MFS - The Other News

Fukushima Daiichi plant

                          Morning Posting.

• Huge blast at Japan nuclear power plant.A massive explosion has rocked a Japanese nuclear power plant after Friday's devastating earthquake.A huge pall of smoke was seen coming from the plant at Fukushima and several workers were injured.Japanese officials fear a meltdown at one of the plant's reactors but say the container housing it was not damaged.A huge relief operation is under way after the 8.9-magnitude earthquake and the tsunami it triggered, which is thought to have killed at least 1,000.The offshore earthquake triggered a tsunami which wreaked havoc on Japan's north-east coast, sweeping far inland and devastating a number of towns and villages.Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan declared a state of emergency at the Fukushima Daiichi and Daini (also known as Fukushima 1 and 2) power plants as engineers try to confirm whether a reactor at one of the stations has gone into meltdown.The emergency declaration is an automatic procedure after nuclear reactors shut down in the event of an earthquake, allowing officials to take rapid action.Japan's NHK TV showed before and after pictures of the plant. They appeared to show that the outer structure of one of four buildings at the plant had collapsed after the explosion.The Tokyo Electric Power Co (Tepco), the plant's operator, said four workers had been injured.Japan's nuclear agency said on Saturday that radioactive caesium and iodine had been detected near the number one reactor of the power station.The agency said this may indicate that containers of uranium fuel inside the reactor may have begun melting.Analysts say a meltdown would not necessarily lead to a major disaster because light-water reactors would not explode even if they overheated.But Walt Patterson, of the London research institute Chatham House, said "this is starting to look a lot like Chernobyl".He said it was too early to tell if the explosion's aftermath would result in the same extreme level of radioactive contamination that occurred at Chernobyl.The explosion was most likely caused by melting fuel coming into contact with water, he told the BBC.Hmmmm.....And we all remember how "fast and honest" the info was on that accident.Read and see the full story here.

• CNN LIVE NEWS STREAM HERE.

• Japanese tsunami creates whirlpool.A huge whirlpool has been created by the earthquake in Japan.It was created after the sheer force of the tsunami hit another strong current in the water.The vortex-like motion is dragging anything nearby into its core.Four trains still missing also.See the full story here.
• WATCH LIVE:Japan earthquake coverage from Reuters News . Here. Live updating news here.

• Updated !Aftershocks between 5,1 and 5,9 epicenters of four of them near nuclear plants more info here.

• Greece : In the last 8 Hours 12 light quakes Between 2,4 and 3.4 something is moving there also it seems.

• Update - AP : Government official says shaking, smoke at Japanese nuclear plant facing possible meltdown.Japanese government officials say there was shaking and a trail of white smoke at the nuclear plant in the area devastated by a massive earthquake.Fukushima Prefecture official Masato Abe says the cause is still under investigation, and it was unclear whether there was an explosion.Another official said the utility that runs the Fukushima Daiichi plant is reporting Saturday that several workers may have been injured.Full story here.

• UPDATED ! Japan faces nuclear meltdown after explosion at vast power plant caused by earthquake which killed 1,300.A building at a nuclear power station in Japan has exploded after the massive earthquake damaged its cooling system.Several workers have been injured and white smoke was seen pouring from the Fukushima Daiichi plant after the blast.There were fears the reactor at the site could melt down and radiation levels around the plant had already reached 20 times the normal.Fukushima Prefecture official Masato Abe said the cause of the building collapse was unclear.Footage on Japanese TV showed that the walls of one of the buildings had completely collapsed, leaving only a skeletal metal frame standing.More than 125 aftershocks have occurred, many of them above 6 on the Richter scale.President Barack Obama has pledged U.S. assistance and said one aircraft carrier was already in Japan and a second was on its way.Read and see the full story here.

• Updated - Japanese chief cabinet secretary confirms radiation leakage occured from explosion at Fukushima nuclear power plant - Reuters .

• LIVE : Quake-hit nuclear plant blast sparks meltdown fears.Japan woke to scenes of havoc Saturday, a day after a massive earthquake and tsunami swept away homes, cars and factories, leaving thousands missing. Authorities scrambled to prevent a nuclear leak after a damaged plant exploded.Read and see the full story here.

• BBC : 10.000 people missing after the Tsunami swept through the town of Minamisanriku that's half of the population! Source.

• The Future is written in the stars or is it in the Moon?Supermoon 19 March 2011, moon closest to earth on 19th March 2011.I mean no disrespect for those who enjoy the study of astrology. Some of the greatest astronomers of the past were also astrologers. To practice either line requires a deep understanding of our solar system, its movements and the relationship to the celestial sphere. The only thing I have difficulty swallowing is how a perfectly normal function could wreak havoc on planet Earth. Does an astrological prediction of an upcoming “Extreme SuperMoon” spell impending disaster – or is it just one more attempt to excite our natural tendencies to love a good gloom and doom story? That’s what I set about to find out…“SuperMoons are noteworthy for their close association with extreme tidal forces working in what astrologers of old used to call the sublunary world: the atmosphere, crust and oceans of our home planet – including ourselves, of course. From extreme coastal tides to severe storms to powerful earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, the entire natural world surges and spasms under the sway of the SuperMoon alignment – within three days either way of the exact syzygy, as a general rule.” says Nolle. “Obviously it won’t be the case that all hell will break loose all over the world within a few days either side of the SuperMoons. For most of us, the geocosmic risk raised by SuperMoon alignments will pass with little notice in our immediate vicinity. This is a rather roomy planet, after all. But the fact remains that a SuperMoon is planetary in scale, being a special alignment of Earth, Sun and Moon. It’s likewise planetary in scope, in the sense that there’s no place on Earth not subject to the tidal force of the perigee-syzygy.”Hmmmm........Read the full story here.

• Nuclear plant fears force mass evacuations as Japan earthquake death toll rises. The US Air Force, which has many bases in Japan, delivered coolant to a Japanese nuclear plant, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, without specifying which plant.The two nuclear plants affected are the Fukushima No. 1 and No. 2 plants, both located about 250km northeast of greater Tokyo, an urban area of 30 million people.Tokyo Electric Power vented radioactive vapour at five reactors between both plants to release building pressure."We are not in a situation in which residents face health damage," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.However, the evacuation area was expanded. A total of 45,000 people living within a 10km radius of the No. 1 plant were told to evacuate.Officials today ordered the evacuation of people living within a 3km radius of the second plant, with those up to 10km away told to stay indoors.When the massive quake hit, the plants immediately shut down, along with others in quake-hit parts of Japan, as they are designed to do - but the cooling systems failed, the government said.The major fear is that fuel rods, which create heat through a nuclear reaction, could become exposed and release radioactivity.When reactors shut down, cooling systems must kick in to bring down the very high temperatures. These systems are powered by either the external electricity grid, backup generators or batteries.This is key to prevent a "nuclear meltdown" and major radioactive release.Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan left on a helicopter this morning to Fukushima to assess the situation at the plants operated by Tokyo Electric Power, and other areas in the disaster zone.Military personnel have been dispatched to Fukushima, including a chemical corps and an aircraft on a "fact-finding mission".The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Japanese officials had kept it informed of their efforts to restore power to the cooling systems while monitoring a pressure build-up.Kan had at first said no radiation leaks were detected among the country's reactors after the quake.Read the full story here.

