Hajj’s stoning ritual raises fears of swine flu outbreak – washingtonpost.com


MINA, SAUDI ARABIA — Millions of Muslim pilgrims, some wearing surgical masks, jostled one another Saturday to furiously cast pebbles at stone walls representing the devil — the hajj ritual of highest concern to world health authorities watching for an outbreak of swine flu.

The Islamic pilgrimage draws 3 million visitors each year, making it the largest annual gathering of people in the world and an ideal incubator for the H1N1 flu virus.

So far, about 60 flu cases have been uncovered, but health officials warn that the true impact will be known only after the faithful have returned to their home countries around the world.

Saudi officials, along with U.S. and international health experts, have geared up to try to limit any outbreak here. But they are also using the pilgrimage as a test case to build a database, watch for mutations and look for lessons on controlling the flu at other large gatherings, such as the 2010 soccer World Cup to be held in South Africa.

via Hajj’s stoning ritual raises fears of swine flu outbreak – washingtonpost.com.

The Associated Press: Leaders say momentum building on climate change


PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad — Leaders of the Commonwealth countries called Saturday for a legally binding international agreement on climate change and a global fund with billions of dollars to help poor countries meet its mandates.

The 53-nation meeting was the largest gathering of international leaders before next month's global climate summit in Copenhagen.

The leaders said a deal should be adopted no later than next year and the support money should be available simultaneously, providing up to $10 billion a year starting in 2012.

At least 10 percent of the fund should be dedicated to small island and low-lying coastal nations that are at risk of catastrophic changes from global warming, the group said.

“Climate change is the predominant global challenge,” the Commonwealth leaders said in a joint declaration. “For some of us, it is an existential threat.”

The document called for a “legally binding” agreement by the world's nations.

via The Associated Press: Leaders say momentum building on climate change.

The Associated Press: Leaders say momentum building on climate change


PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad — Leaders of the Commonwealth countries called Saturday for a legally binding international agreement on climate change and a global fund with billions of dollars to help poor countries meet its mandates.

The 53-nation meeting was the largest gathering of international leaders before next month's global climate summit in Copenhagen.

The leaders said a deal should be adopted no later than next year and the support money should be available simultaneously, providing up to $10 billion a year starting in 2012.

At least 10 percent of the fund should be dedicated to small island and low-lying coastal nations that are at risk of catastrophic changes from global warming, the group said.

“Climate change is the predominant global challenge,” the Commonwealth leaders said in a joint declaration. “For some of us, it is an existential threat.”

The document called for a “legally binding” agreement by the world's nations.

via The Associated Press: Leaders say momentum building on climate change.

Russia blames terrorists as dozens killed in train crash | World news | The Observer


Russia was tonight coming to terms with its most deadly terrorist attack in years after investigators confirmed that a powerful improvised bomb caused Friday's devastating train crash in which at least 26 people, including several top government officials, were killed.

The head of Russia's FSB counter-terrorism agency, Alexander Bortnikov, said the bomb, hidden on the railway line between Moscow and St Petersburg, contained the equivalent of 7kg (15.4lb) of TNT. Officers had found “elements of an explosive device”, he said.

Today two huge cranes lifted up wreckage at the crash site as workers searched for the missing. Officials said 18 people were still unaccounted for. Nearly 100 people injured in the crash were being treated in hospitals. Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, called for calm amid speculation the explosion could be the start of a new campaign by Chechen extremists. “We need there to be no chaos, because the situation is tense as it is,” he told Russian TV.

via Russia blames terrorists as dozens killed in train crash | World news | The Observer.

The Quest for Chaos


http://www.gointernet.biz/the-quest-for-chaos

On any ordinary day, we could sense the inception of an approaching storm.  At first, the isolated low rumbles of thunder can be felt deep in our guts as apposed to being heard audibly.  Sometimes the sign is simply the breeze picking up and creating that familiar ghostly whistle in the nearby trees or a rush of leaves that tend to swoop out of nowhere as the atmosphere drops in temperature without warning.  The heavens become silenced by the swirling debris and quietness of the soul begins to meld with the mysterious feeling that something is just different.  We shut off any noisy appliances and turn the television stations over to the local weather channel in order to hear the latest forecast.  It turns out to be just a passing storm with no real threat involved.

