APOD: 2021 March 30 - Red Sprite Lightning over the Andes

Red Sprite Lightning over the Andes
Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN)

Explanation: What are those red filaments in the sky? They are a rarely seen form of lightning confirmed only about 30 years ago: red sprites. Recent research has shown that following a powerful positive cloud-to-ground lightning strike, red sprites may start as 100-meter balls of ionized air that shoot down from about 80-km high at 10 percent the speed of light. They are quickly followed by a group of upward streaking ionized balls. The featured image was taken earlier this year from Las Campanas observatory in Chile over the Andes Mountains in Argentina. Red sprites take only a fraction of a second to occur and are best seen when powerful thunderstorms are visible from the side.

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210330.html

Red Sprite Lightning over the Andes
Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN)

G5 Northern Light Storm
Taken by Lukasz Gornisiewicz on March 30, 2001 @ Medicine Hat, Alberta Canada

Back In Time: It is the 20th anniversary tonight where the biggest sunspot (9393) in solar cycle 23 erupted and generated a G5 northern light storm on the evening of March 30, 2001.

https://spaceweathergallery.com/indiv_upload.php?upload_id=173375

More photos here:

March 30 - April 1, 2001 Aurora Gallery

https://spaceweather.com/aurora/gallery_31mar01.html

Spaceweather.com Time Machine 31 March 2021

20 YEARS AGO, AN EXTREME GEOMAGNETIC STORM: Unlike today's blank sun, the solar disk 20 years ago was peppered with sunspots, including a monster named "AR9393." The biggest sunspot of Solar Cycle 23, AR9393 was a truly impressive sight, visible to the naked eye at sunset and crackling with X-class solar flares.

On March 29, 2001, AR9393 hurled a pair of CMEs directly toward Earth. The first one struck during the early hours of March 31, 2001. The leading edge of the shock front was dense (~150 protons/cc) and strongly magnetized -- traits that give rise to powerful geomagnetic disturbances. Within hours, an extreme geomagnetic storm was underway, registering the maximum value of G5 on NOAA storm scales.

In the hours that followed, Northern Lights spread as far south as Mexico. In 20 year old notes, Dr. Tony Phillips of Spaceweather.com describes "red and green auroras dancing for hours" over the Sierra Nevada mountains of California at latitude +37 degrees. Similar displays were seen in Houston, Texas; Denver Colorado; and San Diego, California.

A second CME struck at ~2200 UT on March 31th. Instead of firing up the storm, however, the impact quenched it. When the CME passed Earth the interplanetary magnetic field surrounding our planet suddenly turned north -- an unfavorable direction for geomagnetic activity.

Indeed, the quenching action of the second CME may have saved power grids and other technological systems from damage. The storm's intensity (-Dst=367 nT) stopped just short of the famous March 14, 1989, event that caused the Quebec Blackout (-Dst=565 nT) and it was only a fraction of the powerful Carrington Event of 1859 (-Dst=~900 nT).

https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=31&month=03&year=2021

The biggest sunspot of Solar Cycle 23, AR9393

https://spaceweather.com/images2021/31mar21/monsterspot.gif

COVID Tracking Apps Have Eerie Echoes of Chinese Surveillance System - Washington Free Beacon

Aaron Sibarium
MARCH 30, 2021 5:00 AM

The proposal would amount to a more extreme version of the "vaccine passports" being rolled out by airlines and some U.S. cities, which are already causing controversy. Those passports, such as New York's "Excelsior" app, indicate whether an individual has tested negative or been vaccinated, but not whether they've been exposed to the virus based on tracking data. They collect less information and use a less granular classification scheme than the University of Illinois app, meaning they pose relatively fewer risks to civil liberties.

Only 11 percent of Americans do not have a government-issued ID, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, whereas 19 percent don't own a smartphone. Widespread adoption of the app could ice nearly a fifth of the United States out of the economy, never mind the polling booth.

https://freebeacon.com/coronavirus/covid-tracking-apps-have-eerie-echoes-of-chinese-surveillance-system/

NOT NOW, CATO!

Naomi Wolf: Mandatory Vaccine Passport Could Lead To The End Of Human Liberty In The West | Video | RealClearPolitics

Posted By Tim Hains
March 29, 2021

NAOMI WOLF: I can not say this forcefully enough: This is literally the end of human liberty in the West if this plan unfolds as planned.
"Vaccine passport" sounds like a fine thing if you don't understand what these platforms can do. I'm the CEO of a tech company, I understand what this platform does. It is not about the vaccine or the virus, it is about your data. What people need to understand is that any other functionality can be loaded onto that platform with no problem at all.

What that means is that can be merged with your Paypal account, digital currency, Microsoft is talking about merging it with payment plans, your networks can be sucked up, it geolocates you wherever you go. All of your medical history can be included -- this has already happened in Israel.