• Radiation Levels Surge Outside Two Nuclear Plants in Japan.Japan declared states of emergency for five nuclear reactors at two power plants after the units lost cooling ability in the aftermath of Friday's powerful earthquake. Thousands of residents were evacuated as workers struggled to get the reactors under control to prevent meltdowns.Operators at the Fukushima Daiichi plant's Unit 1 scrambled ferociously to tamp down heat and pressure inside the reactor after the 8.9 magnitude quake and the tsunami that followed cut off electricity to the site and disabled emergency generators, knocking out the main cooling system.Some 3,000 people within two miles of the plant were urged to leave their homes, but the evacuation zone was more than tripled to 6.2 miles after authorities detected eight times the normal radiation levels outside the facility and 1,000 times normal inside Unit 1's control room.The government declared a state of emergency at the Daiichi unit -- the first at a nuclear plant in Japan's history. But hours later, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., which operates the six-reactor Daiichi site, announced that it had lost cooling ability at a second reactor there and three units at its nearby Fukushima Daini site.The government quickly declared states of emergency for those units, too, and thousands of residents near Fukushima Daini also were told to leave.Officials at the Daiichi facility began venting radioactive vapors from the unit to relieve pressure inside the reactor case. The loss of electricity had delayed that effort for several hours.Plant workers there labored to cool down the reactor core, but there was no prospect for immediate success. They were temporarily cooling the reactor with a secondary system, but it wasn't working as well as the primary one, according to Yuji Kakizaki, an official at the Japanese nuclear safety agency.Even once a reactor is shut down, radioactive byproducts give off heat that can ultimately produce volatile hydrogen gas, melt radioactive fuel, or even breach the containment building in a full meltdown belching radioactivity into the surroundings, according to technical and government authorities.Despite plans for the intentional release of radioactivity, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said the 40-year-old plant was not leaking radiation."With evacuation in place and the ocean-bound wind, we can ensure the safety," Edano said at a televised news conference early Saturday.It was unclear if the elevation of radioactivity around the reactor was known at the time he spoke.Dr. Irwin Redlener, a pediatrician who runs a disaster preparedness institute at Columbia University, said the reported level of radiation outside the plant would not pose an immediate danger, though it could lift the rate of thyroid cancer in a population over time.However, he called the reported level inside the plant extraordinarily high, raising a concern about acute health effects. "I would personally absolutely not want to be inside," he said.While the condition of the reactor cores was of utmost concern, Tokyo Electric Power Co. also warned of power shortages and an "extremely challenging situation in power supply for a while."Defense Ministry official Ippo Maeyama said dozens of troops trained for chemical disasters had been dispatched to the plant in case of a radiation leak, along with four vehicles designed for use in atomic, biological and chemical warfare.Technical experts said the plant would presumably have hours, but probably not days, to try to stabilize things.Leonard S. Spector, director of the Washington office of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, said loss of coolant is the most serious type of accident at a nuclear power plant."They are busy trying to get coolant to the core area," said Neil Sheehan, a spokesman for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. "The big thing is trying to get power to the cooling systems."No radioactive releases were reported in any of the other affected plants.As Japan is one of the most seismically active nations in the world, it has strict sets of regulations designed to limit the impact of quakes on nuclear power plants. These standards call for constructing plants on solid bedrock to reduce shaking.As one of the most seismically active countries in the world, Japan has strict sets of regulations designed to limit the impact of quakes on nuclear power plants. These standards call for building plants on solid bedrock to reduce shaking.Hmmmmm.......As they say another Chernobyl would not be possible but in the event it would have been possible the California Coast would be the first to receive the fallout with the Jetstream,and the Philippines with the current landwinds.Read the full story here.More here.

• Japan on 'Path of Core-Melt' Nuclear Accident, Expert Tells Newsmax.Japan is “on the path of a core-melt accident,” a nuclear expert tells Newsmax in an exclusive interview.The news Friday that the only nation that ever has endured a nuclear-weapons attack is venting contaminated vapor from a nuclear power plant’s containment core could indicate that the coolant loss is quite serious, says Mark Hibbs, a Berlin-based senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a nonprofit think tank. Hibbs, who works in Carnegie's Nuclear Policy Program, has spent 20 years reporting for nuclear-energy journals and has spoken with Japanese officials in the aftermath of the nuclear plant mishap resulting from the earthquake there.“The Japanese public is generally very alarmed about things like radioactive emissions,” says Hibbs, who served for two decades as an editor and correspondent for the nuclear energy publications “Nucleonics Week” and “Nuclear Fuel.” “They have an extreme high standard of safety protection, and they don’t like to see risks like this taken even if the risk is small. “It’s a very, very risk-averse culture in this regard. So if the authorities are willing to do this, that might be a sign of how serious they perceive the threat to the reactor.”Although coolant interruptions to nuclear power plants are not all that unusual, says Hibbs, who adds that the surprising aspect of this incident is that Japan’s redundant systems apparently have been unable to counteract reactor core heating. “What happened in Japan is very alarming because it would appear . . . that about 2:30 this afternoon Japan time, when the earthquake struck . . . three of the reactors that were operating were disenabled because of a loss of offsite power that was caused by the earthquake.”The Japanese situation appears to be roughly analogous to the Three Mile Island incident in the United States, where authorities struggled for days to contain an improperly cooled reactor core but were able to avert a widespread release of nuclear material.At least one of the reactors in Japan, and perhaps more, “ are on the path of a core-melt accident. It’s called a loss of coolant accident. . . . And it’s up to the Japanese authorities, together with the industries in that country, to find a way to stem this problem,” he said.Hibbs spoke with Japanese government officials who told him the force of the tsunami was so severe that the water may have flooded the reactors, power generators, and cooling mechanisms, disabling the equipment. "Which means they have to resort to basically a military-type exercise, to rush in to the devastated site equipment that they can quickly hook up to the reactor to get power in there and start this emergency equipment, to get cooling water into that core and prevent that fuel from overheating. “And if they can’t do that,” he told Newsmax, “then you’re going to have this meltdown.”They have 24 hours or so to avoid a core meltdown, he says. But if one occurs, two scenarios could follow: The good outcome would mirror what happened at Three Mile Island, while the bad one could involve what he called a “Chernobyl scenario, where the damage to the reactor was such that the integrity of the structures were damaged.“So that is the ultimate worst-case scenario. Nobody is saying that’s going to happen. Nobody is even saying we’re going to have a core meltdown. But we have a window of time now. We don’t know how much is left — but the Japanese authorities and the government and all the agencies that they can muster are working overtime to get cooling systems on that site powered and working.”Hibbs said the Japanese right now are fighting the clock to contain the heating.“I have no reason to believe that the amount of radioactivity that would be released in an event like that would be very much. It probably would not be. In the absence of any fuel damage, which they haven’t reported . . . it wouldn’t be a lot of radioactivity at all.”Hmmm.....I do remember Chernobyl very well it was only once that other countries picked up the Radioactivity in their country that the truth emerged.Read the full story here.

