Just When You Thought It Was Safe: Asian Murder Hornets

Coronavirus cases are trending down in many places, people are going back to work. Then, just when you thought it was safe to leave isolation, the Asian Murder Hornets show up.

The vicious insects, which can grow to two inches long, have stingers that are long enough to puncture beekeeper suits and venom is so potent that victims say it feels like being stabbed with hot metal. If that weren’t enough, the hornets use mandibles shaped like shark fins to decapitate and kill normal bees, wiping out honeybee hives in a matter of hours.

A brutal video on Twitter depicted a Murder Hornet in action against a mouse.

The FilthyFranksta@FilthyFranksta

WTF...., why can’t these murder hornets just act like regular hornets!!!

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7:16 PM - May 3, 2020

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The hornets are now showing up in Washington State reports The New York Times. After two of the insects were discovered last December, state officials and local beekeepers embarked on a search to find the hive and determine the extent of the threat.

“Most people are scared to get stung by them,” said beekeeper Ruthie Danielsen. “We’re scared that they are going to totally destroy our hives.”

Ed Yong, science writer at The Atlantic, notes that Japanese honeybees have a defense against an attack by the hornets. The bees create a “heatball,” swarming the attacking hornets and vibrating their wings. The activity raises both the temperature and carbon dioxide levels, choking the hornet. American honeybees apparently have no such defense.

Ed Yong

✔@edyong209

About those "murder hornets": Japanese honeybees defend themselves by swarming the hornets & vibrating their wing muscles. This is called "heatballing." It raises the temperature and CO2 levels inside the ball. The hornets cook and choke to death.

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10:05 AM - May 4, 2020

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The hornets kill up to 50 people per year in Japan. Like killer bees, the hornets are very aggressive and often attack in groups. Several stings can expose victims to toxic venom equivalent to a snakebite and can be fatal.

Subsequent discoveries of additional hornets in Canada compounded the problem. Scientists believe that there were at least two separate introductions of the hornets into North America.

Scientists are now exploring the use of thermal imaging to locate additional nests since the temperature inside the hives is often warmer than surrounding ambient temperatures. Researchers have also put out traps and may try to use a radio-frequency identification (RFID) tag to track captured hornets as they return to the nest. The large size of the hornet makes them able to fly with such trackers.

The full extent of the Murder Hornet infestation is not yet known, but there is limited time to root out the nests of the invaders and destroy them before they become too established. If the hornets cannot be eradicated quickly, they may spread throughout North America, killing honeybees and endangering people as they go.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Trump To Ask Allies To Pay ‘Cost Plus Fifty’ To Host US Troops

Friday afternoon is often the time to drop unpopular and controversial news. As the denizens of Foggy Bottom hurry to leave the District of Columbia for the weekend, it can be a convenient time to unveil news that will reflect poorly on the elites who control the government. That was the case today as the Trump Administration dropped a figurative bomb whose effects will be felt around the world.

As the president toured tornado-ravaged areas of Alabama, Bloomberg reported that Mr. Trump is demanding Germany, Japan, and any other country hosting American troops pay the full cost plus an additional 50 percent. Per Bloomberg, the plan would apply first to Germany and Japan and eventually be applied to every other nation where American troops are based. Under the plan, some countries would pay five or six times their current share of defense costs.

President Trump has reportedly pushed the idea for months and his insistence on the requirement reportedly derailed talks with South Korea about the status of the 28,000 US troops stationed on the Korean Peninsula. Trump allegedly overruled negotiators with a note to National Security Advisor John Bolton that read, “We want cost plus 50.”

The proposal seems tailor-made as an excuse for President Trump to unilaterally withdraw American forces from abroad and bring the troops home. During the 2016 campaign, Trump questioned the need for mutual defense pacts such as NATO and railed against the cost of basing troops abroad. While in office, Trump’s relationship with America’s allies has been rocky and the president has reportedly considered withdrawing the US from NATO. The demand for more money from allies may be intended to resolve the issue by having host countries kick American forces out.

It is possible that the demand is simply a negotiating ploy by the president, who has pushed NATO and other allies to pay a larger share of the cost of their defense in the past. The president may also be swayed by advisors to accept a less harsh deal. This week Mr. Trump reversed himself on a decision last year to withdraw American troops from Syria.

