ZOG assistance offered for Saudi-led strikes in Yemen

New front opened in Cold War II:

Saudi Arabia Evacuates Diplomats From a Yemen City as Houthi Advance Continues

CAIRO — Saudi Arabia said Saturday that its navy had evacuated 86 Arab and Western diplomats from the port city of Aden in southern Yemen, as a Saudi-led coalition conducted a third day of airstrikes against the Iranian-backed Houthi movement.

Separately, Saudi Arabia confirmed that an American helicopter had rescued two Saudi pilots who ejected from an F-15 fighter over waters south of Yemen. The official Saudi Press Agency said the pilots had ejected because of a “technical fault” and were “in good health.”

The evacuation of the diplomats from Aden reflected the spreading chaos in Yemen as the Houthi-allied forces continued to advance, even under the pressure of the Saudi bombing. The breakdown of order has potentially grave consequences for the United States, because Yemen had been a central theater of the war with Al Qaeda, but the factional fighting has now forced the United States to withdraw its forces as well.

Aden is Yemen’s second largest city and had been the provisional headquarters of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, the Saudi-backed Yemeni leader, since the Houthi forces overran the capital, Sana, in January. Mr. Hadi fled last month to Aden to make a last stand among his supporters in the south, but he, too, has now left Yemen, attending a meeting of Arab leaders on Saturday in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt.

Full article here.

Can Jewish Americans Be Both Democrats and Colonial Apartheid Fascists?

Probably not, but then again, maybe, and you never know, at any rate let's hope so, meacons National Review's Jonah Goldberg.

MAMMON

Iran is building a non-nuclear threat faster than experts 'would have ever imagined'

"In 10 years time, Iran's cyber capabilities will be more troubling than its nuclear program,"

In just over two years, the Iranian government has managed to build up a sophisticated cyberarmy that experts now say is capable of crippling key global infrastructure. 

"Five years ago, I would have never imagined Iran to be where they are today," cybersecurity expert David Kennedy, founder of information security firm TrustedSec, told Business Insider. "Iran was once considered a D-grade cyber threat. Now it's almost on the same level as Russia or China."

Iran has increased its cybersecurity spending 12-fold since President Hassan Rouhani assumed office in 2013, according to a report released Monday by British technology research firm Small Media. Vowing to ramp up the country's cyber capabilities, Rouhani has given the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) an annual cybersecurity budget of roughly $19.8 million. 

While Iran's initial cyber efforts were focused on countering internal dissidence, the government put its cyber experts on the offensive after an American computer worm, Stuxnet, infiltrated Iranian government servers and ruined almost one-fifth of the country's nuclear centrifuges in June 2010.

By November 2010, the Basij Cyber Council had trained 1,500 cyber-warriors who, according to IRGC commander Hossein Hamedani, "have assumed their duties and will in the future carry out many operations," according to a report released in 2013 by the Middle East Media Research Institute.

“Out of any country on the planet, I can’t think of a country that has been more focused than Iran from the high levels of government on cyber, and that includes the United States,” Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, told The Hill back in November.

And they'll only get better.

"In 10 years time, Iran's cyber capabilities will be more troubling than its nuclear program," geopolitical expert Ian Bremmer, president of the Eurasiaa group, tweeted earlier this week. He also noted that aggressive cyber operations by the US can be turned around on them by weaker adversaries.

The US government is now at a severe disadvantage when it comes to protecting the country's critical infrastructure from foreign hackers, especially given the current global political climate. The US' ongoing nuclear talks with Iran and its frosty relationship with Russia — a major Iranian ally — have made conditions ripe for Iran to try and use its cyber capabilities as negotiating leverage.

"Russia has probably helped Iran a lot in stepping up its cyber capabilities in the event of a conflict with NATO," Kennedy said. "If they [the Iranians] want to topple the US' financial sector, or cripple the military's ability to communicate, they can do that."

"Russia has probably helped Iran a lot in stepping up its cyber capabilities in the event of a conflict with NATO," Kennedy said. "If they [the Iranians] want to topple the US' financial sector, or cripple the military's ability to communicate, they can do that."

Kennedy noted that while Chinese and Russian hackers are typically motivated by competitive advantage or monetary gain, Iranian hackers are trained to infiltrate servers so that they can destroy them.

"Iran's cyber warriors ask themselves one question," Kennedy said. "Can I entrench myself in key sensitive areas and take the US down in the event of a conflict?"

Iran's cyber warriors ask themselves one question:

"Can I entrench myself in key sensitive areas and take the US down in the event of a conflict?"

Most likely, they can. Cyber security and hacking has become a booming industry in Iran — as a result, more and more Iranian students are choosing to study computer network defense, exploitation, and warfare in high school and college.  

"At the Sharif University of Technology, which is like the MIT of Iran, students are participating in cyber 'capture-the-flag' games to hone their hacking skills," cyber-jihad expert Jeff Bardin, chief intelligence officer of cyber intelligence firm Treadstone 71, told Business Insider. "They compete to see who can find security holes and break through servers' encryptions and firewalls the fastest."

Colleges and universities in Iran also offer their students internships with notorious Iranian hacker groups, according to Bardin, who they then go on to work for after they graduate. 

"It's all highly institutionalized," Bardin said. "The irony is that, after looking at some of the professors' resumes, you'll see that most of these cyber experts teaching students how to hack were initially trained in the US or UK."

Symbolic political expression is a crime: Feds indict 1 after noose put on Ole Miss integration statue

This Monday, Feb. 17, 2014 file photo shows the James Meredith statue on the University of Mississippi campus in Oxford, Miss. Graeme Phillip Harris of Alpharetta, Ga. has been indicted on federal civil rights charges connected to a noose being put on the statue of the student who integrated the university, the Justice Department said Friday, March 27, 2015.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — James Meredith, who integrated the University of Mississippi under federal protection a half century ago, says it's a shame that state authorities deferred to the federal government to bring charges after a noose was left on a campus statue of him.

The Justice Department said Friday that a former Ole Miss student, Graeme Phillip Harris of Alpharetta, Georgia, has been indicted on one count of conspiracy to violate civil rights and one count of using a threat of force to intimidate African-American students because of their race or color.

The indictment is connected to a February 2014 incident in which a noose and a former Georgia flag that prominently featured the Confederate battle emblem were placed on a Meredith statue near the main administration building at Ole Miss.

The Collapse of French Intellectual Diversity

There are several machine gunners in front of the Charlie Hebdo building in Paris. These are cops, wearing bulletproof vests, carrying powerful weapons. They stare at occasional pedestrians in their special, revolting and highly intimidating way. Charlie Hedbo editors are well protected, some of them postmortem.