• When An ill Wind Blows From Afar! (Like from Iran, Japan or North Korea!)Surviving Radioactive Fallout & Radiation Contamination from Iran, Japan or North Korea.From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_iodide we see reported that : Chernobyl also demonstrated that the need to protect the thyroid from radiation was greater than expected. Within ten years of the accident, it became clear that thyroid damage caused by released radioactive iodine was virtually the only adverse health effect that could be measured. As reported by the NRC, studies after the accident showed, that "As of 1996, except for thyroid cancer, there has been no confirmed increase in the rates of other cancers, including leukemia, among the...public, that have been attributed to releases from the accident." Researchers at the World Health Organization accurately located and counted the cancer victims from Chernobyl and were startled to find that "the increase in incidence [of thyroid cancer] has been documented up to 500 km from the accident site...significant doses from radioactive iodine can occur hundreds of kilometers from the site, beyond emergency planning zones." Consequently, far more people than anticipated were affected by the radiation, which caused the United Nations to report in 2002 that "The number of people with thyroid cancer...has exceeded expectations. Over 11,000 cases have already been reported." The good news is that taking either Potassium Iodide (KI) or Potassium Iodate (KIO3) before exposure will saturate (fill up) a persons thyroid gland with safe stable iodine to where there is no room for later uptake of radioactive iodine. Once the thyroid is saturated, then any additional iodine (radioactive or stable) that is later inhaled or ingested is quickly eliminated via the kidneys.From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_iodide we see reported about KI use during Chernobyl event that : Poland, 300 miles from Chernobyl, also gave out KI to protect its population. Approximately 18 million doses were distributed, with follow-up studies showing no known thyroid cancer among KI recipients. But time has shown that people living in irradiated areas where KI was not available have developed thyroid cancer at epidemic levels, which is why the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reported "The data clearly demonstrate the risks of thyroid radiation...KI can be used [to] provide safe and effective protection against thyroid cancer caused by irradiation."The bad news is that after Three Mile Island and Chernobyl all available KI and KIO3 supplies disappeared for months, almost overnight! The KI and KIO3 market is very thin and current limited inventory will be quickly depleted in any nuclear emergency occuring anywhere in the world. (At www.ki4u.com we expect to be largely 'out of business' within days of any nuclear emergency simply because we'll be totally sold-out with no illusions of getting re-supplied again any time soon!) Potassium Iodide (KI) and/or Potassium Iodate (KIO3) has already been stockpiled by most developed countries for future nuclear emergencies, they figured it out after Chernobyl, but here in the USA they've only just begun. (We sold 300,000 doses to HHS Office of Emergency Prepardness after 9/11, which represented half of our nations stockpile then.) However, very limited quantities will be available for individual purchase in the USA by the public after an 'event'. (Potassium Iodide (KI) has long been recognized and approved by the FDA for sale for this purpose without a prescription. Unfortunately, it is an over-the-counter (OTC) drug that's to be found on too few counters here in the USA!)Hmmm......Keep informed in the next days!Read the full story here and here.

• Dr. Manny: Potential Danger as Radiation Levels Surge in Japan.As I watch the tragedy unfolding in Japan since an 8.9-magnitude earthquake rocked the nation this morning, triggering a deadly tsunami, I am realizing just how much devastation this small country is potentially facing – and it’s scary. Hundreds of people have already died, and I’m sure the number will continue to rise as the clean-up efforts kick into high gear.But new concerns are growing. The massive earthquake caused a power outage that disabled a nuclear power plant’s cooling system in the Onahoma city, about 170 miles north of Tokyo.Surging radiation levels of 1,000 times more than normal have caused an evacuation of 3,000 people near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant—making it the first-ever state of emergency declared at a nuclear plant in Japan.Government officials said the amount of radioactive elements leaking from the plant would be "very small" and would not affect the environment or human health—if the leak is kept under control.However, if they cannot continue to restore cooling of the plant, it could become a very dangerous situation to those living in close range of the plant, and the fallout would only spread.If the reactor does indeed melt down, the results could be similar – if not worse – than that of Chernobyl.When a reactor at a nuclear power plant in Chernobyl, Ukraine went out of control in April of 1986 during a low-power test that led to an explosion and subsequent meltdown, it contaminated 58,000 square miles of land between Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine, and prompted the evacuation of thousands of residents.The reactor meltdown released a hundred radioactive elements into the atmosphere including dangerous iodine, strontium and caesium, which are the most dangerous, and can still be found in the affected areas today.In the years since this devastating accident, studies on groups of emergency workers and individuals with the highest exposure rates have linked the radioactive fallout to several health consequences like certain cancers, cardiovascular disease and death.Radiation is predicated on three factors: total exposure, how close you were to the accident and how much time you were exposed to it.Right now, it seems the Japanese government is controlling the situation. And we can only pray that it stays that way.Hmmm.....different sources ,different information,better stay informed.Read the full story here.

