A recent weapons flight test in the Utah desert may change future warfare after the missile successfully defeated electronic targets with little to no collateral damage.
Boeing and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Directed Energy Directorate, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., successfully tested the Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) during a flight over the Utah Test and Training Range.
h/t Jim D
The Canadian government and the European Commission have approved the $15.1bn (£9.4bn) takeover of Nexen by China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), in a deal that has caused controversy in Canada over the foreign ownership of natural-resource assets.
The deal is China’s largest-ever overseas energy acquisition and gives China control over 8pc of North Sea oil and gas production.
In addition to its Canadian assets, Nexen is the second-largest oil producer in the UK North Sea, pumping 114,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boepd).
It has a 43pc stake in the Buzzard field which is becoming increasingly important in setting global oil prices as output at other fields in the North Sea declines.
Brent crude prices are increasingly being used all over the world as the definitive global benchmark in deals, overtaking West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the US benchmark oil contract.
A random search in any state inquiring about liberty groups, patriot groups or militias will fill the page. There are wide interests of these groups from strict Constitutionalism, to paramedic militias. The interest in liberty and a faithful adherence to the Constitution is somewhat remarkable given the lack of energy any of these organizations exert toward the actual goal.
It is as if we are all waiting for something, though I cannot fathom what. We have drones overhead, black boxes to be installed in cars, the police demanding the ability to listen in on cell phone conversations. We can be pulled over for suspicion of distracted driving and have our cell phones confiscated, but what we cannot do, without a long legal battle, is film the police. Hmmmm. They can surveil us until the cows come home, but we should not surveil them. Orwellian, or Marxism?
Sarin canisters stored in Syria
The danger that Syrian ruler Bashar Assad will now resort to chemical warfare shot up Saturday afternoon, Dec. 8, after the rebels captured the “chloride factory” at Al Safira east of Aleppo. This is a codename for the Syrian army’s biggest chemical weapons store and base, which also houses Syrian Scud D missiles armed with chemical warheads adjusted to fire at Israel. Assad’s warning to the rebels not to fight with chemical weapons is taken as a means of justifying his own resort to chemical weapons and brought this threat closer than ever before. The West, Israel and Syria’s other neighbors have gone on elevated preparedness. DEBKAfile file: The fall of Al Safira into rebel hands crosses a red line and places the Assad regime in direct peril. Possession of the chemical-tipped Scuds gives the rebels their strongest weapon for forcing the Syria army to capitulate.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said earlier Saturday that the UK and the US have seen evidence that Syria is preparing to use chemical weapons. There was enough evidence from intelligence sources to know “that they need a warning,” he said at a security conference in Bahrain. “The President of the United Sates warned of serious consequences and he meant it,” said the British minister.
British intelligence sources told the BBC that Syria’s chemical weapons are concentrated at five air bases and are being closely watched. They said contingency plans have been drawn up if they show signs of being readied to be loaded and used as weapons.
DEBKAfile reported this week that US British and French air, sea and marine forces are concentrated opposition Syrian shores and across its Turkish and Jordanian borders.
Here’s a new dominant social theme: US presidents are good and they ought to be in movies.
Of course, it helps if you are a socialist leader and make maximum use of the awesome power of Leviathan. The two presidents currently being lionized – surprise, surprise – are Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln.
Roosevelt presided over the initial, massive expansion of the welfare state – the same one that has brought the US some US$200 trillion in payables and will eventually spell the end of the US as a going concern. Lincoln paved the way for the activist leader Roosevelt by insisting that the Union was indivisible and doing his part to murder or otherwise maim about a million people to prove it.
The movies that portray these leaders don’t provide us with this stark – if historically realistic – point of view, of course. The bloody-minded decisions and subsequent ramifications are presented as historical necessity.
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It would seem to be indicating that something is to unfold in President Barack Obama‘s second term that may replicate some of the same sort of events that took place under FDR and Lincoln.
What those events are to be is not yet clear. But it is a most disturbing supposition.
We [National Geographic] are evaluating you on the same scale as the Doomsday Preppers to rule how long you will survive, and where you stand on the prepper leaderboard. From water supply to shelter location and security, all aspects of prepping are interconnected. Keep a close eye on your score as you progress to see how your answers affect your rating from question to question and apply to your overall score. Along the way, we’ll provide survival tips for you to improve your score. Already feel like a prepping-pro? See how you stack up against the Doomsday Preppers.
Records newly released to the Electronic Frontier Foundation reveal the federal government has approved dozens of licenses for unmanned aerial surveillance drones all across the United States.
“These records, received as a result of EFF’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA),” the EFF reports, “come from state and local law enforcement agencies, universities and – for the first time – three branches of the U.S. military: the Air Force, Marine Corps and DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency).”
Some of the records show drones used for purposes as sensible as helping the U.S. Forest Service fight forest fires.