The basing of American soldiers around the world benefits both the host country and the United States. In the War on Terror, the US used bases in Germany as a transshipment point to and from the Middle East. Ramstein Airbase was a vital link in the logistical chain to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Likewise, the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center is the largest overseas military hospital in the world. Many American soldiers injured in Iraq and Afghanistan were sent to Landstuhl for stabilizing treatment before returning home.

It is not clear whether the US is close to making a formal demand of its allies or whether Friday’s announcement is a trial balloon, but the proposal comes at an awkward time. Vladimir Putin’s Russia has been waging an offensive war on the borders of NATO against Ukraine, another US ally, since 2014. In Asia, Trump’s attempted détente with North Korea has yielded little in the way of results while China continues to solidify its hold on the South China Sea.

While basing American soldiers abroad has not been free for the United States, it has been beneficial. The seventy years that American troops have occupied parts of Europe and Asia has been known as the Pax Americana, the American peace. The period allowed the US to become the world’s preeminent trading power and the leader of the community of nations.

It is a virtual certainty that the forward deployment of American soldiers prevented numerous wars including a Soviet invasion of Europe. If President Trump gives in to his isolationist tendencies, it is likely that the world may find that the cost in both blood and treasure of bringing American soldiers home is much greater than the cost of basing them abroad.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Amelia Earhart Photo Debunked, But History Channel May Have Debunked Global Warming Concern

The History Channel special on Amelia Earhart this week fell flat with respect to finding the fate of the famed aviatrix, but, in addition to discrediting The History Channel, the special may have also helped debunk a major concern of climate change alarmists. The evidence for the survival of Earhart and navigator Fred Noonan was largely based on photograph. Ironically, it is a History Channel photograph that, if accurate, causes problems for the climate change crowd.

The “lost evidence” for Earhart’s survival consisted of a photograph that showed people who resembled Earhart and Noonan on a dock on Jaluit Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The History Channel’s assumption, based on the resemblance of the people in the photo to Noonan and Earhart, was that the pair had survived their last flight and were taken prisoner by the Japanese and later executed.

In a post on July 9, Japanese military history blogger Kota Yamano challenged the History Channel claim. Yamano said that an internet search for the picture revealed that it was taken too early to be Earhart and Noonan. The picture was originally published in a travelogue, “The Ocean's ‘Lifeline’: The Condition of Our South Seas,” in 1935, two years before the disappearance of Earhart and Noonan.

“The photo was the 10th item that came up,” Yamano said in an interview with The Guardian. “I was really happy when I saw it. I find it strange that the documentary makers didn’t confirm the date of the photograph or the publication in which it originally appeared. That’s the first thing they should have done.”

There were other problems with The History Channel theory as well. The Daily Beast points out that when Charles Lindbergh made an emergency landing in Japan in 1931, he was given a hero’s welcome. The Daily Beast also cites a Japanese book from 1982 that detailed the story of a crewman on the Japanese navy ship in the picture. According to the testimony of Japanese veterans, the Japanese navy was instructed to join the search and rescue effort for Earhart. The ship’s log contains no mention of Earhart or Noonan.

Earhart and Noonan disappeared on July 2, 1937. At that time, relations between the US and Japan were still good. The attack on Pearl Harbor was four years away. Even though fighting in the Pacific predated America’s entry into World War II, the region was still largely peaceful at the time. Japan’s war with China began five days after Earhart’s disappearance with a battle between Japanese and Chinese forces at Marco Polo bridge in Beijing. At the time, Earhart disappeared, the Japanese had not motive to keep her rescue a secret.

The theory that Earhart went off course on her way to Howland Island and wound up crash landing in the Marshall Islands also strained credulity. The Marshall Islands are 1,000 miles away from Earhart’s intended target. To end up there, Earhart and Noonan would have had to fly to the vicinity of Howland Island, realize that they were lost, and then, low on fuel and disoriented in bad weather, fly past numerous other islands for another thousand miles.

On the other hand, Steve Milloy of Junk Science claims that a graphic used in The History Channel’s documentary undermines the argument for rising sea levels due to climate change. The graphic shows Mili Atoll, an island in the Marshall Islands, with markings that say “area between blue lines was shore in 1937.” The blue lines on the photo show a forested area in 2017. If the History Channel photo is accurate, Mili Atoll has grown since 1937 instead of getting smaller due to rising seas.

