Tag Archives: acceleration

Excellent videos on recent Earth changes

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If you find Thundering Heard at all interesting, you owe it to yourself to see this video, either on youtube:

     SOTT Earth Changes Summary – July 2014

or on vimeo. It’s a truly remarkable video summary of events on our planet during July.

And if you found that interesting, here are the summaries from the prior two months:

     SOTT Earth Changes Summary – June 2014

     SOTT Earth Changes Summary – May 2014

For those who can’t access youtube, here are links for those same June and May videos on vimeo.

SOTT.NET is doing a great job on these videos.

 

Lightning, and the Earth’s weakening magnetic field

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Why lightning? Because, in articles found since July 1:

     Lightning Strikes 14 People In California

     Ball of lightning hospitalises woman and kills hundreds of pigs at farm in China

     Single lightning strike kills 45 head of Black Angus cattle on Montana ranch

     In Bashkortostan, lightning killed 101 sheep

     Two reports of lightning going inside homes and striking people down

     Family of four struck by one lightning bolt

     Second lightning strike fatality in two days at Colorado park, officials say

Four people were injured in Saturday’s strike, and eight were hurt on Friday, officials said in a news release.

For those interested, more headlines about increasingly fierce lightning since July 1 are at the bottom of this post.

From the Manifesto for this site:

This transition is not limited to things human. It reverberates through our entire energetic continuum: the Earth itself is having documented increases in earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, changing weather patterns, and extreme weather events; energy is dancing from the Sun as we’ve never seen before; even the Earth’s magnetic poles are on the move in accelerating fashion.

This is yet another manifestation of the full-spectrum energetic change we are beginning to experience. Yes, lighting strikes occur millions of times a day across the planet. But in recent months, the power of some of these strikes has clearly escalated. Single bolts are striking multiple people and are able to kill a hundred animals at a time. This is not usual.

The cause? It could be from the general increase in the power of storms documented here in several past posts. But it could also be related to this, based on the latest readings from the European Space Agency’s (ESA) satellite array called Swarm:

     Earth’s Magnetic Field Is Weakening 10 Times Faster Now

Once every few hundred thousand years the magnetic poles flip so that a compass would point south instead of north. While changes in magnetic field strength are part of this normal flipping cycle, data from Swarm have shown the field is starting to weaken faster than in the past. Previously, researchers estimated the field was weakening about 5 percent per century, but the new data revealed the field is actually weakening at 5 percent per decade, or 10 times faster than thought. As such, rather than the full flip occurring in about 2,000 years, as was predicted, the new data suggest it could happen sooner…

Earth’s magnetic field acts like a giant invisible bubble that shields the planet from the dangerous cosmic radiation spewing from the sun in the form of solar winds.

So, yet another example of acceleration and energetic change. When one combines this with the idea of an electric universe–that is, one in which electricity is present everywhere, a view that is being proven by excellent work summarized at sites like the Thunderbolts Project–then as the magnetic field weakens, our environment is being stimulated in an increasing way by the emanations of the Sun. Researches such as Mitch Battros have for years been showing an extremely high correlation between geomagnetic storms that hit the Earth and an increase in earthquakes and storms in the 24 to 72 hours that follow, as he did again this weekend at his Earth Changes Media web site:

BREAKING NEWS: Friday’s Two M-Class Flares Accelerate Ocean and Jet Stream Currents

On August 1st, two M-class flares fired off from sunspot regions 2130 and 2127, both of which were located at the Sun’s central meridian producing direct hits to Earth.

Within 24 to 48 hours of these solar storms, four tropical storms; Genevieve, Bertha, Halong, Iselle – were either produced or elevated. Within an additional 24 hours, the NOAA Tsunami Warning Center a 7.2 magnitude earthquake hit near Lorengau, Papua New Guinea at 00:22:03 UTC, August 3rd 2014.

He could haven mentioned these earthquakes as well:

     Update: At least 367 killed in southern China after strong earthquake

     USGS: Earthquake Magnitude 6.1 – Federated States of Micronesia region

So, what’s the moral of the story?

1. If you are in the vicinity of a lightning storm, don’t mess with it. Ignoring the storm based on thoughts of the low probability of being struck by lightning may no longer be a wise approach.

2. Expect further acceleration in the trends documented at Thundering Heard: extreme weather, earthquakes, magnetic pole migration, and so forth, and take whatever measures, if any, you deem appropriate.

3. Expect an increasing effect from these energetic changes on society and on you, at all levels of your being.

Here are some additional lighting links gathered since July 1:

     3,400 lightning strikes in Central Oregon – dozens of wildfires erupt

     Spanish World Cup team plane struck by lightning on way back from Brazil

     Colorado man struck by lightning while filming storm

     Severe lightning storms tear through Chicago area

     Lightning knocks Atlanta-area man clean out of his ‘smoking’ boots

     Dramatic film of lightning strikes as July storms hit the UK

     UK storms cause further disruption after lightning

     UK freak lightning & hail plunge commuters into ‘Zombie Apocalypse’

     Spectacular lightning strike filmed in New York

     Lightning storm creates terrifying nuclear bomb-style mushroom cloud above Sardinia

     ‘Whistling’ Volcanic Lightning Heard Halfway Around the World

 

 

 

A brief comment on the metals

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This is strictly an opinion piece, I will not try to prove my case with links, charts, and so forth. An attempt to prove the case would be seriously lengthy, a project for which I don’t currently have the time and which I doubt most would want to read.

There is a very bright golden light on the horizon for precious metal prices, but that light is on the horizon (let’s say the first half of August), not right here. In other words, I think prices will drop first before they start rising in a serious way. I see four separate price, time, and trend patterns that include an expectation that price falls first before it takes off to the upside in a big way. And these patterns are supported by the seasonal pattern for gold which shows prices typically falling in the Summer and then turning up sometime in August.

