From Debkafile one of the better sources for actual news anywhere.

As opposed to opinion dressed as news most everywhere.

Yes of course, the picture ... click on it.

India to pay gold instead of dollars for Iranian oil.

Oil and gold markets stunned.

India is the first buyer of Iranian oil to agree to pay for its purchases in gold instead of the US dollar, DEBKAfile's intelligence and Iranian sources report exclusively.  Those sources expect China to follow suit. India and China take about one million barrels per day, or 40 percent of Iran's total exports of 2.5 million bpd. Both are superpowers in terms of gold assets.

By trading in gold, New Delhi and Beijing enable Tehran to bypass the upcoming freeze on its central bank's assets and the oil embargo which the European Union's foreign ministers agreed to impose Monday, Jan. 23. The EU currently buys around 20 percent of Iran's oil exports.

The vast sums involved in these transactions are expected, furthermore, to boost the price of gold and depress the value of the dollar on world markets.

You should be listening to your Uncle Roany here ..... buy gold!!!!!

The following was taken from an interview with Ron Hera of Hera Research that was published at Seeking Alpha this past weekend.

Keith Nueman's resume' was too heavy to cut and paste.

One must take into account that Mr. Neumeier has silver for sale so keep that thought in mind when considering his opinions on the price of silver going forward, but this is a man with tremendous experience dealing in futures markets as both a supplier/hedger and an investor/broker/dealer.

When he tells you the deal is rigged you have to take it seriously.

Click anywhere below for the entire interview.

Recommended

Keith Neumeyer: The job of the regulators is to protect the retail investor. That’s their only job. It’s not to protect the banks or the brokerage firms. The little guy is the primary taxpayer. Why were the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the CFTC put in place? They were put in place to protect retail investors. Prior to regulation, the banks controlled the market. Today, the banks control the market again. Who should control the market? Retail investors. Who’s protecting them? No one.

HRN: Are you saying that the CFTC does nothing while the COMEX caters to banks and brokerage firms?

Keith Neumeyer: Yes.

HRN: And the COMEX doesn’t serve retail investors?

Keith Neumeyer: No. Absolutely not.

HRN: Do you foresee a return to a free market in the future?

Keith Neumeyer: I’m an optimist. I believe one day that governments will rewrite the rules and force the regulators to protect investors. That’s where we were back in the ‘70s and that’s where I think we have to be again to correct the problems that have arisen over the past 40 years. Silver is being revalued. It’s going to affect a lot of people along the way and it will change the financial system. Ultimately, we’re going to have a new financial system and, hopefully, we’ll go back to natural markets, completely driven by supply and demand. It may take another 20 years but I think it will happen.

HRN: A new financial system?

Keith Neumeyer: If I’m wrong, the banks will run the world, even more so than they do today, 10 or 20 years from now. God forbid that we ever get there because that’s a one currency, one government world that would absolutely be a disaster for the human race. There would be no freedoms at all to move or to invest. It would be like having shackles on our ankles. There is a movement to go in that direction, unfortunately. There are a number of very wealthy people that want to see that. I hope that we can find the politicians to prevent that type of world from coming to pass.

Instructive in light of the following quotes.

Don't you think?

For some reason, it's been an incredibly rich week for video.

Here is some of the better short video we've either subscribed for or had sent our way.

Thanks to Somebody who sent us the Battle for Brooklyn stuff and didn't want to be identified in any way.

We figure he/she's embarrassed to associated with us.

Wealth disparity in China is far more profound than it is in America.

The following thought has been spreading across the length and width of China

If one percent of American people own 90% of the wealth, one ten-thousandth of the Chinese people own 90% of the wealth.

Who should be occupying what?

The phrase "Occupy ......." has been banned on all search engines across all of Communist China.

If you feel compelled to mess with the banks any way you can, this kid ... don't be offended, I've attained that age where damn near everybody's a kid to me ... has an extremely clever, nonviolent idea.

The following is an interview from the makers of and some bits of a trailer for the movie Battle of Brooklyn, a documentary on the acquisition of the land for and subsequent construction of Barclays Center and one of the more eggregious examples of the use of eminent domain for private profit you will encounter.

Unfortunately, around here Christmas comes with winter.

We're giving this one some serious thought.