The History Channel documentary does point out that coral islands can change shape over time. A 2015 report by New Scientist found that, even if sea levels rise, many islands are rising faster.

If the History Channel expose’ was truly a bust on the scale of Gerado’s unveiling of Al Capone’s vault, what really happened to Earhart and Noonan? Sometimes the simplest and most obvious explanation is also the correct one. The pair were using primitive navigation methods to Howland Island, a small, isolated speck of land. The Pacific is a very big ocean and Earhart and Noonan are most likely at the bottom of it.

Read the full article on The Resurgent

Are the lessons of Pearl Harbor forgotten?

As America remembers the attack on Pearl Harbor that occurred 75 years ago today, I have to wonder how well we remember the lessons of that day of infamy. Everyone remembers the Japanese sneak attack that Sunday morning, but not everyone remembers the events that led to war.

Two of the factors that resulted in the destruction of the American Pacific fleet are rearing their heads in modern American policy. First was American military weakness that was not widely recognized at the time. Second was an attitude of isolationism that was brought on by the economic malaise of the Great Depression. There are parallels to both in 2016.

After WWI, the “war to end all wars,” the American military was placed on the back burner. Particularly after the onset of the Great Depression, the US military was placed behind FDR’s public works projects in importance. While the federal government built national parks and post offices, the army and navy languished.

As Japan and Germany built up their armed forces in the 1930s, the New Deal gave them a head start of almost a decade. At the beginning of WWII, the US Army was smaller than the army of Portugal at about 180,000 men. The air force, which was then part of the army, had only a few hundred planes, many of which were already obsolescent. In 1941, the US Navy had only six aircraft carriers to split between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. They faced a fleet of 10 new Japanese carriers.

The situation is analogous to today’s American military. The Heritage Foundation recently found that the US armed forces were understrength and weak after years of protracted wars and budget cuts. Modernization has been sacrificed to maintain current strength while potential adversaries like Russia and China have both expanded and modernized their forces.

Isolationism grew from the Great Depression as well, but had roots that ran deeper. After WWI, Congress rejected American membership in the League of Nations, a precursor to the United Nations. While the US actively intervened in Central America, Americans did not want to involve themselves in European or Asian politics. Protectionist policies like the Smoot-Hawley tariff served to both further isolate America from the world while at the same time preventing economic recovery.

“America first,” a slogan heard on both sides of the political aisle this year, was also a popular phrase in the 1930s. When President Roosevelt felt it necessary to intervene against Japanese aggression in China and Nazi aggression in Europe, he could not do so openly due to opposition at home. Father Charles Coughlin and aviator Charles Lindbergh were among the celebrities who whipped up isolationist sentiment against American involvement overseas.

Today, political figures on both sides of the aisle have argued against American involvement against aggressive and expansionist governments. It was Republican opposition that derailed President Obama’s plan to intervene against Assad in Syria, a failure that led to the protracted civil war and more instability in the region. Donald Trump removed the plank from the Republican platform that called for lethal aid for Ukraine in its fight against insurgents backed by Vladimir Putin. China is building islands in the South China Sea that will become military bases while the United States does nothing.

Pearl Harbor was the result of a perfect storm of military weakness and inward-looking policies that allowed dictatorships to flourish. When tyrants like Hitler thought that no one dared oppose them, they decided to expand their borders. The desire to avoid war at all costs while failing to maintain military readiness eventually led to a war that cost millions of lives. Tragically, these lessons of Pearl Harbor appear to have been forgotten.  

Originally published on The Resurgent

Georgia reactor is similar to failing Japan nuclear plant

Georgia is not typically associated with earthquakes, but fault lines do run through Georgia.  The Great Valley fault extends from Chatsworth to Cartersville and the Brevard fault runs from Atlanta to Stephens County and then to Brevard, N.C.  These faults, as well as the New Madrid fault in Arkansas and Missouri, have produced earthquakes and tremors in Georgia on multiple occasions.

The earliest recorded Georgia earthquake was in 1811 and shook bricks from chimneys.  Savannah and Tybee Island were shaken by the 1886 quake centered near Charleston, S.C.  This earthquake was estimated at approximately 7.6 on the Richter scale.  There have been a number of earthquakes in Georgia that are rated at V or VI on the Mercalli Scale.  This is considered strong and would be approximately equivalent to a 6 on the Richter scale.  The U.S.G.S reports the most recent Georgia earthquake was a 2.2 that was centered near Milledgeville on August 10, 2010.  (See the U.S.G.S. Seismic Hazard Map of Georgia here.)