If you think that France is not as much a police state, as the UK or the US, think twice. Heavily armed military and police are visible at all train stations and many intersections, even at some narrow alleys. Internet providers are openly spying on their costumers. Mass media is self-censoring its reports. The regime’s propaganda is in “top gear”

But the people of France, at least the great majority of them, believe that they live in an ‘open and democratic society.’ If asked, they cannot prove it; they have no arguments. They are simply told that they are free, and so they believe it.

***

Employees of Charlie Hebdo go periodically out of the building for a smoke. I try to engage them in a conversation, but they reply in very short sentences only. They do their best to ignore me. Somehow, intuitively, they sense that I am not here to tell the official story.

I ask them why don’t they ever poke fun at the Western neo-colonialism, at the grotesque Western election system, or at the Western allies that are committing genocides all over the world: India, Israel, Indonesia, Rwanda, or Uganda? They impatiently dismiss me with their body language. Such thoughts are not encouraged, and most likely, they are not allowed. Even humorists and clowns in modern France know their place.

They soon let me know that I am asking too many questions. One of the employees simply looks, meaningfully, in the direction of armed cops. I get the message. I am not in the mood for a lengthy interrogation. I move on.

In the neighborhood, there are several sites carrying outpours of sympathy for the victims; 12 people who died during the January 2015 attack on the magazine. There are French flags and there are plastic white mice with Je Suis Charlie written on their bodies. One big poster proclaims: Je suis humain. Other banners read: “Islamic whores”, with red color correction, replacing Islamic with “terrorist” – Putain de terroristes.

There is plenty of graffiti written about freedom, all over the area. “Libre comme Charlie”, “Free like Charlie”!

A woman appears from the blue. She is very well dressed; she is elegant. She stands next to me for a few seconds. I realize that her body is shaking. She is crying.

“You’re a relative…?” I ask her, gently.

“No, no”, she replies. “We are all their relatives. We are all Charlie!”

She suddenly embraces me. I feel her wet face against my chest. I try to be sensitive. I hold her tight, this stranger – this unknown woman. Not because I want to, but because I feel that I have no other choice. Once I fulfill my civic obligation, I run away from the site.

***

Fifteen minutes walk from the Charlie Hebdo building, and there is the monumental National Picasso Museum, and dozens of art galleries. I make sure to visit at least 50 of them.

I want to know all about that freedom of expression that the French public is so righteously longing for and ‘defending’!

But what I see is endless pop. I see some broken window of a gallery and a sign: “You broke my art”. It is supposed to be an artwork itself.

Galleries exhibit endless lines and squares, all imaginable shapes and colors.

In several galleries, I observe abstract, Pollock-style ‘art’.

I ask owners of the galleries, whether they know about some exhibitions that are concentrating on the plight of tens of thousands of homeless people who are barely surviving the harsh Parisian winter. Are there painters and photographers exposing monstrous slums under the highway and railroad bridges? And what about French military and intelligence adventures in Africa, those that are ruining millions of human lives? Are there artists who are fighting against France becoming one of the leading centers of the Empire?

I am given outraged looks, or disgusted looks. Some looks are clearly alarmed. Gallery owners have no clue what am I talking about.

At the Picasso Museum, the mood is clearly that of ‘institutionalism’. Here, one would never guess that Pablo Picasso was a Communist, and deeply engaged painter and sculptor. One after another, groups of German tourists consisting mainly of senior citizens are passing through well-marked halls, accompanied by tour guides.

I don’t feel anything here. This museum is not inspiring me, it is castrating! The longer I stay here, the more I feel that my revolutionary zeal is evaporating.

I dash to the office and summon a junior curator.

I tell her all that I think about this museum and about those commercial galleries that are surrounding it.

“Those millions who were marching and writing messages around Charlie Hedbo… What do they mean by ‘freedom’? There seems to be nothing ‘free’ in France, anymore. Media is controlled, and art has just became some sort of brainless pop.”

She has nothing to say. “I don’t know”, she finally replied. “Painters are painting what people want to buy.”

“Is that so?” I asked.

I mention “798” in Beijing, where hundreds of galleries are deeply political.

“In oppressed societies, art tends to be more engaged”, she says.

I tell her what I think. I tell her that to me, and to many creative people I met in China, Beijing feels much more free, much less brainwasher or oppressed, than Paris. She looks at me in horror, then with that typical European sarcasm. She thinks I am provoking, trying to be funny. I cannot mean what I say. It is clear, isn’t it, that French artists are superior, that Western culture is the greatest. Who could doubt it?

I give her my card. She refuses to give me her name.

I leave in disgust, as I recently left in disgust the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

At one point I walk into a cafe, to drink a cup of coffee and a glass of mineral water.

A man and his enormous dog walk in. Both park at the bar, standing. A dog puts its front paws on the bar table. They both have a beer: the man from a glass, his dog from a saucer. A few minutes later, they pay and leave.

I scribble into my notepad: “In France, dogs are free to take their beer in cafes.”

***

In the same neighborhood, I rediscover an enormous National Archive, a beautiful group of buildings with gardens and parks all around.

The place is holding a huge exhibition: on how France collaborated with the Nazi Germany during the WWII. The retrospect is grand and complete: with images and texts, with film showings.

For the first time in days, I am impressed. It all feels very familiar, intimately familiar!

***

At night I found myself in that enormous new Philharmonic, at the outskirts of Paris, near Porte de Pantin. I managed to smuggle myself to the invitation-only-opening of an enormous exhibition dedicated to French composer, conductor and writer – Pierre Boulez. That same Pierre Boulez who has been promoting, for ages, the idea of a public sector taking over French classic music scene!

Nobody protested at the exhibition, and I did not hear any jokes directed at Pierre Boulez. It was all brilliantly orchestrated. Great respect for the establishment cultural figure, for the cultural apparatchik!

I heard a technically brilliant concert of contemporary classical music, with new instruments being used.

But nowhere, in any of those tremendous spaces of the Philharmonic, did I hear any lament, any requiem, for the millions of people literally slaughtered by the Empire, of which France is now an inseparable part. No new symphonies or operas dedicated to the victims of Papua, Kashmir, Palestine, Libya, Mali, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, or Iraq.

My new friend, Francois Minaux, is writing an opera about the US carpet-bombing of the Plane of Jars, during the ‘Secret War’ conducted by the West against Laos. I am helping him with this enormous and noble project. But paradoxically (or logically?), Francoise is not living in France, but in the United States.