So for anyone who has savings to deploy in the metals, the setup is ideal: you should get lower prices over the next couple of months for your buying, with an expectation that your buying will be followed by the start of a major price rally, that is, the prices available over the next several weeks should be quite a bargain.

For those of you who bought your metals years back–hopefully at prices that are still well below where they are now–and who have no additional buying power, you’ll need to be patient here, but as implied above, a price drop dead ahead will be an elegant completion of major recognizable patterns (based on four entirely different types of calculations) that have an exceedingly high probability of being the end of this general price downmove that started in late 2011. These patterns all clearly indicate that the bull market in metals that started early in this century still has many years to run, and that the best upward price movement is definitely still ahead of us.

Of course this could all be wrong if some huge war breaks out, in which case prices could go up and never look back. But if things are allowed to work out with “only” the normal amount of accelerating instability that is the most important trend of our time, then these reliable price, time, and trend patterns are likely to complete as outlined above. In any case, no matter what, prices should turn up for good later in the Summer.

This post is an attempt to keep emotions out of the precious metals picture so that as many of us as possible own some when we will all truly need them down the road. (I am serious about the word need; my repeated posting about gold and silver has nothing to do with an “investment scheme” to get rich quick or with having the “right asset class in your diversified portfolio,” I am talking about what people will soon need.) As their propaganda on this topic and their dirty tricks clearly show, the Powers That Were want you to get emotional and make the mistake of avoiding or selling physical metals so that they can accumulate more metals for themselves at low prices. I’m hoping that everyone who reads Thundering Heard is well prepared to fend off, or even capitalize on, their tricks.

 

Actual democracy

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How often do you hear of a referendum where there is huge voter turnout and 90% vote in favor? We just saw two, both with the theme of secession:

     Crimeans vote in referendum on whether to break away from Ukraine, join Russia

Crimean election Spokesman Mikhail Malyshev said the final result was 96.77 percent to rejoin Russia and 2.51 percent against.

That was with an 83% voter turnout.

     Venice votes to split from Italy as 89% of the city’s residents opt to form a new independent state

In Venice, 73% of eligible voters cast ballots. The last time even 60% of voters turned out for a US Presidential election was 1968.

And it’s fairly clear that, despite attempts to quash it by the national government, Catalonia will vote to secede from Spain on November 9:

     Spain Says Catalonia Can’t Vote for Independence, But Catalans Will Go Ahead Anyway

Last September 11, Catalonia’s national day, hundreds of thousands of Catalans formed a vast human chain across the region to call for independence.

According to a site that tracks all of the current wars on the planet, there are 33 other states working to gain independence from their national government. That’s in addition to the 534 militias-guerrillas and separatist groups who are actively fighting their own national government in 60 countries.

Perhaps people are just a bit tired of the confiscation of a huge chunk of their earnings by massive government bureaucracies that: use that money to spy on their own citizens; pass laws that clearly favor their interests over the interests of the people, including laws that apply to regular citizens but not to the lawmakers; jail people for stealing $500 from a convenience store but give rich cronies like Jon Corzine a free pass when they try to steal a billion dollars; start wars ruining countless lives and costing trillions of dollars, indebting current and future generations, wars that very few people want:

     Americans Think the Afghanistan War Was a Mistake, Just Like All the Other Wars Since 1950

It took two years or less for public opinion to turn on the wars in Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq.

that pad their own salaries when regular people are struggling, as shown here:

Fed_V_Civilian

When benefits such as health care and pensions are included, the federal compensation advantage over private workers is even larger, according to the BEA data. In 2012, federal worker compensation averaged…74 percent more than the private-sector average.

that create trade agreements such as the TPP, written in secret by corporate lobbyists, covered here by Bill Moyers:

     The Top Secret Trade Deal You Need to Know About

that continue playing global power games while people in the US lose basic services:

     US Prepares To Provide A Billion To Ukraine As Detroit Plans Mass Water Shutoffs Over $260 Million

Oh how, as we all know all too well, this list could go on and on. The more the powermongers try to centralize all control, the more they are creating resistance as people rightfully try to bring real governance back to their communities. Charles Hugh Smith has been doing some excellent writing recently on how the huge lumbering centralized structures created by government are a very poor match for the complexity (and speed, I would add) of today’s world (The Incompetence of the Federal Reserve and Deep State Is Unavoidable):

The incompetence of these organizations is not a reflection of the competence or intelligence of their managers–it is the intrinsic consequence of their limited control of complex systems. If the system has reached the point of being ungovernable, even the most brilliant and experienced managers will fail because it’s not the managers who are incompetent, it’s the organization itself that is incompetent.

I consider this move toward secession to be trend, not anomaly. Expect acceleration. In these votes for secession, people are getting just the smallest taste of actual democracy, so–and this is the true anomaly in today’s world where the political process has been captured by large corporations known as political parties, giving many people the correct idea that their vote counts for little or nothing–the turnouts are huge and the votes decisive.

I would go even farther: Today’s political process is intentionally designed to funnel the beautiful and brilliant energy of people’s good will–via voting where the choices are poor, monetary contributions, letter-writing campaigns, emotional attachments to issues and politicians, etc–into a black hole of ineffectiveness so the power elites can exercise ever-increasing control. They will fail spectacularly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Earth changes statistical update

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Just over a year ago, the post What is the Transition? Part 1 presented statistics and charts showing that there is an acceleration in extreme weather events and geologic changes. And there have been several posts with specifics, including these:

     The Weather Gets Even Wilder

     Weather Wildness Update

     Britain faces choice of saving town or country from floods

This is a statistical update showing that this exceedingly important trend continues.