Georgia also is home to two nuclear power plants.  The Edwin Hatch plant in Baxley has two units, which have been operating since 1974 and 1978 respectively.  The Alvin Vogtle plant in Waynesboro also has two units.  These came online in 1987 and 1989.  A new reactor is currently being built at Plant Vogtle.  Other states bordering Georgia also have additional plants such as the Savannah River Site which is located in South Carolina near Augusta.

Hatch’s Unit 1 is only three years younger than Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan that is center of the current crisis and has the same GE Mark 1 boiling water reactor.  Nevertheless, experts point out that the problem in Japan is not with the design of the reactor itself, but with the fact that the earthquake and tsunami cut off electrical power to the plant.  Diesel backup generators then came online, but stopped working several hours later.  At that point, the pumps that provided water to cool the fuel rods ceased to function.  The Wall St. Journal reports that the Japanese engineers failed to cool the rods with sea water until it was already too late.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s assessment was that the tsunami was primarily responsible for the loss of power in the Japanese plants.  The damage caused by tsunamis is limited to coastal areas about 1,000 feet from the water.  Georgia’s nuclear plants are far enough inland that they would not be threatened by a tsunami.  The NRC further states that U.S. nuclear plants are designed to withstand the largest magnitude expected in their area plus a safety margin.  The Japanese plants withstood an earthquake magnitude of 9.1.  Georgia earthquakes have historically been limited to about six on the Richter scale.

The Union of Concerned Scientists claims that many U.S. plants, like the one in Baxley, have the same vulnerability to loss of main and backup power.  The group says that the Japanese plant had batteries that supplied the plant with electricity for eight hours, but engineers could not restore power in that time.  According to the U.C.S., many U.S. nuclear plants have battery power that only lasts four hours.

The instability of the world’s oil supply and its increasing price, along with concerns over global climate change, make nuclear power an important part of America’s future energy plans.  While Georgia is not in imminent danger of an earthquake or tsunami, there is the possibility of power loss from other sources.  As the U.C.S points out, fires, which can be caused by earthquakes, can pose a significant risk of damage to a reactor’s primary and secondary power systems.

In the U.S., fire protection standards were updated after a 1975 fire at Brown’s Ferry near Decatur, Ala.  which threatened the plants ability to control one of its reactors.  Changes to the standard in 2010 allow individual plants to evaluate their own fire risks.  Some claim that this standard is too weak and point out that many U.S. nuclear reactors are in violation of fire codes.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission stated in response that older plants were built before 1981 when fire protection standards were updated.  Exemptions were issued to these existing plants in cases where safety gains from modifications would have been negligible.  Further, the NRC says that the voluntary fire risk analysis program will enhance safety by focusing attention on “design and operational issues according to their importance.”

In spite of its potential as clean energy, nuclear power has long had strong opposition in the United States.  No nuclear power plant has been built in the U.S. since 1979, the same year that the Three Mile Island incident occurred.  As a result, the U.S. does not rank in the top ten nations according to the percentage of electrical power provided by nuclear energy, but ranks first in the number of reactors shut down.  According to the Energy Information Administration, the U.S. gets just under 20% of its power from nuclear energy.  More than 76% of France’s energy is nuclear.

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Rabbis say Arab unrest may signal Messiah's coming

Rabbi Chaim Konievsky (Wikimedia)

A number of Israeli rabbis have said that the spreading unrest in the Arab and Muslim world may signal the long-awaited coming of the Messiah.  Christians, who believe that the Messiah has already come in the form of Jesus (Yeshua), can also find many reflections of Biblical prophecy in current headlines.

Chaim Kanievsky, a Lithuanian Orthodox rabbi who is believed by his followers to have mystical powers, said, “"It is evident that many unnatural things are happening.  People have come to me and said that it's 'Gog and Magog'. We cannot know. But it's probable that any unrest that God creates shows that the Messiah is coming, and that we must begin to prepare for it and become stronger."

Another Lithuanian Orthodox rabbi, Aharon Leib Steinman, blamed the unrest on the persecution of Torah (Old Testament) students:  “Recently it appears that there is a powerful effort to destroy and agitate the world of the Torah, through various attempts to prosecute kollels and yeshiva students.  When you try to agitate the world of the Torah, God agitates the world.”

