Meteor fireball explodes over eastern Turkey, sending shower of meteorites to the ground

The meteor fireball was seen across a large area of eastern Turkey

Sott.net readers in Turkey are reporting that a meteor fireball lit up the night sky over the eastern city of Bingöl on September 2nd, 2015 at about 23:06 local time. The meteor appears to have exploded nearby because local residents later found what they believe to be meteorites. Several online Turkish news sites have picked up on the incident. The date and time-stamp on the following security camera footage appears to be correct:

The meteor was actually observed from a wide area of eastern Turkey, with eyewitnesses seeing the bright fireball from the cities of Elazığ, Muş, Diyarbakır, Tunceli, Erzurum and other surrounding towns. Local media has reported that some citizens were frightened by the light and an accompanying humming sound that appeared to be emitted by the object.

Eyewitness Mehmet Nezir Ergün from Sarıçiçek reported:

“A great light beam covered the whole village the night before last. The whole village was illuminated as if it was daytime. We first thought that it was due to armed conflict because it sounded like that to us. Then it sounded as if it was hailing on the roofs of houses. We could not understand what exactly it was. But the following morning, we saw that meteorites had fallen on the roofs of our houses.”

After searching online for information about the cosmic event, Ergün said he spoke with an associate professor from Bingöl University, who told him there was no relevant department at the university that could answer his questions. Ergün then placed a call to an engineer friend of his, who warned him that the stones might be dangerous to touch. However, as Ergün pointed out:

“Children in the village have been handling the meteorites since this morning. I did too. As these stones are from outer space, I was curious about their smell, so I smelled them! We do not know if these stones are hazardous in any way, but we expect officials to investigate the incident.”

Here are some photos of meteorites found by villagers, which they shared with local news media:

Meteorites found in eastern Turkey, where locals say their roofs were pelted following a bright burst of light in the night sky. Via http://www.ajans12gazetesi.com
Via http://www.ilkha.com
Via http://www.bingolunsesi.com.tr

The frequency of meteor fireball sightings worldwide continues to increase. In the space of a month, overhead meteor explosions have showered meteorites in northern Iran and now eastern Turkey.

First published on Sott.net, September 5th, 2015

United States of Europe: New German Reich crushes Greece, part 1

In theory maybe…

With Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras calling snap elections in Greece, the boom has been lowered on that country’s rebellion, at least in its current form. Even before Syriza – arguably the first truly leftist government in Europe since Spain pre-WW2 – came to power in Greece in January this year, the EU central powers’ knives were out for them.

Immediately following Syriza’s victory at the polls, the Eurocrats began shutting off the cash flow from the European Central Bank to the Bank of Greece. They also began a sustained campaign of ‘capital flight’, withdrawing billions of euros from the Greek economy, thereby encouraging private investors to follow suit. They then put ‘capital controls’ in place, ostensibly to dampen the capital flight they themselves were causing, and which had the foreseeable effect of increasing Greece’s total outstanding debt by one third to an unpayable 312 billion euros. Greece’s economy has shrunk 30% since it first went into recession 8 years ago, a contraction worse – in both duration and depth – than the American Great Depression of the 1930s.

Throughout this campaign of financial terrorism, the Eurocrats stone-walled or otherwise thwarted all efforts by the Greek government to implement reforms that would relieve the Greek people and make the their economy productive again. They did this because they sought to bring the country to its knees, then institute the raft of austerity measures we’ve seen the Greek government accept now, in one fell swoop, and without resistance. For those of you familiar with Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, this is economic shock therapy 101: “Only a crisis – actual or perceived – produces real change,” said monetarist schizoid-in-chief, Milton Friedman. In the process, the idea that the EU is based on social justice and solidarity has been exposed as nothing more than manipulative and cynical rhetoric. The European central powers sought to make Europe’s peripheral member-states aware of the real rules that govern the EU: ‘We rule, you comply. We pillage, you submit.’

During the crisis, the plucky Greeks brought up Nazi-era war reparations, and spoke out against anti-Russian sanctions, but at no point did they publicly mention a ‘Grexit’; rumors in that direction always came from the Eurocrats and the bankers. Like a psychopath gaslighting its prey, they painted Grexit as a nightmare scenario, and then used it – ruthlessly – as leverage with which to financially terrorize the Greek population and ‘mentally waterboard’ their leaders.

The Greek government did, however, briefly consider what to do in such a ‘worst case’ scenario, but the half-hearted nature of their plans in that direction is the clearest indicator that they were committed to remaining in the EU and the euro zone, and transforming it from within. Unsurprisingly, the impetus for this came from former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, who, when asked if they had made preparations for leaving the euro, said that his government had discussed it and:

“if they dared shut our banks down, which I considered to be an aggressive move of incredible potency, we should respond aggressively but without crossing the point of no return. We should issue our own IOUs, or even at least announce that we’re going to issue our own euro-denominated liquidity; we should haircut the Greek 2012 bonds that the ECB held, or announce we were going to do it; and we should take control of the Bank of Greece. This was the triptych, the three things which I thought we should respond with if the ECB shut down our banks.”

