GeoPolitics and Why to Move to Russia

THAT VERY STRANGE RUSSIAN COMMERCIAL

I’m publishing this early, on a Sunday, because there’s a little bit of chatter on the internet about a very strange Russian television commercial that’s been making the rounds, mostly on YouTube. That in itself is worth some commentary, but we’ll get back to that later, as it forms part of today’s high octane speculation. I was first made aware of this commercial last Friday (Aug 12, 2022) during our members’ vidchat when someone first mentioned it, and another member chimed in and said that they’d also seen it.

After the vidchat I quickly went searching for the commercial, and any information that might corroborate that the commercial is genuine, and indeed a product of the Russian government. Welll, according to this article from the U.K. Express, the commercial is indeed genuine, so I’m going to throw caution to the winds and run with it:

‘This for real?’ Moscow ridiculed as ‘move to Russia’ ad sparks hilarious Twitter slapdown

Now in case you missed the commercial itself while you were watching Sean Vannity on Faux News, or whoever-it-is on SeeBS or whatever, here it is:

So in that short minute, the case for moving to Russia is reduced to the following 16 points:

(1) delicious cuisine: check, I have to admit that I miss my mother’s beef Stroganoff, although she wasn’t Russian (for that matter, I also liked her chicken paprikash, and she wasn’t Hungarian either, but Orban makes a good case too);

(2) Beautiful women: well, check, at least they seem to know what women are in Russia (beautiful or not), and the last time I checked, they’re not letting men swimmers compete against women swimmers just because the former “identify” as the latter, which makes one wonder if Ron De Santis is either Russian, or a Russian agent.  His lack of gender confusion is…well, it’s just highly suspicious;

(3) Cheap gas: well, that’s probably a check. I don’t know, because I haven’t bought any gas in Russia lately, or for that matter, ever.  I imagine, however, that the way the Germans are wincing, it’s probably true.  I know it’s not nearly as cheap here as it was when Orange-Man-Bad was president.

(4) Rich history: check, Russia certainly has that, and with several intriguing nooks and crannies well worth exploring. Take it from me, because I used to teach Russian history in college.

(5) World famous literature: again, check, and probably several checks.  Dostoyevsky alone would have put Russia on the literary map, and he’s just one of very many. And while we’re on the subject, isn’t it a bit ironic and creepy that Chekov’s The Cherry Orchard resembles more the modern USSA than it does Russia, they having gone through their “cherry orchard” dark ages-evil empire moment called the Soviet Union? Who can forget the fun and frolic with Yezov, Yagoda, and Beria, huh?

(6) Unique architecture: yup, check: they have everything from Byzantine, classical, and European to that unique style that can only be called “Soviet Modern Ugly”, sort of the Russian equivalent in spartan ugliness to the German Bauhaus school, only the Soviet style isn’t nearly as ugly. The only uglier style is the Obama Presidential Library Style that infects modern America.

(7) Fertile soil: well, a probable check here. Again, I don’t know, and I’m the last person anyone should ask, because after years of careful and studious neglect, I’ve managed to kill my mother’s old Swedish ivy plant. I know nothing about soil conditions, and particularly Russian soil conditions, except I do know that the Russian government doesn’t like GMOs, has banned than, and that this has to be good for the soil. That one factoid alone makes me extremely suspicious of Western motivations in backing the regime in Kiev (and yes, I’m going to keep spelling it and pronouncing it that way, just to be irritating).

(8) Cheap electric and water: again, a probable check, because I don’t know, I’m not there. That said, we do have a couple of members of this website who actually maintain rather spacious apartments in St. Petersburg (a city full of that unique architecture) and when they told me how cheap their rent was for such a large city, I was flabbergasted, so I can believe the cheap water and gas, though I suppose like everywhere else, it depends on local conditions.

(9) Ballet: ok, check. I’m not a big ballet fan as one might have guessed, probably for the same reasons I’m just not a big opera guy. But, once that’s on the record, the music itself has become part of the standard repertoire. Who of us haven’t heard The Nutcracker or Swan Lake? If you haven’t, well, then that sort of makes the commercial’s point: you’re a modern western cretin, and the commercial isn’t targeting you  to move to Russia. Had I been in charge of making the commercial for the Russian government and its evil-super-criminal-genius-and-never-to-be-trusted-byzantine-mastermind Vladimir Putin, I would have stressed “Great music” rather than ballet, with perhaps a snippet of Rachmaninoff or Prokofiev playing in the background.