"The way I think about it is this is a great, great country that had gotten a little soft, and we didn't have that same competitive edge we needed over the last couple of decades."    President Barack Obama

"Seriously, in 2008 we elected a community organizer, state senator, college instructor first term senator over a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. And now he's lecturing us about how America's gone 'soft'?   Really?"    Jonah Goldberg

Most days our serious reading begins with McMaster Online which unfortunately offers neither free content nor the occasional means to pilfer, as it is completely hidden away behind their paywall.

All three quotes below were offered within R.E. McMaster's daily newsletter.

We may well live to regret having said this, but McMaster Online is one of the three of four sites we take that we don't even ask how much it's costing us.

We would have probably stumbled across the other two quotes sooner or later anyway as we haunt both Zero Hedge and Casey's Daily Dispatch on a regular basis.

Anyway, the McMaster quote below links up to his homepage, the next two quotes will link you up to the specific piece from which it was taken.

The US is attempting to do financially to Switzerland what it did militarily to Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and supported clandestinely in the Arab Spring countries by Clinton.

Most people are unaware that Switzerland is the only country in Western civilization that does not have the modern rendition of the "divine right of kings", which is Hegel's "the state is god walking on earth"  top-down form of government.  Instead, the Swiss have a constitutional confederation of 26 sovereign cantons, where the governmental power lies, not in the centralized government.

The Swiss balance of power is between the three distinct different languages and cultures of the German, French and Italian speaking cantons. Moreover, the Swiss can reverse anything their central government does through a referendum system.

For a nation without any natural resources, is it any accident that the Swiss consistently express the greatest satisfaction with their lives, as well as one of the world's highest per capita incomes? Not in the least. The best politics and economics are run at the local level, not at the parasitic bureaucratic federal level. And certainly not with an empire.  R.E. McMaster

"The specific path of our lives is very much in our control. Yet most people don't give the matter much thought at all, and therefore are blown here and there like dried leaves in the wind.

And even when people do take the time to reflect on the scripts of their lives, they tend to resist plot lines that move them outside of the rut of the status quo. For instance, provided you were looking to live an interesting and fulfilling life - and who doesn't want that? - it's only logical to look to the lives of others who have lived successfully to guide in your script-making. The examples of people who have lived truly fascinating and wonderful lives are abundant in the history books, and even among contemporaries who live life large and lively. Yet most people find it impossible to envision such a life for themselves. Instead, they dismiss such people as overachievers and exceptions while resolving themselves to hunkering down in a ditch of their own making, hoping against hope to muddle through until the passage of time fills the ditch in, with them in it...

Put another way, most people cast themselves as walk-on characters even in their own lives, and not as the lead."  David Galland, Casey's Daily Dispatch, 09-23-11

As previously disclosed, we really like Zero Hedge and especially like Tyler Durden who is really, probably 6-8 different guys all of whom would probably, really give up their left testicle to indeed look like Tyler Durden.

It is frequently a difficult read as it is not a jargon free zone.

It is also a colossal pain in the ass to subscribe to as they clearly, sincerely don't care if you subscribe or don't.

Having said that, someone from around here is hanging around there every day.

"...the transition of America from a government 'on behalf of the people' to one 'in control of the people' catalyzed, as Bill Buckler, put it simply, by one simple event: the confiscation of America's gold, and the ushering in of the welfare (or 'promise') state, the same welfare state that now is supported by a system that no matter how hard one denies, is nothing but a ponzi scheme.

...just like in the time of FDR, for whom the creation of a 'mild' inflation was a prime prerogative to offset the depressionary deflation gripping the land, the moment for a brazen gold revaluation by none other than the US government has arrived. Unfortunately, it likely also means that any scheme in which the government opens a buy/sell gold window at a substantially higher price point, will mean that very soon, either by guile or by force, the US government will once again be the prime and sole owner of all the gold.

As Coxe says, 'The gold bugs have long proclaimed their own version of the Golden Rule: “He who has the gold makes the rules." By that standard, Barack Obama could become the leader of the world overnight.'... in summary, Coxe's point is that the time for a government 'LBO' of the gold market, one in which every last ounce is extracted from the skittish public, in exchange for pseudo-equivalent assets such as gold-backed bonds, has arrived. The only question is what the acquisition price of the risk-free alternative to fiat would be, and hence how much higher will investors push the price in anticipation of the inevitable 25% take out premium. Once the public realizes that this is the endgame, and that the buyer of only resort will be none other than Uncle Sam... then look out above.