For starters, here is a chart from the world of yet another industry whose original intent–a way to spread financial risk that could overwhelm an individual to a wider community–has been perverted to massive investment pools from which any payment is not celebrated as a victory but is called a loss. Thus the chart of “Loss events worldwide 1980-2013” from the largest re-insurance company in the world, Munich Re. I use it so that any reader who might still be mired in “it’s just better reporting because of the internet” delusion about accelerating Earth changes–I heard of a person who still claimed that recently, so there must be more–can put that aside. So, not from the woo-woo world, but from the Mr. Gradgrind hard-nosed no-nonsense actuary-driven world where all things are calculated in currency and where the business model depends in great part on frightening people into buying more insurance than they need:

MunichReWeatherAndEarthChangesLines2wTextI added the cone lines highlighting the expansion of damaging floods (the blue portion of each bar) and storms (the green portion) from around 250 per year in the 1980s to around 700 per year for the last eight years. That’s a mighty clear indication of trend as opposed to outlier.

The chart does not show all damaging floods and storms, just those that caused losses for the insurance industry. The chart shows a similar acceleration in damages from “extreme temperature, drought, forest fire” (the yellow part of each bar).

It shows a fairly constant set of losses from geologic events, but this chart does not tell the true story of geologic events because, worldwide, very few have earthquake or volcanic eruption insurance, so there are relatively few loss events from these for the insurance industry.

According to those who closely monitor volcanic eruptions, these set a new all time record in 2013, with 84 volcanoes erupting, beating the previous record of 82 in 2010. There were even volcanic eruption clusters:

     Seven Volcanoes In Six Different Countries All Start Erupting Within Hours Of Each Other

And then there was this “minor problem”:

     Scientists find new volcano rumbling under Antarctica ice: 1,370 tremors: “It may blow or it may not. We don’t know.”

And with 32 volcanoes having already erupted this year, 2014 is off to a thundering and deadly start. After this in Indonesia:

     Villagers run for their lives as Sinabung volcano kills 16 in Indonesia

there was this from the Jakarta Post:

     19 more volcanoes on alert

Jakartavolcanoefeb4.img_assist_custom-560x306

     Electric universe: Pyroclastic flow from Sinabung volcanic eruption last month produced string of ‘tornados’

Here is a video link to those tornadoes.

If I had all the data to chart volcanic eruptions, it would likely look very much like this chart of the 10-year average of earthquakes of magnitude 6.0 or greater, updated with 2013 data:

EarthquakesMag6_2013

These days, the planet has one of these potentially damaging earthquakes on average every two and a half days, though more typically they come in clusters as well:

     Global outbreak of strong earthquakes on anniversary 9.0 Fukushima earthquake

quake_map

There were no significant tsunamis in 2013, so my previous comment from the end of 2012 still seems appropriate:

According to data at the NOAA Global Historical Tsunami Database, which has records going back to 2000 BC, there have been 34 tsunamis with a wave height greater than twenty feet over the last 400 years. Six of those, or 18%, have occurred since the year 2000…In the Twentieth Century, there was a tsunami with a twenty foot wave height about once every ten years. In this century, it has happened once every two years, resulting in the deaths of a quarter million people despite the fact that none of these tsunamis struck a major city.

Sinkholes have continued unabated, though in the rain-drenched UK, there have been multiple large land movements:

     Huge cracks appear in Jurassic Coast a third of a mile inland after landslide in UK

UKarticle_2570052_1BE7D39F000005

And given that the world saw a very strange outbreak of mid-Winter brush and forest fires:

     Despite hurricane and record flooding, fire crews dealing with large bog fire near Aberystwyth, Wales

     Winter wildfire weirdness continues: Firefighters tackle 100-acre grass fire near Shawnee, Oklahoma

     Wildfire in western Broward burns 350 acres, Florida

     Are ‘drought conditions’ really to blame for winter wildfire outbreak across U.S.? Wildfire breaks out in Florida marshland‏

     Another wildfire in Norway: Fire on Norwegian coast destroys 140 buildings

     Fire devours historic Norwegian village, 90 people hospitalized

     Many Tibetan monasteries and famous sites destroyed this winter by mysterious ‘wildfires’

     Take cover! Meteor fireballs rain down across U.S. – Outbreaks of wildfires reported

it seems I would be remiss in not mentioning that meteor fireball sightings have been increasing dramatically in recent years. Confirmed sightings doubled from 2011 to 2013:

FireballsEnglish_Version_2014_6

Do I report all this to frighten? Not at all. I report it because it is the reality in which we are living; because I have learned the hard way that standing firm in the face of nasty powerful trends is very high risk behavior and usually turns out poorly; and because I want those who read Thundering Heard–who are presumably open to the idea that the accelerating changes we are seeing in most fields of life are related and are very important for humanity and for each of us–to stay alive so that, after the collapse of the financial system, they are ready to help rebuild society based on principles that include wisdom, creative intelligence, and compassion rather than the rampant and self-defeating materialism that is disintegrating our precarious “civilization.” (The quotes around civilization refer to Gandhi’s remark: “What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.”)

So as I say to my younger cats when they bound out the door at night to face the local wildlife: Be careful out there.