• "The China Syndrome".The 'China Syndrome' refers to the most drastically severe meltdown a nuclear reactor could possibly achieve. In this case, the reactor would reach the highest level of supercriticality for a sustained period of time, resulting in the melting of its support infrastructure. The uranium in the core would behave in a similar manner to a delta-class fire, self-sustaining temperatures in excess of 2000°C. Since these temperatures would melt all materials around it, the reactor would sink due to gravity, effectively boring a hole through the reactor compartment's floor.The China syndrome becomes fictional in the hypothesis of it boring a hole from the United States to China, or any other part of the world (the opposite side of the earth from the USA is the Indian Ocean, except for a section of northern Montana, Hawaii and sections of Northern Alaska, central Colorado, whose antipodes are Ile Saint-Paul, Ile Amsterdam, French Southern and Antarctic Lands, northern Namibia and Antarctica, respectively). Most obviously it is impossible because the Earth's gravity would only pull it towards the core of the planet and no further. Furthermore, were the molten reactor fuel to reach the planetary mantle, the actual environmental effect would likely be low; the radioactive material would disperse by convection throughout the mantle, which is in any case kept liquid by natural nuclear decay. However, it is likely that the uranium core would not exceed more than 10 meters of 'boring' due to natural passive safety. The surrounding ground beneath the reactor would absorb the heat and transfer it conductivity to the surrounding area, thus preventing the ground directly beneath the core from 'melting'.This manner of spreading heat convectively through the ground is proposed for use in General Atomics' Gas Turbine Modular Helium Reactor for regular operation and passive safety, which aims to eliminate the possibility of a meltdown. Source.

• WTF ? Obama administration approved $40billion in private arms sales to countries including Libya and Egypt.The U.S. government approved $40billion in private arms sales to countries including Libya and Egypt in 2009 - before they both dissolved into unrest this year - the State Department reported.From 2008 to 2009, the U.S. authorised an increase in sales of military shipments to the now-toppled Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak and the embattled kingdom of Bahrain. But they did reduce the sales approvals to Muammar Gaddafi's Libyan government to $15million that year from $46million in 2008.The State figures detailed sales of U.S. defence items for Egypt ($101million) and Bahrain ($88million). The figures show $458,000 in tear gas sales licensed to Egypt, where there were numerous reports that U.S.-supplied crowd-control gas suppressed democracy protesters in Cairo. The U.S. authorised $18,000 in tear gas for Bahrain in 2008, but did not license it in 2009, the figures show. Both countries were also authorised shipments of firearms, shotguns and close assault weapons.All sales to Libya were restricted to non-lethal equipment. Almost all of the equipment approved in 2009 were aircraft parts, compared to more than $1million that had been approved in 2008 for explosives and incendiary agents. State Department spokesman Mark C Toner said earlier this week that the explosives were limited for use in oil exploration, but other officials raised concerns that the material could be converted into crude battlefield munitions.In total $7.3billion of the $40billion in U.S.-approved defence sales went to Middle East and North African countries indicating the willingness to pay top dollar for American defence equipment.Iraq, where U.S. forces are still drawing down and the fledgling government is struggling against militants, was the biggest buyer with $1.51billion, closely followed by Turkey with $1.5billion.William D Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan Washington think tank questioned whether the U.S. was lax in providing such weaponry and crowd-control devices to authoritarian regimes.'Some of these countries have very serious records of human rights abuses that are being overlooked in deference to other aspects of their relationship with the U.S.,' he said.Hmmmm......Someone really,really doesn't like Israel?Read the full story here.

• "The War on Christinanity".Chicago Conference to Address Muslim Persecution of Middle East Christians.A conference will be held in Chicago this Saturday to address the persecution of Christians in the Middle East. The conference is sponsored by a coalition of Christian groups and Middle Eastern Christians, including Assyrians, Maronites and Copts.According to the organizers of the conference. Recent attacks against churches in Iraq and Egypt demonstrate that Christianity faces an uncertain future in the Middle East. The one day conference will bring together representatives from the Christian communities in Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt to speak about the day-to-day threats faced by Christians in the M.E.. Activists serving the persecuted church in Muslim-majority countries will describe their efforts to promote human rights in the Middle East.Hmmmm......"We will NOT remain silent"!Read the full story here.

• Pope Benedict: Violence Can Never Be Carried Out in God’s Name.Pope Benedict XVI rejects the idea of Jesus as a political revolutionary and insists that violent revolution must never be carried out in God’s name in a new book being released Thursday amid great fanfare at the start of Lent.“Jesus of Nazareth — Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection,” is the second installment of Benedict’s planned trilogy on Jesus. Part I, which covered Jesus’ early ministry, shot to the top of the best-seller lists in Italy when it was published in 2007.Already, 1.2 million copies of Part II have been printed in seven languages, and reprints of 100,000 more are planned for the Italian editions and 50,000 in German.In the book, Benedict exonerates the Jews as a people for Christ’s death. He also insists that Jesus never advocated violent revolution, as some liberation theologians have suggested, saying violence was not His way no matter how valid the motivation.Benedict has spoken out frequently to denounce religiously motivated violence against Christians in the Middle East, Pakistan and elsewhere. “The cruel consequences of religiously motivated violence are only too evident to us all,” he noted in the book.“Violence does not build up the kingdom of God, the kingdom of humanity. On the contrary, it is a favorite instrument of the Antichrist, however idealistic its religious motivation may be,” Benedict wrote. “It serves, not humanity, but inhumanity.”Hmmmmm......"The Truth Shall Set You Free"John 8:32.Read the full story here.

• Bill Clinton Slams Obama Regime’s “Ridiculous Delays” in Issuing Offshore Drilling Permits.Former President Bill Clinton said Friday that delays in offshore oil and gas drilling permits are “ridiculous” at a time when the economy is still rebuilding, according to attendees at the IHS CERAWeek conference.Clinton spoke on a panel with former President George W. Bush that was closed to the media. Video of their moderated talk with IHS CERA Chairman Daniel Yergin was also prohibited.But according to multiple people in the room, Clinton, surprisingly, agreed with Bush on many oil and gas issues, including criticism of delays in permitting offshore since last year’s Gulf of Mexico spill.“Bush said all the things you’d expect him to say” on oil and gas issues, said Jim Noe, senior vice president at Hercules Offshore and executive director of the pro-drilling Shallow Water Energy Security Coalition. But Clinton added, “You’d be surprised to know that I agree with all that,” according to Noe and others in the room.Clinton said there are “ridiculous delays in permitting when our economy doesn’t need it,” according to Noe and others.“That was the most surprising thing they said,” Noe said.The two former presidents both generally agreed on the need to get offshore drilling workers back on the job.Hmmmm....."Blasphemy"?Read the full story here.

