Cosmic Echoes has not been getting its fair share of my attention the last few months, and it is in a great position to help a LOT of people. I should be doing a better job of keeping this blog updated.

So, in that state of mind, I’ve made a commitment to myself, and to you, the reader, to make this blog a USEFUL, interesting, and cutting edge look at all things preparedness…again.

This year, after 3 years of heavy college student involvement, resulting in two college degrees, many awards (All USA Academic Team, New Century Scholar, Video Telly Award, and others), I am taking what we students like to call “a breather”, and do some half time college work and invest the majority of my time this next 18 months doing a specific set of projects. In no specific order these are…

• 6 to 8 credit hours of college classes towards my bachelors degree in Journalism(instead of 12 to 20 credit hours per semester…as I have been doing for my first two degrees)
• major update of SurvivalRing.org..the ENTIRE website…into a database driven, Web 2.0, easily manageable, and entirely up-to-date system. See the first glimpse here
• the addition of a citizen driven, science backed, and thoroughly complete compendium of BIRD FLU prep..including some deep discussion of the effects a very possible pandemic outbreak might bring to our society
• a greatly enhance fallout shelter compendium, with lots of comments, suggestions, and insight….versus just a ton of free downloads. You’ll have the info in your hands to print out with the downloads. Now, I’ll tell you the things you’ll really need to understand..if you’re considering actually building one. The Build A Fallout Shelter Page, in other words, is due to a massive overhaul.
• Podcasts….yes, long promised, yet, not online. I’ve been doing weekly music radio shows for my college radio station for over a year…now it’s time to make the SurvivalRing Survival Podcast a reality. Everything is ready (computer hardware, software, recording equipment, mics, etc)…but that ACTUAL podcast recordings. That will change, very soon.
• A lot of new articles from yours truly, on a wide range of preparedness topics and genres. These articles will also be making the rounds of magazine editors, to hit the real world between the eyes with what can be done with very little work, when it comes to being preparede.
• New CD Rom projects. I’ve published two multimedia CD projects in the past 4 years…I’m doing at least 3 more in the next YEAR. Watch this space for more news.
• New digital publications. I’ve mentioned here many times that I have hundreds of original government produced, unscanned survival and preparedness documents…some of which you never knew existed. I have at least a dozen ready to finsish and upload in the next month, and new scan projects queued and prioritized. You’ll love what is coming…
• Interactivity for you, the site visitor. I’ve had polls up for several years on the main SurvivalRing website, and had forums up for years as well, until spammers wreaked total chaos and havoc. I’ve got the old archives saved and updated, and will be opening the new SurvivalRing forums this spring, in a much more secure and stable software package. Chat has been working fine, but with little traffic. Comments in the new site design may be posted in ANY page or article, much like commenting is available on THIS blog. Take advantage of it!

That’s just the start. A new year, a new sense of adventure, and a lot of work to do…and a lot of work that has ALREADY been done.

Many things are happening in the background that will change the way we all see our future. SurvivalRing, Cosmic Echoes, and I will be here to help you get through what we fear will be tough times ahead. Consider me your friend, mentor, and guide…we will get through this together.

Rich

This article is disturbing in so many ways. But, what it comes down to is that we, the USA, are forecasting a future attack plan (undoubtedly one of many) to a nation which truly is a threat to world security. This article shares way too much info that *I* think would best be left unpublished in open source publications.

What can you do? Bush seems to have a BIT too much worry about Ahmadinejad and Iran’s leaders plans after they start enriching uranium. It COULD be a problem…but it is NOT right now.

We’ll just have to see how this plays out, I suppose.

Fair Use Applies…

Source

THE IRAN PLANS
Would President Bush go to war to stop Tehran from getting the bomb?
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Issue of 2006-04-17
Posted 2006-04-10

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.

American and European intelligence agencies, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.), agree that Iran is intent on developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons. But there are widely differing estimates of how long that will take, and whether diplomacy, sanctions, or military action is the best way to prevent it. Iran insists that its research is for peaceful use only, in keeping with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that it will not be delayed or deterred.

