Sunday Headlines:

Earthquakes:

First we get to updates on the Iran quake, and now a reasonably large quake in China. Earthquakes (again) are becoming a prominent sign:

The first link will be updated periodically and contains photos of the various areas hit (as expected, depending upon the news source, the numbers of those injured and killed vary):

Earthquakes Iran: 227+ Killed And At Least 1380 Injured

Two Earthquakes In Iran Kill 250 and Injure 2,000

Overcrowded hospitals in north-west Iranstruggled to cope with thousands of earthquake victims on Sunday and rescuers raced to reach remote villages after two powerful quakes killed at least 250 people.

Thousands of people huddled in makeshift camps or slept in streets after Saturday's quakes in fear of more aftershocks, 40 of which had already struck. A lack of tents and other supplies left them exposed to the night chill, one witness told Reuters.

Casualty figures are expected to rise, officials said, as some of the injured were in critical condition while hundreds were trapped under rubble, inaccessible to rescue workers hampered by darkness in the first hours after the quakes.

Many villages are hard to reach by road, hindering rescue efforts. Hospitals in Tabriz, Ardabil and other cities nearby took in many of the injured, residents and Iranian media said, and there were long queues of survivors waiting to be treated.

Twelve villages were destroyed and about 60 had more than 50 percent damage in the quakes, Iranian media reported. About 110 villages were damaged, Deputy Interior Minister Hassan Ghadami told Fars news agency.

Ghadami said 250 people had been killed and Red Crescent spokesman Hossein Derakhshan told Fars more than 2,000 people were believed to have been injured.

"We saw some villages that were truly destroyed," said Sadati, who visited the affected area to document the aftermath. "One good thing was that the earthquake happened during the day, so many people were not in their homes. If it had happened at night the casualties would have been far worse."

Seventy-one ambulances and 40 units trained to find survivors had been deployed to the affected areas along with more than 5,000 tents, Derakhshan said.

Very Strong (6.2) Earthquake In Xinjiang, China

Very strong earthquake in China
A M6.2 earthquake occurred a shortwhile in Hotan district, Xinjiang China
We are currently collecting more information on this earthquake and will start an in-depth article if the current data are confirmed.
Early reports are mentioning a very shallow earthquake.
We are currently trying to verify the data in China but their servers are down.
In a first overview of the location, the epicenter looks to be in a wilderness area in the mountains with no or very few people around.
Theoretical intensity should not go over VI MMI (strong shaking).
Based on other specialized organizations, the number of people in a radius of 100 km around the epicenter is max. 10000

Shallow 6.3 Quake Jolts Western China

A shallow 6.3-magnitude earthquake rattled western China Sunday on the border between Xinjiang and Tibet, the US Geological Survey said.

The quake's epicentre, at a shallow depth of nine kilometres (5.6 miles), was in a remote area of the border region some 280 kilometres east of Hotan town, the USGS said.

The quake struck at around 6:45 pm (1045 GMT) and there were no immediate reports of damage or casualties.

The China Earthquake Networks Centre measured it as a 6.2-magnitude quake, the state-run Xinhua news agency said.

War Rumors:

Israel Media Talk Of Imminent Iran War Push

Israel's prime minister and defence minister would like to attack Iran's nuclear sites before the U.S. election in November but lack crucial support within their cabinet and military, an Israeli newspaper said on Friday.

The front-page report in the biggest-selling daily Yedioth Ahronoth came amid mounting speculation - fuelled by media leaks from both the government and its detractors at home and abroad - that war with Iran could be imminent even though it might rupture the bedrock ties between Israel and the United States.

PM Rebuffs Reports That Home Front Not Prepared

Netanyahu says Iranian danger dwarfs all other threats, but the country has made huge strides in preparing itself for any contingency; bids farewell to Home Front Defense Minister Vilnai.

With the country's papers over the last few days full of reports of an imminent war with Iran, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Sunday said goodbye at the weekly cabinet meeting to Home Front Defense Minister Matan Vilnai, who is leaving to take up his post as ambassador to China.

Netanyahu said, "A separate ministry to deal with this issue was set up, meetings every two week have been held with him, Vilnai, and other ministers to deal with the issue and assess the situation, and billions of shekels have been spent on home front defense, including the Iron Dome, the Arrow and other weapons systems.

He also said Israel had developed perhaps the most advanced warning system in the world. Netanyahu added that while it is impossible to say that there are no problems with home front defense, all the threats facing the homefront today are dwarfed by one threat: Iran.

Attack On Iran Means Regional War, Says Ex-IDF General

An Israeli military attack on Iran would ignite a regional war, former IDF Operations Commander Yisrael Ziv told Army Radio Sunday.

Reiterating other officials' observations that an attack cannot be compared with the aerial strike on the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981, Ziv said, “We are talking about a number of operations and not just one.”

Knesset Member Tzachi HaNegbi issued a public plea to politicians on Sunday to keep quiet on Iran, but pundits both in Israel and elsewhere continue to make predictions and develop analyses in the wake of the latest reports that Iran is rapidly approaching its goal of developing a nuclear warhead that can be placed on a missile aimed at Israel.

Jeffrey Goldberg, writing in The Atlantic on Sunday, echoed Ziv’s warnings. “A strike could trigger an overt war without end… and an all-out missile war may escalate into something especially horrific, so in essence, Israel would be trading a theoretical war later for an actual war now,” he wrote.