• HT:Investors. 'Genius' Obama Blames Oil Companies For Lack of Domestic Drilling. In his Friday press conference to discuss gas prices, President Obama was rather defensive, straining to counter the notion that his administration has been unfriendly to oil drilling, something most people would like to see a lot more of these days.Where do people get that notion? Perhaps his Interior Department appealing a judge’s ruling that it act on several pending deepwater permits had something to with it.Obama claimed repeatedly that he is not against drilling, then made the following comments:There is more we can do, however. For example, right now, the (oil) industry holds leases on tens of millions of acres — both offshore and on land — where they aren’t producing a thing. So I’ve directed the Interior Department to determine just how many of these leases are going undeveloped and report back to me within two weeks so that we can encourage companies to develop the leases they hold and produce American energy. People deserve to know that the energy they depend on is being developed in a timely manner.In other words, Obama is arguing that the oil companies themselves may be to blame for the fact that there isn’t more drilling. For some reason they’re ignoring making a profit. It’s a bizarro-world inversion of the usual complaint against oil companies — that they are reckless and all-too eager to despoil pristine lands in search of black gold.Hmmmm......How much 'deceit' can America take from this 'administration'?Read the full story here.

• HT:TheZeroHedge.Will The Japanese Earthquake Be The Straw That Breaks Europe's Back?Two months ago many were scratching their heads when Japan announced it was buying Eurozone bonds. After all - why would Europe want to have a marginal buyer (or as the case may be seller) of its debt be the country that is known by all to be the most indebted entity in the world? Of course, it became promptly clear that it was not the Japanese government doing the buying, but mostly its financial companies, with an emphasis on its insurance and reinsurance companies. Fast forward to today when Japanese insurance companies are getting pummeled in local trading on concerns the payoffs to the decimated Japanese infrastructure will be unprecedented. So what will happen? Why a scramble for liquidity of course, just like we saw back in September 2008, when cash stricken companies sold all their liquid assets first, resulting in a toxic loop of self-fulfilling prophecy selling which almost tobbled the $25 trillion shadow banking system. And what will said Japanese insurance companies sell first? Why the very same Eurozone bonds they acquired with so much pomp and circumstance, by the minions of the insolvent Eurozone, back in January of course. Furthermore, now that Japan will have no choice but to launch a mini round of Quantitative Easing and flood the market with JGBs, there will be a dramatic spike in supply for sovereign paper, which of course means yields across the board will rise.Hmmmm.......Read the full story here.

• Utah allows gold, silver coin to be used as legal tender.UTAH (Commodity Online) : Utah in Western United States has passed a legislation that would allow gold and silver coins to be used as a legal tender in the State; a move to hedge them from the value erosion that the US Dollar is undergoing,. Analysts and think tanks have supported the move. But there is opposition too. As one of the law makers joked, Utah should make salt a legal tender owing to its surplus in the State. The Utah legislation is touted as a rejection of fiat money and an opposition against tax code that encourages consumption. The new wave is not restricted to Utah, as a dozen states have proposed such a bill. In Virginia, the legislature there has passed a bill (which is yet to be signed by the governor) that would allow the state to mint gold, silver and platinum coins. This is expected to protect the state from the scourge of high inflation. In fact, a Virginia delegate tried to initiate a resolution that would allow the state to have its own currency, but fell through. Recently, there were unconfirmed reports that China is on a move to opt gold Standard.The US had been on gold standard for a major part of the 20th century, but Richard Nixon decoupled gold from currency in 1971.In November last year, World Bank President, Robert Zoellick called for considering by nations a return to gold standard to better accommodate currency fluctuations. The Utah bill is yet to be signed by the State Governor. Once this is through, there are arguments that the legislation may spur the US Congress to consider adopting gold standard.Hmmmm.....The Saudis consider once the price of Gold reaches 1550 $ an ounce that the real value has been reached.Read the full story here. Flashback : MFS -The Other News -13 Januari : Virginia introducing Bill to return to Gold and Silver standard in case of Federal Reserve System breakdown. here.

• Us vs. them unions.Wisconsin standoff brings attention to the Democrats’ dirty bargain.Republicans in the Wisconsin statehouse had enough of Democratic Party antics designed to insulate its union supporter base from the pains of the economic malaise affecting the rest of us. The state Senate voted Wednesday to ban public-sector employees from entering into collective bargaining arrangements. Union thugs encircling the capitol building made a spectacle of themselves as the Assembly turned to consider the bill yesterday. Meanwhile in Washington, congressional Democrats continue to hold out against the most milquetoast of spending-reduction proposals, despite the dire circumstances of the nation’s finances.The longer the squabbles in the state and national capitals drag on, the more time the public has to notice the extent to which the party of Johnson, Carter and Obama loots the public treasure to maintain a political empire. The foundation of that empire at the federal level is $671,512,415 in campaign checks Big Labor has written for Democrats since 1990, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. That does not account for the massive, expensive logistical support provided to “get out the vote” at each election.At the state level, unions have given Democrats $760,395,170 in campaign support since 2000, according to data from the National Institute on Money in State Politics. In 2010, public-employee unions gave $77,722,313 in donations to state Democrats. In short, most Democrats owe their election to the support of union bosses, and the unions know it.It’s only appropriate that this Land of Lincoln refuge finds itself among the worst off. The latest budget devotes $1 out of every $8 collected from taxpayers to pay off retired bureaucrats. The percentage will only grow over time as politicians have promised $139 billion in benefits to the public-sector unions, but the pension system only has $53 billion in assets. Most states face unfunded liabilities of similar magnitude, saddling taxpayers with massive bills that will come due long after the Democrats who approved the benefits have left office. They expect productive taxpayers to pick up the burden, but it might not last.Americans are starting to catch on to the “us vs. them” attitude of the unions. The unruly mob camped out in Madison has made few friends with the hateful signs and nasty rhetoric. A Quinnipiac poll found more national voters support limiting collective bargaining for public employees in order to reduce state deficits. That feeling will grow as those spoiled with lifetime employment and automatic raises betray the selfishness of their cause.Hmmm.....The 'Ants' can no longer feed the useless 'dinosaur'.Read the full story here.Read the full story here.

• Google in the White House? Obama considers $7bn CEO of search engine for secretary post.He's worth $7billion, has led the world's number one internet search engine for a decade and oversaw an 18 per cent annual rise in its stock value last year.So it’s no surprise U.S. President Barack Obama is looking at outgoing Google CEO Eric Schmidt, 55, as a candidate to become his next secretary of commerce.Mr Obama could dip into the business world for his next secretary, with Jeffrey Kindler, 55, former CEO of drug maker Pfizer also being considered, sources told Bloomberg.Mr Schmidt said in January that he will step down as Google CEO to become executive chairman next month after leading the California company for ten years.He gave $25,000 to Mr Obama’s inaugural committee and has regularly consulted with him on economic subjects.Mr Obama has been considering candidates from outside politics and academia as top jobs have opened up in the second half of his term.His new chief of staff Bill Daley, who was a JPMorgan Chase executive before joining the administration in January, earned $20 million last year.But his recruitment on a salary of $172,200 a year as a top aide comes as Mr Obama tries to establish closer relations between government and business.The next commerce secretary will play a key role in Mr Obama’s plans to double U.S. exports to $3.1trillion within five years. Symantec chairman John Thompson and Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski are also reportedly being considered by Mr Obama.Hmmmm......Big brother takes over US politics,With Googles supercomputers on my side there's no way i can loose the 2012 election?What's next 'Hummingbird drones' to spy on people?Read the full story here.