There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change. Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has challenged the reality of the Holocaust and said that Israel must be “wiped off the map.” Bush and others in the White House view him as a potential Adolf Hitler, a former senior intelligence official said. “That’s the name they’re using. They say, ‘Will Iran get a strategic weapon and threaten another world war?’ ”

Continue Reading »
THE IRAN PLANS

Bookmark It!:

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Source on CNN

Luck runs out in ‘Triangle of Death’
Unit commanders shared great responsibility, greater worries
By Cal Perry
CNN

Editor’s note: CNN producer Cal Perry is embedded with the U.S. Army’s 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, 3rd Infantry Division, Forward Operating Base Falcon.

NORTHERN BABIL PROVINCE, Iraq (CNN) — The two men were good friends at Forward Operating Base Falcon in Babil province, each commanding units at the base in what’s called Iraq’s “Triangle of Death.”

Col. William Wood and Lt. Col. Ross Brown exchanged gifts recently, said Sgt. Kim Bradshaw.

He couldn’t say what the gifts were, just the kind of things soldiers with great responsibility and even greater worries share on a battlefield.

That’s why the events of October 27 hit so hard.

Northern Babil province is vast farmland divided by a series of canals with narrow roads running alongside.

The members of the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment patrol in Bradley fighting vehicles and Humvees, wary of the roadside bombs that have taken so many lives in Iraq, including those of four members of the 3rd ACR who died when an explosion knocked a Bradley into a canal.

Those were just four of the 14 deaths suffered by the 3rd ACR in 45 days during the summer.

On October 27, Brown led a patrol of two Bradleys and one Humvee along Route “Tampa,” a highway in the sense that it is wider than the paths that pose the biggest danger for roadside bombs. “Tampa” links Babil province to Baghdad.

As he prepared the patrol that day, Brown asked his soldiers what they carry out with them for protection — not meaning the usual flack jackets, Kevlar helmets, M-16s and grenades — but pieces of so-called “luck” from home.

Among the pieces brought out — a Bible, a folded prayer, pictures of loved ones, the patron saint of soldiers and the ever-present “charm” candy found in MREs (meals ready to eat).

Three bombs had exploded along the route the day before.

Shops line only one side of the road. They are tiny and poor — hastily made of splintered plywood and nails, the better ones with an overhang for shade, all with little or no business to speak of. The business plan seems to be the hope that traffic will back up so much that frustrated motorists will stop by for a drink or a snack.

The makeshift shops had closed before the previous day’s explosions, an obvious sign to Brown that the shopkeepers knew the attacks were planned.

As he talked to each shopkeeper — making his way methodically down the road — it became obvious that he was not going to get any answers to help protect his soldiers from further violence. Each shopkeeper told Brown they weren’t present the day of the explosions.

Brown knew better. Bradshaw was among the responders a day earlier, and he had seen the shops were closed.

Brown walked back and forth with the owners, threatening to shut down the shops, all the while continuing to catch the shopkeepers in similar and equally questionable statements. Finally, he walked away from the shops and spoke to Bradshaw.

“How can I make them fear me more than the insurgency?” the commander asked.

This question is at the center of the problems faced by the U.S. military every day across Iraq.

Bradshaw responded, “They’re all lying — and they’re scared to death.”

“Of course,” Brown said. “And they know that — unlike the insurgency — we’re not going to take them out into the street and shoot them. They know we’re here temporarily, and they have to live with these people forever.”

Getting back in the Bradleys to move out of the area, Brown said he didn’t know if he was going to shut down the shops.

“I need to think about it some more,” he said, shaking his head in near disgust as he climbed back into his Bradley.

Brown is a firm believer that his men are making a difference in Iraq, that they are true heroes. But he’s not without his superstitions.

Later that day, after much prodding, he begrudgingly brought out his personal pieces of “luck” that protect him on missions — two personal notes from his son and daughter. In a small plastic bag, the note from his daughter reads, “come home ASAP.”