As for the context of Executive Order 6102.2, Coxe notes: 'When nearly all OECD economies are running huge deficits at a time of near-zero interest rates, and nearly all governments are looking for ways to raise revenues without imposing economy-unfriendly taxes, why don't the big holders revalue their gold to, say, $2,200 an ounce and declare themselves willing sellers at that price—in bars or in bonds backed by gold—and willing buyers at, say, $2,000? Roosevelt revalued gold from $20.67 an ounce to $35 and declared that the US was a buyer and seller at that price. He also made it illegal for US citizens to own gold. By the end of the Depression, most of the world's visible gold reserves were in Fort Knox.'

Most importantly, Coxe observes that 'now is a good time to lock in the gold bull market by monetizing the nation's holdings through various strategies and vehicles forty years after Nixon uncapped gold and 78 years after Roosevelt boosted it 70%. Why don't the governments bring out their gold and use it to back their bonds? Obama should, in our view, try to find one non-Keynesian economist who understands gold to advise him. We’re sure he could get an old-fashioned scholar from the University of Chicago to help him out if he made a few calls.'" - Tyler Durden, www.ZeroHedge.com, 09-22-11

Most people aren't aware of the fact that I used to look a great deal like Tyler Durden ... before the operation.

We love Fred Reed around here, and despite the fact that his subject matter is frequently ugly and/or brutal, we look forward to each new installment and struggle to refrain from linking up Fred On Everything everytime he posts.

While we don't always agree with Fred, his resume' forces us to always give strong consideration to his point of view.

Click anywhere on the excerpt below to link up to Fred's latest ..... you know, as of this instant.

"It wasn’t until ‘The Great Society’ and the ‘War on Poverty’ and Lyndon Johnson that the black family began to fall apart. The old adage is ‘The road to hell is paved in good intentions’, and I believe that the liberals that designed the welfare programs were well intentioned but WRONG.

Rules are meant to be broken and programs are designed for people to capitalize on the weak points and misapply them to their advantage.

This is what I saw happen with the black families when the father moved out, stayed down the street and only came by for conjugal visits which increased the family’s income.

The black father and young men were no longer hard working heads of the their families but part of disjointed groups that were intent on personal gratification and working the system and they developed a ‘plantation mentality’ with the government being the great provider and not the men of the family.”    Fred Reed

You might have heard that International Monetary Fund President and likely 2012 Socialist Party candidate for the French Presidency, Dominique Strauss-Kahn was pulled out of his first class seat on an Air France flight from New York to Paris and indicted for the rape of a chambermaid in his $3000 a night suite at New York's Sofitel Hotel.

He wasn't indicted in the $3000 a night suite, the alleged rape took place in the $3000 a night suite.  I just wanted to make that point perfectly clear.

So anyway, I'm going to have to look into this Socialism stuff.

It seems to pay a hell of a lot better than I thought it did.

From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

From Agora Financial, publishers of The Daily Reckoning and Whiskey and Gunpowder, two of my favorites among their many titles, here are the two charts that tell me that QE3 is inevitable.

Announced or otherwise.

To begin with, I'm still not entirely certain of what works and what doesn't with regards to the free stuff at Stratfor.

I hope this works ... you might have to fool around with something.

I've created a link from the photo below to Stratfor's latest article regarding Inspire Magazine, the al Qaeda english language jihadist magazine.

If I've said it once, I've said it a million times, "There's a magazine out there for everybody".

As I have also said before, I subscribe to Stratfor.

I don't even know what it costs anymore, mostly because I'm afraid to.

Still, as far as I'm concerned, Stratfor is the single best site in the world for a "news junkie".

The “Open Source Jihad” section contained a photograph of the U.S. Capitol building with a Christmas tree in the foreground on the first page.  

The “What to Expect in Jihad” section featured a graphic of a sticky note with a to-do listreading: buy handguns, make a bomb in mom’s kitchen, blow up Times Square and “pull off Mumbai near Whitehouse ‘till martyrdom.”  

This section also had a graphic of an envelope marked with the word “Anthrax.”

The photograph of the U.S. Capitol, followed by a reference to an armed assault directed against soft targets near the White House (and the anthrax envelope), will certainly raise some eyebrows in Washington — especially since the Open Source Jihad section of the second edition of Inspire had a photo of the Chicago skyline, and the subsequent plot involving explosive devices hidden in printer cartridges were in packages sent to Chicago.