“Britain faces choice of saving town or country from floods”

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That title is a quote from the chairman of the UK Environment Agency informing people that there is no way the country has the money to save–that is, build flood defenses for–both city and rural areas:

     Britain faces choice of saving town or country from floods, says agency chief

What’s happening in Britain is a perfect example of what people in an increasing number of regions are facing: a relentless parade of major, deadly storms. Decades back, England was William Blake’s “green and pleasant land,” celebrated for its mild weather with the occasional major storm. Now it’s a rare week that doesn’t have 100mph winds strafing some part of the British Isles. Here’s a bit of high surf in Wales:

UK124826

(Photo source: Huge waves smash into British coastline, swells up to 75 feet recorded off-shore, UK government considers establishing tsunami-warning system)

And a lighthouse in Cornwall:

Cornwallarticle_2554557_1B4C531B000005

(Photo source: UK storms: While some FLY in 80 mph winds, others wade through murky water to salvage what little they have left (amazing photos) )

Even where houses are not on coasts or in flood plains, 1.6 million homes are said to be at risk of flooding from the water table rising.

From the BBC:

     10 key moments of the UK winter storms

And CNN:

     Atlantic storm brings more misery to drenched Britain: heaviest rainfall in 250 years

     UK government sends 5,000 military personnel to flood zones as hurricanes keeping coming

Somerset1622103_214327935429018_188120

(Photo source: UK Floods Could Last Months, Scientist Warns  )

*  *  *

Food For Thought

The bigger question is whether the UK Environment Agency will be able to save town or country. In my view, they won’t have the time or money to save either. How often do people have to hear about unprecedented winds, rain, and waves–storms that almost everyone now realizes are ramping up in intensity, not receding–before they move away from coasts, flood plains, and low-lying areas? Perhaps some few will move to high ground, but it’s almost certain that most will not. Most, even faced with complete destruction of their homes, show a Monty Pythonesque “bravado and derring-do” and vow to rebuild on the same spot, egged on by clueless newscasters and politicians. As someone who studies cycles, I conclude that, if every culture on the planet has, in their oral and written traditions, reports of floods that totally cleanse the land, there is a reason. And it isn’t because there was one really big worldwide flood. It’s that cyclically, repeatedly, the Earth’s surface gets an intensive cleansing. From the way we are treating the planet, isn’t it obvious why? If the Earth didn’t do this cyclic cleansing of its own surface, would there be any humans here at all? As I said: food for thought. I know many will reject such thinking. All I am suggesting is that eyes and minds be kept open to the steadily emerging evidence.

For example, the British storms have swept away the sand from many beaches. Here’s a story that the storms uncovered human footprints from 800,000 years ago. If that’s correct, then we could be talking about lots of cycles:

     Ancient footprints dating back 800,000 years found in Norfolk

 

War cycle influences

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They admit to financing terrorism and they get fined $32,000. Where if I were to do that, I would go to jail for life. –Everett Stern, a former HSBC compliance officer on the fine levied on HSBC for funneling hundreds of millions of dollars to Hezbollah

Scientists tell us that when cycles pull in opposite directions, they can nullify one another. They call it wave cancellation:

wavecancellation

But when cycles push in the same direction, the effects are amplified. A storm surge is one example: As they blow across the ocean’s surface, the winds that create waves accelerate during a storm, causing the cycle of ocean waves to have far greater wave heights. These waves combine with the high tide waters of the tidal cycle, and a storm surge ensues with sometimes devastating results, such as the damage at Tacloban from Typhoon Haiyan:

TaclobanBA2

The so-called Great Recession is another example: Thundering Heard talked about two cycles–the highly reliable 25-year recession/depression cycle for the USA described in What is the Transition? Conclusion; and the cycle of Pluto moving from Sagittarius into Capricorn described in A Forecast for the Next Eleven Years, still in effect through 2024–that combined to make the financial crisis of 2008 very deep and long-lasting, with many saying that these cycles started a depression that is still going on today. There are other cycles, even larger ones, that contributed to the Great Recession/depression, but I haven’t yet had time to explain those, though I plan to soon.

Does the existence of a cycle mean that something must happen? In human affairs, no, often because larger cycles can mute or nullify smaller cycles, represented in this graph, showing that the cycle represented in red might be nearly unnoticeable at times because of the dominant cycle in blue:

LongerShorterCycleSuperimposedcr

However, when larger and smaller cycles point in the same direction, the results can be awe-inspiring. We have such a situation now relating to war. I know of at least five cycles pointing in the direction of war. Two have been discussed before.

One is the Wheeler Index of War and Political Change, discussed here and here, whose troughs have coincided with great precision with the starts of World War 1, World War 2, the War in Viet Nam, and the massive political changes that transformed Russia and China in 1989. The next trough in that cycle is due in 2014.

Another cycle pointing to war in the 2014-2016 period was discussed here.

Again, I know of other cycles that point to major war in the near term, but even if I documented those to the hilt, would it convince us all that that major war must happen? Probably not. But clearly, the influence of these cycles is being strongly felt. Over the last couple of decades, the talk of war has primarily been talk of smaller regional wars. But recently, talk of superpower war has been ramping up.

Here’s one from the Yale Journal of International Affairs, not exactly some emotion-laden incendiary blog, about war between the US and China:

     Who Authorized Preparations for War with China?

The Pentagon has concluded that the time has come to prepare for war with China, and in a manner well beyond crafting the sort of contingency plans that are expected for wide a range of possible confrontations.

     Russia will use nukes in case of a strike – official

     Russia Stations Tactical, Nuclear-Capable Missiles Along Polish Border

     China Declares “Willing To Engage In A Protracted Confrontation” With Japan As “Prime Target”

     US Challenges China, Flies B-52 Bombers Over New Air Defense Zone

     Japan Dispatches F-15s, E-767s And P-3 Into China’s Air Defense Zone, China Scrambles Su-30 In Response

     China Re-Escalates, Deploys Warplanes To Air Defense Zone

     China Slams Abe’s “Malicious Slander”; Warns Japan Is “Doomed To Failure”

     First Glimpse Of China’s Nuclear Submarine Fleet

     US, Chinese Warships “Nearly Collide” In South China Sea

Hold on: how can two massive ships, visible to the naked eye and certainly to radar from hundreds of miles away, “nearly collide”?