Moments after Brown shared these personal items, the bad news came across the radios.

Wood had been killed about a kilometer south of Brown’s position. Wood — a regular Army officer assigned to command the 1st Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment, a National Guard outfit from California — was directing his men on a road that had been a bombing site moments earlier.

He was giving orders when his luck ran out. A secondary explosion killed him, blowing him backward into one of the canals.

At the time of his death, he did not know that he was about to be promoted — from lieutenant colonel to colonel.

Wood was the highest-ranking U.S. officer to die in combat in Iraq.

This report is startling…probably over 30,000 dead Iraqi civilians. Now over 2000 dead American Soldiers.

But, what the following report does NOT state, and what NO ONE has attempted to break out of the above numbers is this.

Of the 30,000 dead civilians…HOW MANY were killed by THEIR OWN COUNTRYMEN?

In the story below, THREE car bombs killed mostly civilians. In most other stories about car bombs, the numbers are ALWAYS “mostly civilians”.

My point is that AMERICANS have NOT killed 30,000 civilians. No where close…I don’t know enough to state exactly how many WERE killed by Americans, and no one else does either.

I think it’s very inappropriate to make a blanket statement that basically says we’ve traded 2000 Americans for 30,000 civilians.

If the American forces weren’t there, then how much HIGHER would the civilian death counts be?

I believe it would be much higher…and thank God for letting the US be able to help save a nation of people from the tyranny that they were under, and in many cases certain death for just BELIEVING differently than the leadership. Remember what happened in Rwanda….Remember Stalin, and Lenin…Remember Hitler.

Don’t EVER let one man have that much power ever again to decide the fate of entire generations of a people that just want to be free.

A superpower must show its force, by NOT using it when it might, and ONLY using it when it must. The US does this better than any nation on the planet.

IN IRAQ, RISING CIVILIAN TOLL IS WAR’S SILENT, SINISTER PULSE
By SABRINA TAVERNISE
NYT Express
10/25/2005

BAGHDAD, Iraq — The scene was grimly familiar. Three car bombs in rapid succession sent plumes of smoke into the evening sky. The target was foreign reporters and contractors inside two hotels here. But the victims, as is often the case, were Iraqis.

The war here has claimed the life of the 2,000th American soldier, but in the cold calculus of the killing here, far more Iraqis have been left dead. The figures vary widely, with Iraqi and American officials reluctant to release even the most incomplete of tallies. In one count, compiled by Iraq Body Count, a U.S.-based nonprofit group that tracks the deaths using news media reports, the total of Iraqi dead since the American invasion ranges from 26,690 to 30,051.

Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, a nonprofit research group, who has analyzed statistics of American deaths in Iraq, called the group’s count “the best guesstimate in town,” but warned that the figures were far from complete.

Monday’s bombs, which exploded near the Palestine and Sheraton Hotels in central Baghdad, added at least 10 people to the tally, according to Iraq’s Interior Ministry. They were coordinated for maximum damage, exploding just after sunset, when Iraqis were breaking their daily fast for Ramadan. The second bomb, carried in a Jeep Cherokee, killed the largest number of people, including a 19-year-old named Beshir, whose mother wandered aimlessly through the wreckage Monday night, searching for his body.

“He told me he would leave this dangerous area,” said the woman, who was crying and speaking to other women. “Death took him from me before he fulfilled his promise.”

The U.S. military said last week that sweeps it has conducted with Iraqi troops throughout Iraq have brought the number of suicide attacks down sharply, with 22 attacks in October, compared with 58 in June, not including Monday’s blasts.

But the drop in suicide attacks comes amid an overall rise in violence and a shift in the nature of the killing. Shortly after the Americans invaded, insurgent attacks were aimed almost exclusively at American troops, but as the months passed, Iraqis — civilians, police officers and soldiers — have suffered far greater losses, as insurgents, seeking maximum effect, focus their attacks on the softest targets.