(10) Cheap taxi and delivery: well, a probable check on that one too, though I haven’t had to ride any Russian taxis or have any packages delivered in that country, although my guess is, yea, that’s probably true too.

(11) Traditional values: ok, check. You don’t get to dress up in outlandish costumery and purple hair, call yourselves “Pussy Riot”, and carry on in a lewd fashion in an Orthodox Cathedral and call it a “protest” without being clapped in the slammer; up to that point, apparently, it was ok to dress as outlandishly as your liked, and to call yourself whatever offensive name you wished; you just don’t get to do that in church.

(12) Christianity: ok, check. Granted, the Christianity in Russia is, well, Russian Orthodox by and large, but so what? When Kirill wakes up and realizes that the Church is missing a golden opportunity to put some real weight behind an Orthodox western rite complete with hierarchy, then who knows where that will lead. (Here’s a hint Kir: neither Antioch nor ROCOR know what they’re doing… dig in your archives long enough and you’ll find out what I’m talking about… have your people contact my people; let’s talk.)

(13) No cancel culture: well, ok, check, but with caveats: when are we talking about here? Certainly there was a lot of “canceling” being done under the aforementioned Mssrs Yezov, Yagoda, and Beria.  But I grant the basic proposition: no one carted Pussy Riot off to a gulag; rather, one gets the impression that Pussy  Riot would be entirely ok with putting the entirety of the Russian Church back in the gulag.

(14) Hospitality: check: this one deserves some ‘splaining. While I’ve not been to Russia, I have been around a lot of Russians, and yes, I can vouch for the hospitality. WARNING (and I learned this trick far too late to do me any good): don’t drink the vodka (the next point on the list). Claim that you’re an alcoholic. I’m still suffering a hang-over with a half-life of 243 years because I drank vodka with Russians, and I’ll still be suffering that hang-over long after I’m dead.

(15) Vodka: check (see point 14 above).

(16) An economy that can withstand thousands of sanctions.  Well, ok, check.  To listen to the western propatainment media tell it, Russia’s economy is on its last legs and will implode at any moment. Now, in my humble and uninformed opinion, that’s probably right up there with The Ukraine is Winning Hugely meme we’ve been watching. We’re supposed to be gloating that the Russian military is doing so poorly.  Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t, but I don’t see the American military anywhere close, and one wonders how its “reality fluid” approach to basic metaphysical categories would fare.  If the captured American-and-NATO trained fascist military units are any indicator, then they wouldn’t fare too well. It was, after all, Russian 152mm cannon firing point blank into the Reichstag, and not German 15omm cannon firing point blank into the Kremlin, that ended the last little fascist saber-rattling episode, as I recall.

Finally, the commercial ends with a cheery “Time to Move to Russia” and then a not-so-cheery “Winter is Coming.”

Now I’ve taken a lot of time to review this commercial, because frankly, it intrigued me. Why produce such a thing at all? After all, Russian media has been all but totally banned in the west. In a way, it was easier when I was a boy to dial up the English language service of Radio Moscow than it is to tune into Russian television now. Why go to the production expense to produce such a commercial, when buying advertising time on Deutsche Welle or SeeBS or FAUX news or the Canadian Broadcorping Castration is a foregone negative conclusion? Why produce something that millions of people won’t see? Or rather, why produce something that the Western media and their masters won’t let millions of people see?

One obvious answer is that this commercial may be a typical dye-the-waters operation to see who is paying attention in the alternative media, and how the commercial circulates there. In which case, I’m happy to help. But the other possibility is that we’re also looking at the next phase of a campaign. If you’ve been paying attention to Russia lately, you’ll have noted that it’s not exactly on Mr. Globaloney’s bandwagon because it’s been insisting that there can be no global order that cancels national sovereignty, and more importantly, that global order does not arise without respect to culture and tradition. That’s a fancy way of saying that a merely technocratic approach to global order is doomed to failure.  It’s a commercial deliberately designed to highlight the failures of the globalist cabal and their programs, and, indeed, to invite those who crave for an expression of traditional European culture to move to the one place where it still has a living expression, in spite of the best efforts of Bolshevik technocrats and their Pussy Rioting lackeys to crush it.