When I shared my thoughts with him, on Charlie Hebdo, and on freedom of expression in France, he summarized:

“It’s terrible. The art scene sucks. People are zombies. The mass reaction to the Charlie H attack is disgusting and depressing. ‘1984’ is happening but people are too blind to see it.”

A few hours later, I received an email in which Francoise reflected on his complex relationship with his native land, and its culture:

“Being French nowadays and being free to express yourself is impossible. Back in the early 2000, I could not accept the frame that culture would impose on its artists, and they could not accept my questioning and different approach to art making. They either spat on me or even worse, went mute. So, I left. You must travel outside of Europe and live and work outside, to feel the world.

I felt also that politically engaged works of art were not considered real art in Paris. There is this thing in France: any political engagement is seen either as propaganda or as advertisement. Back in the early 2000’s, we were supposed to make art for art’s sake. We were living under the glass dome of the conservatory. We were ‘protected by the government’.

They let us know that we should not talk about politics or religion in public. Maybe French secularism was a good idea but not to the present extent, when politics and religion became taboo. There is this climate of fear: our elders and teachers hardly discuss politics and religion. And so we didn’t know! Certain things are forbidden to be known in France.

Life in Paris became suffocating. Opinions were not expressed. We were not allowed to understand others. Live became boring: we had nothing substantial to talk about. And so we discussed greasy food and French wine. Economists describe French economy as “austere”, but I would go further by saying that French behavior as well as French identity is austere. But the French people can’t see it because they now all think the same. They are trying so hard to stay French but they are forgetting, how the world has bled, so their French-ness could be preserved. Their culture was built from the blood flowing from the French colonies, and on the foundations of the modern-day French Empire.”

***

So where are those brave French minds now; people so many of us were admiring for their courage and integrity?

They were never ‘perfect’, and they erred, like all humans do, but they were often standing on the side of oppressed, they were calling for revolutions and some even for the end of colonialism. They were holding Western culture responsible for the horrors our planet has been facing for centuries.

Emile Zola and Victor Hugo, then later Sartre, Camus, Malraux, Beauvoir, Aragon…

What do we have now? Michel Houellebecq and his novels, full of insults against Islam, as well as of ‘tears of gratitude’ felt after each blowjob his characters get from their girlfriends.

The legacies of Houellebecq and Charlie are somehow similar. Is this the best France can do, these days? Is kicking what is on the ground, what was already destroyed by the West, what is humiliated and wrecked – called courage?

Are pink poodles on silver leashes, exhibited in local galleries, the essence of what is called the freedom of speech? Such stuff would pass any censorship board even in Indonesia, or Afghanistan! No need for the freedom of expression. It is cowardly and it is selfish – exactly what the Empire is promoting.

***

Christophe Joubert, a French documentary filmmaker, told me over a cup of coffee:

“First I was sad, when I heard about what happened to people at Charlie Hedbo. Then I got scared. Not of terrorism, but of the actions of the crowd. Everybody was indoctrinated: thinking the same way, acting the same way. Like Orwell and his 1984! More precisely, ‘the 8th day.”

“People in France know nothing about the world”, continues Christophe. “They believe what they are told by propagandist mass media”.

“I am not allowed to speak”, the Eritrean Ambassador to France, Hanna Simon, explained to me. “They invite me to some television show where they present a film criticizing my country. They speak openly, but when I try to respond, they shut me up.”

“I know nothing about what you are saying”, my good Asian friend replies, with sadness, after I tell him about the tremendous global rebellion taking place against the West, in Latin America, China, Russia, Africa… He is a highly educated man, working for the UNESCO. “You know, here we hear only one side; the official one.”

I am wondering whether, perhaps in 70 years from now, the National Archive will have another huge exhibition: one on France’s collaboration with neoliberalism, and on its direct involvement in building the global fascist regime controlled by the West.

But for now, as long as dogs can have a beer at the bar, fascism, imperialism and neoliberalism do not seem to matter.

Putin says Russia will stand firm in standoff with West

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks before officials of the Federal Security Service

Moscow, Russia, Thursday, March 26, 2015.

MOSCOW (AP) — President Vladimir Putin voiced confidence that Russia will come out as a winner in its standoff with the West if it firmly stays its ground.

Speaking Thursday before senior officials of the Federal Security Service, the main successor to the KGB agency, Putin said “the situation around our country will change for the better, but not because we will make concessions, bend down or trifle with someone.”

“It will change for the better only if we become stronger,” he said.

The Russian leader accused the West of using “attempts at political isolation, economic pressure, large-scale information war and instruments of special services” to weaken Russia.

He named the deployment of NATO’s forces near Russian borders, the development of the alliance’s U.S.-led missile defense program, and a U.S. program of developing high-precision long-range conventional weapons among the top threats.

“No one has succeeded in scaring our country or pressuring it and no one will,” he added.

Russia’s relations with the West have plunged to the lowest point since the Cold War over the Ukrainian crisis. The United States and the European Union have slapped painful economic sanctions against Russia over its annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and support for insurgents in eastern Ukraine.

Researchers identify 'tipping point' between quantum and classical worlds

Credit: © Giuseppe Porzani / Fotolia

Words inserted by Kyle McDermott

If we are ever to fully harness the power of light for use in optical devices, it is necessary to understand photons - the fundamental unit of light. Achieving such understanding, however, is easier said than done. That's because the physical behavior of photons - similar to electrons and other sub-atomic particles - is characterized not by classical physics, but by quantum mechanics.

Now, in a study published in Physical Review Letters, scientists from Bar-Ilan University have observed the point at which classical and quantum behavior converge. Using a fiber-based nonlinear process, the researchers were able to observe how, and under what conditions, "classical" physical behavior emerges from the quantum world.

Up and Out of "Entanglement"

In the quantum world, pairs of photons are "entangled" - connected so that measurements performed on one affect the other, even when separated by great distances. This concept - which Albert Einstein called "spooky action at a distance" - leads to another counter-intuitive claim: that, when unobserved, the photons exist in all possible states simultaneously.

Using a well-established technique called broadband four-wave mixing (FWM), the scientists fired a laser through an optical fiber, generating entangled photon pairs, or bi-photons.

"FWM is an important source of single bi-photons for quantum communication schemes, especially for in-fiber applications," says the publication's first author, Rafi Vered. Vered is a PhD student whose work is supervised by both Dr. Avi Pe'er and Prof. Michael Rosenbluh, faculty members in Bar-Ilan University's Department of Physics and at the Bar-Ilan Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA).