A (super)natural conspiracy

“Not friends anymore?” Dutch Fin. Min. Dijsselbloem offers a begrudging handshake to Varoufakis

Although the creditors and bondholders of so-called Greek ‘debt’ are protected by anonymity, lists have been leaked to German investigative journalist Harald Schumann, creator of two excellent documentaries: On the Trail of the Troika (2015), and The Secret Bank Bailout (2013). The biggest recipients of these billions read like a who’s-who of the financial world – Rothschild, BNP Paribas, Deutsche Bank among others. The reason these zombie banks cannot be allowed to fail is because the judicial process of discovery that would accompany such an event would reveal a network of bribery, corruption and nepotism between high finance, national banking sectors, and national government officials.

This is why, according to Varoufakis, Juncker said: “We can’t solve the systemic crisis and remain in power.” Whether you believe you’re looking at a conspiracy or ‘just the natural state of affairs’, the interests of political animals like Juncker and the financial vultures come together in tight-knit ways via networks spread out across Europe. Consider this passage from Political Ponerology:

In every society there are people whose basic intelligence, natural psychological worldview, and moral reasoning have developed improperly. Some of these persons contain the cause within themselves, others were subjected to psychologically abnormal people as children. Such individuals’ comprehension of social and moral questions is different, both from the natural and from the objective viewpoint; they constitute a destructive factor for the development of society’s psychological concepts, social structure, and internal bonds.

At the same time, such people easily interpenetrate the social structure with a ramified network of mutual pathological conspiracies poorly connected to the main social structure. These people and their networks participate in the genesis of that evil which spares no nation. This substructure gives birth to dreams of obtaining power and imposing one’s will upon society, and is quite often actually brought about in various countries, and during historical times as well.

In mathematics, ‘ramification’ is a geometric term used for ‘branching out’. It’s an apt term in this context because it captures the interconnectedness of financial speculators, Eurocrats, and clandestine military-intelligence networks without there necessarily being intentional linking-up or conscious coordination between all, or even most of them. Much like an ‘artificial neural network’ used in statistical models, we can conceive of networks of people – some explicitly bound to each other via conspiracies, others just loosely bound via mutual self-interest – that overlay and interpenetrate “the main social structure”; that is, the legitimate and productive social economy in which the masses of normal people live, work and develop normal relationships.

Ramified networks of mutually reinforcing vectors, feeding off the human super-organism

Varoufakis vs the Minotaur

‘EU democratic principles? What EU democratic principles?’

As the arbitrary June 30th ‘bailout deadline’ approached and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras stunned the technocrats by announcing a referendum on whether or not to accept their demands, they did effectively shut down Greece’s banks, but the Greek government didn’t enact Varoufakis’ triptych. If you haven’t yet read it, here is Yanis Varoufakis’ interview with the New Statesman, which took place after he resigned and before the ‘deal’ took place in Brussels on July 12th.

Asked to share his experience of taking part in European Union-level meetings, Varoufakis said that it was “worse than he imagined“, that Eurocrats, prime minsters and finance ministers have a “complete lack of any democratic scruples.” Varoufakis recounted how he would be met with blank stares when he explained the plain facts of Greece’s situation to them, “as if you haven’t spoken.” While you’d be forgiven for assuming that they did not understand what Varoufakis was saying, or that they did not want to hear what he was saying, he clarified that, occasionally, when they came out from “behind the parapet of the official line“, they “looked me in the eye and said: ‘You’re right in what you’re saying, but we’re going to crush you anyway’.”

Varoufakis at one point sought a legal opinion after the ‘Eurogroup’ chairman – Dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem – broke with convention to issue a communiqué without all eurozone finance ministers being present. Varoufakis was told the Eurogroup does not exist in law“, therefore he could have no objections to whatever its dominant members decreed. Confirming what everyone knows about the state of ‘democracy’ in the EU, but which the mainstream media has acquiesced in covering up, Varoufakis said the ‘Eurogroup’ is

“not answerable to anyone, given that it doesn’t exist in law. No minutes are kept; and it’s confidential. So no citizen ever knows what is said within. These are decisions of almost life and death, and no member has to answer to anybody.”

Dijsselbloem – pronounced ‘day-sell-bloom’, and nicknamed ‘Mr.Euro’ – is a pen-pushing poster-boy of the EU project, a thoroughbred technocrat who oversaw the fleecing of Cyprus in 2013, when its government was told: “You agree to this, or you’re out of the eurozone.” The Troika forced the Cypriots, at financial gunpoint, to transfer 6 billion euros from Cypriot depositors’ bank accounts into one of the Greek zombie banks, which was thus ‘miraculously’ resurrected overnight, going from ‘insolvent’ to ‘profitable’. Dijsselbloem warned at the time thatCyprus would be used as the model for future bailouts.”

Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany’s Finance Minister. Is it just me or is he the spitting image of a certain notorious German Chancellor?

Other revelations from Varoufakis make it crystal clear that Germany – in the form of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble – was in charge of proceedings throughout, and that the European Union today is a thoroughly German-controlled institution. When ‘old ironsides’ Wolfgang said ‘jump’, everyone present knew the only answer was ‘how high?’

While European media have spent the last 6 months pumping out lies about Greek ‘intransigence’, ‘brinkmanship’, and ‘reluctance to negotiate’, Varoufakis reveals that what really happened is that the bankers, via the EU-ECB-IMF ‘troika’, were playing hardball from the moment Syriza was elected – stalling, blocking, or simply ignoring all proposals (most of which were patently conservative and ostensibly in line with creditors’ wishes) put forward by the Greek negotiating team.

Why would they do this if they were so concerned with recouping their money, and getting the Greek government to ‘reform’ Greek institutions?