We shut off the TV, grab our shoes and head out to the yard or front porch in order to stand there and watch in awe at the great wonder that is called nature.  The dark clouds are just visible over the distant houses as they seem to creep in and invade the blue solemn sky just directly above.  Low rumbles of audible thunder start entering the scene while little wisps of wetness start to dot your face with a splat here and a trickle there.  And then the darkness begins to shroud the sky and blind us from the light of day.

And this is the moment we all live for.  Not the storm or watching people come out of their homes as if it were the first time they realized there was a world out there.  It’s not the rain on our faces or the lightning that cuts us down and reminds us how small and insignificant we really are.  Nor is it the swooshing cool evening wind of an oncoming storm that prevents us from realizing our control over destiny.  The one thing that keeps us going from the moment we are born until the day we die is that illusion or sensation of something mystical and mysterious just over the horizon.

Simply knowing that the future is unpredictable is not enough to sustain us.  Something that is unpredictable is still well within the realms of predicting potential outcomes even if the definite conclusion is still unknown.  Reliving the same mundane ins and outs of society is not what keeps us going either.  Even newfound relationships or unexpected promotions are not enough to lift us into a state of euphoria because something that is different to one person is still a routine for a series of generations.

In neither the ages of elderly bliss nor a mid-life crisis do we find anything like we did when growing up in the world and discovering it for the first time as young children.  “Blessed are the children” brings a whole new meaning when you think about it.  It is only a child who can establish a foundation of wonderment within a life consisting of everyday routines.  Once you become an adult, the wonderment transforms into a simple state of awareness that seeks to discover those feelings again.

We reach deep into our proverbial grab bag of ‘the known’ and start weaving together new ideas mixed with old childhood feelings in a vague attempt to turn order back into a state of chaos so that we can establish a new foundation of the ‘unknown’ to play with.  And from that repository of gifted memories and the abundance of available political or social debates of our present time, we construct a new method of reliving our lives anew.  Through the power of the subconscious mind with the assistance of our bias conscious thoughts, we develop a method of insurrection where we can create a problem in order to seek out the solution even where one may have never existed to begin with.  And so, a new conspiracy is born.

Surely, one must consider the natural order of things.  By merely introducing the possibility that a conspiracy is but the product of an overactive imagination is not to suggest that conspiracies do not exist.  There are three types of people in this equation.  First you have those who invent conspiracies theories.  Secondly are the ones who discover existing conspiracy theories and distort them in such a way to make them their own.  And lastly are the ones who create the conspiracies to begin with.  All three of which are still the product of that overactive imagination.  I have conveniently left out the ones that discover that a conspiracy really does not exist because there is no such thing.  Once a conspiracy theory is implemented it either graduates into a known fact or simply remains a theory for life.  You can not disprove a conspiracy theory insomuch as you, personally, can simply become a non-believer.  After all, many people believe that Elvis is still alive.  But once we have historically reached his one hundred and thirtieth birthday and everyone is sitting around no longer contemplating the possibility that he might still be with us, the theorists will simply be swapping “He’s still alive!” with “Well, he was!”.

What really boggles my mind at times is the fact that I really don’t see any possible directives with conspiracies to begin with.  Whether it is the theory or the conspiracy itself, the agenda behind it is a terrible phenomenon on its own.  To conspire being in a position of such great power or to have some ungodly amount of fortune is really quite contradictory to what people really want to begin with.  Our basic goal in life is to simply be happy.  Sometimes this takes money but certainly not an amount that justifies buying your own nation and introducing a whole new level of enduring hard physical and mental labor.  If one is to be so insecure about their own future that they must inject upon themselves a great powerful position or so much money that they could not possible spend it all in a lifetime, then somewhere a miscommunication has occurred that left these people believing that we ‘normal’ people really even care. 