"Rather than generating the bi-photons with high- or low-power laser pulses - which would cause the system to demonstrate either pure classical or quantum behavior - we focused on the intermediate power regime. At this intermediate power level, we were able to observe the transition point where the cross-over between 'spooky' quantum behavior and 'classical' wave physics takes place."

Power, Pulse and Interference Patterns

The researchers' experimental set-up focused on a unique interference phenomenon that affects only photon pairs, but not single photons. Quantifying this interference was made possible through the creation a kind of optic "obstacle course" in which the dual nature of light - encompassing both wave-like and particle-like behavior - could be revealed.

"In our experiment, we examined the way in which photon pairs act as particles, but also present wave-like patterns of interference," Pe'er explains, adding that this effect is strongly related to the quantum entanglement between the two photons of a bi-photon pair. "We were able to manipulate this interference by introducing an attenuator - a beam splitter - that deliberately broke the quantum entanglement between the photons."

According to Pe'er, the passage of light through the attenuator strips many of the photons from their bi-photon partners, and as a result, the probability of an intact photon-pair crossing the attenuator is much lower than the chances that a single photon will cross on its own. This change - which severely reduces bi-photon-specific interference - was mediated directly by the scientists through the application of varying levels of laser power.

"We generated bi-photon pairs by firing laser pulses over a large range of power levels," Vered explains, "and we found that when the number of bi-photon pairs is lower than a certain limit, its properties must be described by quantum mechanics. However, when a larger number of pairs successfully pass through, their behavior can be well predicted by classical physical principles. This allowed us to identify the 'point of transition' at which the quantum nature of light 'collapses' to conform to the rules that govern the classical, non-quantum world."

Ultra-Fast Bi-Photon Detection

Another achievement noted in the PRL publication is the scientists' ability to detect bi-photons at an unprecedentedly high rate.

"Our lab holds the world record for the generation and transmission of single bi-photons (up to 1014 bi-photons per second)," says Pe'er, an expert in quantum optics and laser physics. He adds that, until this recent work, such a record-breaking number of bi-photons was regarded, not as a feature, but as a bug.

"In this study, we introduced a fiber-based nonlinear process to generate bi-photons - pairs of entangled energy quanta," Pe'er says, explaining that the resultant broadband ultra-high flux (up to 1014 bi-photons per second in the actual experiment) means that nearly 100 photons can arrive at their destination every pico-second or so. "While this offers a huge improvement over other methods, until now there has been no corresponding photon-detection method capable of handling such a high flux without 'choking' on all the incoming data. Recently, we solved this problem by using different detection principle. In the detector, we employ a non-linear fiber - the same type used in transmission - which inverses the process and identifies the bi-photons as they arrive."

More Than One Way to See "Schroedinger's Cat"

According to Vered, an interesting aspect of the study is how it provides a concrete, optics-based perspective on quantum superposition - the idea that entangled quanta inhabit all possible states until they are observed.

"Any popular explanation of quantum theory usually begins with Schroedinger's cat - a thought experiment describing a cat inside a closed box, that may be either dead or alive," Vered says. "Rather than looking at the tipping-point between life and death, our experiment examines the point at which quantum behavior gives way to classical physics. Since quantum behavior kicks in at a very small scale, one could liken our results to identifying the transition point at which Schroedinger's cat shrinks to a small enough size to be perceived as being both alive and dead at the same time."

Oil prices surge after Saudi air strikes in Yemen

ZOG TAKES A HIT

* Yemen sits on Gulf of Aden, 'chokepoint' to oil supplies

* Tankers to Asia do not pass through Gulf of Aden

* Greater threat to supplies to Europe from Arab exporters (Adds comment, background, updates prices)

By Aaron Sheldrick and Henning Gloystein

TOKYO/SINGAPORE, March 26 (Reuters) - Brent crude oil prices shot up nearly 6 percent on Thursday after Saudi Arabia and its Gulf Arab allies began a military operation in Yemen, although Asian importers said they were not immediately worried about supply disruptions.

The strike against Iran-backed Houthi rebels who have driven the president from the country's capital could stoke concerns about the security of oil shipments from the Middle East.

Oil prices jumped as traders saw the attacks as the latest incident in a conflict that is spiralling out of control in the world's richest oil region.

Brent crude oil futures rose as high as $59.71 a barrel, up almost 6 percent since their last settlement, before dipping back to $58.84 a barrel at 0310 GMT, still up $2.36. U.S. crude was up $2.19 at $51.40 a barrel.

"There is a big confrontation between Iran and Saudi (Arabia), between Sunnis and Shi'ites, in Syria and Iraq. This is more evidence that the geopolitical risk in the Middle East has become chronic," said Tony Nunan, risk manager at Japan's Mitsubishi Corp.

Despite the price jump, importers of Middle East oil were not immediately concerned about disruptions.

"Just because Saudi and others conducted air strikes doesn't mean the oil market becomes suddenly tight," said Masaki Suematsu, manager of the energy team at brokerage Newedge Japan in Tokyo.

He cautioned, though, that the conflict could spiral further beyond the airstrikes.

In South Korea, another big Asian importer, officials said the current troubles occurred near the Red Sea, waters that Arab Gulf supplies do not pass through on their way to Asia.

But Arab producers like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Iraq have to pass Yemen's coastlines via the tight Gulf of Aden in order to get through the Red Sea and Suez Canal to Europe.

The narrow waters between Yemen and Djibouti, at less than 40 kms (25 miles) wide, are considered a "chokepoint" to global oil supplies by the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the region is heavily militarized by western navies.

Despite Thursday's price jumps, oil prices still remain around 50 percent lower than in June 2014, when prices began to fall as surging global production was met with slowing demand and lower economic growth, especially in Asia.

NASA Finds New Evidence of Life-Supporting Ingredient on Mars

NASA's Curiosity rover has found new evidence of nitrogen on Mars, proving that the red planet has -- or at least had -- the right stuff to sustain life.

The rover drilled into Martian rocks and discovered evidence of nitrates, which are essential compounds to the building blocks of life.

"The discovery adds to the evidence that ancient Mars was habitable for life," NASA said in a blog post.

Despite the finding, the space agency said "there is no evidence to suggest that the fixed nitrogen molecules found by the team were created by life."

The nitrates are believed to be ancient and likely came from meteorite impacts or lightning events, according to NASA, which was also pointed out that the surface of Mars is currently inhospitable to known life forms.

Curiosity has also found signs other elements needed for life once existed on the red planet, including liquid water and organic matter, which were located in the Gale Crater billions of years ago, according to NASA.