U.S. Will Probably Enforce A "No Fly Zone", "Take Aggressive Action" Over Syria

From Bloomberg: "The U.S. and allied forces probably will impose a “no-fly zone” over Syria and take other “more aggressive action” against the Syrian regime, former Defense Secretary William Cohen said. While the U.S. has been leery of another military intervention after a decade of wars, “We’re coming to the point, however, where the violence is getting so severe, I think, that you’ll see a movement towards setting up those no- fly zones,” Cohen said on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend." Is war and immediate geopolitical escalation guaranteed? Not yet: "The former Pentagon chief and Maine senator, now chairman and chief executive officer of the Cohen Group consulting firm in Washington, said any U.S. military action would depend on participation and support from allies." Although desperate times, and by that we mean unfavorably trending popularity ranking, will certainly require desperate measures. Such as the continued massive build up of US naval assets in the middle east.

U.S. And Turkey To Consider No-Fly Zones For Syria

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu are considering implementing no-fly zones for Syria after holding Saturday talks in Istanbul.

According to Reuters, Clinton said that Ankara and Washington need to plan ways to assist the rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad – including possibly implementing a no-fly zone.

U.S. Sets Up Teams With Israel, Jordan, Turkey Against Chemical Attack

The United States last week began laying plans for the contingency of Syrian chemical warfare by setting up joint military, intelligence and medical working teams with Israel, Turkey and Jordan, all of which are feared under threat by Syrian president Bashar Assad, DEBKAfile’s military sources report. The White House, the CIA and the Pentagon’s DIA are laying odds on a Syrian unconventional attack. All three countries under potential threat have put their medical services on the ready.

Because Jordan lacks the appropriate medical facilities, the United States and France have freighted over to the kingdom special forces trained in chemical warfare, military hospitals and hundreds of tons of medical equipment. Washington is taking into account that American military and strategic interests in all three countries may also be in danger.

In Istanbul, Saturday, Aug. 11, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quite frankly discussed a chemical war scenario. Referring to working groups, she said: …we need to get into the real details of such operational planning and it needs to be across both our governments (US and Turkey). Our intelligence services and our military have very important responsibilities and roles to play, so we are going to be setting up a working group to do exactly that. We have planned for many contingencies, including the very horrible scenario of the use of chemical weapons.”

Around The World:

Carbon Agenda Sets Stage For Rolling Blackouts In California

It is said that as California goes, so goes the nation. The Golden State is about to experience what the rest of the nation will experience after the globalists phase in their carbon-free agenda under the demonstrably bogus global climate change scam.

“California’s electricity grid operator issued a rare statewide alert on Thursday warning residents to curb power usage in coming days as a heat wave threatens to strain its already taxed network,” Reuters reported on Monday.

The alert instructs residents and businesses to “curb use” during the peak consumption hours of 11:00 AM to 6 PM. The “alert” will last through Sunday.

Reuters reports that an alert issued by CAISO “may serve as a reality check for state leaders and grid officials who are struggling to deal with increasing demands for more carbon-free electricity over the next few years.”

California plans to drastically cut back on traditional sources of electric generation and rely “on renewable power sources, such as solar and wind, while shutting a number of ocean-side plants that supply power around the clock will challenge power grid operators to keep the lights on.”

The federal government is moving ahead with plans to shut down traditional energy plants. In 2011, Obama Energy Secretary Steven Chu launched an effort to bankrupt the coal industry through EPA regulations. The Obama administration’s strict enforcement of draconian EPA regulations has led to new clean-burning coal-fired plants being mothballed and other existing ones being shut down, Infowars.com reported in February of 2011.

During his presidential run, Obama said that “if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted…. Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”

“The deliberate deindustrialization of America has nothing to do with protecting the environment. Whereas the competitiveness of America’s energy industry is being crippled by the EPA and the White House, China and Mexico are building dozens of new power plants every year which fall well short of the clean-burning technology standards adhered to in the United States,” Alex Jones and Paul Joseph Watson wrote on Monday.

“This is about the implementation of the UN’s Agenda 21, which operates under the guise of ‘sustainable development’ yet is clearly part of a stealth agenda to centralize control over energy, bankrupting America in the process as part of the move towards a crony system of one world governance.

Pestilence:

Here It Comes: Super Gonorrhea

I just got out of a telebriefing with the CDC. The atmosphere was not a jovial one. The words "gonorrhea epidemic" were thrown around in ominous tones. No one was up for hanging out after.

Did you know gonorrhea can kill you? It can, and it's also tragically effective at making women infertile.

But over the past decades, gonorrhea has been mowing down our antibiotics.

The list of effective antibiotics has been dwindling as the bacteria became resistant, and now it's down to one. Five years ago, the CDC said fluoroquinolones were no longer effective, but oral cephalosporins were still a common/easy treatment. Now injected ceftriaxone is the only recommended effective drug we have left. And it has to be given along with either azithromycin or doxycycline

So, yes, getting gonorrhea now means that you have to go in and get antibiotics through a needle. And then everyone with whom you've had sex in the last 60 days has to get tested, too.

Once gonorrhea becomes resistant to the last of our cephalosporin antibiotics -- "it's only a matter of time," according to Dr. Gail Bolan, Director of STD Prevention at the CDC in today's announcement -- we will have no treatment. Then when it gets into your bloodstream, it will be lethal.