One can see this by contempleting the implied negative message of the commercial: (1) delicious cuisine, versus poor nutrition, “fast food” and eating bugs; (2) Beautiful women, versus not knowing what a woman is; (3) Cheap gas, versus alleged President Joe Bidenenko; (4) Rich history, versus people that cannot even read and who do not even know, nor are taught, their own; (5) World Famous Literature, versus a population that can barely write and scrawl its own name; (6) Unique architecture; versus collapsing footbridges designed by “inclusive and diverse” committees; (7) fertile soil; versus soil polluted and corrupted, and robbed of nutritional value by “argibusiness”; (8) cheap electric and water, versus alleged President Joe Bidenenko; (9) Ballet, versus the bump-whump of subwoofers in vehicles drumming out a primitive jungle beat and screaming unrelenting iambic pentameter, for everyone to hear; (10) cheap taxi and delivery; versus  lockdowns  (11) Traditional values; versus collapsing reality and epistemological solipsism; (12) Christianity, versus hollowed out ecclesiastical institutions, bishopettes, mangled and gutted “liturgies”, “inclusiveness” and empty churches, (13) no cancel culture, or rather, a culture period, and one not apologizing for existing.

The bottom line that I’m suggesting here is that this commercial is not a one-off.  It’s but the latest chapter in a long series of messages of culture and tradition and history that post-Soviet Russia has been sending. So far, they’ve been sending that message – at the popular level at least – mostly to their own population. In so far as they have sent that message to the West, it’s been to the Western leaders, who, of course, are stupid and tone-deaf and unable to hear it.  But the western populations… they are a different matter. This is a serious message, addressed to them. And I suspect it’s only the first of many.  There is even a carefully calculated geopolitical aspect to it, but I’ll leave that for you to guess, and perhaps take it up at another time.

… See you on the flip side…

from:    https://gizadeathstar.com/2022/08/that-very-strange-russian-commercial/

Russian Students Going Home?

Russian Government Officials Told to Immediately Bring Back Children Studying Abroad

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Editor’s Note: While everyone is busy with the election, Russia continues to prep for war…

082814putin

In Europe, when it gets serious, you have to lie… at least if you are an unelected bureaucrat like Jean-Claude Juncker. In Russia, however, when it gets serious, attention immediately turns to the children.

Which is why we read a report in Russian website Znak published Tuesday, according to which Russian state officials and government workers were told to bring back their children studying abroad immediately, even if means cutting their education short and not waiting until the end of the school year, and re-enroll them in Russian schools, with some concern. The article adds that if the parents of these same officials also live abroad “for some reason”, and have not lost their Russian citizenship, should also be returned to the motherland. Znak cited five administration officials as the source of the report.

The “recommendation” applies to all: from the administration staff, to regional administrators, to lawmakers of all levels. Employees of public corporations are also subject to the ordinance. One of the sources said that anyone who fails to act, will find such non-compliance to be a “complicating factor in the furtherance of their public sector career.” He added that he was aware of several such cases in recent months.

It appears that the underlying reason behind the command is that the Russian government is concerned about the optics of having children of the Russian political elite being educated abroad, while their parents appear on television talking about patriotism and being “surrounded by enemies.”

While we doubt the impacted children will be happy by this development, some of the more patriotic locals, if unimpacted, are delighted. Such as Vitaly Ivanov, a political scientist who believes that the measure to return children of officials from studying abroad, is “long overdue.” According Ivanoc, the education of children of the Russian elite abroad is subject to constant ridicule and derision against the ruling regime. “People note the hypocrisy of having a centralized state and cultivating patriotism and anti-Western sentiment, while children of government workers study abroad. You can not serve two gods, one must choose.”

On the other hand, political analyst Stanislav Belkovsky quoted by Znak, believes that such decisions should be approached with more pragmatism. Such a recommendation is more likely to lead to an outflow of officials from the state, rather than allow the return of the children studying at elite foreign universities. He also warned of attempts to recreate an echo chamber such as that experienced after the failed July coup attempt on Turkey’s President Erdogan.