• HT:AmericanThinker.Who Wrote Obama's Books?Three Cheers for Jack Cashill!Would you believe me if I told you that while in Milan last weekend, I'd been to La Scala for the world premiere of a new opera by George W. Bush? And would you ever again take me seriously if I published a review of Bush's new opera in which I wrote that "...through this work, so infused with the passion of Carmen, the musicality of La Boheme and the drama of Tosca, our forty-third president takes his place as the most gifted composer in the history of American politics"?Of course not. No one, not even that former-Bush-White-House-press-secretary blonde who keeps showing up on Fox News, would believe this because it's utterly preposterous. A man who has displayed not the slightest musical talent simply cannot sit down one day and produce an operatic masterpiece.And as Jack Cashill proves in Deconstructing Obama, it is just as preposterous to believe that President Obama actually wrote his lyrical, extravagantly praised autobiography, Dreams from My Father. On page after page, chapter after chapter, Cashill shows why it simply isn't possible for Obama to have produced such a high-quality autobiography. For instance, Obama wrote nearly nothing before Dreams from My Father, despite being president of the Harvard Law Review, and what little he wrote in the years after Harvard is clunky and sophomoric. And yet Dreams from My Father contains some of the most elegant, evocative sentences ever penned by a politician :

I heard all our voices begin to run together, the sound of three generations tumbling over each other like the currents of a slow-moving stream, my questions like rocks roiling the water, the breaks in memory separating the currents....

Huh? Obama has been our president for more than two years, and hardly a day goes by without him blathering on about some issue. Jokes about his dependence on the teleprompter are a staple of the late-night television comics. The president's inaugural address -- which he surely didn't dash off casually, because he must have understood that this is the speech that one day will be carved into the marble wall of his monument -- contains not one memorable phrase or sentence. So how did he write the kinds of poetic, elegiac passages that make Dreams from My Father a literary near-masterpiece?As Cashill shows, he didn't. And he demonstrates, with as much precision as you can get short of a DNA sample, that Dreams was actually written by Obama's Hyde Park colleague, friend and neighbor, the terrorist Bill Ayers. (There's even more evidence of Ayers' authorship in Cashill's book than in the articles about this he's written for American Thinker.) Oh, and Cashill reports two specific instances in which Ayers acknowledges his authorship of Dreams. That's interesting, to say the least.By Deconstructing Obama page by page -- and piece by piece -- Cashill brings the reader to understand that in 2008 "Barak Obama" wasn't a candidate but a carefully created myth. The leftist mainstream media bought that myth, which is why they blew off Cashill and his overwhelming amount of evidence that so much about Obama was fraudulent. That's why Obama's close relationships with Ayers and with the vicious America-hater Jeremiah Wright were ignored by the mainstream media during the campaign, and also that telling comment by Michelle about her husband's candidacy being the first time she'd ever been proud of our country. After all, if any part of the myth turned out to be false, Obama's candidacy would have collapsed. That didn't happen, of course, and it's depressing to realize that when given the choice between a myth and a genuine war hero -- American voters chose the myth.In the long run, reality always wins. Tomorrow, or next year, or sometime later this century the truth about Barack Obama will trickle out. And when that happens, "Barak Obama" will be exposed as a myth. And Jack Cashill will get the recognition he deserves as the best investigative journalist of our time.Hmmmm......Can't wait for the day this 'Obamination' is exposed for what it really is,and that Congress go's all the way to the full extent of the law.Read the full story here.

• FAA: No more emergency oxygen in airplane lavatories. Citing a security vulnerability, agency orders equipment disabled in 6,000 U.S. planes. Citing security concerns, the federal government in secrecy last month ordered every airline in the United States to remove emergency oxygen in every lavatory on all 6,000 domestic commercial aircraft. Under Air Worthiness Directive 2011-04-09, made public this week, the Federal Aviation Administration directed all airlines to disable the lavatory oxygen generators to "eliminate a potential safety and security vulnerability.”That means that if there’s a sudden loss of cabin pressure, now only those passengers at their seats will have oxygen flowing to the masks that drop down from the ceiling. “I’m in shock,” said Kate Hanni, executive director of Flyersrights.org, a nonprofit airline passengers' rights organization. “We get reports of mid-air decompression events all the time. So now going to the bathroom on a commercial flight can kill you? I’m panicking just thinking about this.” In the past 10 years, according to an FAA spokeswoman, there have been only 12 incidents of loss of pressure at cruise altitudes and none in which the cabin altitude reached an unsafe level for breathing.The agency noted that it is working with aircraft manufacturers “to design, certify, and install a new lavatory oxygen system” on all aircraft, adding that “if there is a sudden loss of cabin pressure, pilots are already trained to guide the aircraft to a safe, breathable altitude as quickly as possible. Flight attendants are also already trained to assist passengers to quickly access oxygen — including those in the lavatories.” Sara Keagle, a flight attendant who blogs at TheFlyingPinto.com, said flight attendants had not yet received training on the new directive but added that they already have access to portable oxygen bottles that could be used to assist any passengers in a lavatory.“If a decompression should occur, flight attendants are trained to get on oxygen immediately,” she said. “Once it is safe, we would don a portable oxygen bottle and check the cabin, including the lavs, to make sure everyone was OK.”Airlines were expected to begin informing passengers about the lack of lavatory oxygen generators on seatback briefing cards, during the verbal passenger safety briefing presentation and on signs posted in airplane bathrooms.Hmmmmm........."Warning using the toilet during flight might kill you"?Read the full story here.