Because the Eurocrats had zero interest in negotiations. It was THEY who were stalling for time in order to bring about precisely the scenario Greeks are faced with today: a state of economic siege, under assault from financial terrorists. Varoufakis was explicit: “We were set up.” Ok, but still, why risk regional, and potentially global, economic fallout from the shock of a ‘Grexit’? Because the Criminal Class is gunning for regime change in Greece, and the regime change they seek is not just a changing of the guard via the removal of “those two communists, Tsipras and Varoufakis, but a literal change of regime in Greece: breaking the back of Greek popular resistance to ‘austerity measures’.

Moscow or bust?

No sooner had Syriza been elected than stories began appearing in the Western financial press about the new Greek government’s ‘alarming connections with Russia’. Their new foreign minister Nikos Kotzias had academic connections with one Aleksandr Dugin, the ideological leader of the Eurasianist Movement, a character so vilified in Western policy circles that you can feel the spray coming off the screen when reading rants about his alleged ‘neo-fascist, nationalist Bolshevik designs on destroying America and taking over the world.’

Whatever those two may have discussed prior to Syriza winning power, there’s no reason to doubt that the extent of recent Greco-Russian ‘plotting’ at government level was limited to discussion of sanctions and bilateral trade, including extension of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline into Greece. Ultimately, what Putin had to say on the matter… was all there is to say on the matter:

“Greece is a member of the EU and …conducts complicated negotiation process with its partners. Mr. [Alexis] Tsipras didn’t ask us for any help. And in general, it’s understandable because the numbers [of Greece’s debt] are high.”

Putin and Tsipras

There was nothing Putin could do to ‘save’ Greece. The ‘obvious’ solution touted by some commentators – leave the eurozone, switch to the drachma, seek financial aid from Russia/BRICS, then join the Eurasian Economic Union – requires long-term thinking and planning, and expertly judicious execution. And no, Greece could not have gone solo by ‘doing an Iceland’. The time to do so was in 2010, before Greece accepted ownership of the debt burden. But even then, it would have been no easy choice for Syriza’s predecessors. Greece, unlike Iceland, is fully integrated, financially, economically and militarily, within the EU and NATO. It was in no position to leave because, had it done so, Germany and every financial speculator out there would have torn the Greek economy apart piece by piece.

There have been a number of rumors flying around about Greek-Russian ‘deals’ during the crisis. Among them is the claim that the Greek government asked Moscow for $10 billion to fund a return to the drachma, a request that was supposedly only turned down on the night of the referendum. Another story has an element of the Syriza party, upon learning that Tsipras had decided to fold to Germany, briefly considering placing the governor of the Greek central bank under house arrest, emptying the central bank’s vaults, and only then appealing to Moscow for help (presumably as ‘guarantors’ of their coup).

Evidently, none of that happened. Varoufakis has since gone public with detailed contingency plans he drew up at the eleventh hour to prepare for Greece being forced out of the Eurozone – or Tsipras deciding to keep up the fight against the Troika, whichever panned out first. For this, Varoufakis has been accused of treason, a ridiculous charge on the face of it, but one that has some truth to it: the Greek state was – and still is – effectively in ‘a state of coup d’état‘, thus if its leaders were going to make any bold moves, they would have had to do as Varoufakis suggested and take such measures as hacking their own tax systems in order to take back control from the real coup plotters in Brussels and Berlin. But once Tsipras decided to fold and Varoufakis resigned, Greece’s swan song of protest had been sung.

I think the reason why Tsipras capitulated, when he appeared to have a stronger hand thanks to a successful referendum result against EU austerity, and after having already held out for six months, was because he didn’t have any other (humanitarian) option. Any rash decisions taken at that moment would only have brought a ‘color revolution’ on the heads of ordinary Greeks, and a headache for Moscow at a time when its strategy regarding US-occupied Europe – as far as it can be discerned – is to hold out for such a time when Berlin may reconsider its alignment with Washington.

A coup of sorts?

The Greek resistance fought the Nazis during WW2 only to be betrayed and slaughtered by the British

If we consider the historical pattern of reactionary forces across post-WW2 Europe that were either established by or subsumed into a NATO-CIA-MI6 military-intelligence structure, and whose common directive was to subvert trends towards left-wing government (under the pretext that such government is de facto under Moscow’s control), then we might wonder if this situation, where an actual left-wing European government made a show of developing friendly relations with Russia, presents a clear invitation to that power structure to respond covertly with some form of force.

Greece has all-too-vivid memories of counter-revolutionary forces suppressing democratic expression. When the British crushed a popular Greek uprising in 1944, they did so by creating a right-wing military brigade (outside of the popular, anti-Nazi, volunteer resistance army, EAM) that went on to win a civil war and form the basis of today’s regular Greek army. When Greece joined NATO in 1952, the CIA made Greek Special Forces (the LOK Mountain Raiders) the country’s NATO ‘stay-behind’ secret army, and put them into action in a military coup in 1967.

Could Tsipras have been told or had it indicated to him – perhaps in no uncertain terms, but more likely through ‘whispers on the wind’ – that bloody mayhem would ensue if Syriza didn’t back down? It has been speculated, based on reports that the Greek military was put on standby on July 5th – referendum day – in a rather ominously titled ‘Operation Nemesis’, that a Maidan-like showdown hung over Athens like the proverbial sword of Damocles:

‘Greek army and police prepare for street battles’
UK Sunday Times, 5 July 2015

Greek security forces have drawn up a secret plan to deploy the army alongside special riot police to contain possible civil unrest after today’s referendum on the country’s future in Europe.