But what he said next was more disturbing: “On the one hand, this is all part of a package of measures to prepare the elites for some ‘big war’ even if it is rather conditional, on the other hand – this is another blow to the unity of President Putin with his own elite” Belkovsky said. He adds that the Western sanctions launched in March 2014, had sought to drive a wedge between Putin and elites. In response, the Kremlin began to act precisely according to the logic of these sanctions. “But while a ban for having assets in the West is one thing, and understandable, when it comes to a ban for offshore health and education services, the blowback will be far greater, as it represents a far more important element of the establishment’s life strategy.”

Ultimately the motivation behind Putin’s decision is unclear: whether it is to show Russia’s high-ranking oligarchs who is boss, to boost a sense of patriotism among the nation by sending a symbolic message that the west is no longer a welcome destination for Russia’s rich kids, or just a preemptive move of repatriating of any individuals affiliated with Russian politics for other unknown reasons; however it underscores the severity of the ongoing diplomatic crisis and just how significant the upcoming isolation between Russia and the West is likely to become in the coming months – unless of course tensions deescalate dramatically in the very near future – resulting in even greater collapse in global commerce and a further slowdown to world economic growth, which may ultimately lead to an armed conflict, whether regional or global, as the only possible outcome.

 

Related Reads

40 Million Russians to Participate in MASSIVE Civil Defense Evacuation Drill

Russian Army Is Drafting 152,000 New Soldiers

from:    http://www.thedailysheeple.com/russian-government-officials-told-to-immediately-bring-back-children-studying-abroad_102016

Huge Earthquake — Russia

Massive earthquake in Russia’s far east – Felt in Moscow and parts of China, India and Japan

Last update: May 24, 2013 at 11:25 am by By

– A large crack also appeared in a bridge in Jakutsk in eastern Siberia, only 1500 km west of the epicenter. Samara and Moscow are more than 6000 km east of the epicenter.

– Some damage reports arrive from Moskow and Samara, where a few buildings cracked. One building in Samara suffered major damage.
In St. Petersburg, one person was sick due to the shaking of the office tower.

– An other country, feeling this quake, is Kazakhstan. 20 people in Uralsk in western part of the country reported authorities they felt it.

– Seems that this quake was felt over the whole Eurasian plate. Russian media report that also some people in Romania felt it. We received reports from Finland and Denmark and a perso from Italy gave their report to ESMC.
In St. Peterburg one more building was evacuated. Both towns, Moscow and St. Petersburg, usually do not have any earthquakes. So people are frightened if it happenes.
There are still no news about damage from Kamtchatka. But usually those buildings widestand larger intensities than V, so no heavy damage is expected.

– Many parts of China were also affected by the quake. People from different provinces said they felt the quake, among them Heilongjiang, Gansu, Hubei, Chongqing, Jiangsu and Sichuan. No damage was reported from China.

– In Moscow at least two offica buildings were evacuated due to the quake. Several hundred people had to leave their workplace for some time. There are no damages reported, but some people in Moscow said they experienced an aftershock. No quake was registered around Moskow.

– Now a reader from Finland told us that this quake was felt there.

– No tsunami was registered on russian coast so far and the tsunami warning was lifted.
Russian newspaper confirm that this quake was also felt in St. Petersburg on Baltic Sea.

– We also received reports of people in Alaska and Canada who might have felt this quake. If you also felt it, please tell us.
So far, there are no reports of damage from Kamtchatka. There it was felt with moderate intensity. Also parts of western Siberia experienced a moderate shaking. People in Moskow and Tomsk report a weak shaking.
India and Japan also experienced only a weak shaking.

– In Petropavlosvsk this quake caused panic. People ran out of their buildings, schools were evacuated.

– The earthquake was felt in many parts of Russia, including Siberia and Moscow. Also people in Japan and India felt this quake. There is a tsunami warning for the russian pacific coasts.

– There exists a very very low tsunami threat from this M8.2 off Kamchatka if the 600km depth is correct.

– The cool subducting plate off the Pacific, slowly moves down into the mantle, and these bits of old crust can still be brittle enough to make big earthquakes, even 600km down.

AN EARTHQUAKE HAS OCCURRED WITH THESE PRELIMINARY PARAMETERS

   ORIGIN TIME - 0745 PM HST 23 MAY 2013
   COORDINATES - 54.7 NORTH  153.4 EAST
   LOCATION    - SEA OF OKHOTSK
   MAGNITUDE   - 8.2  MOMENT

EVALUATION

 BASED ON ALL AVAILABLE DATA A DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS
 NOT EXPECTED AND THERE IS NO TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII. REPEAT. A
 DESTRUCTIVE PACIFIC-WIDE TSUNAMI IS NOT EXPECTED AND THERE IS NO
 TSUNAMI THREAT TO HAWAII.