• Suggestion on Visas From Putin Catches Biden by Surprise.MOSCOW — When Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. sat down for his meeting with Vladimir V. Putin this week, the Russian prime minister opened with a curveball.Rather than reiterating the joint projects on the table — cooperation on missile defense and Russia’s accession to the World Trade Organization, among others — Mr. Putin cheerily suggested a brand-new idea: dropping visa requirements between Russia and the United States. The early part of the meeting was featured on Russian television and reported by journalists in the press pool. Mr. Biden responded quietly, almost reflexively, “Good idea,” and Mr. Putin seized on the response, saying that tossing out visa requirements would “break all the stereotypes concerning Russia and the U.S.” He referred admiringly to Mr. Biden’s “clout” within the Obama administration and said he hoped Mr. Biden would make the case for the change in Washington. As Mr. Biden’s advisers looked on, the vice president hastily backpedaled, suggesting that he does not decide such matters.“Mr. Prime Minister, in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a real difference between being president and vice president,” he said, perhaps referring to the structure of Russia’s leadership, in which Mr. Putin occupies the country’s second-highest post but is widely viewed as its paramount leader. Then the vice president changed the subject.Hmmmm......Ooooops i did it again?Come to think of it ....No visas between Turkey and Russia and no visas between Russia and the USA would mean free entry to every terrorist in the Middle East. Read the full story here.

• Erdoğan says EP report on Turkey ‘unbalanced’.Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has slammed a European Parliament report that noted a deterioration in press freedoms and women’s rights in Turkey, saying it was unbalanced and written by people who did not know the country. “There is no balance in this report. Excuse me, but I believe that people who have prepared this document lack balance as well,” Erdoğan said during a joint news conference in Ankara with the visiting Serbian prime minister late on Thursday.In a resolution passed on Wednesday on Turkey’s accession bid, the EP said the recent arrests of journalists could undermine confidence in Turkey’s judiciary and adherence to democratic principles. The report followed the arrests in recent weeks of more than two dozen journalists accused of being part of an ultranationalist group plotting against Erdoğan’s government.“I sincerely say that Turkey is much more developed than many EU countries in terms of freedom of the press. If there is nothing to discuss about press freedoms in Europe, or the Western world, then how should we understand the situation of Julian Assange? Why is Assange being tried in court?” he went on saying, referring to the WikiLeaks founder, who is currently free under strict bail conditions in London.The EP’s rapporteur on Turkey, Ria Oomen-Ruijten, who drafted the report, meanwhile, stated that there has been a deterioration in freedom of expression in Turkey. “Freedom of the press is very important for the proper functioning of the checks and balances system,” Oomen-Ruijten was quoted as saying on Thursday.Hmmmm.......Ahmadinejad nodding in approval "It's a Zionist plot"against my friend?Read the full story here.

• Merkel ally assails Erdoğan over Turkey’s poor human rights record.The leader of the governing Christian Social Union (CSU), an ally of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Horst Seehofer criticized Turkey over its poor human rights record and its intrusive remarks with respect to the integration of some 4 million Turks into German society. Seehofer called on immigrants, the majority of them being ethnic Turks, to “sign up to German values,” and urged Ankara not to interfere in the integration debate in Germany, The New York Times reported on Wednesday.Amid an intense immigration debate in Germany, the senior German official’s remark will undoubtedly add fuel to the squabble between Turkish and German officials over the integration of Turks in Germany.Seehofer said Erdoğan had no right to criticize Germany’s dominant way of life given what is happening in Turkey.“A country that disregards the human rights of women as much as Turkey does, that on its own territory renders life difficult for Christians, from such a prime minister we do not need lessons about how to deal with religious minorities in our countries,” Seehofer reportedly said.Hmmmmm........Ahmadinejad  : "He's not heavy he's my brother"?Read the full story here. 

• Prime Minister Erdoğan criticizes Israel over its satellite reservations.Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan criticized Israel on Friday because the Jewish state is waging a diplomatic war with several countries, including the US, to prevent Turkey from snapping pictures of its territory through a new Turkish satellite. The GökTürk satellite is due to be in orbit by 2013, Erdoğan noted while speaking at a meeting arranged in Ankara by a youth branch of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party).This fact annoys some, Erdoğan said, without mentioning the name of any particular country. Yet, he apparently addressed Israel since Turkey's leap into the aerospace market treads on Israeli security sensitivities given the former allies' recently strained ties. Unlike with other nations that have fielded commercial satellites, Israel has little leverage over Ankara. “You have been observing us for decades,” Erdoğan said at the meeting held with the theme of “Vision 2023.”“But now our GökTürk satellite will be in orbit by 2013,” Erdoğan said. “You are the ones who will firmly stick to the 2023 goals and exert efforts to make them real with all of your strength,” he added, while addressing young members of his party.Hmmmm.....'Nice' to see that Erdogan hasn't changed his priorities,you can always count on him to bash Israel.Read the full story here.

• ‘Code crisis’ overshadows Turkey’s planned purchase of F-35 jets.A “code crisis” has erupted in Ankara that could threaten Turkey’s participation in a US-led project to produce F-35 fighter jets, further complicated by the presentation of a bill to Turkey for an additional $4 billion to offset the growing costs of the project. The Turkish side in this $16 billion project has repeatedly knocked on America’s door to ask for the flight codes for the fighter jets into which so much money has been invested. However, the Pentagon has rejected these demands on the part of Turkey. America’s refusal to turn over the codes belonging to the jets and to share the software technology used in their production is making Turkey nervous.Though Ankara plans at this point to purchase around 100 of these fighter jets, there is the awareness in the Turkish capital that without the codes in question, possession of the jet planes will only be partial. There are assertions at hand that the F-35s will be controllable from outside sources, that they may be defenseless against electronic warfare and that no changes will be able to be made to their software. At this point, diplomatic circles claim the UK will be withdrawing from the consortium was formed to realize the project for these same reasons.Turkey is one of a group of countries designated as production nations for the F-35, which has been designed to be the “hunter of the future.” Along with Turkey, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Australia, the US, and Canada are all a part of this project. A budget of $10 billion has been earmarked in the Turkish Treasury for this project, whose first fighter jet is slated to be presented to Turkey some time in 2015.Although there has been no F-35 turned over to Turkey yet, an bill for an extra $4 billion, based on higher than predicted costs for the building of the planes, was presented to Ankara. In fact, taking into consideration logistics as well as other costs, the total cost to Turkey is now said to be likely to reach $16 billion. The SSM has already gone to the Treasury to ask for the extra cost to be covered, following requests from the General Staff.Hmmmmm......Erdogan in Germany :"Now Turkey will at last start building its own war planes"?Read the full story here.