Don't bother running out, I already checked Barnes and Noble ..... no luck.

Must've gone like hotcakes.

There it is.

My youngest just whipped it up out there in the garage ....... kidding.

Ok, before we begin, we are cheerfully conceding that we have no idea what anyone is talking about here, and that this one seemingly might be a little tough to explain even if we did.

To begin, from Wikipedia.

Cold fusion refers to a proposed nuclear fusion process of unknown mechanism offered to explain a group of disputed experimental results first reported by electrochemists Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons. 

It is sometimes termed "Low Energy Nuclear Reaction" (LENR) to avoid the negative connotations associated with the original name.

Those negative connotations are the result of the fact that Fleischmann and Pons never published and their results were never duplicated.

Wikipedia continues.

The field originates with reports of an experiment by Martin Fleischmann, then one of the world's leading electrochemists, and Stanley Pons in March 1989 where they reported anomalous heat production ("excess heat") of a magnitude they asserted would defy explanation except in terms of nuclear processes. They further reported measuring small amounts of nuclear reaction byproducts ...

 The media reported that nuclear fusion was happening inside the electrolysis cells, and these reports raised hopes of a cheap and abundant source of energy. Hopes fell when replication failures were weighed in view of several reasons cold fusion is not likely to occur, the discovery of possible sources of experimental error, and finally the discovery that Fleischmann and Pons had not actually detected nuclear reaction byproducts. By late 1989, most scientists considered cold fusion claims dead, and cold fusion subsequently gained a reputation as pathological science.

With regards to that publishing issue, and subsequent inability to reproduce the experiment, excuses/explanations, take your pick, were subsequently offered.

Now ..... flash forward to January, 2011.

From Pure Energy Systems.

 Eng. Andrea A. Rossi and Professor Sergio Focardi of the University of Bologna (one of the oldest universities in the world), have announced to the world that they have a cold fusion device capable of producing more than 10 kilowatts of heat power, while only consuming a fraction of that. On January 14, 2011, they gave the Worlds' first public demonstration of a nickel-hydrogen fusion reactor capable of producing a few kilowatts of thermal energy. At its peak, it is capable of generating 15,000 watts with just 400 watts input required. In a following test the same output was achieved but with only 80 watts of continual input.

They don't always use the term "cold fusion" do describe the process, but often refer to it as an amplifier or catalyzer process.

Focardi states:

"Experimentally, we obtained copper; and we believe that its appearance is due to the fusion of atomic nuclei of nickel and hydrogen, the ingredients that feed our reactor. Since hydrogen and nickel 'weigh' with less, copper must have released a lot of energy, since 'nothing is created or destroyed.' Indeed, the 'Missing Mass' has been transformed into energy, which we have measured: it is in the order of a few kilowatts, two hundred times the energy that was the beginning of the reaction." 

They also claim to be going into production, with the first units expected to ship by the second half of October of this year, with mass production commencing by the end of 2011. The first units will be used to build a one megawatt plant in Greece. This one megawatt plant will power a factory that will produce 300,000 ten-kilowatt units a year.

This would become the world's first commercially-ready "cold fusion" device. Licensees are mentioned, with contracts in the USA and in Europe. Mass production should escalate in 2-3 years. Presently, Rossi says they are manufacturing a 1 megawatt plant composed of 125 modules. These modules should begin shipping by the end of October. On January 31st, 2011, Rossi wrote: "The cost to produce the catalyzer is 1 cent per MWh generated; the life expectancy is 20 years; the cost impact is between 1 and 1.5 cents per MWh."

And then from New Energy and Fuel

Now just to raise the stakes the application discloses that at the time of presentment the inventive apparatus, installed on October 16, 2007, is “at present perfectly operating 24 hours per day, and provides an amount of heat sufficient to heat the factory of the Company EON of via Carlo Ragazzi 18, at Bondeno Province of Ferrara, Italy.”

To quote my dear old friend Mr. Genari, who replied as follows in response to a completely different set of questions,

"Ima don' know, Ya know?

But we are considering looking into a license.

From Dutchsinse.com which we're beginning to really like a lot, even though we're not real sure about most of it.