Much of the focus on the Arab uprisings stems from a Biblical prophecy of Ezekiel regarding the future War of Gog of Magog.  In the prophecy (found in Ezekiel 38-39), a coalition of nations is led by “Gog, ruler of Rosh, Meschech, and Tubal” in an attack on Israel.  Although the names of the nations listed in the prophecy are antiquated, most are generally believed to refer to modern day Arab and Muslim nations.  One nation that is easily identified is Persia, which is the historic name of Iran.  Modern Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons with which to destroy Israel.

The current wave of revolutions sweeping the Arab world may eventually bring nations that are now ruled by secular dictatorships and monarchies under the sway of radical groups like the Muslim Brotherhood.  Where the secular governments have realized the folly of directly confronting Israel, newly radical governments might take the success of their revolutions as a sign of Allah’s favor and be more inclined to join in an attack on the predominantly Jewish state.

The War of Gog of Magog will be different from previous Arab-Israeli conflicts which have been settled by conventional means.  According to Isaiah, the coming war will be won by divine intervention.  In 38:19, Ezekiel describes an earthquake followed by a rain of fire and ice from the sky in verses 21-22 as Gog’s troops turn on each other.  This bombardment from Heaven will totally destroy the attacking forces.  Chapter 39 describes the aftermath of the attack and the carnage inflicted on the attacking armies.

In Christian theology, the War of Gog of Magog is typically thought to occur before the second coming of Jesus Christ.  It is possible that the utter destruction of the militant Islamists in the Middle East will make it possible for the Jews to construct a replacement for their temple in Jerusalem.  The last temple was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70 during the First Jewish Revolt.  The Biblical book of Daniel describes a latter-day stoppage of sacrifices at the temple (9:27, 12:11).  Jesus refers to these verses (Matthew 24:15-16) in response to a question about his return and the end of days.  The prophecy of Daniel was partially fulfilled by Antiochus Epiphanes when he defiled the altar of the temple in 168 B.C.  Obviously this is not the ultimate fulfillment because Jesus was speaking of future events and Antiochus’ actions had occurred over 150 years earlier.

The Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount (Wikimedia/Chris Yunker)

The traditional site of the Jewish temple in Jerusalem is now occupied by the Muslim Dome of the Rock mosque.  The mosque is currently protected by the Israeli government even though Jerusalem has been under Israeli control since Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser’s disastrous Six-Day War on Israel in 1967.  Any attempt to remove the mosque to rebuild the temple would undoubtedly spark a holy war.  If the mosque were destroyed as a result of the divine intervention against Gog, however, it might well provide an opening for Jewish Israelis.  Interestingly, the chapters of Ezekiel following the Gog prophecy contain a description of a new temple that has so far never been built.

Along with a defilement of the temple, Jesus also says that signs of his return will include earthquakes and famines.  The recent Japanese earthquake ranked as the fourth largest of all time by magnitude.  Of the nine strongest earthquakes in history, four have occurred within the last decade. With respect to deaths, only two of the top ten earthquakes (Haiti in 2010 and Sumatra in 2004) have occurred in the past decade.  Likewise, world food prices have risen sharply over the past few years.  The rising cost of food is a factor in the Arab uprisings and is already causing a food crisis in the poor nations of the world.

 “We've been living in the ‘last days’ ever since Jesus' ascension,” says David Reid, pastor of Peachtree Community Church in Villa Rica and author of Leading to the Bedroom.  “He could come back for the church at any time.  It's the next appointment on God's calendar. Jesus gave many signs of His return in Matthew 24 and Luke 21 including wars and earthquakes.  All of these things are warnings for us to be ready for His return because it is closer than ever before.”

As David Gushee, professor of Christian ethics at Atlanta’s Mercer University also notes “According to the New Testament, Jesus will one day return to earth. But he also said that no one knows the day or hour of his return. The only proper posture for the Christian is to ‘be always on the watch.’  We must live in a way pleasing to Christ whether he is to return tomorrow or in 10,000 years. All speculations that a certain sequence of events now definitively means that the messiah will soon come should be rejected, even though they seem to be a quite natural response of human beings to the stressful and sometimes terrible events of life on earth.”

For a brief overview of Biblical signs of the approaching end of days, please visit http://www.captainkudzu.com/2007/12/signs-of-times.html

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