Puppet Masters
The Pentagon on Thursday held a successful test flight of a flying bomb that travels faster than the speed of sound and will give military planners the ability to strike targets anywhere in the world in less than a hour.
Launched by rocket from Hawaii at 1130 GMT, the "Advanced Hypersonic Weapon," or AHW, glided through the upper atmosphere over the Pacific "at hypersonic speed" before hitting its target on the Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands, a Pentagon statement said.
Kwajalein is about 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii. The Pentagon did not say what top speeds were reached by the vehicle, which unlike a ballistic missile is maneuverable.
Scientists classify hypersonic speeds as those that exceed Mach 5 -- or five times the speed of sound -- 3,728 miles (6,000 kilometers) an hour.
RT correspondent Lucy Kafanov reports that the blasts of sound lasted no more than five seconds, but had a profound effect on protesters. Joshua Paul, an eyewitness, tweeted that LRADs emitted 'High pitched noise' and wrote: 'Natural reaction: My face scrunched and hands started moving to my ears.'
At least 175 people have been arrested during clashes between police and Occupy Wall Street demonstrators in New York. Some protesters were bloodied during arrests.
This man who identified himself as Brendan Watts was beaten to the ground by police officers in Zuccotti Park. According to reports he was injured and suffered a fractured skull after being hit with a baton to the head as police clashed with protesters.
'In certain conditions, I do not rule out local and regional armed conflicts developing into a large-scale war, including using nuclear weapons.'
Makarov's explosive words - sounding like an icy blast from the depths of the Cold War - will cause dismay and alarm in eastern Europe. He linked the risk to former Warsaw Pact countries that have already joined NATO - and those which have expressed a willingness to join. He complained: 'Practically all the countries of the former Warsaw Pact have become NATO members. The Baltic states that were part of the former Soviet Union have also joined the North Atlantic Alliance.'
To those brainwashed by America's Zionist corporate media, the question sounds like paranoid fantasy. But the truth is that powerful geopolitical actors do sometimes attempt to intimidate each other through "plausibly deniable" threats. And the Zionists, masters of hardball realpolitik, are said to do such things with some regularity, not to mention chutzpah.
Item: Obama leaves his microphone on to tell the world that Netanyahu is a liar. Zionist flack Dennis Ross is ejected from the White House. It looks like Obama isn't going to obey Netanyahu's orders to attack Iran.
Steve Kroft reports, members of Congress and their aides have regular access to powerful political intelligence, and many have made well-timed stock market trades in the very industries they regulate. For now, the practice is perfectly legal, but some say it's time for the law to change.
We're raising our alert status for the next financial crisis. We already raised it last week after spreads on U.S. credit default swaps started blowing out. We raised it again after seeing the remarks of Mr. Mobius, chief of the $50 billion emerging markets desk at Templeton Asset Management.
Speaking in Tokyo, he pointed to derivatives, the financial hairball of futures, options, and swaps in which nearly all the world's major banks are tangled up.
Estimates on the amount of derivatives out there worldwide vary. An oft-heard estimate is $600 trillion. That squares with Mobius' guess of 10 times the world's annual GDP. "Are the derivatives regulated?" asks Mobius. "No. Are you still getting growth in derivatives? Yes."
In other words, something along the lines of securitized mortgages is lurking out there, ready to trigger another crisis as in 2007-08.
Near the end of the 15th century, the Catholic monarchy in Spain established a tribunal court, whose purpose was ostensibly to ferret out and prosecute Protestants, Muslims, and Jews. Townspeople were encouraged to turn in their neighbors in exchange for leniency. The operating presumption was that the accused were guilty, and had to prove their innocence.
That concept of guilty until proven innocent is exactly the sort of principle that America's polticians are looking to embrace with pending legislation. The U.S. House Judiciary Committee is currently in the process of debating the Stop Online Piracy Act [SOPA]. The full text is available here [PDF].
Five Republican congressmen who visited Israel last week disclosed the bill.
The bill states an "expression of support for Israel's right to defend its sovereignty and to protect the lives and safety of its citizens and use all necessary means to confront and eliminate the nuclear threat that emerges from the Islamic Republic of Iran, including use military force in the absence of other diplomatic means available in the near future. "
Dozens of Kuwaiti protesters stormed parliament late on Wednesday, as hundreds more demonstrated outside.
Eyewitnesses said they were demanding that Prime Minister Sheikh Nasser al-Mohammad al-Sabah step down.
Hundreds of people, including opposition lawmakers, have been protesting weekly outside parliament over alleged corruption.
Some reports said riot police had beaten demonstrators using batons as they gathered outside parliament.
AFP news agency reports that at least five protesters were injured.
"Now, we have entered the house of the people," said Mussallam al-Barrak, who was among those who led the protest against Sheikh Nasser, a nephew of the emir.












Comment: As has been said in the past, "the days of freedom on the internet are numbered". There is currently nothing you can do on the net that cannot be tracked.
in every possible way who would annihilate knowledge
and reason and mind, and yet ventures to speak
confidently about everything."
Plato, Phaedo