THIS WILL BE THE ONLY STATEMENT ISSUED FOR THIS EVENT UNLESS
ADDITIONAL DATA ARE RECEIVED.

USGS gives this massive earthquake with M 8.2, luckily in a relatively safe depth of more than 600 km.

Most important Earthquake Data:

Magnitude : 8.3

Local Time (conversion only below land) : Unknown

GMT/UTC Time : 2013-05-24 05:44:48

Depth (Hypocenter)  : 605 km

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2013/05/24/massive-earthquake-sea-of-okhotsk-on-may-24-2013/

Meteor Hits Russia

Meteorite – not the end of the world – strikes Russia’s Siberia

A bus-sized meteor exploded over Russia’s Ural Mountains, sparking speculation about everything from a missile attack to the end of the world. The shock waves smashed windows and damaged buildings.

By Fred Weir | Christian Science Monitor

  • Russian meteorite caught on tape; injuries reportedKABC – Los Angeles  0:56A meteor hit over Russia’s Ural Mountains on Friday, causing sharp explosions and reportedly injuring …

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A meteor the size of a bus exploded in the atmosphere over the Russian Urals city of Chelyabinsk Friday, terrifying thousands with blinding light flashes and powerful sonic booms that shattered windows, damaged buildings, and injuries may be heading toward 1,000, mainly due to flying glass and debris.

Thanks to the proliferation of new technologies like CCTV and dashboard cameras in cars, the dazzling meteor shower that hit the far-western Siberian region may be the first event of its kind in history to be filmed from almost every angle.

Dozens of videos have cropped up on YouTube and other social media, and they offer an astounding glimpse of what happens when a huge hunk of rock, estimated at about 10 tons, plows into the atmosphere at a speed of 30,000 miles per hour. It disintegrated in a series of bright flashes while still several miles above the Earth’s surface.

According to eyewitnesses quoted by the Ekho Moskvi radio station, the event began around 9 a.m. local time, when it was not yet full daylight. The station said that thousands of people rushed into the frigid streets, looking up at the fiery contrails in the sky, with many wondering if it was an air disaster, a missile attack, or the end of the world.

“My ears popped, the windows in our building are smashed, everyone says an airplane exploded. My cellphone stopped working for awhile,” said one witness from Chelyabinsk.

“I was driving to work and suddenly there was this flash that lit everything up like bright sunlight,” said another. “The shock wave nearly drove me off the road.”

Close to 1,000 people were reported injured, but only three seriously enough to be hospitalized, according to the official RIA-Novosti agency. Windows were blown out across a wide area, and several buildings were reported damaged, including a Chelyabinsk factory, whose roof caved in.

Pieces of the meteor have been reported coming down across several regions in western Siberia and even nearby Kazakhstan. Russia’s Defense Ministry reported that soldiers have located a 20-ft.-wide crater near a lake in Chelyabinsk region.

Russia‘s military may have known of the impending meteor strike several days in advance, but did not issue any special public warnings, according to the independent Rosbalt news agency (link in Russian).

“The preliminary data about its size and composition suggested it would break up in the atmosphere. There was no cause for alarm,” the agency quoted an unnamed Defense Ministry official as saying.

Experts say that such meteor showers are not uncommon, but this one was much bigger than usual, and it occurred over a major population center in the early morning, where huge numbers of people could watch it. Chelyabinsk is an industrial city of about 1 million.

“Judging by the intensity of the shock waves, this was a body at least 30 ft. in diameter and weighing around 10 tons. That’s a big one,” says Nikolai Chugai, a department head at the official Institute of Astronomy in Moscow.

“It came in very fast, at a shallow angle, and disintegrated in an arc across the sky. That accounts for the amazing sound-and-light show…. If it had come in vertically, it would have been way more destructive, but over a smaller area,” he adds.

The European Space Agency reported Friday that there is no connection between the meteor that hit Russia and the huge 165-ft. diameter asteroid known as DA14, which is due to pass within 17,000 miles of Earth – less distance than satellites in geosynchronous orbit – within the next day or so.