Codenamed Nemesis, it makes provision for troops to patrol large cities if there is widespread and prolonged public disorder.

The Greek army has long avoided involvement in politics, but deployment of troops to contain unrest is extremely sensitive in a country with a history of military coups.

Several ministers in Alexis Tsipras’s leftist government, some of them former communists, voiced outrage when told of the proposal at a cabinet meeting on June 26, hours before he announced the vote.

In Greek mythology, ‘Nemesis’ follows ‘hubris’, so was this a thinly veiled threat of retribution against Syriza’s ‘hubris’ for standing up to the money masters? To gauge the likelihood of that, we’d need to know the circumstances behind the operation. As it was reported, there’s no reason to think that it wasn’t sanctioned by Tsipras as a precaution against riots breaking out – whether they occurred spontaneously or with the assistance of outside or subversive forces. In this case, putting military and security forces on alert is surely a measure to thwart conditions leading to a coup, not instigate them.

Nevertheless, there is some circumstantial data (it’s not ‘evidence’) of subversive forces at work in the background.

  • The day after Syriza was elected, a Greek F-16 fighter jet crashed on take-off at Los Llanos military base during a NATO military exercise in Albacete, Spain, killing two Greek and eight French military personnel, and injuring 21 others.
  • In mid-March, US Assistant Secretary for War in Europe European and Eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland, visited Athens to subtly remind Tsipras not to break ranks with NATO allies against Russia.
  • The day after the punitive ‘bailout’ deal was reached in Brussels, locals were adamant that destructive fires, which broke out in and around Athens, were the work of arsonists. Pointing out that at least some of them began simultaneously, the mayor of the district of Ilioupoli, Vassilis Balassopoulos, claimed, “This is clearly arson, I heard explosive devices go off in the forest.”

But the best clue pointing to deliberate mahyem-making came when Athens police arrested 26 people during a riot in Athens on July 17th and charged them with smashing up a metro station and attacking police officers. 14 of these agitators were non-Greeks: four came from Germany, three from Poland, two were French, one Australian, one Ukrainian, one Dutch, one Italian, and one Albanian. In addition, police officers told Greek media outlet Kathimerini that there were other recent cases of foreign rioters, including a Syrian, a Pakistani and a Georgian arrested during similar clashes on July 5th. Some of them told police they had been paid between 20 and 30 euros to take part in the disturbances.

Whose army?

A variety of statements made by Greek and American elites highlight U.S. government interest in Greece accepting the third bailout program and remaining in the euro zone. On the eve of the referendum, a group of 65 former generals and other senior Greek military personnel, including General Frangoulis Frangos, a former defense minister and head of the Greek army general staff until 2011, made an extraordinary intervention by signing an incredibly shrill public statement calling for a ‘yes’ vote:

“We have vowed to the Homeland and the flag. We devote our lives to the defense of the country. We have served the Republic and Liberty. Our goal has always been to defend the Nation and its Welfare. The circumstances and the times force us to express our fears and worries. The strength of our country is the most important thing we have and at this time its power is compromised. Our exit from Europe and the euro will make our country weaker. We will lose allies who have stood by our side. We will lose the power that is given to us by the associations and groups of countries to which we belong historically and culturally.

An important factor in a country’s power are its allies, who will hasten when it faces the highest risk. Without allies, our strength diminishes, the position of our country is discredited and the consequences will be terrible. The geopolitical position of the country is power, but also weakness [‘Power’ from the perspective of Greece’s location being important to the US; ‘weakness’ from the perspective of Greece being tempted to re-align with Russia – NB]. Our exit from Europe will make us weak to pressures that will intensify and become more threatening, and all the sacrifices Greeks have made will go to waste.

By choosing isolation we are endangering the Homeland and its future. With the choice of isolation, we are taking a risk with painful consequences. A risk that can have enormous costs for the Country, Democracy, Freedom and National Sovereignty. With the choice of isolation we are making the country powerless against the challenges of those who conspire against it; we make it weak against those who want it to kneel and to be subjugated.

Europe is our ally.

Greece is Europe.

Yes to Greece. Yes to Europe.”

To read that, you’d think Greece was facing an existential threat, like imminent nuclear holocaust, not a political decision over whether or not to accept the latest Brussels bailout terms. And indeed, Greece is in a dire straits, but it’s a result of being in the euro, not out of it. In addition to this bizarre statement, Frangos ranted to Kathimerini:

“With its irresponsibility and its verbiage, the coalition government has vilified our homeland and Greeks worldwide, and have led them down a difficult path with an uncertain future, and complete impoverishment as a result of the criminal irresponsibility of those who cheated with ambiguous and false promises, and who have usurped the vote of the Greek people. Greeks must, as ever, decide wisely and with temper for our survival as a nation within Europe with a resounding YES on Sunday!”

Clearly referring to Tsipras, Fragkos also said that “the moral values and principles that have always defined us Greeks are not under negotiation with any clueless and historically ignorant [politician] who is advancing his own party interest.” But rather than describing Tsipras or the Syriza party, Frangos’ rant perfectly describes the kind of people who got Greece into this situation, and who Syriza ministers are up against in trying to get Greece out of it. Where does such paranoia come from, if not the Strangelovian mindset at NATO or the irrational Russophobia in Washington?