Others purposes, such as performing aerial observation of houses when serving warrants or covert surveillance of drug sales, however, have prompted the EFF to question privacy issues.
httpv//www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGl3BWwbn5o
Democratic Party leaders, President Obama in particular, are forever telling the country that wealthy Americans are taxed at too low a rate and pay too little in taxes. The need to correct this seeming injustice is framed not simply in terms of fairness. Higher tax rates on the wealthy, we’re told, would help balance the budget, allow for more “investment” in America’s future and foster better economic growth for all. In support of this claim, like-minded liberal pundits point out that in the 1950s, when America’s economic might was at its zenith, the rich faced tax rates as high as 91%.
True enough, the top marginal income-tax rate in the 1950s was much higher than today’s top rate of 35%—but the share of income paid by the wealthiest Americans has essentially remained flat since then.
In 1958, the top 3% of taxpayers earned 14.7% of all adjusted gross income and paid 29.2% of all federal income taxes. In 2010, the top 3% earned 27.2% of adjusted gross income and their share of all federal taxes rose proportionally, to 51%.
So if the top marginal tax rate has fallen to 35% from 91%, how in the world has the tax burden on the wealthy remained roughly the same?
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnvWU2-44Co
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=336CGAW7tQw
The latest news on AQIM:
AL QAEDA CONSOLIDATES LIBYA BASE
Al-Qaeda is intensifying efforts to establish a new base for its terrorist operations in Libya following the recent attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, according to the latest Western intelligence reports. The leaders of Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the North African offshoot of the mainstream organization, are making a concerted effort to link up with Ansar al-Sharia. The CIA believes Ansar al-Sharia was behind the September 11 attack on the US consulate in which four people died, including US Ambassador Christopher Stevens. AQIM leaders are also attempting to establish ties with other Libyan Islamist groups in the hope of establishing an al-Qaeda fiefdom there similar to the one it has created in nearby Mali.
Catherine Herridge
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PaG3SXXq50
Muslim Brotherhood ‘paying gangs to go out and rape women and beat men protesting in Egypt’ as thousands of demonstrators fill streets.
Egypt’s ruling party is paying gangs of thugs to sexually assault women protesting in Cairo’s Tahrir Square against President Mohamed Morsi, activists said.
They also said the Muslim Brotherhood is paying gangs to beat up men who are taking part in the latest round of protests, which followed a decree by President Morsi to give himself sweeping new powers.
It comes as the Muslim Brotherhood co-ordinated a demonstration today in support of President Mohamed Morsi, who is rushing through a constitution to try to defuse opposition fury over his newly expanded powers.
Just 24 hours earlier around 200,000 people gathered in Tahrir Square, the heart of last year’s revolution which toppled President Hosni Mubarak, yesterday to protest against a new draft constitution.
Whether you are at the doctor’s office, hospital, or clinic awaiting treatment for you or your loved one, how many of you read the fine print on those multi-page legal notices pertaining to privacy practices? I suspect not many, yet you sign them anyway, especially when you are at your most vulnerable. But, have you read them recently?
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Buried in the middle of page two of this finely typed legal notice oriented in landscape format, located between the subheadings of “military” and “inmates” is an interesting addition to at least one hospital’s privacy disclosure statement. Under the heading of “National Security,” the notice states that the treating medical facility may disclose your health information to federal officials “in order to protect the President, other officials or foreign heads of state.”
The CFTC has filed a civil injunctive enforcement action in US District Court against 12 commodities firms for allegedly selling phantom precious metals to clients. The CFTC complaint states that: The defendants claim to sell physical metals, including gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and copper, to retail customers in retail commodity transactions. Under the defendants’ retail commodity transactions investment contract, customers allegedly make a down payment on certain quantities of physical metals, usually 25 percent of the total purchase price. Defendants allegedly claim to arrange loans for the balance of the purchase price, and advise customers that their physical metals will be stored in a secure depository.
The complaint further alleges that these statements were false, and that the defendants do not purchase any physical metals, arrange loans for their customers to purchase physical metals, or arrange for storage of physical metals for any customers participating in their retail commodity transactions. Instead, all the transactions are just paper transactions.
Sounds remarkably like the COMEX.
After being treated to the standard COMEX open waterfalls that saw gold smashed as low as $1684 and silver under $32.50, both metals made a vertical move to the upside around 10am EST.
Gold cleared $1700 trading as high as $1704, and silver is back above $33, reaching $33.38.
The impetus for the move appears to be a massive physical gold buy order in the range of 10 metric tons.
We can also confirm that SDBullion was in fact approached Wednesday by a UK hedge fund manager seeking the acquisition of 20 metric tons of gold in good delivery bar form, which had been physically tested for purity above .9995 within the past 5 years.
The fact that a London fund manager has resorted to contacting US retail bullion dealers in attempt to fill a 20 ton gold order speaks volumes to the availability of physical gold (or lack thereof) for delivery in London and the extreme tightness in the physical market.