     South Korea Unveils It’s Own Air Defense Zone, Overlapping China’s And Japan’s

     Japan Press: “China-Japan War To Break Out In January”

     Japan to bolster military, boost Asia ties to counter China

Japan will boost its military spending in coming years, buying early-warning planes, beach-assault vehicles and troop-carrying aircraft, while seeking closer ties with Asian partners to counter a more militarily assertive China…

Abe’s government also vows to review Japan’s ban on weapons exports, a move that could reinvigorate struggling defense contractors like Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd and Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd.

     Is War With China Inevitable?

And of course, the Middle East doesn’t want to be left out of the headlines:

     Israeli Generals Preparing For “Short, Sharp” War Against Hezbollah

     US Drones Taliban Leader; His Troops Vow Bloody Revenge; Pakistan Government Furious At America

     Syrian Army Base Rocked Again By Overnight Explosions, Israel Implicated

     Regional War Scenario. NATO-US-Turkey War Games Off the Syrian Coastline

The Saudis and Israelis are seething that the US and Europe are negotiating with Tehran. Perhaps that is why the role the Saudis played in helping to set up the 9/11 attacks is beginning to get some airplay?

     Inside the Saudi 9/11 coverup

However, I don’t think they need to seethe, a quick look at these Iran negotiations says there is something more than fishy about it. First, there were meetings and it looked like there was an agreement, but at the last minute, the US insisted on lots of changes. This happened when some of the negotiating teams were already at the airport on the assumption that an agreement had been reached. So that first agreement was scuttled.

The parties met again a few weeks later and announced an agreement which was really an agreement to come together again to negotiate the real details. The parties each went back to their countries saying they got what they wanted, despite the fact that these claims were contradictory, as documented here by CNN:

     Iran nuclear deal: One agreement, wildly different reactions

     Iran’s Rouhani: “We Are Not Dismantling Our Nuclear Facilities; Iran Will Maintain Its Uranium Enrichment Programme”

One thing that was clearly promised to the Iranians was no new sanctions. As soon as the detailed negotiations got started, the US broke that promise:

     Iran Quits Nuclear Talks After US Expands Blacklist Sanctions

Iran has quit nuclear talks with world powers, accusing Washington on Friday of going against the spirit of a landmark agreement reached last month by expanding its sanctions blacklist.

Last I heard, Iran is back at the table. I’m happy to hear that. But given the antics of all of the parties, I’m not especially optimistic about the outcome of these talks. They sound like the endless US budget talks where agreements are reached to maintain the status quo and do the real negotiations later.

And the Europeans look like they want to play their part in adding to the warmongering tone:

     Facing Triple-Dip Recession, France Set To Deploy US-Made Drones In West Africa

It appears that the more oil and gold they find in West Africa, the more troops keep showing up.

All of the above shows why it is very helpful to know which human affairs cycles are ending and which are gearing up: knowing the influences that are pressuring people, behaviors start to make more sense. Not rational sense: no one could possibly claim it is rational for Japan and China to be threatening war over rights to small, uninhabited islands. But behavioral sense: one can see how the players are playing their parts. Probably unconsciously, since most people, unfortunately, consider cycles analysis to be some kind of voodoo. Of course, anyone who knows what cycles are in play can be conscious about them, sidestepping negative influences, and hopping on board positive trends, some of which were mentioned here.

But at least we can rest assured that warmongering will be starved for financing: US Government regulators fined big bank HSBC for allowing “hundreds of millions of dollars” to be transferred to Hezbollah. The fine? $32,000. I guess HSBC had to dig real deep into their petty cash drawer to pay that one. The regulators said HSBC, the bank recently fined $1.9 billion for facilitating money transfers for the drug cartels, came to them voluntarily with this violation of international rules, so the regulators probably sat around and said, “Oh, isn’t that sweet, HSBC is so honest, such nice people, we can’t be mean to them.”

     HSBC Gets Slap On The Wrist For Helping To Finance Terrorists

A major U.S. bank has agreed to a settlement for transferring funds on the behalf of financiers for the militant group Hezbollah, the Treasury Department announced on Tuesday.

Concluding that HSBC’s actions “were not the result of willful or reckless conduct,” Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control accepted a $32,400 settlement from the bank. Treasury noted, as did HSBC in a statement to HuffPost, that the violations were voluntarily reported.

Everett Stern, a former HSBC compliance officer who complained to his supervisors about the Hezbollah-linked transactions, told HuffPost he was “ecstatic and depressed at the same time.”

“Those are my transactions, I reported them,” he said, satisfied that the government was taking action. But, he added, “Where I am upset was those were a handful of transactions, and I saw hundreds of millions of dollars” being transferred.

Stern said he hopes the government’s enforcement actions against HSBC have not come to an end with the latest settlement. “They admit to financing terrorism and they get fined $32,000. Where if I were to do that, I would go to jail for life,” he said.

We sure all know what Hezbollah plans to do with those hundreds of millions–add to their existing arsenal that already includes 80,000 to 100,000 rockets and missiles. No wonder the Israeli generals are in a panic to act soon, which of course falls right in line with the timing of the war cycles. But I do wonder who Hezbollah will be buying their new weapons from, that is, who will be the real recipients of that money.  As usual, the Dark Forces want to make some big bucks off the carnage of war they are fomenting–right in line with the cycles.

Plug-In Vehicle Update

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Updating In Praise of Plug-In Vehicles, our mileage after two months with the Chevy Volt is 101 miles per gallon (2.3L/100km for the metric-minded). That included four drives of 350 miles and one drive of 250 miles during which the car runs from electricity only for the first 45 to 50 miles (70+ km), after which it runs from gasoline.