When Syriza first formed, one of the items on its to-do list was the “closure of all foreign bases in Greece and withdrawal from NATO,” something that would not have gone down well with the Greek military or Washington. For some 15 years now, Greece has – per capita – consistently been the highest-spending European NATO member, thanks in part to enormous bribes for contracts from German and French weapons manufacturers. Even during its ‘debt crisis’, Greece has been one of just four member-states that fully implemented the NATO target of spending at least 2% of its annual GDP on the military.

Greece_per capita_military spending_NATO

Oligarkhia, from oligoi – ‘few’ – and arkhein – ‘to rule’

There are countless ways in which pressure could have been brought to bear on Tsipras and his government. The question to ask is: who would have had the means and motive to threaten them? While the retired generals’ intervention made no explicit mention of NATO or US geopolitical interests, a separate intervention by wealthy Greek-Americans did cut straight to the chase in a pre-referendum statement on Greek priorities:

“Regardless of the outcome of the referendum held in Greece on July 5, 2015, what is crucial to the Greek American community is that U.S.-Greece relations remain strong and certain, and Greece’s geostrategic importance and contributions to the security interests of the U.S. and NATO is valued and appreciated.”

United States of Atlantasia

Greek-American lobby groups have been received at the White House by US Vice President Joe Biden on a number of occasions in recent months, ostensibly as part of their funding drive to provide Greece with ‘humanitarian aid’. In their most recent meeting, it was agreed that the US government will establish an “interministerial working group” to investigate possible areas of assistance to Greece, including “military support from the Pentagon.” In what appears to be an oblique reference to the Greek government’s deal with Putin to extend the Turkish Stream gas pipeline through Greece, these Greek-American lobbyists said they would like to see the US government “send a clear message that the U.S. wants Greece to become an energy hub,” presumably to the exclusion of Russian involvement.

There’s not much we can say about the likelihood of Greek military intervention in the form of a coup, or even whether the mere threat of a coup was weighing on Tsipras’s mind as the referendum result was announced, without knowing the political leanings of the current military heads. On the whole, I’m inclined to assume that their training and education – to say nothing of their daily working contact with NATO, especially in the current climate of hyper-paranoid US antagonism towards Russia – is likely to make them pro-NATO to the extent of supporting Washington’s bottom line: Greece must not be separated from the EU because the risk of separation from NATO follows.

Robert Kaplan is Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), the Democrats’ answer to the neo-conservative Project for a New American Century think-tank. In his June 30th op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, ‘The Greek Crisis Is About More Than Money‘, Kaplan went beyond Europeans’ fear of “euro-debt contagion” to spell out US geostrategic interest in keeping Greece within the Western fold:

[…] the spectacle of a major Balkan country pivotally loosening its ties with the West, even as Russia appears momentarily ascendant in the region, will be sobering in the extreme.

The first post-Cold War decades featured a secure Eurasian maritime sphere from the Mediterranean across the Indian Ocean to the Western Pacific. Thus, the weakening of Greece’s ties with the West in the eastern Mediterranean has to be seen alongside the ascendancy of Iran in the Persian Gulf and the rise of China in the South and East China seas as a singular process in the chipping away at American power.

Whether or not it was explicitly intended, the split we’re seeing in Syriza was inevitable: the revolutionary or independence movement’s leadership – when confronting the “ramified network of mutual pathological conspiracies” – is always forced to make the difficult, but heavily weighted, choice of backing down to live another day, or risking going down in flames with large numbers of the people they’ve sworn to defend.

In part 2, we’ll be looking at more revelations from Varoufakis on the ‘troika’, his ‘global minotaur’ metaphor for ‘the Beast’ a.k.a US empire, and why the Eurocrats rejected his plan to actually solve Europe’s money problems…

First published on Sott.net, August 22nd, 2015

Global warning? Top UK climate scientist and expert on Arctic ice cries foul over colleagues’ deaths

Extraordinary claims made by a prominent British climate scientist recently made headlines in the UK. Peter Wadhams, Professor of Ocean Physics at Cambridge University, told the UK Times that he suspected the deaths of three of his peers in early 2013 were the result of foul play:

‘Climate scientist fears murder by hitman’

By Ben Webster, The Times, July 25th, 2015

[Wadhams] said that assassins may have murdered scientists who were seeking to reveal how rapidly global warming was melting Arctic ice… [and] believed that he had also been targeted but had a narrow escape after a driver of an unmarked lorry tried to push his car off the M25.

Professor Wadhams faced criticism this week after a study contradicted his prediction that Arctic ice was melting so fast that it could all disappear this summer. Asked by The Times for his response to the discovery that the total volume of ice grew 40 per cent in 2013, Professor Wadhams insisted that there was still an outside possibility of the Arctic being ice-free this year [in 2015 – NB].

Top left: Peter Wadhams. Top right: Seymour Laxon. Bottom left: Katharine Giles. Bottom right: Tim Boyd.

He then said there were only four people in Britain who were “really leaders on ice thickness in the Arctic” and he was one. The others, he said, had died in early 2013.

He said: “It seems to me to be too bizarre to be accidental but each individual incident looks accidental, which may mean it’s been made to look accidental.”

He named the three as Seymour Laxon of University College London, Katharine Giles, a climate change scientist who worked with Professor Laxon at UCL, and Tim Boyd of the Scottish Association for Marine Science.

