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Tuesday, January 01, 2008
10 Resolutions to Help You Survive the Coming Bear Market
In case it isn't all of that, do resolve to remain prepared for challenges.
In terms of your financial situation, Paul B. Farrell offers a fair advisory on how you might keep your head above water and dog-paddling in the right direction ...
PAUL B. FARRELL
Winning attitude
Ten resolutions that will help you survive the coming bear market
By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch
Last update: 5:01 p.m. EST Dec. 31, 2007
ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) -- In a rare Fortune interview several years ago Warren Buffett warned that America was "selling the farm" to live "high on the hog." Forget the hog: that dream's gone, and the farm may not be far behind.
"Selling the farm" was a perfect metaphor for the coming downturn. During the recent bull, Wall Street became totally addicted to easy credit, junk mortgages and snake-oil derivatives. The Fed and Treasury loved it, too, denying the massive bubble buildup, adding fuel to Wall Street's greed. Deja vu the 90's "irrational exuberance."
Now the crisis is metastasizing: Hundred of billions of dollars in write-offs reducing shareholder equity, hundreds of millions of dollars in severance pay to CEO losers. Worse yet, Wall Street's insiders rubbed salt in their shareholders wounds by passing out $38 billion of the shareholders' profits in bonuses, averaging more than $600,000. [snip]
To read the whole article, including Paul's 10 suggested resolutions, click here.
Get Ready ... Seriously - www.safecastleroyal.com
Monday, December 31, 2007
IDF Advising Israelis How to Prep for WMD War

The document is a 48-page pdf. Not sure if you'll have the same issues I did in downloading it, but I found that I had to keep "reloading" about seven times in a row before it completed the process. Overall, because of that, it took about a minute with my DSL connection to get the whole document.
It's certainly worth looking at. The advice is much different than what Americans are used to seeing, that's for sure. Primarily, the difference is the fact that in Israel, rocket attacks are a grim reality of life. The danger of WMDs being used there is clear and potentially imminent.
Get Ready ... Seriously - www.safecastle.com
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Friday, December 28, 2007
Will We Know If Extremists Gain Control of Pakistani Nukes?

“The real danger for us now in the U.S. is that if this continues the way it’s going, the Taliban and al-Qaida could eventually have control of a nuclear arsenal,” says S. Eugene Poteat, a former CIA official. “And you know, we might not even know it. Because the way infiltration works by these people, you never know who they are.
"Al-Qaida or its affiliates could be in the military, they could be in control of a nuclear arsenal, and if they get it, we know one thing for sure is that it will be used one way or the other. They may not use it right away, but that’s the danger,” says Poteat, who is president of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers. “They’ve let it be known publicly what their plans are: their intentions are to kill us.”
Get Ready ... Seriously - www.safecastleroyal.com
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Bhutto's Assassination

The former Prime Minister knew the grave risks she was assuming returning to her native Pakistan several weeks ago. Her ambition was to help stabilize and re-democratize a country that is increasingly the focal point of the struggle between the West and radical Islam.
The stakes there ARE enormous--to include the Islamic nation's dozens of nuclear weapons, not to mention the welfare of more than 162M Pakistani citizens, most of whom remain liberal and westernized.
Sadly today, the situation is clearly moving closer to the feared societal meltdown in Pakistan that would pose worldwide danger.
Terror-wielding groups such as the Taliban and Al Qaeda are fully engaged and aiming for chaos in the region--attempting to gain control or influence over unknown numbers of susceptible members of the Pakistani military. If the radicals succeed in overthrowing the government there, the entire global dynamic becomes extremely volatile.
My suggestion--watch this situation very closely and determine how this might impact your own readiness plan.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Database - 247 U.S. Disasters To-Date Since 2000
Since 1988, the WHO Collaborating Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) has been maintaining an Emergency Events Database - EM-DAT.
EM-DAT was created with the initial support of the WHO and the Belgian government.
The main objective of the database is to serve the purposes of humanitarian action at national and international levels. It is an initiative aimed at rationalizing decision-making for disaster preparedness, as well as providing an objective base for vulnerability assessment and priority setting.
I strongly recommend you spend at least a few minutes perusing the EM-DAT site. I guarantee you will take away some eye-opening morsels for consideration.
At a minimum, I'd suggest going to this page:
http://www.em-dat.net/disasters/Visualisation/advsearch.php
On that search page, you can call up lists of types of disasters and their impact for any country or region in the world for periods of time as long ago as 1900. A sample search I did was for the U.S., from 2000 to present, all types of disasters. The result was a list of 247 disasters, to include drought, earthquake, fire, disease, floods, storms, industrial and transportation accidents, and more.
This is quite simply a stark reminder that disaster, when it strikes, is rarely going to be the type you might envision in your ongoing program of preparedness.
One lesson to take away is that we need to NOT focus on any one type of threat as being THE danger we want to be ready for. Another lesson is that wherever we are, risk is always there on the periphery of our comfortable and secure existence.
Thankfully, a good prep program is largely applicable across a wide spectrum of disaster risks.
Get Ready ... Seriously - www.safecastleroyal.com
Monday, December 24, 2007
Christmas Joy to You and Yours
Sunday, December 23, 2007
DHS: Resolve to be Ready in 2008