If you're the impatient type, like we are, scroll forward to 1:00, or if you're the extremely impatient type, like we are, scroll forward to about 1:28.

Because Capitalism provides you with the opportunity to go out there and buy the crap you want.

For example ... from CNN Money

Sales of luxury doomsday bunkers up 1,000%

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- A devastating earthquake strikes Japan. A massive tsunami kills thousands. Fears of a nuclear meltdown run rampant. Bloodshed and violence escalate in Libya.

And U.S. companies selling doomsday bunkers are seeing sales skyrocket anywhere from 20% to 1,000%.

Northwest Shelter Systems, which offers shelters ranging in price from $200,000 to $20 million, has seen sales surge 70% since the uprisings in the Middle East, with the Japanese earthquake only spurring further interest. In hard numbers, that's 12 shelters already booked when the company normally sells four shelters per year.

"Sales have gone through the roof, to the point where we are having trouble keeping up," said Northwest Shelter Systems owner Kevin Thompson.

UndergroundBombShelter.com, which sells portable shelters, bomb shelters and underground bunkers, has seen inquiries soar 400% since the Japanese earthquake. So far sales of its $9,500 nuclear biological chemical shelter tents are at an all-time high -- with four sold in California last week, compared to about one a month normally.

Hardened Structures said inquiries have shot up about 20% since the earthquake -- particularly for its apocalyptic 2012 shelters, radiation-protection tents, and nuclear, biological and chemical (NBC) air filters.

Whether you need it or not.

As opposed to the crap some government guy thinks you ought to have.

GM sells just 281 Chevy Volts in February, Nissan only moves 67 Leafs

Peruse Chevrolet's February sales release, and you'll notice one number that's blatantly missing: how many Chevy Volts were sold. The number – a very modest 281 – is available in the company's detailed data (PDF), but it apparently isn't something that GM wants to highlight. Keeping the number quiet is understandable, since it's lower than the 321 that Chevy sold in January.

Nissan doesn't have anything to brag about here, either (and it avoided any mention of the Leaf sales in its press release). Why? Well, back in January, the company sold 87 Leafs. In February? Just 67.  Where does that leave us?

Well, here's the big scorecard for all U.S. sales of these vehicles thus far:

Volt: 928

Leaf: 173

As always, click the photos for each piece in it's entirety.

“Then there are the vast majority of academics all over the world. They are apologists for the prevailing system. They are paid to support it. They take the king’s shilling, and they do the king’s bidding. Some of these academics are paid directly by the state as faculty members in tax-funded, state-licensed, accredited universities. Others are paid indirectly as faculty members in private universities that are protected from competition by means of accreditation systems that are backed up by laws against unaccredited institutions that use the word ‘university.’

“Every accredited university is part of a cartel. This is why universities are not price competitive. This is why they can afford to grant tenure — a practice unknown in the private sector.

“There is an army of academic critics of Mises’ argument that the free market should be trusted to provide economic planning, and that people backed up by other people carrying guns and badges should not be trusted. In this army are thousands of state-trained and state-accredited economists, who assert that they believe in the free market.

When push comes to shove, they don’t.

“In the entire academic profession, all over the world, there is not a single textbook in economics that says that central banking is conceptually and operationally a cartel-enforcement institution for privately owned large banks: an anti-free market institution. There never has been such a textbook. Every economics textbook separates the chapter on cartels from the chapter on central banks. Neither chapter refers the reader to the other chapter.

“This is not random. This is a crucial part of the arrangement between the national government and the bankers’ cartel in every nation. The academic cartel joins with the bankers’ cartel to screen out any suggestion in a textbook that either of these state-licensed cartels is in fact a cartel. ‘You scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours. You promote the right of my agents to carry guns and badges, and I’ll promote yours.’"

Gary North PhD, Whiskey and Gunpowder 3/18/2011”

Ken Ring at PredictWeather.com who claims over 5000 subscribers including farmers, corporations and government agencies, uses in his own words, "trends and cycles of Moon orbits to predict the weather", scored some notoriety lately for having tweeted a Valentine's Day prediction for a Christchurch, New Zealand earthquake between February 15 and 25.

Damn that was a convoluted sentence.

Be reminded here of the devastating magnitude 6.3 earthquake the hit Christchurch February 21, 2011.