“It did a lot of damage, but what do you expect?” asks Nikolai Zheleznov, an expert with the Institute of Applied Astronomy in St. Petersburg. “A meteorite is a large projectile, like a bomb, that enters the atmosphere at high speed. Imagine the kinetic energy in a rock 30 ft. across. When it comes roaring into the atmosphere, the air density is like a solid wall that it slams into. Kinetic energy turns to heat, and then there is percussion….

“We live in a solar system that’s full of asteroids and meteorites. There’s no avoiding them. Thousands of tons of meteorites fall onto the Earth every year, far more than we can even keep track of. So, try not to worry too much.”

from:    http://news.yahoo.com/meteorite-not-end-world-strikes-russias-siberia-144416162.html

Russia To Quit Kyoto Protools?

Russia hints plans to quit Kyoto Protocol October 18, 2012 Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev Enlarge Russia on Thursday hinted that it may refuse to sign up to a new round of targeted carbon cuts that could see the Kyoto environmental protection treaty extended beyond its end of 2012 expiry date. “One has to admit that we never got any real commercial gain from the Kyoto Protocol,” news agencies quoted Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, pictured on October 12, as telling a government meeting. Russia on Thursday hinted that it may refuse to sign up to a new round of targeted carbon cuts that could see the Kyoto environmental protection treaty extended beyond its end of 2012 expiry date.
“One has to admit that we never got any real commercial gain from the Kyoto Protocol,” news agencies quoted Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev as telling a government meeting. “That does not mean that we have to try and drag it (the treaty) out any further,” Medvedev added. European diplomats at the May G8 summit in France said that Russia along with Japan and Canada had confirmed plans not to join the second round of carbon cuts. Russia ratified the treaty in 2004. It has since argued that its terms harm developing nations. Medvedev noted that he had said on repeated occasions in the past that “if the world community fails to agree on Kyoto, we would wave it goodbye.” He said he was thinking of extending the treaty’s terms with EU nations alone. “But considering our uneasy relations with the European Union, I am not sure how likely this scenario will be,” he said. A range of EU nations are probing Russian energy natural gas giant Gazprom for price-fixing and other unfair practices under its new Energy Charter Treaty. Medvedev did not explain his reasoning beyond the mention of Russia’s failure to tap into the profits it could have earned had it sold other nations unused carbon emission credits from its domestic producers. (c) 2012 AFP

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-10-russia-hints-kyoto-protocol.html#jCp

Earthquake — Sea of Okhotsk, Russia

Earthquakes list August 14, 2012

Last update: August 14, 2012 at 3:09 pm by By

Massive very deep earthquake in the sea of Okhotsk
A Magnitude 7.7 (updated from 7.3 by USGS) earthquake hit the sea of Okhotsk 160 km from Poronaysk, Russia although it was a massive earthquake the depth of  625 km has decreased the shaking strongly, making it a IV on the Mercalli scale (light shaking) for a very wide area, no tsunami is possible because of the depth.
The earthquake has been felt as far as Japan!

from:    http://earthquake-report.com/2012/08/13/major-earthquakes-list-august-14-2012/

Daylight Savings Times Tales

5 Crazy Chapters in the History of Daylight Saving Time

Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
Date: 09 March 2012 Time: 03:11 PM ET
The sun rises over the Atlantic ocean.
The purpose of daylight saving time is to sync people’s lives with the sun.
CREDIT: Roman SigaevShutterstock

On Sunday, most Americans will wake up only to realize they’ve lost an hour of their weekend to daylight saving time — the price we pay for eight months of well-lit evenings.

Unless you live in Arizona or Hawaii, which don’t observe daylight saving, you’re probably used to this routine by now. But the history ofdaylight saving time has been anything but peaceful, from its first wartime introduction to its ongoing controversy today.

Bright idea

Ben Franklin gets credit for thinking up the idea of daylight saving time, albeit with his trademark wit. As ambassador to Paris, Franklin wrote a letter to the Journal of Paris in 1784 of his “discovery” that the sun gives light as soon as it rises, and needling Parisians for their night-owl, candle-burning ways.

Ben Franklin had the basic concept,” said David Prerau, author of “Seize the Daylight: The Curious and Contentious Story of Daylight Saving Time” (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2005). What Franklin lacked, Prerau said, was a useful way to force everyone into living by the sun’s rules — other than some “humorous ideas” that Parisians surely wouldn’t have found very funny, including shooting off cannons at sunrise every morning.

