CenturyLink Tower (formerly Qwest Tower) is a 296,448 sq.ft office building located in downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It is 174 feet tall, has 11 stories, and is the tallest building in the state of South Dakota. Previously the 202-foot Zip Feed Tower was the tallest building in Sioux Falls, as well as South Dakota.
Not all of America has extremely tall skyscrapers.
A TOP secret airbase more mysterious than Area 51 has been spotted in the Nevada desert on Google Earth.
Area 6, a shielded airbase used for testing unmanned aircraft, has got conspiracy theorists wondering what the US Government might be hiding at such a remote location.
The site is roughly 12 miles northeast of Area 51 and is part of the Nevada National Security Site, where 1,000 nuclear tests were carried out between 1945 and 1995.
Six nuclear tests and four detonations have been completed in Area 6 according to the US Department of Energy.
The mysterious airbase has a 5,000ft runway used by federal agencies to carry out aircraft tests, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.
Its secretiveness has quickly led to comparisons with Area 51, where some conspiracy theorists believe the wreckages of crashed UFOs are stored and studied.
National Nuclear Security Administration spokesman Darwin Morgan told the Las Vegas Review-Journal: “We have controlled airspace and that gives them opportunities to test various types of platforms.
“We do a wide variety of work for others – supporting people with sensor development activities.
“It evolved from the nuclear testing program. We had to have very good sensors to collect data in a split second before they were obliterated.”
The Nevada National Security Site is run by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s field office in the state, which works with other agencies to develop ways of tackling terrorism.
Could they be interrogating the Grays at Area 6?
See also: https://markozen.com/2021/07/21/nuclear-bomb-craters-in-nevada-2/
Kulula.com (stylized as kulula.com) and commonly referred to as Kulula is a South African low-cost airline, operating on major domestic routes from O. R. Tambo International Airport and Lanseria International Airport, both serving the city of Johannesburg. The airline’s headquarters are located at Bonaero Park, Kempton Park, Ekurhuleni, Gauteng. The name ‘Kulula’ comes from the Nguni languages of Zulu and Xhosa, meaning It’s easy.
The similarities are uncanny.
Putin was swimming in a river on the Kamchatka peninsula when a huge grizzly jumped in the water.
Robot furnace
Size comparison between Belgium and Canada.
Belgium is the little purple inkblot.
While we’re at it, here are some more comparisons.
France (purple), Brazil (orange)
Australia (purple, orange), Russia (blue)
Manitoba (orange), Bangladesh (purple). FYI Manitoba has a population of 1.2 million, Bangladesh has a population of 168 million!
US (blue), UK (purple). We don’t always appreciate how much space we have in North America.
Sahara desert imposed over Canada. That is a giant sand dune, I’m getting thirsty just thinking about it.
Africa is utterly enormous. The purple is Germany.
The lighthouse is surrounded by open water and is precariously perched on a cliff. Morgunblaðið/Árni Sæberg
A photograph taken by Morgunblaðið photographer Árni Sæberg of the Þrídrangaviti lighthouse in 2009 has now become viral thanks to Justin Bieber of all people.
Árni Sæberg is photographer for our sister publication Morgunblaðið (and also takes photos for us at Iceland Monitor). The lighthouse, Þrídrangaviti, is located in the Westman Islands and is located around six miles from the shore. It’s quite possibly the most isolated lighthouse in the world and is precariously perched on top of a rock pillar with the wild waves of the cold North Atlantic ocean raging below.
Þrídrangar means “three rock pillars” and the lighthouse was built there in 1939. The lighthouse has also been an inspiration to literature, with best-selling thriller novelist Yrsa Sigurðardóttir using it in her novel “Why did you lie?” This is not the first time that Sigurðardóttir draws inspiration from Sæberg’s photos. His photos of the deserted farmhouse in Hesteyri in the remote West Fjords became the setting of her spine chilling ghost story, I remember you, which recently was made into an Icelandic film of the same name.