In an article at his site titled The Ethics of Warning, in which Mr. Ring defends himself and his predictions from charges of fear mongering and pseudo science, he writes the following:

Earthquakes correlate with kingtides - they are a function of the kingtide in the land deep under the ground.

The whole 2/3 of the planet that is beneath the Earth's surface has a moving egg-shaped bulge that, as the earth daily rotates, is always pointing to the moon, just as when a magnet is moved above a plate of iron filings and the area under the magnet is always more responsive.

The perigee (day that the moon is closest to earth each month) is in control of the timing of the kingtide. Sometimes new moon accompanies perigee (as on 4 Sept 2010), sometmes full moon (22 Feb 2011), so kingtide occurs around these dates as well. 

Before new year kingtide days were new moon-related. From February onwards full moon has accompanied perigee, so kingtides were full moon-related.

It does not mean all full moons (or new moons) bring the biggest earthquakes.

Perigee (closest approach to the Earth) is also a factor.

I can find no other use of the phrase kingtide anywhere (I know you believe me when I say that I looked) that correlates in any way to Mr. Rings.

He predicts an second earthquake March 20, 2011 in Christchurch based on the astronomy of that day, namely the "Supermoon" on March 19, and the Jupiter, Saturn opposition which is exact on March 28, 2011, but is within a few degrees from mid March until mid April 2011.

Click on the below sketch of the Jupiter, Saturn opposition for a radically different way to look at both the world and the universe around you.

Remembering as always ..... head ..... swivel.

Our friend Richard Nolle at Astropro is picking up some press from the mainstream lately

The following is from an article at Accuweather.com.

As always, click the photo to link up the entire piece.  

Extreme Super (Full) Moon to Cause Chaos?

Mar 1, 2011; 7:54 AM ET

Coming up later this month (March 19 to be exact) the moon will make its closest approach to Earth (called lunar perigee) in 18 years. A new or full moon at 90% or greater of its closest perigee to Earth has been named a "SuperMoon" by astrologer Richard Nolle. This term has been recently picked up by astronomers. An extreme "SuperMoon" is when the moon is full or new as well as at its 100% greater mean perigee (closest) distance to earth. By this definition, last month's full moon, this month's and next month's will all be extreme "SuperMoons".

Please visit Richard's website by clicking here.

I have read several "new age" forecasts that go something like this: "Extreme SuperMoon this month (March 2011) will bring strong earthquakes and storms and/or unusual climate patterns." Google the term 'extreme SuperMoon March 2011' and see for yourself what comes up. The validity of these types of forecasts can be debated ad nauseum.

There were SuperMoons in 1955, 1974, 1992 and 2005. These years had their share of extreme weather and other natural events. Is the Super Moon and these natural occurences a coincidence? Some would say yes; some would say no. I'm not here to pick sides and say I'm a believer or non-believer in subjects like this, but as a scientist I know enough to ask questions and try to find answers.

We obviously know that there are scientific laws that say the moon affects the Earth (i.e. tides). There are also less proven theories that propose that the moon affects the Earth in other ways (i.e. abnormal behavior during a full moon). Can the Super (full) Moon contribute to extreme weather and other natural phenomenon?

Here are Richard's thoughts on March's "SuperMoon" activity from his February 28, 2011 post.

Click on the map for the entire post.

Markets, geopolitics and history aside, you can’t get there from here if you don’t get out of Mother Nature’s way.

First and foremost, that means being mindful of the March 19 full moon 28° 48' Virgo.

It’s arguably the year’s most extreme SuperMoon, for a couple of reasons: it’s the closest SuperMoon of the year, occurring within an hour of lunar perigee (the Moon’s closest approach to Earth): the Moon will look huge when it rises at sunset.

And being so close to the vernal equinox, this SuperMoon occurs within hours of the moment the full moon crosses the celestial equator from north to south, just as the Sun crosses in the opposite direction. That makes this a major geophysical stress window, centered on the actual alignment date but in effect from the 16th through the 22nd.

Of course you can expect the usual: a surge in extreme tides along the coasts, a rash of moderate-to-severe seismic activity (including magnitude 5+ earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruptions), and most especially in this case a dramatic spike in powerful storms with heavy precipitation, damaging winds and extreme electrical activity.

Floods are a big part of the picture in this case, although some of these will be dry electrical storms that spark fast-spreading wildfires.

As always, keep your head on a swivel.