And six months later, we're hearing from activists that it is a two-tiered society and basically activists are ostracized and surveiled continually. It is the end of civil society and they are trying to roll it out around the world. It is absolutely so much more than a vaccine pass, it is -- I can not stress enough that it has the power to turn off your life, or to turn on your life, to let you engage in society or be marginalized.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2021/03/29/naomi_wolf_mandatory_vaccine_passport_could_lead_to_end_of_human_liberty_in_the_west.html

Populism Isn’t Dead, It’s Stunned - Gold Goats 'n Guns

March 30, 2021
Tom Luongo

The endless lying comes from the need to sell us on a future we don’t want for a price we can’t afford to pay.  That the pols in D.C. think they can bribe us with a couple thousand bucks of stimmy money after they’ve destroyed our quality of life is the clearest sign ever that they are completely out of touch.

But what is clear as well is that they do not care.  They don’t have to care because our government has openly morphed into the phone company from the old Lily Tomlin sketch of a few years after the Pythons’ heyday.

This absurd level of lying betrays the elites’ utter contempt for us.  They’re obsessed with squashing all traces of the only truly four-letter word in Brussels and D.C. “populism.’

https://tomluongo.me/2021/03/30/parrot-populism-isnt-dead-its-stunned/

The Great Nonsense of ‘The Great Reset’ - LewRockwell

By Thomas DiLorenzo
March 27, 2021

But do not despair, he [Robert Heilbroner] told his fellow socialists, for there is one more trick up our sleeves, namely, the Trojan Horse of achieving socialism under the guise of “environmentalism.”

The basic strategy was then, as it is now, to constantly frighten the gullible public with predictions of The End of the World from environmental catastrophe unless we abandon capitalism and adopt socialist central planning. This has always been the one constant theme of the environmentalist movement (not to be confused with the conservation movement which is actually interested in the health of the planet and the humans who occupy it) since the 1960s.  It ignores the fact that the twentieth-century socialist countries like the Soviet Union and China had by far the worse environmental problems on the planet, orders of magnitude worse than in the capitalist countries.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/03/thomas-dilorenzo/the-great-nonsense-of-the-great-reset/

DISORDER WILL COME – AS CONFUCIUS WARNED

March 31, 2021
By Egon von Greyerz

Superior man can exist at many different levels in society, not necessarily linked to money or investments. There will be many people without money who are prepared at an intellectual or psychological level. These people are probably the happiest since sadly many wealthy people worry about their money all the time rather than enjoy it.

https://goldswitzerland.com/disorder-will-come-as-confucius-warned/

“The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come. When in a state of security he does not forget the possibility of ruin. When all is orderly, he does not forget that disorder may come. Thus his person is not endangered, and his States and all their clans are preserved.” – Confucius

Proverbs 22:3
A prudent man seeth the evil, and hideth himself; But the simple pass on, and suffer for it.

Porgy and Bess - I Got Plenty o' Nuttin Lyrics

Oh, I got plenty o' nuttin'
And nuttin's plenty for me
I got no car, got no mule
I got no misery

De folks wid plenty o' plenty
Got a lock on de door
'Fraid somebody's a-goin' to rob 'em
While dey's out a-makin' more
What for

http://www.themusicallyrics.com/p/240-porgy-and-bess-musical-lyrics/1644-i-got-plenty-o-nuttin-lyrics.html

Philippians 4:8
Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honorable, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.

Covid Vaccine Nonsense – OffGuardian

US-based human rights lawyer breaks down the contradictory claims of “effectiveness”, the incomplete studies and legal minefield of forced use of experimental vaccines

P Jerome
30 March 2021

The efforts to require every American to be injected with an experimental vaccine for Covid-19 are based on the false notion that vaccination will protect recipients from becoming infected with SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, or protect them from passing along the infection to other people.

The FDA, the CDC, the NIH and the pharmaceutical companies involved have all stated very clearly that there is no evidence to support this idea.
...
In each of the EUAs, the FDA has been careful to avoid any claim that the vaccines provide protection against infection or transmission of the virus. Similarly, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have each publicly stated that the vaccines have NOT been shown to prevent infection or transmission.

All of their regulatory documents and commentary addressing the issue state clearly that there is no evidence that the vaccines affect either infection with or transmission of the virus, nor do they prevent symptoms of Covid-19 from appearing.
...
The most important questions about the experimental Covid-19 vaccines were not even asked during the clinical trials: Do these experimental vaccines prevent infection with the virus and do they prevent transmission of that virus? The short answer is No.
...
Under EUA status, the government is not permitted to require Covid-19 vaccinations because the vaccines are not FDA-approved and recipients are clinical trial participants. This is why states cannot legally require vaccination, despite suggestions by some legislators to do just that.
...
Yet the fake “scientific” approach to herd immunity touted by the WHO, US government agencies and politicians, and media monopolists is blatantly dishonest, and has nothing to do with “science.” The push by private companies to require vaccination and “immunity passports” is similarly based on private financial interests, not scientific research.

Government scientists admit that the Covid-19 vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission of the virus they say causes Covid-19, but many of these same scientists also dishonestly claim the vaccines will somehow prevent the spread of the virus, leading to herd immunity.

Such an approach is not only unscientific and dishonest. It’s nonsense.

https://off-guardian.org/2021/03/30/covid-vaccine-nonsense/

Exodus 33:19
And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and will proclaim the name of Jehovah before thee; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.