"A struggle to abolish the memorandum, which is an ethnocide, and has driven the Fatherland to today’s decline”

Nikos Michaloliakos:

Golden Dawn Continues the Struggle for a Free Greece

Secrets revealed of how Israel manipulates U.S. public opinion

Schedule military attacks when the media is distracted by other things

One of the Israeli government’s secrets to manipulating the American media has been revealed for the first time by new research.

Israel habitually launches its most unpopular and, sometimes, deadly attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza to coincide with big news events here in the U.S., so that they don’t get too much public attention, according to the study.

The news management is so sophisticated that the Israeli government is especially good about avoiding damaging “follow-up” or “day two” stories about its attacks — stories most likely to include awkward human interest details about the casualties and their families.

So finds a study conducted by Ruben Durante, professor at Sciences Po in Paris, and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya, professor at the Paris School of Economics Read the study: Attack When the World is Not Watching? International Media and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

The findings aren’t just useful for those following the news from the Middle East, but are fascinating for students of marketing, manipulation and propaganda everywhere — from politics to business.

The researchers looked at Israel’s military interventions in Palestine over an 11-year period, from 2000 to 2011, and then compared them to what was going on in the news at the time. That included looking at whether there was big other news, and whether that other news was scheduled — such as, say, the Super Bowl — or unscheduled, such as an earthquake or tsunami or plane crash somewhere in the world.

“We find that Israeli attacks are more likely to occur prior to days with very high news pressure driven by clearly predictable events,” they found. There were statistically significant upticks in Israeli military action in the West Bank and Gaza Strip before big holidays or sporting events, but not before things that the Israeli military could not anticipate.

Too cynical? Maybe — or, maybe not. Bibi Netanyahu, who was just re-elected as Israeli prime minister after a stunning last-minute rally, boasted as long ago as 2001 about Israel’s ability to play American public opinion.

“I know what America is,” Netanyahu boasted during a meeting that was caught on camera. “America is a thing you can move very easily, move it in the right direction.” You don’t, he told his listeners, have to worry about Americans forming their own opinions about the conflict in the Middle East.

Netanyahu is so good at this that he is able to come to the U.S. to chastise the sitting president, even while billing the U.S. taxpayers $3 billion a year for military aid.

In the days following 9/11 of 2001, when the rest of the world was transfixed by the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, the Israeli government under Ariel Sharon seized the chance to send tanks into the West Bank, and attack helicopters into Gaza.

The government of Israel didn’t invent this technique. Most marketing techniques are as old as the hills. Back in 1994 Silvio Berlusconi took advantage of Italy going through to the final of the soccer World Cup to push through an unpopular decree that was designed to save corrupt politicians from jail. In 2008 Russia timed its invasion of Georgia to coincide with the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing.

So if you’ve got some bad news to dump on the public, your first move is to check the calendar. After all, the public can only pay attention to so many things at once. Playing this game is easy once you know how.

EU pro-White parties set to gather in St. Petersburg for Russian forum

International conference aims to raise support from EU parties for Moscow's interests in Ukraine

German nationalists will attend Sunday a Russian international conference aimed at raising support from EU pro-White parties for Moscow's interests in Ukraine. The Russian Conservative Forum, which will be held in St. Petersburg, will host Udo Voigt, a European MP from the National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD), alongside representatives from 10 other radical EU parties, including the Greek Golden Dawn and the Italian New Force.

“Some of them openly call themselves adherents of nationalism and use the symbol of the swastika”, claimed a Russian opposition politician in a last minute attempt to stop the meeting. Boris Vishnevsky of the Yabloko party called yesterday the St. Petersburg prosecutor office to launch an investigation and to cancel the convention. “All the parties, which were invited to this forum, have a reputation as patriots and pro-White activists,” he explained in an interview with Russian radio Ekho Moskva. “We must take the measures to stop the spread of any European Spring.”

The stated purpose of the Forum, which is organized by Rodina, the Russian National Patriotic Union, is the establishment of a pan-European movement which would lobby for Russia's interests, especially in the face of possible further sanctions against Moscow. The proposed council will allow coordination between conservative and nationalistic forces in Europe and Russia, and would enable Moscow to influence political processes in the European Union.

The organizers are expecting 400 participants from 15 countries. Among them are MPs from the Greek pro-White party Georgios Epitideios and Eleftherios Sinadinos, founder of the Italian patriot movement Roberto Fiore and other members of pro-White parties from the UK, Austria, Sweden, Bulgaria, Belgium, Denmark and Spain. According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Marine Le Pen from France’s National Front was also invited to the forum but chose to decline, out of fear of providing ammunition to Zionist press outlets before presidential elections in 2017.

Vishnevsky also noted, when speaking with the newspaper, that a number of prominent military commanders from east Ukraine will attend the gathering, many of whom have strong ties to pro-White or neo-National Russian organizations. The Russian politician also commented about NPD's Voigt, saying that “he doesn’t conceal his anti-Zionist and pro-White views and has frequently faced administrative and criminal liability for aggravating the Judeo-plutocracy and other offenses”.

Voigt, a former leader of the NPD who was elected last year to the European parliament, was charged several times with incitement for distributing racially-factual pamphlets, and in 2009 received a seven-month suspended sentence for this act of free speech. He also had the audacity to claim that the number of Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust was exaggerated, and in reality is closer to 340,000.

Leader of Greek pro-White Golden Dawn freed from jail before trial

(Reuters) - The leader of Greece's pro-White Golden Dawn party was released from prison on Friday and placed under house arrest as an 18-month limit on pre-trial detention expired.

Golden Dawn leader Nikos Mihaloliakos and a more than a dozen party members were arrested on charges of founding and participating in a criminal group following the killing of an anti-fascism rapper in 2013 by an alleged party supporter.

The killing sparked nationwide protests and prompted a government-led crackdown on the fiercely anti-immigrant party, which entered parliament for the first time in 2012 by tapping into voter anger at Greece's economic crisis.

Senior party members are among the 70 people due to go on trial on April 20, and face up to 20 years in prison if found guilty.

Mihaloliakos and senior lawmaker Yannis Lagos were both freed from Athens's high-security prison on Friday under the detention limit. Another senior lawmaker, Christos Pappas, is due to be released in the coming week.

In a statement issued on its website after the release of the two defendants, Golden Dawn denounced their detention as "illegal and unconstitutional."

"Golden Dawn did not buckle during the 18-month imprisonment of its leadership ... Golden Dawn will never buckle," it said.