Regardless of whether I am a billionaire or just received my long awaited weekly paycheck, I still have to wake up in the morning, eat food at some point, find a way to entertain myself and then go to bed.  I sometimes revel in the fact that I did not have to attend a secret society, participate in a Bilderberg meeting, take on a political assassination, overthrow a government or nuke an enemy just to have my daily bread and spend time with a few family members and friends.  Therefore, even with a tremendous ego and the power to rule the world, I still see this final completion of an objective nothing more than a method of transferring your life from one in which you know who your friends really are into one where you just order everyone to pretend they are your friends.  Anyone with such position of authority must have a relatively huge ego and equally large inferiority complex to begin with in order to submit to such extreme measures.

And then again most people are reluctant to notice that often times it is not so much the agenda behind a conspiracy insomuch as the fuel that set it into motion.  Not every fire is set in order to destroy something.  We need heat to survive and the flame to cook our food.  However, when did keeping warm or eating a hot meal ever need to be a huge secret?  If a huge conspiracy is based upon an agenda that we should all agree is a sound reason to contribute to it, then why is it all such a big secret to begin with?  Why not reveal the conspiracy while keeping the tactics involved a secret? Just once I want to see someone in power stand up and say “We have decided to overthrow an evil empire and make life good again for all the people of the world!  Oh, but we’re not going to tell just how we are going to do it though.”  Even if the conspiracy is involving Aliens visiting our planet I can’t see the idea of keeping it a secret.  Actual statistics imply that more people today believe in Aliens than in God.  However, I don’t see the governments running around picking off copies of the bible and hiding them away in underground bunkers in order to prevent religions from rebelling against government regulations.  Of course this is a bit of an exaggeration due to the fact that hiding religion today is about as possible as hiding Osama Bin Laden in the White House.  Oh wait, that’s another existing conspiracy.  Bad analogy.

My point here is that conspiracies are not often the product of simply being a secret as it is just a continuing controversy in order to cover one’s own butt.  For example, the act of hiding knowledge about alien existence might be reconciled with when attempting to prevent the enemy of war from obtaining such knowledge of Alien’s whereabouts prior to us knowing anything about them. And even in a time of peace, peace itself is nothing more than another way of saying, “well, nobody is shooting at us right now”. It’s still hardly considered peace while indifferences exist.  But nonetheless, don’t you think they have enough information on the aliens by now in order to come to a conclusion?  Whether that conclusion is that alien technology should be kept secret or not, at one point or another I believe it’s time to just stand up and say “Ok, here it is.  We have been hiding alien existence from you because we feel that their technology, in the wrong hands, could be severely consequential to our peaceful way of life. You can agree that this was for your own good.  But now we feel that the world is ready to know that aliens do exist but you should be patient with us about revealing any of the technology that we have uncovered thus far because terrorism is still in the process of threatening our quest for peace.  Now here is Zorknick from the planet Kaxxia to say a few words.”

It should already be plainly apparent that if an alien race or races did exist, that they would be extremely friendly by now.  I have come to this conclusion not because we haven’t been invaded by now but because, even if the government were attempting to hide them from us, if theirs was an agenda to mislead the public into thinking they are friendly only to attack later, governments could not hide them from exposing themselves to us.

Let’s break this down while using this whole alien cover-up thing as a scenario.  Let’s say that alien existence is being hidden because they want to hide their technology.  This only justifies the hiding of technology and not the existence itself.  We are not that stupid.  Aliens or no aliens, we are very much aware of the fact that there is military technology that is kept from us for good reason.  We are grown ups, we can accept that and completely understand the ramifications involved.  Humans come up with terrific forms of technology that need to be kept secret too.  Are we hiding geniuses now?