For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
Contact: 202-282-8010
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reminds Americans that the New Year is a perfect time to Resolve to be Ready. The department’s Ready Campaign has outlined the top 10 items for a basic emergency supply kit so that every American can keep their preparedness resolutions next year.
“We cannot stress enough the importance of being prepared for all types of emergencies, from natural disasters to terrorist attacks,” said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “Having a plan can make all the difference, as the recent flooding and ice storms across the country have shown. The time for individuals, families and businesses to plan is now, and to resolve to make readiness a priority for 2008.”
Keeping New Year’s resolutions is challenging, but making resolutions that are simple and realistic is the key to success. Americans can successfully prepare for emergencies by following the Ready Campaign’s three easy steps:
1. Prepare an emergency supply kit;
2. Make a family emergency plan; and
3. Be informed about the kinds of emergencies that can happen in your area and their appropriate responses.
To help get started, the Ready Campaign is issuing a checklist of the leading items needed in a basic emergency supply kit for the home or business. These items include: water, food, radio, flashlight, first-aid kit, whistle, moist towelettes, garbage bags and plastic ties, wrench or pliers, local maps, and personal items.
For the complete list of items the Ready Campaign recommends including in your emergency kit, visit theReady Campaign Web site at www.ready.gov or call 1-800-BE-READY. Ready also suggests creating a smaller, portable kit for your home or office in case you need to evacuate immediately. The Web site includes free information, checklists and guidelines about the two other key components of preparedness – developing a family emergency plan and being informed.
DHS reminds Americans to get involved in neighborhood and community preparedness efforts once their families are prepared. A good way to start is by reaching out to a local Citizen Corps Council to learn about hands-on training and opportunities to get involved with a local organization. For more information, visit https://www.ready.gov/citizen-
DHS promotes individual emergency preparedness through the Ready Campaign and Citizen Corps as part of a broader national effort conducted by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Ready is a national public service advertising campaign produced by The Advertising Council in partnership with DHS. The Ready Campaign is designed to educate and empower Americans to prepare for and respond to emergencies, including natural disasters and potential terrorist attacks. Individuals interested in more information about family and business preparedness can visit www.ready.gov or call 1-800-BE-READY to receive free materials. Citizen Corps, DHS’ grassroots effort, localizes preparedness messages and provides opportunities for citizens to get emergency response training; participate in community exercises; and volunteer to support local first responders. To learn more and to get involved, contact your nearest Citizen Corps Council by visiting https://www.ready.gov/citizen-
Staysafe.org's Guide to Disaster Preparedness:
https://www.staysafe.org/how-
Get Ready ... Seriously - www.safecastle.com
Friday, December 21, 2007
Think Tank Games Middle Eastern Nuclear War
Unthinkable? Think tank sees Israel, not Iran, surviving a Mideast nuclear war
Thursday, December 20, 2007 Geostrategy-Direct.com
WASHINGTON — Iran could sustain up to 28 million and Israel 800,000 casualties in a nuclear war between the two countries.
A report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies envisioned a nuclear missile war between Iran and Israel that would last 21 days. Authored by former Defense Department strategist Anthony Cordesman, the report said Israel could conceivably survive a nuclear war, but Iran would not.
"Iranian recovery is not possible in the normal sense of the term," the report, entitled Iran, Israel and Nuclear War, said. "Israeli recovery [is] theoretically possible in population and economic terms."
[snip] Click on article title above to read whole article.
Get Ready ... Seriously - www.safecastle.com
Reidel: Israel Will Attack Iran