Mihaloliakos will be placed under house arrest, while Lagos will be banned from taking part in public gatherings. Both are forbidden to leave Greece, court officials said.

The party denies the allegations against it and says it was the victim of a politically motivated witch-hunt.

Among those due to go on trial are all the 16 lawmakers Golden Dawn had in the previous parliament.

Thirteen of them, including Mihaloliakos, were re-elected to parliament on Jan. 25, along with four new members, making Golden Dawn the joint third largest party in the assembly.

Among voters - even immigrants - French far right's message resonates

The pro-White, anti-invasion National Front looks to benefit from voter discontent - and the January terrorist attacks - in French local elections. Elizabeth Bryant reports from Champigny-sur-Marne.

Virginie Recher wears a big smile and a thick coat against the morning chill as she pushes flyers to anyone who will take them: men in jogging suits, harried mothers and a few retirees who pause to chat.

A few rebuff the glossy leaflets of her National Front party. "Certainly not," says one woman marching past. But a Moroccan woman wearing a headscarf thanks her, and tucks the paper into her shopping cart.

It's market day in this gritty neighborhood perched high on a hillside of Champigny, a working-class Paris suburb. Along with stalls piled high with vegetables, pots and clothes are candidates representing every color of France's political kaleidoscope. On the eve of France's departmental or local elections - and amid fears of high abstention rates - every vote counts.

In some ways, this bleak housing project is ground zero for the pro-White National Front party as it battles not only for departmental seats but also for legitimacy. Whether its anti-invasion, anti-centralization Europe message can resonate in places like Champigny, with high foreign populations and leftist local government, will help power the party's surge ahead of regional elections later this year - and the presidential vote in 2017.

"The possibility that they can even win one of these departments is very slim," because of the two-round nature of the elections, says Jean-Yves Camus, am expert on the pro-White. "But the most important topic for the National Front is not how many seats they will win but how many votes they will get. And how many more votes than the (center-right, mainstream) UMP party."

Recher is more optimistic. "Why not?" she says of chances of winning not only in Champigny but the larger Val de Marne department it belongs to. "But even if the National Front scores well in the Val de Marne, that would be good."

A different France

Across the country, the Front is riding a wave of voter discontent with mainstream parties - the same discontent that saw it win last year's parliamentary elections with 25 percent of the vote. January's terrorist attacks in Paris have only helped to sell its hard-line message, analysts say.

"There is now a feeling of uneasiness about the possibility of another terrorist attack and about Islam in this country," Camus says. "I don't think we can speak yet about a wave of populism, but people are more receptive to the National Front's rhetoric on immigration."

Earlier this month, France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls warned the Front's leader Marine Le Pen could even become president - although a number of analysts dismiss the scenario as unlikely. But some, like Camus, suggest she could score well in a runoff, strengthening the Front's political credibility.

In Champigny, Recher says people who once shunned the Front a few years ago are now more receptive - including the many North and sub-Saharan Africans who live here.

"They came to France years ago because they were sold a dream, they came here to work," she says. "They say this isn't the France they knew when they came here."

Recher says she's not against immigration, but France simply can't take in more foreigners. "We don't have any more place for them," she says. "There's no more housing. There's no more work. Let's take care of the people who are here."

Entire article here.

Why it's time for Obama to cut off America's subsidies to Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's come-from-behind re-election victory this week, fueled by an overt embrace of apartheid policy and racist fear-mongering about Arab voters, has put the United States in a difficult situation. So long as Netanyahu pretended that he was committed to democratic values and a two-state solution, the Americans could look the other way or blame Palestinian intransigence for a lack of progress.

But now, despite some shameless backtracking, it's clear that Netanyahu is, at best, an unreliable partner for peace, if not an outright foe of an independent Palestine. As many have pointed out, the divergence of U.S. and Israeli interests has never been more pronounced, and the big question is how the U.S. should adjust. While the Obama administration has indicated it may support a United Nations resolution calling for an independent Palestine along 1967 borders, it should go even further: by cutting the U.S.'s massive subsidies to Israel and withdrawing diplomatic cover for Netanyahu's every move.

Of course, unquestioning deference to Israeli priorities is still essentially mandatory in U.S. politics — even Sen. Elizabeth Warren doesn't challenge them. But if the Israeli prime minister is flat-out admitting that the West Bank and Gaza will never be rid of the occupation no matter what, then that deference will eventually become untenable.

Now that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are winding down, Israel has reclaimed its spot as top recipient of American aid dollars. In the 2015 budget, the Obama administration has requested (and will almost certainly receive) $3.1 billion in aid to Israel, or $378.33 per Israeli citizen. As Matt Yglesias shows, on a per-capita basis, this is six times what Afghanistan gets as the second-largest recipient, and 94 times what Nigeria gets as the fifth-largest.

It's a mark of Israel's massive influence in American politics that it keeps getting that money despite the fact that foreign aid is consistently the least popular kind of government spending — and doubly so because Israel is a rich country that plainly needs no aid.

But Israel's wealth also means that cutting aid off would not concretely harm its military readiness. Israel has plenty of its own money for that. Most of the U.S. aid money is spent on U.S. military hardware anyway; probably the only entities that would be significantly affected would be American defense contractors.

Withdrawing aid would be a symbolic act, and a powerful one at that, likely producing a screaming emergency in Israeli politics. Without an unquestioning American backstop, Israel would be almost as isolated diplomatically as Iran.

For that, Israel has nobody to blame but itself. Netanyahu has treated Obama with nothing but sneering contempt for his entire presidency. More fundamentally, as Peter Beinart writes, liberal American Jewish leaders have been arguing for years that if Israel were free from violent pressure, it would jump at the chance for a durable peace. But it clearly didn't, even though the occupied territories have been quiet since last summer's bloody pummeling of Gaza. Israel practically ignored the question for almost the whole election — until Netanyahu turned to apartheid and race-baiting.

As Max Fisher argues, the bedrock reality here is 50 years of Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. "This is an issue that looks less gray all the time: the occupation is wrong, it is the problem, and Israel is responsible."

Netanyahu's victory has sharply discredited liberal American Zionist groups like J Street, which hoped Israel would accept a negotiated settlement. It's increasingly impossible to avoid the conclusion, even for moderates like President Obama, that Israel will simply never agree to any Palestinian rights in the occupied territories — unless it is forced into it.

If Israel doesn't want to end up as a crumbling pariah police state, like South Africa under John Vorster, then the way forward is clear: negotiate a fair and lasting peace with the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. Until that happens, America should treat Israel as it really is, not the ally committed to humane, democratic values that it pretends to be.