Next let us consider that their existence is being hidden because they are hostile.  Hostile?  Really?   If the government can’t even cover up YouTube videos of recent sightings captured on camera phones then how would they possibly manage to hide an invading army of aliens that are so technologically advanced that our F-16s and stealth bombers are like tortoises in the Kentucky Derby?   We would have been invaded and destroyed long before Barney and Betty Hill could ever say “What the heck is that?”

Next let’s consider that Aliens are actually secretly working along side the US government in order to complete some sort of unknown agenda.  What agenda could that possibly be that would initiate an advanced society of aliens to want to help conspire with any particular government secretly?  After achieving interstellar travel and universal enlightenment, they all decided to take a break and come down here in order to become part of some great conspiracy to fool humans into believing they aren’t here.  Wow!  Sounds like something they could have achieved by simply staying on their own planet to begin with.

Ok, despite the fact that there are countless other theories involving alien cover-ups, let’s just back this up a minute.  Who ever came to conclusion that aliens have achieved cosmic or universal awareness anyway?  Think about this for a second.  We earthlings have come so far in the areas of technology that we have already managed to travel to other heavenly bodies years ago.  Despite the fact that the order of things would require one to first explore the galaxy or even the Universe prior to even beginning to consider alternative dimensions, we have already jumped into those as well.  Logically speaking, we may only be a few years to no more than a couple hundred years away from managing light speed or beyond.  However, some guy in the desert wearing a turban managed to take us down to our knees in one swipe using four airplanes while thrusting a new age of terrorism into our lap and setting us back billions of dollars in the process.   Who is to say that these Aliens are not a mere couple hundred years more advanced than we are instead of the millions of years that people are hypothesizing about?  If the Roswell crash has taught us anything it should be that maybe the aliens are still in the process of getting the hang of their own inventions.  Technology represents the evolution of a man but only peace can represent the evolution of mankind.

The most common reason given by non believers as to why aliens could not exist is in the form of a common question.  “If aliens are millions of years more advanced than us then why haven’t they bothered to show themselves until just recently?”  My response is that there is a first for everything.  It just seems illogical for one to determine the existence of something based on the historical timing by which it chooses to take an action.  Could this simply be an indication that Aliens are just starting out where we may have been starting out in a couple hundred years anyway?  Perhaps these aliens have a world of their own where they are fighting and being taken down by defenseless looking desert cepulapods and telling their inhabitant that humans don’t exist.  Maybe the reason they have not revealed their existence to us is not so much an issue of us not being ready insomuch as we all are just not ready.

Let’s just consider for a moment that not all conspiracies are what they seem.  With all of the political power and religious influences that exist on our feeble little planet, why would the primary agenda be to have complete control over the whole planet when they already have that?  World domination is no longer a quest as it is just another boring day for them.  They are just dogs chasing fire trucks and now that they’ve caught one they have no clue what to do next.  So, like everyone, they are sticking their hands back into the ‘grab bag’ and preparing new adventures in order to relive their wondrous childhoods from a new adult perspective.  As for the rest of us, you really don’t have to try that hard to uncover new conspiracy theories.  It’s not always about reliving your childhood in a state of euphoric discoveries.  As long as people are out there seeking their own adventure, conspiracies will just happen and eventually they leak into the public on their own accord.  After all, all you have to do is remember what it was like to be child.  Getting into trouble was not always that much fun until you included the risk of being caught.

Not unlike the approaching storm and the occasional sensation of fear at conspiracies that appear too big for us to control on our own, one can always choose whether they want to be a spectator, participant or to simply not get involved.  By not getting involved, you certainly provide no momentum or power the deceptions nor would you be assisting in uncovering the mysteries that blind us from the truth.  Nonetheless, the uninvolved is usually the ones to be least effected by any negative outcomes.  The spectators are often the ones sitting on the sidelines and watching everything unfold at the hand of the participants.  So it’s your choice.  You can grow old and tell your grandchildren boring stories about how you sat around all day watching the storms pass from your living room windows and front porches or, despite all of the lightning, thunder and other dangers involved, you can tell them how you went outside with the rest of us and danced in the rain.