Michael Yon has posted his latest news report from the battlefront in Iraq. If you haven’t read his blog lately, and REALLY want to know what it’s like on the ground, get over there now and get caught up.

See what our men and women in uniform over there are doing…how they’re holding up…and note the fact that the US Military IS making a difference over there.

I highly recommend this resource very much.

Rich

Source

Apocalypse, now? Katrina, other disasters fuel doomsday predictions
By Kari Huus - Reporter - MSNBC
Updated: 9:02 p.m. ET Oct. 19, 2005

It’s been 10 months of epic disaster. First there was the tsunami that killed some 250,000 people in Southeast Asia. Then came Hurricane Katrina with its devastating toll on the Gulf Coast, followed by an earthquake that took tens of thousands of lives in South Asia. Now, Hurricane Wilma, one of the most powerful storms ever measured in the Atlantic Basin, is stalking the Florida coast, and experts are warning of a deadly avian flu pandemic.

It’s enough to make just about anyone pause to look for meaning in the madness.

For many who await Judgment Day, the writing is on the wall.

So close is the correlation between recent events and the biblical prophecy of the Second Coming, by the reckoning of RaptureReady.com, its “Rapture Index” has been hovering around 160 — the highest levels since just after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. According to the Web site, “the higher the number, the faster we’re moving towards the … rapture.” When the number is above 145, it advises: “Fasten your seatbelts!”

“There is a resurgence of End Times thinking,” says Stephen O’Leary, an expert on apocalyptic thinking and an associate professor at the University of Southern California. Anxiety about doomsday always lurks under the surface and resurfaces periodically, he says. “It’s a very traditional way of coming to terms with disaster. In one sense it’s as old as the hills … but there is a recent uptick of this kind of thinking.”

Current events have provided rich fodder for religious groups devoted to watching for the End Times, when the faithful believe that they and nonbelievers will ultimately be judged. Nowhere is this more evident today than on the Internet, where scores of Web sites analyze the news through a biblical lens. While predictions of an apocalypse are part of many religions, including a version in Islam that is very similar to the Christian one, it is evangelical Christians who are sounding alarms in U.S. churches and online.

Among the most commonly cited biblical passages describing the beginning of the end are in Matthew, where Jesus warns that “nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes,” and this passage in Luke: “And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring.”

The race to interpret the news
Many evangelical Christians believe these events signal the End Times, as spelled out in the Book of Revelation, which go something like this: First there is the Rapture, in which God’s loyal followers suddenly disappear from Earth and enter his kingdom. Then comes the Tribulation, a seven-year period of rule by the Antichrist and severe hardship on Earth. During this time, nonbelievers who remain on Earth will have a chance to convert to Christianity but will be hounded by the Antichrist and his minions. Then comes Armageddon, when God comes back to defeat Satan in a devastating battle. Ultimately, there is Judgment Day, when those who are with God live on in Paradise, and others are eternally condemned to Hell.

There are scores of Web sites that interpret current events through the prism of biblical passages, seeing divine signs not only in the weather, but in the war in Iraq and events at the United Nations.

Abbaswatchman.com “explains how virtually everything we are seeing, from hurricanes and tsunamis to tensions with Damascus are fulfilling prophesies.” The blog ApocalypseSoon.org strives “to document the final moments of human history as it unfolds and to announce the return of Jesus Christ on earth.” The list goes on.

New Orleans warning
Some Web sites serve as a pulpit for those who believe that God sent Katrina to smite New Orleans for its sinning ways and to send a warning to the rest of the nation.

“Although the loss of lives is deeply saddening, this act of God destroyed a wicked city,” says conservative anti-gay activist Michael Marcavage on the site RepentAmerica.com. He says New Orleans was punished for a “public celebration” of homosexuality, wanton drunkenness and show of flesh.

Alabama state Sen. Henry E. “Hank” Erwin Jr., a Republican, expressed a similar view in a weekly column he writes for news outlets. “New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast have always been known for gambling, sin and wickedness,” he wrote. “It is the kind of behavior that ultimately brings the judgment of God.”