Professor Laxon died after falling downstairs at a New Year’s Eve party in Essex; Dr Giles died in a collision with a lorry while cycling to work in London; and police said they believed that Dr Boyd was killed by lightning as he walked near a loch in Scotland.

Professor Wadhams said that about the same time he was driving on the M25 late at night when the lorry hit his car. “This guy showed definite evidence of malevolence. He was trying to run me right off the road.” He said his car was damaged but he managed to get home and called the police the next day. He was told no action could be taken.

“I just thought ‘what is going on here?’ Somebody is trying to do in people who are working on ice thickness in Britain.”

He said: “If it was some kind of death squad, you don’t expect that with something like climate change. I know oil companies have been giving lots and lots of money to… climate change denialist organisations but you don’t expect them to kill people.”

While Wadhman’s claims may seem outlandish, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that scientists working in certain areas might be discretely bumped off. Post 9/11, a flurry of microbiologists died in mysterious circumstances. More recently, a pattern has emerged of holistic medical doctors and practitioners meeting untimely demises.

In the case of the microbiologists, it’s either known, or considered very likely, that their research connected into high-level military/government projects and sensitive research areas. It’s less clear-cut how natural health practitioners could present such a threat to the Powers that Be that they merit ‘termination’. While a string of suspicious deaths of researchers in particular fields is not necessarily evidence of a conspiracy or cover-up, it’s also true that powerful interests may wish to, at any time and in any field, snuff out apparently innocuous research. Science can indeed be dangerous work.

The problem with Wadham’s claim however is that the research he and his former colleagues were engaged in supports the dominant man-made global warming theory. ‘Warmists’ are a godsend to those in power because it deflects blame for increasing climate chaos from powerful and extremely wasteful institutions like central banking and the US military onto the masses of ordinary people.

Politically incorrect science

But still, Wadham has a point: the odds of three out of four of Britain’s top researchers in one specific field dying in unrelated incidents over a relatively short time are rather large. If we run with Wadhams’ suggestion for a second and assume that his colleagues were killed in such a way as to make their deaths appear accidental, then that would suggest they were killed by high-level military-intelligence operatives. Only such types would have the clout to pull off the deeds, manage the crime-scenes, influence the investigations and vector media coverage.

David Kelly

As to motive, what if these apparent ‘warmists’ research was leading them to conclusions that posed a serious challenge to the official narrative? I imagine that hard evidence supporting the case for sudden glacial rebound would be high on the criminal elite’s blacklist. The Powers That Be want people alarmed, but in a controlled manner, and by a false narrative that blocks awareness that something big is happening on a global scale – now, not in some distant future.

Speaking publicly about such civilization-ending scenarios won’t necessarily bring danger on anyone’s head. It’s no secret that a number of scientists from all over the world are leaning towards some form of ice age scenario. But what counts is the standing of the person saying it. Even if they only say certain things to their peers in private, the Powers That Be are ever-alert to ‘sedition’ within the lower ranks.

When Dr. David Kelly knew for a fact that British government claims about Iraq’s WMDs in the run-up to the Iraq War were false, he didn’t stay silent. He was an expert in that very field and could prove what the Iraqi military did and did not have in its arsenals. British security operatives forced the journalist who anonymously cited Kelly’s expertise to publicly reveal Kelly’s name, at which point they discredited Kelly in trial-by-media, then physically ‘suicided’ him. The reason they went to such lengths was because of Dr. Kelly’s public standing and specific knowledge which made him unlikely to give in to intimidation.

Wadhams features regularly in media coverage of Arctic climate developments, where he has consistently promoted his view that an ‘ice-free Arctic’ is almost a certainty by 2020, and on its heels comes a ‘big chill’. As such, he is the most high-profile name of these four climate scientists, and also the one to make the most hard-and-fast claims, like this from 10 years ago:

‘Britain Faces Big Chill as Ocean Current Slows’

By Jonathan Leake, Sunday Times (UK), May 8th, 2005

Climate change researchers have detected the first signs of a slowdown in the Gulf Stream – the mighty ocean current that keeps Britain and Europe from freezing.

They have found that one of the “engines” driving the Gulf Stream – the sinking of supercooled water in the Greenland Sea – has weakened to less than a quarter of its former strength.

The weakening, apparently caused by global warming, could herald big changes in the current over the next few years or decades.

Paradoxically, it could lead to Britain and northwestern and Europe undergoing a sharp drop in temperatures.

‘The Day After Tomorrow’, just a movie scenario, for now

Peter Wadhams, professor of ocean physics at Cambridge University, hitched rides under the Arctic ice cap in Royal Navy submarines and used ships to take measurements across the Greenland Sea.

“Until recently we would find giant ‘chimneys’ in the sea where columns of cold, dense water were sinking from the surface to the seabed 3,000 metres below, but now they have almost disappeared,” he said.

“As the water sank it was replaced by warm water flowing in from the south, which kept the circulation going. If that mechanism is slowing, it will mean less heat reaching Europe.”

Such a change could have a severe impact on Britain, which lies on the same latitude as Siberia and ought to be much colder. The Gulf Stream transports 27,000 times more heat to British shores than all the nation’s power supplies could provide, warming Britain by 5-8C.