And in response to those who e-mailed warnings that electric vehicles are a bad idea in a world with an imminent EMP event: even though I have made the gesture–because it’s so easy to do–of storing my backup generator and other small backup electronics in a Faraday cage, I do not consider a devastating EMP event to be likely. As stated before, what I detect is accelerating evolution, with likely supply line disruptions. That is what I see, so that is what I plan for. I see no evidence of an impending planetary reset event. With humanity about to reap the full consequences of its good and bad decisions about finance, governance, war, health care, pollution, overuse of resources, taxation, energy, communications, etc., the conditions on this planet are perfect for humanity to learn how to live and how not to live. I think humanity will benefit mightily from this ingenious setup. Let’s see if we can.

More cycles

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Yet another instance of the accelerating flood cycle: a photo from the devastating Himalayan floods, indicating a stance people might wish to take during these times:

submerged-lord-shiva-idol-in-rishikesh-1

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Despite being surrounded by the cyclic nature of physical life (breathing, heartbeat, blinking, day/night, tides, seasons, birth/death … and the less visible or invisible: sound waves, radio waves, x-rays, microwave cooking, evolution … and for a fun contemplation of large astronomical cycles, see this and this), for the most part, people tend to ignore cyclicality in favor of seeing life as a straight-line progression. This is unfortunate for at least two reasons: first, because all form is cyclic—form emerges, flourishes to some extent, and dissolves; second, because there are some not-so-obvious cycles that offer understanding for what is otherwise quite mysterious. In fact, here at Thundering Heard, we are on a path to discuss the biggest cycle of them all for people, a cycle that, once grasped, contains the answers to “little” questions like the meaning of life, why are we here, and so forth. But first, let’s get more adept at seeing the cyclic aspect of life and how important it is.

The Sunspot Cycle

There is a peak of sunspot activity every 10 to 13 years, with 11 years being the average for each cycle. A chart of the peaks and troughs of sunspot activity from 1926 to 2009 looks like this:

Sunspots_Longer_Annot3

Let’s look at the three peaks labeled A, B, and C.

The peaks of sunspot activity often really “rev people up” financially, that is, there is typically an excitation of human activity that leads to a financial market bubble that coincides with the sunspot peak.

Three peaks ago, the peak in 1980, labeled A above, coincided with the peak of the commodity price boom and price inflation that took place in the 1970s after Nixon defaulted on the US promise, made near the end of World War 2, to always support conversion of Dollars into gold. Those were the days when the so-called Misery Index (inflation plus the unemployment rate) was tracked in daily newspapers, and mortgage rates in the US rose to 18%.

Here’s a closer look at the last two peaks of sunspot cycle activity:

Sunspots_2_Annot

The cycle peak labeled B was in 1990 and corresponded with the peak in Japan of bubbles in their stock and real estate markets. This was the time when it was generally held that Japan Inc. would rule the world, or at least own it; that its economy would soon be the largest in the world. A single block of downtown Tokyo real estate was said to be worth more than all of the real estate in California. Now that’s a bubble! (We’ll see in our next post on cycles why that Japan bubble grew so large when we cover another cycle that also contributed to this Japan peak. When multiple important cycles converge, the results can be gargantuan.) Following that peak, Japan experienced what has come to be called The Lost Decade, though it has now run for two decades. Both their stock and real estate markets lost 75% of their “value” after that peak, and they still have not come anywhere close to recovering their former glory as Japan has been mired in nearly constant recession ever since.

The sunspot peak labeled C aligned with the peak in the internet/technology stocks in the Spring and Summer of 2000, another famous bubble. Again money flowed, this time into Pets.com, Webvan,com, Geocities,com, DrKoop.com, and many others, most of which had little going for them except an idea and a web site. Little or no sales, no profits—who cared! They were going to the moon. It was a New Paradigm. If you thought it was insane, you “just didn’t get it.” And the thing is, that craziness for internet stocks had been in play for a few years; that hoopla could have ended in 1998 or 1999. But it didn’t. It ended when the sunspot cycle peaked in 2000.

Looking back, it would have been great for the participants in those bubbles to be aware of the sunspot cycle peak. They could have sidestepped a lot of trouble. So what’s going to happen this time around? Well, for a few years, I have thought that  this economic cycle might hang on into the peak of the current sunspot cycle, called Solar Cycle 24, which was projected for August 2013. But Amon Ra may have thrown us a curve ball. It looks like this cycle will not have the usual single large peak, but rather a dual peak like Solar Cycle 14 from the early 20th Century. According to solar physicist Dean Pesnell of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center:

“This is solar maximum. But it looks different from what we expected because it is double peaked.” Pesnell noted similarities between the current cycle and Solar Cycle 14, which happened between February 1902 and August 1913 and experienced a double peak. If the two cycles are in fact twins, he said that “it would mean one peak in late 2013 and another in 2015.”

Here is a chart that shows the peak in 2000 plus our current cycle:

sunspts_predict_l

If the NASA guy is right, there should be a bubble peak in either 2013 or 2015. But a bubble in what? Here are some clues:

  • Lots of savings accounts pay only 0.01% in interest.
  • Mortgage rates got near 1% in Japan and 3% in the US. (Would you lend money to a stranger for 30 years for 3% interest? Neither would banks, which is why almost all mortgages need a guarantee from a government program or the banks won’t make the loan.)
  • Short-term interest rates in Germany and Switzerland recently went negative. That’s right, if you wanted to lend money to Germany or Switzerland on a short term basis, you had the pay them for the privilege.