Former US Intelligence official: Israel will attack Iran
Bruce Riedel, a former career CIA official and senior adviser to three US presidents, including Bush, tells Newsweek he came back from trip to Israel in November convinced that Jewish state would attack Iran. 'Israel is not going to allow its nuclear monopoly to be threatened,' he says.
[snip]
Get Ready ... Seriously - www.safecastle.com
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Olmert's New NBC Bunker

'Nuclear bunker being built for Olmert'
"No atomic bunker is being constructed at the prime minister's official residence, or a bunker equipped with special filters or any special equipment," the statement said.
Yediot Ahronot had claimed that workers at Olmert's official Jerusalem residence were thickening walls, digging, and installing air purification equipment capable of countering chemical agents.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
CTC's New "Sentinel" Publication: Al-Qa`ida’s Resurgence in Pakistan

It's an excellent compendium of current expert reports on global terrorism. You can download the pdf at this site (click on the image there): http://www.ctc.usma.edu/sentinel/default.asp
One of the most noteworthy and cautionary of the reports is on page 8, authored by Bruce Reidel: "Al-Qa`ida’s Resurgence in Pakistan." Reidel concludes ...
It is disturbing enough that Pakistan is the real front line in the war against al-Qa`ida. The most frightening concern, however, is al-Qa`ida’s pursuit of a nuclear weapon. Pakistan is the world’s only Muslim state with nuclear weapons. According to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Pakistan has an estimated 50-90 nuclear weapons. The former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, George Tenet, in his memoirs laid out in great detail al-Qa`ida’s efforts during the last decade to get its hands on a Pakistani nuclear device. If Pakistan becomes more destabilized, it is likely that al-Qa`ida will make every effort to get one.
As I have stated previously, we should make no mistake on this one--Pakistan's ready-made nukes and missile technologies are a tantalizing target like no other these days for AQ. Those weapons and indeed Pakistan's very government are at their most vulnerable right now and we will be seeing every effort put forth by Bin Laden to seize the flame in that Islamic nation (polls today in Pakistan show Bin Laden is more popular there than Musharraf).
Get Ready ... Seriously - www.safecastleroyal.com
Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Trust for America's Health: U.S. Still Unprepared for Disaster

"Overall, federal funding for state and local preparedness will have declined by 25 percent in 3 years if the president's FY (fiscal year) 2008 request is approved," the report reads.
"Until all states measure up, the United States is not safe."
The nonprofit Trust has been issuing reports every year for five years, and said the 2001 anthrax attacks, in which five people died when anthrax spores were mailed to several offices, should have been a wake-up call.
The disasters caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita that wrecked the U.S. Gulf Coast in 2005 should have galvanized more action and highlighted a variety of problems with U.S. disaster preparedness, the group said.
But the report released on Tuesday still finds preparedness is spotty.
Another Reason to Watch Pakistan Right Now