The strong surf below the lighthouse. Photograph/ Árni Sæberg
Sæberg didn’t realise until recently that his photo of the lighthouse had been published all around the world for years until his barber showed him the photo on a German website. The barber’s daughter also told him that Justin Bieber had been posting the photo on social media.Sæberg flew with the national coastguard helicopter, TF LÍF to the take the photo of the lighthouse. It’s quite incredible how people actually managed to build this lighthouse, just at WW2 began. In 1939 there were no helicopters so people would have had to sail to the cliff and scale it. In an old article in Morgunblaðið, project director Árni G. Þórarinsson says in an interview, “The first thing we had to to was create a road up to the cliff. We got together of experienced mountaineers, all from the Westman Islands. Then we brought drills, hammers, chains and clamps to secure the chains. Once they got near the top there was no way to get any grip on the rock so one of them got down on his knees, the second stood on his back, and then the third climbed on top of the other two and was able to reach the nib of the cliff above. I cannot even tell you how I was feeling whilst witnessing this incredibly dangerous procedure.”Þrídrangar, the three pillars of rock are in fact four pillars named Stóridrangur, Þúfudrangur, Klofadrangur and the fourth one is nameless. In 1938 a road was constructed to Stóridrangur and the following year the lighthouse was raised. Many years later a helipad was set up on Stóridrangur where helicopters can land.
Morgunblaðið/Árni Sæberg
The national coastguard helicopter flying towards the lighthouse. Photograph/ Árni Sæberg
November 22
Horse credited with saving owner’s life takes a helicopter ride after being cut off by rising water.
Winter the horse was saved using an Anderson Sling owned by a Fraser Valley veterinarian. The animal was airlifted by helicopter last Friday out of a flooded area near Spences Bridge in B.C.’s southern Interior. (Kelly Kennedy)
A small menagerie of marooned animals — including a horse and a pregnant cow — were rescued in recent days from flooded farms on the Nicola River west of Kamloops, B.C., using a helicopter, a specialized livestock harness and a whole lot of ingenuity.
Kim Cardinal says it was a desperate situation when her two horses and mule became trapped on a stretch of pavement near the community of Spences Bridge following torrential rains that ultimately swept her home into the raging Nicola River last Monday.
Cardinal says she can still hear the sounds of smashing boulders and glass as her house was destroyed by the power of the waters.
She and her partner Lorne Cardinal were airlifted to safety after a B.C. Hydro crew spotted smoke from a campfire they had lit after their house was destroyed. But their animals remained trapped by flooded roads.
“The horse — Winter — saved my life. I just couldn’t bear the thought of him there, dying after that,” said Cardinal.
She said the horse began acting spooked and almost “dancing” as the waters rose. It alerted her and Lorne to the danger and they got out just in time, she said.
But the rushing water made it impossible to get Winter, along with a mini-horse named Spicey and mule named Moxy, to safety.
Kelly Kennedy says she got a call last Thursday from RCMP livestock officer Cpl. Cory Lepine about the dire situation.
“I was thinking about it and I was like, why can’t we just airlift them out?” said Kennedy, a director with the Horse Council of B.C. who also runs Sageview Rescue Centre in Kamloops.
Over the next three days she orchestrated the rescue.
She hired Summit Helicopters with funds from the B.C. Horse Council and had a special sling shipped from the Fraser Valley to Kamloops.
Aldergrove veterinarian Dr. David Paton owns the device, known as an Anderson Sling, that protects large animals when they are lifted off the ground — which is both difficult and dangerous.
The contraption allows this to be done — usually for urgent transport — with little risk to the animal. Paton recommended using the sling in this rescue, which he called a “perfect” example of its usefulness, given there was no other way to get the animals out of their spot.
Paton said despite the fact that horses do not generally fly, they handle being moved in a sling quite well.
“Horses are amazingly calm and quiet, they may need a mild sedation — kind of a little bit of an exciting ride for sure. Once they are airborne they’re not struggling or thrashing,” he said.
Paton says there is only one Anderson Sling in the province and this type of rescue was a first in B.C.
At the beginning of the operation, Kennedy met the pilot Aaron Toombs near Spences Bridge and they flew over the muddy, angry river to the rescue site. The harness took so long to fasten on Winter that the tranquilizer used to keep the horse calm wore off.
“That horse was wide awake. He stayed quiet through the air but when it came to landing it took the helicopter half an hour before we could drop him and try and get a long line on him to control him,” said Kennedy.
By then, Kennedy said “the whole town” of Spences Bridge had come to watch as the pilot tried to delicately land the big horse without breaking the large animal’s legs.
“It wasn’t pretty but we got it done.” Kennedy said.
Some of the other animals needing rescuing were too small for the sling, so Kennedy devised a backup plan. A massive grain tote made out of netting that can handle loads of up to 680 kilograms of feed was used to cradle the smaller animals in and fly them to safety.
Then they heard the neighbours nearby were also in need — with a pregnant Jersey cow named Tina and three goats, cut off by the floods.