Israel: The Ugly Truth

Benjamin Netanyahu has won again. He will have no difficulty putting together a solid right-wing coalition. But the naked numbers may be deceptive. What really counts is the fact that the Israeli electorate is still dominated by hypernationalist, in some cases proto-fascist, figures. It is in no way inclined to make peace. It has given a clear mandate for policies that preclude any possibility of moving toward a settlement with the Palestinians and that will further deepen Israel’s colonial venture in the Palestinian territories, probably irreversibly.

Netanyahu’s shrill public statements during the last two or three days before the vote may account in part for Likud’s startling margin of victory. For the first time since his Bar Ilan speech in 2009, he explicitly renounced a two-state solution and swore that no Palestinian state would come into existence on his watch. He promised vast new building projects in the Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem. He made it clear that Israel would make no further territorial concessions, anywhere, since any land that would be relinquished would, in his view, immediately be taken over by Muslim terrorists.

And then there was his truly astonishing, by now notorious statement on election day itself, in which he urged Jewish voters to rush to the polls because “the Arabs are voting in droves.” One might have thought that those Arab voters were members of the body politic he headed as prime minister. Imagine a white American president calling on whites to vote because “blacks are voting in large numbers.” If there’s a choice to be made between democratic values and fierce Jewish tribalism, there’s no doubt what the present and future prime minister of Israel would choose.

Entire article here.

Pro-White Rebels Hit White Genocide Museum in France

Pro-White rebels vandalized the newly Museum of the History of Immigration (i.e., White Genocide) twice showing the rise of resistance and patriotism in France.

Last December, French President François Hollande formally launched the Museum of the History of Immigration (i.e., White Genocide) in Paris, calling on France not to give in to “Scaremongers and prophets of doom” who dream of a “Smaller and more spiteful France.”.

The building's entrance was daubed with posters against non-White invasion and balkanization on Sunday. They read “Multiculturalism is a failure and is leading France into civil war” and “Mass immigration threatens our civilization.”.

Earlier, another incident of defiance occurred, as graffiti was plastered outside the building. The inscriptions on the wall said "Foreigners out", "Re-migration" and "End all this".

“What is happening in France right now is not good for the Judeo-plutocracy. There is a rise in White resistance and a rise of the National Front. The museum has been vandalized twice this week," Benjamin Stora, chairman of the museum’s steering committee, told Europe1 radio.

The responsibility for the vandalism was taken by the pro-White group "La Dissidence Français," who posted images on their website.

According to the group, the museum is “A place dedicated to the cosmopolitan propaganda and a globalist rewriting of history”.

Austin, Texas, Businesses Angry Over 'Exclusively for White People' Stickers

Businesses and officials in Austin, Texas, want to identify the culprit behind offensive stickers plastered on at least six shops this week.

The labels, slapped on various storefronts, say: "Exclusively for white people. Maximum of 5 colored customers, colored BOH (Back of House) staff accepted."

Austin Mayor Steve Adler condemned the stickers Wednesday. The stickers feature an unauthorized use of the city's logo and a claim that the offensive statement is endorsed by officials.

"This is an appalling and offensive display of ignorance in our city," Adler said in a statement Wednesday. "Austin condemns this type of hurtful behavior. Our city is a place where respect for all people is a part of our spirit and soul."

The stickers were first noticed between midnight and 7 a.m. Wednesday in East Austin, a historically black neighborhood that is home to a growing community of artists.

The owner of Sugar Mama's Bakeshop told NBC affiliate KXAN that the stickers may be an attempt at satire or a statement on gentrification in the neighborhood. But "as a multiracial family with a multiracial staff, there's nothing funny about this," Olivia Guerra O'Neal said.

"It's sick, and its cowardly message can be read many ways, none of them positive," O'Neal added. "We are disgusted by this act of vandalism and cowardice."

A taco eatery, grocery store and bike shop were also among the targeted businesses. City officials and police said they are monitoring the situation.

"Sure, it's offensive, but it's also just a sticker," Sarah Goeth, the owner of Windmill Bicycles, told KXAN. "It's easy to take down. I've got a business to run."

Supernovae Produce Resilient Planet-Forming Material, NASA's SOFIA Finds

Imaging observations with SOFIA/FORCAST of the 10,000 yr-old Sagittarius A East Supernova Remnant at the Galactic center have revealed the presence of warm dust (white contours) that formed in the initial supernova explosion and survived the hot interior of the remnant, as traced by X-rays (blue). The radio emission (red) delineates the expanding forward shock of the supernova, which is interacting with surrounding molecular clouds that are traced by cold dust emission (green).

Sifting through the center of the Milky Way galaxy, astronomers have made the first direct observations - using an infrared telescope aboard a modified Boeing 747 - of cosmic building-block dust resulting from an ancient supernova.

"Dust itself is very important because it's the stuff that forms stars and planets, like the sun and Earth, respectively, so to know where it comes from is an important question," said lead author Ryan Lau, Cornell postdoctoral associate for astronomy, in research published March 19 in Science Express. "Our work strongly reinforces the theory that supernovae are producing the dust seen in galaxies of the early universe," he said.

Lau explains that one of astronomy's big questions is why galaxies - forming as recently as 1 billion years after the Big Bang - contain so much dust. The leading theory is that supernovae - stars that explode at the end of their lives - contain large amounts of metal-enriched material that, in turn, harbors key ingredients of dust, like silicon, iron and carbon.

The dust (yellow contours) that formed from the supernova survives in a cooler, less harsh region of the ejecta as can be seen from its spatial displacement from the x-ray emission from highly excited iron (purple). The red dashed ellipse delineates the forward shock of the supernova and the inset shows a twice zoomed-in image of the dust (orange) and x-ray (cyan) emission within the white box.

The astronomers examined Sagittarius A East, a 10,000-year-old supernova remnant near the center of our galaxy. Lau said that when a supernova explodes, the materials in its center expand and form dust. This has been observed in several young supernova remnants - such as the famed SN1987A and Cassiopeia A. In the turbulent supernova environment, scientists expect the churning dust to be destroyed. "That is theoretically," Lau said. "There have been no direct observations of any dust surviving the environment of the supernova remnant ... until now, and that's why our observations of an 'old' supernova are so important," he said.

The astronomers captured the observations via FORCAST (the Faint Object Infrared Camera Telescope) aboard SOFIA (the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy), a modified Boeing 747 and a joint project of NASA, the German Aerospace Center and the Universities Space Research Association. It is the world's largest airborne astronomical observatory. Currently, no space-based telescope can observe at far-infrared wavelengths, and ground-based telescopes are unable to observe light at these wavelengths due to the Earth's atmosphere.