• HT:CompassDirect.Christian Woman Freed from Muslim Kidnappers in Pakistan.Captors tried to force mother of seven to convert to Islam.LAHORE, Pakistan, March 11 (CDN) — A Christian mother of seven here who last August was kidnapped, raped, sold into marriage and threatened with death if she did not convert to Islam was freed this week. After she refused to convert and accept the marriage, human traffickers had threatened to kill Shaheen Bibi, 40, and throw her body into the Sindh River if her father, Manna Masih, did not pay a ransom of 100,000 rupees (US$1,170) by Saturday (March 5), the released woman told Compass. Drugged into unconsciousness, Shaheen Bibi said that when she awoke in Sadiqabad, her captors told her she had been sold and given in marriage.“I asked them who they were,” she said. “They said that they were Muslims, to which I told them that I was a married Christian woman with seven children, so it was impossible for me to marry someone, especially a Muslim.” Giving her a prayer rug (musalla), her captors – Ahmed Baksh, Muhammad Amin and Jaam Ijaz – tried to force her to convert to Islam and told her to recite a Muslim prayer, she said.“I took the musalla but prayed to Jesus Christ for help,” she said. “They realized that I should be returned to my family.”When she awoke in Sadiqabad, Baksh, Amin and Ijaz informed her that she had been sold into marriage with Baksh. They showed her legal documents in which she was given a Muslim name, Sughran Bibi daughter of Siddiq Ali. After Baksh had twice raped her, she said, his mother interjected that she was a “persistent Christian” and that therefore he should stay away from her. Shaheen Bibi, separated from an abusive husband who had left her for another woman, said that after Baksh’s mother intervened, her captors stopped hurting her but kept her in chains.At midnight on Sunday (March 6), after some encounters and raids in a jungle area where houses are miles apart, the rescue team managed to get hold of Shaheen Bibi, the CDI source said. The captors handed over Shaheen Bibi on the condition that they would not be the targets of further legal action, the CDI source said.Fatigued and fragile when she arrived in Lahore on Monday (March 7), Shaheen Bibi told CDN through her attorneys that she would pursue legal action against those who sold her fraudulently into slavery and humiliation. She said that she had been chained to a tree outside a house, where she prayed continually that God would help her out of the seemingly impossible situation. After the kidnappers gave her father the March 5 deadline last week, Shaheen Bibi said, at one point she lifted her eyes in prayer, saw a cross in the sky and was comforted that God’s mighty hand would release her even though her father had no money to pay ransom. On four previous occasions, she said, her captors had decided to kill her and had changed their mind. Shaheen Bibi said there were about 10 other women in captivity with her, some whose hands or legs were broken because they had refused to be forcibly given in marriage. Among the women was one from Bangladesh who had abandoned hope of ever returning home as she had reached her 60s in captivity. Masih told CDN that he had prayed that God would send help, as he had no money to pay the ransom. The day before the deadline for paying the ransom, he said, he had 100 rupees (less than US$2) in his pocket.Hmmmm.....This is the country the Obama administration gives tens of billions of Dollars,while defending the right to build a Mosque on Ground Zero.Read the full story here.

• Five family members killed in suspected terrorist attack at their home in Itamar settlement. According to police the suspect broke into a home in Itamar armed with a knife and killed the family of five people including parents and three children.Five members of an Israeli family were killed Friday night when a suspected terrorist broke into their home in the West Bank settlement of Itamar and stabbed them all to death. According to police, the suspect broke into the house armed with a knife and stabbed the mother, father and three children, aged 11, three and a three-month-old baby.Magen David Adom rescue services arrived at the scene and found them all dead. Extensive police forces and Israel Defense Forces are scanning the area for the suspect. Initial investigation found that the family's 12-year-old daughter managed to escape the house with her two younger brothers and ran to the neighbors' house to get help. The military blocked the entrance to the northern West Bank settlement of Itamar, as soldiers poured inside and a pair of ambulances departed. The overnight attack is the first attack against settlers in months and the first of its kind and scope in years. It marks a rare outburst of violence during a relatively calm period. Itamar is home to some of the West Bank's most fervent settlers.Hmmmm....Chances are that the UN human rights watch will blame Israel for being there in the way of the poor terrorist.Read the full story here.More here. 

• Massive Show of Force Quashes Saudi Arabia Protests.RIYADH, Saudi Arabia -- A massive show of force by Saudi Arabia's government snuffed out a Facebook-based effort to stage unprecedented pro-democracy protests in the capital on Friday, but political unrest and sectarian tensions roiled neighboring Yemen and Bahrain.Yemen's largest demonstrations in a month were met by police gunfire that left at least six protesters injured and seemed certain to fuel more anger against the deeply unpopular U.S.-allied president.In Bahrain, a conflict deepened between the island kingdom's Shiite majority and its Sunni Muslim royal family, whose security forces and pro-government mobs attacked demonstrators with tear gas, rocks and swords. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited the tiny country, the home of the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet, to reassure its rulers of unwavering U.S. support, officials said.In the city of Qatif, not far from Bahrain, armored personnel carriers and dozens of officers in riot gear surrounded several hundred demonstrators shouting calls for reforms and equality between the sects. Police opened fire in the city to disperse a protest late Thursday in an incident that left three protesters and one officer wounded, but there was no repeat of that violence.Hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in Yemen's four largest provinces, ripping down and burning President Ali Abdullah Saleh's portraits in Sheikh Othman, the most populated district in the southern port city of Aden, witnesses said.Security forces hurled tear gas into crowds close to a stadium and then opened fire, using machine guns mounted on vehicles, said eyewitness Sind Abdullah, 25.In the conservative capital, Sanaa, thousands of women participated in demonstrations -- a startling move in a deeply tribal society where women are expected to stay out of sight.Demonstrators demanded jobs and greater political freedom and decried Saleh's proposal Thursday that the government create a new constitution guaranteeing the independence of parliament and the judiciary, calling it too little and too late.The autocratic leader is also an ally in the Obama adminstration's push to eliminate the local branch of al-Qaida, which has attempted to attack the United States. He has also worked closely with the Saudis to quash his own Shiite uprising in the north.Government minders escorted journalists around the city, where they were shown a man, who gave his name as Khaled al-Juhni, standing outside a government building, shouting calls for more freedoms.Police and journalists watched as the man criticized the regime as a "police state" and "a big prison" before he got in his car and left.A government official said security measures around state-run oil giant Saudi Aramco and its oil facilities in the east were beefed up protectively in case of any violence. The company is based in the Dhahran district on the kingdom's eastern coast.Investors are sensitive to any sign of upheaval in Saudi Arabia because the OPEC leader has been using its spare capacity to make up for output lost amid the violent uprising against Libya's government. When news broke that Saudi Arabian police fired shots to break up the protest Thursday, prices soared $3 in just 12 minutes.Shiites make up 10 percent of the kingdom's 23 million citizens and have long complained of discrimination, saying they are barred from key positions in the military and government and are not given an equal share of the country's wealth.Hmmmmm....."One minute it's a Sunni day ,the next minute you're up to your neck in Shiite"?Read the full story here.