fact that illegal Israeli settlers have been on the warpath. Violent acts by settlers are up 38% compared to last year!
Just in the past few weeks Israeli settlers have forced Palestinians off their property, burned their homes, uprooted their olive trees and burned them, and just a few days ago attacked and tried to burn down a mosque. They also burned several Qur’ans.
Clearly Israel is at war with Palestine.
Yet more proof that the Danish government’s tax on fat is about making money, not being healthy. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, only 10% of Danes are obese!
On a recent BBC World Have Your Say program, a Danish politician said that the purpose of a democratic representative government is to “find balance” in imposing social policies on the general public. Say what? I always thought a democratic representative government was supposed to do what the majority of the voting public wants! Oh well, I’m still waiting for it to happen here in the United States.
Basically the Danish politician was admitting that Denmark is being run by a minority of do gooders that’re pushing their own agenda upon the majority of Danes.
Consider this: There is scientific evidence that it’s a high carbohydrate/sugar diet that actually makes you fat. Now realize that the majority of Danes eat a high fat diet and only 10% are obese!!! That’s 5% below the average for all of Europe.
There’s also plenty of evidence that shows skinny people are just as prone to conditions (like diabetes) as fat people. In fact there’s growing evidence that most poor health conditions, in adults, are more influenced by genetics than what you eat. Remember the old nursery rhyme about Jack Sprat? There’s truth in it.
“I spent seven years at the University of Michigan getting a PHD in Medieval European History, and I realized that I wasn’t making a difference there, and I thought I can make more of a difference on the street organizing people, getting the 99% out to have a voice.”-Occupy LA protestor
October 3, protestors in Los Angeles, California, have occupied city hall and say they will stay there for as long as possible.
Volunteers from the National Lawyers Guild are educating protesters about their legal rights in case they are confronted by police. But some protestors believe that eventually the police will join the protests: “…their pensions are under attack, their overtime is under attack, their benefits are under attack. So once they realize they’re actually part of this movement, I foresee no problems.”-Occupy LA protestor
The continued expansion of the “occupy” movement across the United States has even protestors amazed: “The leadershiplessness of this movement is incredible! The number of the people, the commitment of the people, the collective education of the people. The moment is ripe!”-Occupy LA protestor
Since I posted part 4 of Pacific Ring of Fire Seismic Events, the United States Geological Survey added one more quake to it’s “Largest and Deadliest Earthquake” list; the March 11 earthquake near Japan.
But have there been more large quakes this year, not qualifying for the USGS title of “Deadliest”, but still large, and more than normal?
According to the USGS “Significant Earthquakes of the World” list, so far this year there have been 49 magnitude 6.5, or greater quakes around the Pacific Ring. The majority of those being near Japan. There’s still three months left to go for 2011.
In 2010 the USGS recorded about 57 M6.5+ quakes around the Pacific Ring. About 50 M6.5+ quakes took place in 2009. So in the past three years it looks like about 50 M6.5+ Pacific Ring quakes per year are the norm.
I went back to “Significant Earthquakes of the World 1999”, and counted about 53 M6.5+ Pacific Ring quakes. So, without doing more detailed research, it looks like the number of “significant” quakes around the Pacific Ring is about 50 per year, and seems to be normal. Unless we get a sudden boost in quake activity within the next three months, it looks like 2011 will be another normal year.
What about the number of “deadliest” earthquakes, is there an upward trend? It doesn’t seem so. Looking at the USGS “Largest and Deadliest Earthquakes by Year 1990-2011” list, we average about one or two per year, and that’s all over the world not just the Pacific Ring. The USGS determines the “largest and deadliest” by a combination of magnitude intensity and the number of people killed.
However, I noticed an interesting trend regarding when those “largest” deadly quakes happen; most of the dates are from Autumn to Spring, with the minority happening during Summer. We are closer to the Sun from Fall to Spring, mmmm.