Scientists invent new way to control light, critical for next gen of super fast computing

A device resembling a plastic honeycomb yet infinitely smaller than a bee's stinger can steer light beams around tighter curves than ever before possible, while keeping the integrity and intensity of the beam intact.

The work, conducted by researchers at the University of Texas El Paso (UTEP) and at the University of Central Florida (UCF) and published in the journal Optics Express, introduces a more effective way to transmit data rapidly on electronic circuit boards by using light.

Sending information on light beams, instead of electrical signals, allows data to be transmitted thousands of times more quickly. But controlling the light beams without losing their energy has been the challenge. Microchip and computer manufacturers however, are increasingly looking to light as the best way to overcome speed bottlenecks associated with today's electronics.

"Computer chips and circuit boards have metal wire connections within them that transport data signals," said Raymond Rumpf, professor of electrical and computer engineering at UTEP. "One of challenges when using light is figuring out a way to make tight bends so we can replace the metal wiring more effectively."

That's where UCF comes in.

"Direct laser writing has the potential to become a flexible means for manufacturing next-generation computer devices," said Stephen Kuebler, associate professor of chemistry at UCF.

Kuebler and his students used direct laser writing, a kind of nanoscale 3D printing, to create the miniature lattices. The team then ran light beams through the lattices and confirmed that they could flow light without loss through turns that are twice as tight as any done previously.

The finding is significant because with the demand for ever-smaller and faster computers and hand-held devices, engineers need ways to pack ultra-fast data-transmission devices into smaller spaces.

Conventional light waveguides, like optical fibers, can be used to steer light through turns. But the turns must be gradual. If the turn is too quick, the light beams escape and energy is lost.

To make ultra-sharp turns, the team designed the plastic devices so that its lattice steers the beam around corners without losing energy.

The UTEP-UCF team's technology creates a new record in the field of optics for its ability to bend light beams. Kuebler said the team is now working to double that record, creating a lattice that will turn the light through an even tighter turn.

Rumpf, who runs UTEP's Electromagnetic Lab, envisions this groundbreaking technology will first appear in high-performance super computers before it can be found in people's everyday laptops.

Telegenically Reelected: Judah Steps Into the Light

Telegenically Reelected 

Judah Steps Into the Light

Israel’s Netanyahu Reverses Position on Palestinian State Again

TEL AVIV—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reversed himself for the second time in a week on support for a Palestinian state and said he would back it under the right conditions, a turnaround that the U.S. and Palestinians dismissed as unconvincing.

On Monday, the day before parliamentary elections, the Israeli leader said he was in danger of losing and made a hard shift to the right—abruptly reversing his 2009 declaration of support for a two-state solution to the decades old conflict with the Palestinians. His victory on election day, which defied pre-election polls, was widely attributed to the late shift in strategy.

The U.S. responded Wednesday by upending decades of American policy when it left open the possibility that it might stop using its veto to shield Israel in the United Nations.

U.S. officials said Thursday that Mr. Netanyahu’s sharp departure on Monday from his long-held public position on the two-state plan made it difficult for President Barack Obama’s administration to accept his clarification on Thursday.

“If he had consistently stated that he remained in favor of a two-state solution, we’d be having a different conversation,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said.

In American television interviews on Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu claimed that what he said Monday wasn’t a retraction of his commitment in 2009, maintaining that the conditions to set up such a state are just not achievable today.

Dani Dayan, a prominent leader of West Bank settlers, called Mr. Netanyahu’s recent statements “disorienting and zigzagging.” He said he was among those who switched his allegiance from nationalist party Jewish Home to Mr. Netanyahu’s Likud during the final part of the race.

Entire article here.

In Milky Way, 100 Billion Planets May Exist in Habitable Zone

Life on Earth exists because of the sun and our distance from it. Without that star and the energy it gives off, we’d be what NASA once described as a “lifeless ball of ice-coated rock.” Luckily, we are far enough from it, and as of right now, it’s not radiating so much light as to make our planet uninhabitable. In some ways, we’re in the sweet spot, and researchers may have discovered many more such connections. 

Stars in the Milky Way may have 100 billion planets — two, on average, per star — in their habitable zone, the area far enough from the star to avoid the planet getting scorched but close enough for it to potentially hold liquid water, according to new research from the Australian National University and the Niels Bohr Institute in Denmark.

That number, 100 billion, may seem beyond comprehension, but “this result is actually not controversial,” Steffen Jacobsen, a PhD student in Astrophysics and Planetary Science at Niels Bohr, told weather.com. Previous studies, he said, have predicted tens of billions of these planets. “In that sense, what we find is not surprising. Practically every researcher in the field expects there to be many, many planets in the habitable zone and many, many Earth-like planets.”

The potential for liquid water means the potential for life beyond Earth — assuming, that is, that water is as important to the evolution of life there as it was on our planet. “If you have liquid water, then you should have better conditions for life, we think,” Jacobsen said. “Of course, we don’t know this yet. We can’t say for certain.” Solving that mystery is part of the thrill for researchers looking for extraterrestrial life.

In this case, Jacobsen and colleagues used a theory called the Titius-Bode law for their calculations. They looked at 151 of the nearly 400 planetary systems NASA’s Kepler mission has collected data on, omitting systems with just two planets and focusing on those with four, five or even 10. Put simply, Titius-Bode says that within a single planetary system, a pattern exists in the distance between planets. In other words, “if you know where the four planets lie [in a five-planet system], then you can calculate where the fifth one will lie,” Jacobsen explained.

This is important because right now these planets are purely theoretical, and within the 151 systems, just 77 planets made the researchers’ short list for possibility of actual discovery.

Now it’s up to the field at large to comb through scores of data to determine whether Kepler actually has already spotted some of these planets and we just didn’t know it. “Some of these planets are so small the Kepler team will probably have missed them in the first attempt because the signals we get are so weak. They may be hidden in the noise,” he said. “You may miss them … unless you know where to look and unless you know what to look for.”

That, in a nutshell, is the crux of this work. “Our research indicates that there are a lot of planets in the habitable zone and we know there are a lot of stars like the one we’re looking at. We know that means we’re going to have many billions of planets in the habitable zone,” according to Jacobsen. If that’s true, “that would be very good news for the search for life.”

The research, “Using the inclinations of Kepler systems to prioritize new Titius–Bode-based exoplanet predictions,” was published Wednesday, Mar. 18, 2015 in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.