But by Friday night they’d run out of daylight and money for the $3,000-per-hour helicopter so they had to refuse. However, the pilot knew a government official looking at the highways who had a helicopter booked but only half a day of work on Monday, so they used that aircraft for the goats and the pregnant cow.
They laid the cargo net on the ground, “and the cow walked into the middle of it and we just scooped her up,” said Kennedy.
It took three days and used up the animal rescue contingency fund of the Horse Council of B.C., but in the end they rescued two horses, a mule, a pregnant cow, nine puppies, two large dogs, three goats and several cats.
Cardinal says she can’t stop sobbing thinking about the ordeal, and is so thankful that she survived and that her animals got out thanks to fast-thinking volunteers — especially Kennedy.
“She is my hero,” Cardinal said.
The Sisters of the Valley’s “abbey” is a modest three-bedroom house on the outskirts of Merced, in a cul-de-sac next to the railroad tracks. (Sister Kate calls the frequent noise from passing trains “part of our penance”.) When visitors come to the door, Sister Kate asks them to wait outside until she can “sage” them with the smoke from a piece of wood from a Russian tree given to her by a shaman.
Sister Kate lives here with her “second sister”, Sister Darcy, and her youngest son.
But these aren’t your average nuns. The women grow marijuana in the garage, produce cannabidiol tinctures and salves in crockpots in the kitchen, and sell the merchandise through an Etsy store. (Cannabidiol, or CBD, is one of the active ingredients in marijuana that is prized for medicinal qualities and is not psychoactive.) The women perform their tasks wearing long denim skirts, white collared shirts and nun’s habits. And while their “order” is small – last week they ordained their third member, a marijuana grower in Mendocino County known as Sister Rose.
But their ambitions have been thwarted by legislation that was passed last year – 19 years after medical marijuana was first legalized in the state – to regulate the billion-dollar industry through the Medical Marijuana Safety and Regulation Act. An error in the final text of the law has resulted in scores of cities across the state passing local bans on the cultivation, distribution, and sale of the drug, including Merced, a small city in California’s Central Valley where the Sisters live.
The legislation accidentally established a 1 March 2016 deadline for cities to impose their own bans or regulations on medical marijuana or be subject to state rules, a deadline that assembly member Jim Wood, who authored that section of the bill, said was included by complete accident.
Wood has drafted fix-it legislation, which he’s optimistic will pass in the legislature by the end of next week and be signed by the governor immediately after. But next week is too late for the Sisters of the Valley.
“If it was a typo, that’s great. If it wasn’t, who knows,” said John M Bramble, the city manager of Merced, the morning after Merced’s city council passed its medical marijuana ban. Either way, “it’s too late,” he said. “We’re banning it for now because if we don’t, we’ll have no local control.”
That leaves the Sisters of the Valley in a precarious position. “We are completely illegal, banned through commerce and banned through growing,” said Sister Kate. “They made criminals out of us overnight.”
Despite Sister Kate’s Catholic upbringing, the Sisters “are not affiliated with any traditional earthly religion”. The order’s principles are a potent blend of new age spirituality (they time their harvests and medicine making to the cycles of the moon, and pray while they cook to “infuse healing and intent to our medicine”), environmentalism (“We think the plant is divine the way Mother Earth gave it to us”), progressive politics (asked whether she’s offended if someone drops her title and calls her “Kate”, Sister Kate responds: “It’s offensive that no banksters went to jail”), feminism (“Women can change this industry and make it a healing industry instead of a stoner industry”), and savvy business practices.
Sister Kate was looking for a “second sister” when a mutual friend arranged a phone call with Darcy Johnson. After just a thirty minute conversation, the 24-year-old from Washington state was ready to move to Merced and join the order. Sister Darcy had spent time in New Zealand working on an organic farm, and now, back in the States, was looking for a better way of life.
“This is my better,” Sister Darcy said.
The day after Merced’s ban on medical marijuana was passed, the sisters were preparing for battle. Sister Kate is planning to start a call-in campaigns across the Central Valley, urging growers and customers to flood city council members with phone calls every Friday until they come up with reasonable regulations.
Whatever happens, though, the Sisters of the Valley are answering to a higher authority. “We’re not accepting their ban,” said Sister Kate. “It’s against the will of the people, and that makes it unnatural and immoral.”
That always enticing and omnipresent booze has a real impact on the world. It makes people loose and gets rid of excess mental baggage. Some countries medicate with alcohol way more than others, eastern European countries seem to have a real penchant for the libation.
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