Dec 17, 2007 (CIDRAP News) – The World Health Organization (WHO) has sent a team to Pakistan to investigate at least eight suspected human cases of H5N1 avian influenza in the same general area, including cases in four brothers and two of their cousins, according to news services.
WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said limited human-to-human transmission in the cases is possible, according to an Associated Press (AP) report published yesterday. However, he told Nature that 40 contacts of the suspected case-patients have tested negative.
If confirmed, the cases will mark the first human H5N1 infections in Pakistan. They also appear to constitute the largest cluster of related infections since eight cases (seven confirmed, one probable) occurred among relatives in North Sumatra in May 2006. Transmission of the disease from a 10-year-old boy to his father was confirmed by laboratory testing in that episode.
In a Dec 15 statement, the WHO said Pakistan's ministry of health had reported eight suspected cases in the Peshawar area, in the wake of culling operations to control poultry outbreaks there. Peshawar is in the country's North-West Frontier province, near the Afghan border, where most of the country's poultry outbreaks have occurred.
Samples from the patients tested positive in Pakistan's national laboratory and were being sent to a WHO reference lab for confirmation and further analysis, the WHO said.
Doctors from the WHO in Geneva and Cairo and others from US Navy Medical Research Unit 3 in Cairo were on their way to Pakistan yesterday to help investigate the cases and combat the disease, according to a Dec 16 Bloomberg news report. The team planned to track down, treat, and test contacts of the suspected case-patients, according to the Nature report.
Details of the suspected cases remained somewhat hazy today, as news reports varied in some respects.
According to the AP, Hartl said the illnesses involved four brothers, two of whom died, and two cousins, all from Abbotabad, a city about 30 miles north of Islamabad. Specimens were never collected from one of the deceased brothers. The two men who died had been students at an agricultural college in Peshawar; they were not involved in culling poultry, but they visited another brother when he was hospitalized, the story said.
Also among the suspected cases were a man and his niece from the Abbotabad area and a person who slaughtered poultry in Mansehra, 15 miles away, Hartl told the AP. He said some of the patients had had only mild symptoms and were never hospitalized.
The Bloomberg News report, also based on information from Hartl, concurred that the suspected case-patients included four brothers. The first case was in an agriculture official who fell ill after culling poultry in the Abbotabad area in late October. He was cared for by two of his brothers, both of whom subsequently died, one about a month ago and the other on Nov 29. A third brother of the first man also got sick, was hospitalized, and recovered, the story said.
The suspected cases also included two of the four brothers' cousins, who had only mild symptoms, plus a man and his niece who were involved in culling poultry in the area, Bloomberg reported. (It was not clear if the cousins were involved in culling.) Another case was in a male farm worker from Mansehra.
Still another brother of the first man to fall ill lives in New York state but flew to Pakistan to attend the funeral of one of his deceased brothers, according to Bloomberg. On his return, he told his physician that he might have been exposed to avian flu and quarantined himself at home, after which his son experienced flu-like symptoms. Samples from both father and son tested negative in state and federal laboratories last week, the story said.
Hartl told Bloomberg it was too early to tell whether the cases all spread from birds or involved limited person-to-person spread. He said some of the patients kept chickens and quail, and it was unclear what kind of protective equipment they used during culling.
The Nature report said Pakistan was slow to inform the WHO of the possible cases, boding ill for the agency's hope of detecting any person-to-person transmission early and quickly providing antiviral treatment to stop a potential pandemic. The story said the first cases occurred in mid-November at the latest, but Pakistan didn't officially inform the WHO until Dec 12.
Get Ready ... Seriously - www.safecastleroyal.com
Food Prices Continuing to Rise
Mountain House freeze dried food (in #10 cans, stores for 30 years) is our number one seller in our buyers club. Until this past September, Mountain House food pricing had remained unchanged for six years! Following the September 2007 price hike, they have subsequently announced to dealers that they will be adjusting their prices twice a year, going forward.
Price stability in foods and other necessities is clearly becoming a casualty in the present global dynamics.
World food price rises to hit consumers
By Javier Blas and Chris Giles in London and Hal Weitzman in Chicago
Published: December 16 2007 22:08 Last updated: December 17 2007 07:45
Global food prices were under further pressure on Monday as benchmark prices for cereals at much higher levels came into operation, making it almost inevitable that a second wave of food price inflation will hit the world’s leading economies.
In Chicago wheat and rice prices for delivery in March 2008 have jumped to an all-time record, soyabean prices are at a 34-year high and corn prices at an 11-year peak.
Knock-on price rises are set to hit consumers in coming months, raising inflationary pressure and constraining the ability of central banks to mitigate the slowdown in their economies.
A first wave of surging cereal prices hit the wholesale market during the summer and has fed through the supply chain and contributed to rising inflation.
[snip]
See also: "Why Are Prices Rising?"
Get Ready ... Seriously - www.safecastleroyal.com
Saturday, December 15, 2007
Peace of Mind is For All Year Long
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
New Killer Virus?
Virus Starts Like a Cold But Can Turn Into a Killer
By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 11, 2007; A01
Infectious-disease expert David N. Gilbert was making rounds at the Providence Portland Medical Center in Oregon in April when he realized that an unusual number of patients, including young, vigorous adults, were being hit by a frightening pneumonia.
"What was so striking was to see patients who were otherwise healthy be just devastated," Gilbert said. Within a day or two of developing a cough and high fever, some were so sick they would arrive at the emergency room gasping for air.
"They couldn't breathe," Gilbert said. "They were going to die if we didn't get more oxygen into them."
Gilbert alerted state health officials, a decision that led investigators to realize that a new, apparently more virulent form of a virus that usually causes nothing worse than a nasty cold was circulating around the United States. At least 1,035 Americans in four states have been infected so far this year by the virus, known as an adenovirus. Dozens have been hospitalized, many requiring intensive care, and at least 10 have died.
[snip]
Get Ready ... Seriously - www.safecastleroyal.com
Saturday, December 08, 2007
CELOX Saves Lives; You Save Money
I'm excited about being able to offer a great deal on a life-saving product--CELOXTM. If you're not familiar with it, check the manufacturer's website: www.celoxmedical.com
CELOX is amazing stuff, and was approved by the FDA last year. It's in Iraq and Afghanistan and in most emergency response vehicles today. But every household and every automobile ought to have some on hand. It's so easy to use and so important to have if serious bleeding suddenly becomes an issue. It stores for four years and works in any environment--hot or cold.
A No Brainer
If the Washington Redskins football player, Sean Taylor (whose femoral artery was damaged a couple of weeks ago when he was shot in the abdomen during a burglary in his home), had had some in his house, he likely would have been saved.
On a personal note, a dear aunt of mine died tragically this week in a car accident. She bled to death before help arrived. Needless to say, I wish someone at the scene had had CELOX in their trunk. Or that I would have been able to provide her with some beforehand.
But I cannot change what has already happened. What I CAN do is help those around me to be in a position to deal with disaster if something similar happens to them in the future.
I'm just taking delivery of my first large shipment in the next couple of days and I want to do whatever I can to put it in the hands of our friends out there.
We've got volume pricing levels set up on our CELOX listing for this sale. Buyers club members of course get 20% off all the listed prices and free shipping, so the member price for a 35g pouch of CELOX is as low as $22.40 shipped.
These sale prices are good till January, when the manufacturer's prices are going up.
Still need to join the club? Just $19 for a lifetime membership. Join here.
Get Ready ... Seriously - www.safecastleroyal.com
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
No Good Way to Secure Pakistan's Nukes