If you think these phenomena don’t make a lot of sense, you are right. But it points to the culprit that has all the hallmarks of a monster bubble: the world government bond market. The bull market in bonds has been running for over 30 years. On May 2, if you wanted to lend money to Germany for 10 years, they would pay you an interest rate of 1.2%; the US, 1.6%. And if you wanted to lend Switzerland money for 10 years in December, they were paying a whopping 0.4%. Japan? 0.45%.

And in the case of Japan in particular, they are working very hard to devalue their currency, to make sure the yen falls in value. So the question is, who in their right mind would lend to these countries for such a pittance in interest, especially while most of them are printing money to intentionally debase the value of their currencies!?! You get a very poor interest rate and, if you get your capital back, it will be in a currency that will have fallen in value over 10 years. Yet, that is what institutions and people are doing. Recently, if you wanted to get a reasonable interest rate on 10-year government bonds, then you would have lend money to the country of Rwanda; they paid 7% on a recent offering of 10 year bonds. Best of luck getting your capital back 10 years from now.

When this bubble bursts, the consequences will be huge. This is not a bubble in one country, like Japan in 1980, or in one sector of the economy, like tech stocks in 2000, we’re talking about government bonds, worldwide! This is the market that supports military spending, education, transportation, and just about every safety net (in the US: Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps, Medicaid, Unemployment Insurance, and so forth) on the planet. And you get this paltry interest rate when you might not even get your capital back in 10 years. A number of governments are on a clear trajectory for bankruptcy; there is a good chance that bond buyers will not get their capital back! And yet they lend huge amounts of money to these governments. Especially Baby Boomers, they have been pouring money into bond funds. Just like they poured money into stocks in 2000, and real estate investments in 2006. Oh well.

When do I think the bond bubble will pop? This year! 2013. I don’t think it can last to 2015. In fact, the bubble pop may have already started. And guess which institutions count government bonds as their major “stable” capital: banks. Yet another reason to watch out for the banks!

Furthermore, the solar cycle might actually peak this year. The NASA guy might be wrong about the dual-peak forecast.

What will it mean if this bubble pops? It means interest rates will rise, possibly a lot. This will strongly increase the amount of interest governments must pay on their debts. Their deficits will skyrocket.

Mortgage interest rates are closely tied to the government bond market, so mortgage rates will rise as well. (US mortgage rates rose from 3.88% to 4.35% just over the last week!) And if government deficits skyrocket, programs will need to be cut, so the massive support they are currently providing for the mortgage market will be in jeopardy, threatening even further rate increases.

Still, two cycles that we will discuss in the next post about cycles argue for that 2015 date.

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I would like to make one thing very clear: If you woke up tomorrow and heard that a large “systemically important” international bank had collapsed, causing chaos in the rest of the financial system, and that most banks would be closed for some number of days, would you really be surprised? Probably not. Many people are starting to get the idea that the system is not exactly solid. I am certainly in that camp. So when I talk about August 2013 or some month in 2015 as the month when the real systemic collapse will commence, please know that, in my view, the more-than-sufficient conditions are in place for that full system collapse to happen at any minute. Discussions like the one above are an attempt to get a handle on probabilities. In terms of preparation, acceleration is not to be trifled with: I think that everyone should be doing what they can to be prepared now. If it turns out there is more time for preparation, fabulous, this type of preparation takes awhile and I’m sure we can all use the time. But that time may be short indeed. As the photo at the top of the post shows, when change arrives in your area, it may be monumental change.

Waterfall of Emerging Truth

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Really, what’s happening is, it’s a change in the rules of the game, which means that your cash is increasingly at risk of ending up in the government’s hands.
–Philippa Malmgren, former Special Assistant to the President of the United States for Economic Policy

So, acceleration of US government scandals, acceleration of truth emerging from the shadows into the mainstream, acceleration of clear signs of governments desperate to hold onto power. Wow, if you’ve been reading the news, you know that things are starting to move very quickly:

—NSA collecting phone records of millions of Verizon customers daily

—NSA PRISM program taps in to user data of Apple, Google and others

–The US has extensive offensive cyber warfare capabilities. According to a US intelligence source, “We hack everyone everywhere.”:

     Obama orders US to draw up overseas target list for cyber-attacks

–Youtube gets a video of a former Canadian Defense Minister saying that UFOs and extra-terrestrials are real, that some of them work in and with the US government, and that there is a worldwide cabal that runs the planet for their own purposes:

Who are these vested interests, and what are they up to? …I have broadened and deepened my definition to cabal, and the cabal comprises members of the Three Sisters—the CFR, Bilderbergers, and the Trilateral Commission—the international banking cartel, the oil cartel, members of various intelligence organizations, and select members of the military…who together have become a shadow government of not only the United States, but of much of the Western world. The aim of the game is a world government comprising members of the cabal who are elected by no one and accountable to no one. And according to Mr. Rockefeller, the plan is well advanced. Does this help you to understand why our civil rights are being taken away from us?

–And weather wildness continues to accelerate, Oklahoma seems to get more than its share:

The National Weather Service reported Tuesday that the killer tornado that struck near Oklahoma City last Friday was a ferocious EF5 twister, which had winds that neared 295 mph… The weather service also said the twister’s 2.6-mile width is the widest ever recorded. According to the National Severe Storm Laboratory, the tornado blew up from one mile to 2.6 miles wide in a 30-second span… There have only been eight F5/EF-5 tornadoes in Oklahoma since 1950, the Weather Underground reports, and two of them have hit in the past two weeks. The other hit Moore on May 20, killing 24 people.

We’ll have more comments on all of that government stuff soon, but today, as part of observing this waterfall of emerging truth, let’s review material from an interview with a true insider. As stated in the post Accelerating Truth, more insiders seem willing, finally, to speak publicly about what is going on.