Wadhams and his colleagues believe, however, that just such changes could be well under way. They predict that the slowing of the Gulf Stream is likely to be accompanied by other effects, such as the complete summer melting of the Arctic ice cap by as early as 2020

Wadhams suggests the effect could be dramatic. “One of the frightening things in the film The Day After Tomorrow showed how the circulation in the Atlantic Ocean is upset because the sinking of cold water in the north Atlantic suddenly stops,” he said. “The sinking is stopping, albeit much more slowly than in the film – over years rather than a few days. If it continues, the effect will be to cool the climate of northern Europe.”

So here we have a prominent climate scientist ‘believer’ (as opposed to a ‘denier’) riding the ‘man-made global warming wave’, like most others, but towards an altogether different conclusion: abrupt and imminent glacial rebound, i.e. a new ice age of one sort or another.

With the exception of occasional reports of alternative climate research, the overwhelming media consensus is in line with the position of the UN International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC): the climate system is definitely warming, human activity is definitely to blame, and if measures aren’t taken to address it right now, coastal regions will be under water… perhaps a century from now.

Three dead climate scientists

Dr. Tim Boyd

Tim Boyd was a 54-year-old, US-born climate scientist who worked at the Scottish Association of Marine Science (SAMS) in Oban, western Scotland, where his title was Principal Investigator in Polar Physical Oceanography, and his specific research interests included “variability in the heat and salt content of the upper layers of the Arctic Ocean.”

A passer-by found Boyd dead on a bridge near his home in Port Appin on January 27th, 2013. Local police said they ‘believed’ Boyd was struck dead by lightning, citing a storm that had passed through the area and knocked down power and phone lines. A postmortem was apparently conducted, although its results have not been made public.

The Jubilee Bridge in Argyll, Scotland, where climate scientist Tim Boyd was found dead on January 27th, 2013

Boyd’s death is reminiscent of the sudden death of former British Foreign Minister Robin Cook. Cook was walking in the Highlands of Scotland on August 6th, 2005 when he suddenly died after suffering a massive heart attack and falling off a ridge. A postmortem examination found that Cook died of ‘hypertensive heart disease’. Some, however, including Liberal Democrat MP Norman Baker, believe that Cook – a prominent critic of the Iraq War and the ‘War on Terror’ – did not die of natural causes, but was the victim of a covert hit by an intelligence agency (presumably British). In case anyone is wondering, inducing heart attacks (or just about any other bodily affliction) from afar is not science fiction.

Seymour Laxon was 49 years old when he died on January 2nd, 2013, after suffering a brain hemorrhage and falling down a flight of stairs (it’s unclear in which order) at a New Year’s Eve party in Essex, England. In this Guardian obituary we learn that:

Seymour Laxon

Seymour’s scientific breakthrough was to distinguish the ice surface from the water surface in satellite radar altimeter measurements of ice-covered oceans. This led to the first detailed map of the Arctic gravity field, revealing new tectonic features beneath the seafloor, and water circulation beneath the ice. His work helped give the European Space Agency the confidence to build CryoSat, a satellite dedicated to observing the Earth’s ice-covered regions, launched in 2010.

Seymour taught at University College London’s Department of Space and Climate Physics, before moving to the Department of Earth Sciences, where he was director of the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling. He was awarded his Chair in Climate Physics in 2012.

Then there is Katharine Giles, originally a PhD student of Laxon’s, and at the time of her death a lecturer and colleague of his at the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at University College London. Giles’s major scientific contribution was to build on Laxon’s work supporting the discovery of an enormous quantity of recently accumulated freshwater in the Arctic Ocean, demonstrating that it is being held back from entering the North Atlantic (and thus from disrupting the Gulf Stream) by a rather temperamental force: wind…

‘Huge pool of Arctic fresh water could cool Europe’

By Tamera Jones, phys.org, January 23rd, 2012

British scientists have discovered an enormous dome of fresh water in the western Arctic Ocean. They think it may result from strong Arctic winds accelerating a great clockwise ocean circulation called the Beaufort Gyre, causing the sea surface to bulge upwards.

The researchers made their discovery using European Space Agency (ESA) satellites ERS-2 and Envisat. They measured sea-surface height over the western Arctic over a 15-year period, from 1995 to 2010.

Katharine Giles

Using these measurements, they calculate that since 2002 the sea surface in the western Arctic has risen by around 15cm, and the volume of fresh water has swollen by roughly 8000 cubic kilometres. This is around ten per cent of all the fresh water in the Arctic Ocean.

If the wind changes direction, as happened between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, the water could spill out into the rest of the Arctic and then perhaps even the north Atlantic. This could cool Europe by slowing down a key ocean current derived from the Gulf Stream, which keeps the continent relatively mild compared with countries at similar latitudes.

The Gulf Stream forms part of a larger movement of water called the ocean conveyor belt, which is itself one component of the global system of ocean currents.

Satellite data has shown us that a dome of fresh water has been building up in the western Arctic over the past 15 years, due to the wind. Our findings suggest that a reversal of the wind could result in the release of this fresh water to the rest of the Arctic Ocean and even beyond,” says Dr. Katharine Giles from the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling (CPOM) at University College London, lead author of the study, published in Nature Geoscience.

Giles was killed on April 8th, 2013, while cycling to work through central London. The report of an inquest into her death was made public: the driver of a large truck had failed to notice her ‘coming up his near side’ as he made a left-hand turn. Another cyclist behind Giles witnessed her bicycle being hit. One small thing that stood out about her death was that she was killed at a location that wasn’t on her normal commute. None of her colleagues could say why she might have been on Victoria Street, a location that at least tripled the distance of her normal cycle route.