See:
US war games weigh options to secure Pak's nuke arsenal
Excerpt:
"Everybody's scrambling on this," Oakley was quoted as saying.
A participant of the last year's exercise said the conclusion of that war game was that there were no palatable ways to forcibly ensure the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons -- and that even studying scenarios for intervention could worsen the risks by undermining US-Pakistani cooperation.
"It's an unbelievably daunting problem," said this participant, a former Pentagon official, on the condition of anonymity.
He went on to say that the planners really have not developed answers for how to deal with nuclear weapons stashed in Pakistan's big cities and high mountain ranges.
"The bottom line is, it's the nightmare scenario," added retired Marine Col. Gary Anderson, who participated in an earlier exercise that simulated a breakup of Pakistan. "It has loose nukes, hard to find, potentially in the hands of Islamic extremists, and there aren't a lot of good military options," he said.
According to an expert on Pakistani terrorism, who did not attend last year's war game but learned about some of its conclusions, senior US officials "weren't pleased with what the game told them; they were quite shocked."
The US efforts related to securing Pakistan's nuclear arsenal involve "really, really black SAPs" -- that is, among the most highly guarded "special access programs," he said.
Zia Mian, a Princeton University physicist and expert on nuclear proliferation in South Asia, expressed the view that such exercises "may actually make things worse." Among other negative repercussions, he predicted, any US effort to secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal "would really increase anti-Americanism."
Get Ready ... Seriously - www.safecastleroyal.com
Tempting to Let Down Your Guard, But ...
Bird flu risks will persist for years, health experts warn as they draw up combat plan
By ASHOK SHARMA,Associated Press Writer AP - Wednesday, December 5
NEW DELHI, India - Bird flu is a potentially lethal problem that will persist for years as the H5N1 virus strain continues to spread, pandemic experts were told Tuesday at an international conference in India.
"The virus is still being transmitted between chickens and it is going into wild birds, which are carrying it long distances as they migrate," said United Nations bird flu expert David Nabarro.
"Bird flu is a problem that will be with us still for some years to come," Nabarro said ... [snip]
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