The insider for this post is Philippa Malmgren. She has served in the White House as the liason between the White House and the Federal Reserve, as the person responsible for all financial market issues for the President, and perhaps most importantly for our discussion today, she was part of what is officially called the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, but which is known on the Street as the Plunge Protection Team. The PPT was created in early 1988 in reaction to the stock market crash of 1987. This crew goes to work when markets aren’t doing what the White House wants them to be doing and they interfere in whatever way they deem necessary. While the details are not disclosed, these people are said to have access to a very large pile of cash to push markets where they want them to go.

Philippa gave an amazing interview this weekend to King World News.  Here are some quotes:

…the magnitude of the debt that is held by the United States, and indeed by all of the industrialized economies that have a debt problem, is so great it cannot be paid down. The human suffering involved would be so far beyond our capacity to withstand, so it has to be defaulted on.

* * *

Look, we are in a world where every major industrialized government doesn’t have the funds to deliver on the promises they’ve made to the public. So they are going to reach for the public’s cash in different ways…. Some of it is through higher taxes. Some of it is what I would call ‘expropriation,’ although taxation and even inflation are a version of that. But for example, Portugal, about a year ago, announced that they were nationalizing three of Portugal Telecom’s pension funds and placing the assets on the government’s balance sheet so that the government’s balance sheet would look better for the purposes of negotiating with the EU.

Now, were those pensioners expropriated? Yes. It made page 14 of the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, as if it was a non-event. But I think what we saw in Cyprus, a really overt expropriation, we are going to see that come in lots of different forms (going forward). Some of it will be obvious like Cyprus. Some of it will be subtle like Portugal, but what’s sure is that it’s happening.

So, yes, we have a really important political, philosophical battle now as states (and governments) try to find a way to take your cash in order to fund themselves, and not necessarily to the citizens best interest.

Really what’s happening is it’s a change in the rules of the game, which means that your cash is increasingly at risk of ending up in the government’s hands. So this is what we need to be alert to around the world.

* * *

You just have to whisper at it (the price of gold), and you can move it big time. Are governments good at that? Yes, they are good at that.

* * *

It is true that governments hate it when gold starts going through the roof, especially when they are in the midst of the largest devaluation, currency debasement strategy ever known…. We have never seen so many large industrialized economies all adopt this strategy simultaneously.

* * *

…this is one reason that many of the institutions that I’m advising are very wary about gold is because they do feel it’s subject to manipulation. That (as a result) the volatility is too heart-stopping to withstand.

And they are looking at other options. One option is definitely the world of diamonds. I see lots of private wealth moving in that direction. That’s one reason we see diamonds hitting absolutely record high prices. It’s because you can move an immense amount of value across a border with this thing in your pocket that a metal detector cannot find.

By the way, I was in charge of anti-money laundering policy for the U.S. government, so I’m not condoning this. I’m just saying it’s a fact. In a world where inflation pressures are definitely ripping through emerging markets, people want to move ‘value.’ And in a world where currencies are being debased, they want to hang on to value.

I’ve said a number of those things on this site, some in almost precisely the same words. The web sites listed on the Blogroll for this site published most of these things earlier than I did. These things are not complex. They are easy and clear. But I thought that perhaps these things would mean more to readers if they heard it from a true big-time insider. Let’s summarize:

1. Governments made lots of financial promises they cannot keep.

2. Governments have borrowed way more money than they can ever pay back.

3. They will try to disguise Points 1 and 2 by printing a lot of money because they see this as the most palatable way to default on their obligations, that is, they will pay their debts in money that is worth less and less and less…

4. Governments are going to do whatever they can to confiscate money from people to remain in power, in both subtle and overt ways.

5. Governments who are debasing their currency hate it when the gold price rises as a direct reflection of people trying to defend themselves from the money printing and the confiscations. So they will try to keep you in their confiscation system by scaring you away from gold. By having the price of gold and silver move wildly when priced in dollars, what governments are trying to do is to convince you that an unbacked currency that can be created digitally in infinite quantities is stable…and that gold and silver, honored as money for thousands of years, is not.

Philippa mentioned diamonds for wealth preservation and that has not been mentioned at all on Thundering Heard. The reasoning is threefold: I am not an expert on diamonds; I have heard of other non-experts who attempt to preserve wealth via diamonds and get fleeced by those who are experts; and the diamond market is a cartel run by DeBeers and the Russians where price is falsely supported by these suppliers withholding huge supplies of diamonds from the open market, so in my view, if their cartel ever gets broken, the price crash in diamonds will be epic.

However, Philippa is right: at least for now, for hiding portable wealth, diamonds are very tough to beat. And her clients are large institutions, sovereign wealth funds, etc. These people can afford to hire experts to make sure they don’t get fleeced when they buy diamonds. So if you have such expertise yourself, or access to it through friends, diamonds might be a very good way to go. But if you do not have access to such expertise, in my view, gold is far better because if you buy minted bullion coins from a reputable dealer, you don’t need to be an expert. Though I guess it is best to mention that the following quote was the advice for getting through the financial collapse from a book mentioned in What is the Transition? Conclusion, that is, the Sanctus Germanus Prophecies Volume 1, published in 2003:

Buy minted gold and silver coins, other precious metals or color gemstones. This is your 100 percent guarantee against the financial collapse. Store them in a safe place other than a bank, as bank failures will multiply. Few, if any, will survive. The US and other country currencies will collapse just as the Confederate currency did after the Civil War in the US.

The overall message here is: if you have savings in bank or brokerage accounts, governments are trying to figure out how to grab that money. They are making this very clear, as I will show shortly in separate posts on the threats to bank accounts and brokerage accounts that have recently been clearly announced by governments.