Others took daylight saving time much more seriously, particularly William Willett, an Englishman who loved his early-morning horseback rides, Prerau told LiveScience; Willett he couldn’t believe that everyone else wanted to sleep in after the sun came up. He also touted the benefits of longer hours of daylight in the evenings.

Willett managed to get the idea of moving the clock forward during the summer months proposed in Parliament in 1908, but it was shot down.

“Willett was a steadfast guy, and so he proposed it again in 1909, 1910, 1911, and Parliament rejected it all those times,” Prerau said.

Willett might have kept this up, but he died in 1915, never to see his beloved daylight saving plan reach fruition.

Wartime rally

If Willett couldn’t convince the British populace that daylight saving time was needed, the Germans could. In 1916, with World War I ratcheting up, Germany put itself on daylight saving time to save energy for the war effort. Britain followed a month later.

When the United States got involved in the war in 1918, they too instituted daylight saving time. President Woodrow Wilson even wanted to keep the new system after the war ended. But at the time, the country was mostly rural. Farmers hated the time change, because their jobs were dependent on the sun, and daylight saving time put them out of sync with the city people who sold them goods and bought their products. Congress repealed daylight saving time, Wilson vetoed the repeal, and Congress promptly overrode his veto, a fairly rare occurrence.

“It’s been contentious,” Prerau said.

Total confusion

When World War II hit, daylight saving time came back into vogue, again to save energy for the war effort. The U.S. instituted daylight saving time less than a month after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Prerau said. This time, though, America’s increasingly industrialized population wasn’t as keen on losing their post-work daylight after the war ended. So when the national law requiring the time switch was repealed, some towns stuck with daylight saving.

It was chaos. One 35-mile bus ride from Moundsville, W.Va., to Steubenville, Ohio, took riders through no less than seven different time changes, Prerau said. At one point, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul were on different clocks, creating confusion for workers who lived in one city and commuted to the other.

“The suburbs didn’t know what to do at all,” Prerau said.

Uniform time

This every-town-for-itself system couldn’t last long. In 1966, Congress passed the Uniform Time act of 1966, specifying that states didn’t have to get on the daylight saving bandwagon, but that if they did, the whole state had to comply. And the federal government would determine the days of “springing forward” and “falling back,” the law stated, eliminating the problem of towns and cities setting their own daylight saving dates.

Expanding daylight saving

Since that time, Congress has expanded the length of daylight saving time three times, once in the 1970s during the country’s energy crisis, once in the 1980s, when April got brought under the daylight saving umbrella, and finally in 2007. Today, daylight saving time encompasses March into November.

The reasoning given for each of these changes was to save energy, Prerau said, but there are other benefits to springing forward. Fewer cars on the road on dark evenings mean fewer traffic accidents. And more daylight means more outdoor exercise for the after-work crowd.

On the other hand, expanding daylight saving time to encompass any more of the year might cause trouble. Russia shifted their clock to permanent daylight saving time in 2011, which worked fine until the depths of winter. Suddenly, the sun was rising at 10 a.m. in Moscow and 11 a.m. in St. Petersburg, Prerau said. People aren’t fond of starting their days in the pitch-black, he said, and now there’s talk of reversing the decision.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/18965-history-daylight-saving-time.html

Dutch Sinse on Pole SHift

1/8/2012 — German ‘SWARM’ satellites to study Pole Shift — Launching early 2012

Posted on January 9, 2012

watch the video here:

 

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Euronews put out this news in Oct. 2011 — announcing what the “SWARM” satellite array will do — they announced the project for “early 2012″.

Word has come to me that the launch will be announced shortly. This study will measure the movement of the earths magnetic poles.

Here is the original story:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11980315

https://www.google.com/search?q=german+swarm+magnetic+satellite+launch&ie…

here’s my original video from Oct. 2011 — no longer on my list mirrored by a viewer –

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Y9pM4q9vQY&feature=results_video&play…

from:    http://sincedutch.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/182012-german-swarm-satellites-to-study-pole-shift-launching-early-2012/

 

 

Russian Yeti Nests

eti ‘Nests’ Found in Russia?