Irwin Baxter, founder of End Times Ministries, is among those more focused on how Katrina and the other disasters, combined with key political indicators — including the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip — point to an imminent apocalypse. “With all these converging at the same time, it looks to me we are very close to or just entered the (End Times),” says Baxter.

“People are really apprehensive right now,” he says. But the upside, from his point of view, is that the disasters could help make believers out of doubters. “If we continue seeing event after event of this magnitude … I think it could really galvanize a lot of people.”

He’s given up his regular job as pastor at a Pentecostal church in Richmond, Ind., to devote all his time and energy to End Times Ministries, which includes a magazine that has 30,000 subscribers, a Web site and a radio program broadcast on 30 stations and over the Internet.

To be sure, not all conservative Christians think it’s wise to make predictions. “There have been storms throughout history,” says Mark Bailey, president of the Dallas Theological Seminary, a conservative evangelical institution. “To say about any of these that ‘this is it’ is dangerous speculation.”

He is also troubled by the view that storms are used to punish a certain group of people. However, he adds, “It’s a great time to ask, ‘If this was it, would I be ready?’”

Apocalypse on the big screen
The soul-searching, and the speculation in Christian circles is driven in part by a highly successful series of films based on the best-selling book series “Left Behind.” The story, a melodrama with a backdrop of End Times prophecy events, focuses on characters who remain on Earth after the believers are swept to heaven in the Rapture. The films, starring former television actor Kirk Cameron, launched on DVD in 2000 and have prompted a wave of other books, movies and spin-offs in the apocalypse genre. The third “Left Behind” movie is set to premiere at churches across the country on Friday.

USC’s O’Leary suggests that media coverage of real disasters from Sri Lanka to New Orleans may also be intensifying the belief in impending peril, because the events are delivered instantaneously to American living rooms. “There is a sense of escalation that makes us feel that it’s happening more rapidly,” says O’Leary.

Religious groups don’t have a monopoly on apocalyptic thinking. O’Leary says that even in secular circles, people also embrace apocalyptic thinking when it converges with worrisome scientific or technological developments.

“The prime case was the Y2K scare,” he says, referring to fears of a disaster on the eve of the new century. “For awhile it seemed to have a rational technical basis, which seemed to go overboard,” creating fears that lingered until the clock struck 12:01 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2000, “long after computer programmers said it was going to be OK,” he says.

Evidence of global warming fuels fears of impending disaster among those who don’t necessarily believe in divine intervention, O’Leary points out. And the emergence of nuclear weapons technology after World War II lent plausibility to belief in a secular version of Armageddon.

“You don’t have to be a religious believer to think that we’re headed for disaster,” O’Leary says.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9731623/

Source

A good compendium of what the DOOMERS are thinking about, worried about, and planning for…

Rich

WHAT’S ABOUT TO HAPPEN?

J. Adams
October 2nd, 2005

——————————————————————————–

“If a nuclear weapon is detonated on American soil and they say it is Arab terrorists, don’t believe it.”

- Col. Stanislav Lunev, a Russian military defector (source)

——————————————————————————–

According to an alarming teaser-of-an-article posted on WorldNetDaily last Friday, Al Qaeda may be set to deliver an “American Hiroshima” this month during the Islamic holy time of Ramadan. If you want to find out about this unprecedented threat to U.S. national security and the lives of millions of Americans, you need only pay Joe Farah $9.95 per month or $99 for a full year subscription to his G2 Intelligence Bulletin. Personally I think that if intelligence regarding such a threat does indeed exist, one should freely make the details available rather than seek to make a buck off it. But I guess this is where I and Joe Farah differ.

Unfortunately, there is reason to give some credence to the notion that a threat of nuclear terrorism, or at least the most unprecedented wave of al Qaeda terror since 9/11, looms for October 2005. Here’s why.

Continue Reading »
Some Deep Thoughts…and light reading