To these three we must add the sudden death of British climate researcher Christopher Bell, 24 years old, a PhD student who worked at SAMS under Tim Boyd. Bell was reported killed, along with three others, by an avalanche at the Scottish ski resort of Glencoe on January 19th, 2013 just 8 days before Boyd.

Leaving aside speculation, let’s look at the sequence:

  • Jan. 2nd 2013 – Dr. Seymour Laxon, used satellites to observe polar ice caps and sea ice. Died from brain haemorrage
  • Jan. 19th 2013 – Christopher Bell, PhD student working under Dr. Tim Boyd. Killed in avalanche
  • Jan. 27th 2013 – Dr. Tim Boyd, Arctic ocean ice cover, heat and salinity researcher. Killed by “lightning strike”
  • Apr. 8th 2013 – Katharine Giles, colleague of Dr. Seymour Laxon. Killed by truck while cycling unusual route to work

What are the odds?

Arctic research and ice ages

Wadhams’s assertion that Boyd, Laxon and Giles were the best in their particular field does appear to hold up. In a speech shortly after Giles’s death, Duncan Wingham, a colleague of both her and Laxon said:

“I said we have to look to the younger generation to carry on his work. Katharine was one of the people I had in mind. Science is not just about talent, leadership is essential and she had both. We’ve lost around 40 years of accumulated experience in Seymour and Katharine. That group of scientists were the only people capable of doing the work with satellites they had been doing. That huge investment of time and human effort can’t be replaced.”

If the warmer Gulf Stream ‘conveyor belt’ is interrupted or stopped altogether, Europe (and elsewhere) is plunged into deep cold conditions

The research interests of all four scientists converged in one area: the consequences of changes in Arctic climate conditions for the thermohaline circulation in the North Atlantic Ocean, where the dilution of saltwater by increased freshwater is widely thought to be a key trigger mechanism that shifts the global climate into, and possibly out of, ice ages. Historical studies abound of glaciation caused by changes in North Atlantic ocean salinity. See here, here and here, for example. But when it comes to directly observed, present-day Arctic conditions, you will rarely see or hear tenured scientists mention ‘ice age’, although ‘global cooling’ does appear in their papers from time to time.

Remember those British scientists in The Day After Tomorrow, who sounded the alarm about readings of temperature drops relayed by their buoys in the North Atlantic? The three dead scientists (plus Wadhams) were the real life versions of those characters. There are, of course, others in the UK and elsewhere working in this specific field, and the same warning message is coming through in all of their research – though couched in ‘man-made global warming terms’, and minus any Hollywood drama. For one recent example:

‘Deterioration of perennial sea ice in the Beaufort Gyre from 2003 to 2012 and its impact on the oceanic freshwater cycle’

 

R. A. Krishfield, A. Proshutinsky, K. Tateyama, W. J. Williams, E. C. Carmack, F. A. McLaughlin, and M.-L. Timmermans
Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, 22 February 2014, DOI: 10.1002/2013JC008999

Introduction

The Beaufort Gyre (BG) is a unique circulation component within the Arctic Ocean physical environment with a set of specific atmospheric, sea ice, and oceanic conditions that are interrelated with pan-Arctic as well as global climate systems [Proshutinsky et al., 2002, 2009, 2012; Dukhovskoy et al., 2004; Carmack et al., 2008; Giles et al., 2012, Morison et al., 2012]. Significant negative trends in observed Arctic sea ice extent and thickness over the past decade have prompted numerous discussions about the root causes and consequences of the rapidly changing Arctic climate [e.g., Lindsay and Zhang, 2005; Overland et al., 2008; Kwok, 2008]. Ocean changes in the BG (Figure 1) have been equally as prominent as the disappearing sea ice cover. For example, the BG accumulated more than 5000 km3 of liquid fresh water in the period 2003 – 2012, an increase of approximately 25% [Proshutinsky et al., 2012] relative to the climatology of the 1970s. Not only does this have important consequences for the Arctic sea ice and ecosystems, but a fresh water release from the Arctic of this magnitude could trigger a salinity anomaly in the North Atlantic with magnitude comparable to the Great Salinity Anomaly (GSA) of the 1970s. GSAs can influence global climate by inhibiting deep wintertime convection that in turn can reduce the ocean meridional overturning circulation [Vellinga et al., 2008] and initiate cooling.

Arctic currents. The Beaufort Gyre is to the left, north of Alaska

Whether any or all of these scientists ever fully realize it or not, they have caught a tiger by the tail. They are shy to spell out what that means, but they all understand the implications: severe cooling in the northern hemisphere in the very short term.

The unfortunate Peter Wadhams, routinely ridiculed by skeptics because of his exceptional stance on the likelihood of a coming ice age, and now ridiculed by the British press for his statements about the deaths of his colleagues, is desperately trying to protect his reputation. In a recent article in the British Guardian, Wadhams complained that he was misquoted by the Times journalist, that he initially considered the deaths suspicious but has since concluded that, while extraordinary coincidences, they were also “explainable accidents”. He has also lodged a complaint with the UK’s Press Standards Organisation against The Times. For its part, The Times has responded that it has Wadhams’s comments on tape and stands by the story.

Watch this space… or the weather over Northern Europe this winter.

First published on Sott.net, August 2nd, 2015