Benjamin Radford, Life’s Little Mysteries Contributor
Date: 18 November 2011 Time: 02:09 PM ET
Reward Offered for Mysterious Monsters

Bigfoot researcher and biologist John Bindernagel claims his research group has found evidence that the Yeti (a Russian “cousin” of the American Bigfoot) not only exists, but builds nests and shelters by twisting tree branches together.

“We didn’t feel like the trees we saw in Siberia had been done by a man or another mammal…. Twisted trees like this have also been observed in North America and they could fit with the theory that Bigfoot makes nests. The nests we have looked at are built around trees twisted together into an arch shape,” Bindernagel told the British tabloid The Sun.

Tree twisting, also called splintering, has been claimed as Bigfoot evidence for decades throughout the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere. In some cases tool markings have been found on trees said to have been twisted by Bigfoot. This suggests that the creatures are even possibly more intelligent than previously suspected and may be able to somehowlocate and use pliers, monkey wrenches, and other common hardware tools.

Unless the marks were made by human hoaxers.

Although many of the “mysteriously” twisted tree limbs are conveniently near ground level, some are found at the top of trees. Bigfoot researchers claim these are stronger evidence of the Yeti’s existence, because whereas any hoaxer could easily twist small, waist-level branches, only a Bigfoot-like animal would be able to climb up that high.

However, that raises the not-insignificant question of how a huge, heavy animal would get to the top of a tree without breaking it, or at least snapping a few branches on the way up. Bigfoot are often said to be between 8-and-12-feet tall and weigh several hundred pounds; surely if such a tall, heavy animal made its way up a tree – most of the trees that have been found twisted are spindly in nature – there would be much more obvious damage than a few woven branches at the very top. And if Bigfoot and Yetis spend time perched at the tops of trees doing arboreal decorating, why aren’t they spotted more often?

There’s even more reason to be skeptical of Bindernagel’s claim. According to Sharon Hill of the Doubtful News blog, another scientist who participated in the same Russian expedition concluded that hoaxing was afoot. At a Bigfoot conference that Hill attended last month, Jeff Meldrum (a professor of anatomy and anthropologist at Idaho State Universitywho endorses the existence of Bigfoot) said that he suspected the twisted tree branches had been faked. Not only was there obvious evidence of tool-made cuts in the supposedly “Yeti-twisted” branches, but the trees were conveniently located just off a well-traveled trail.

Meldrum, who eventually concluded that the whole Russian expedition was more of a publicity stunt than a serious scientific endeavor, refused to sign the group’s statement endorsing “indisputable proof” of the Yeti, and returned to the United States. Others, including Bindernagel, remain convinced that conclusive Yeti and Bigfoot evidence is just around the corner — a belief that the Bigfoot community has clung to for more than half a century.

from:    http://www.livescience.com/17104-yeti-nest-russia-evidence.html

Strong Earthquake-Amur Region of Russia

Very strong shallow dangerous earthquake in Amur area, Russia – many aftershocks are reported

Last update: October 14, 2011 at 2:03 pm by By 

arthquake overview : A 5.9 magnitude strong earthquake hit Amurskaya Oblast, Russia. The hypocenter was located at 13.8 km depth. The epicenter was close to Skovordino a town with over 10,000 inhabitants.

 

 

Village and landscape in the earthquake area – image courtesy Tanya Konchik

UPDATE 10:54 UTC : We have found no evidence yet of serious damage and/or injuries

UPDATE: Authorities are talking about “awave of aftershocks“. People walking in the streets of Chita said that “The buildings were moving objects“.

UPDATE: The power supply was temporarily down because of the failure of 2 power substations at Bam. 4 hours 25 minutes later evrything was back to normal.

UPDATE: The earthquake has been calledAmur earthquake by local authorities.

UPDATE:  According to experts, the epicenter of the earthquake was located 7 km east of the village Tahtamygda Skovorodinsky district, 134 km southwest of Tynda

UPDATE:  * The power supply has been fixed, however as they expect new tremors, delays are expected.
* PAGER has updated the shaking damage estimate to be around $2-3 million (median estimate) .

UPDATE: The Russian Ministry for Emergency operations  reports that :  the  earthquake occurred in the Amur region, some 20 km from Skovorodinothe end point of the current 600,000 barrels/day ESPO pipeline where crude is loaded into railroad tanks for further transportation to Kozmino. Workers who are inspecting the pipeline have not yet reported any damage yet.