Puppet MastersS


Rocket

Pentagon 'roadmap' unveils deadlier, smarter drones

demonstrator drone
Sailors move an X-47B demonstrator onto an aircraft elevator aboard the aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush.
The Pentagon has unveiled its "roadmap" for future generation of unmanned vehicles, offering a glimpse into more sophisticated and lethal drones over the next 25 years.

The Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap, released last week, marks out several milestones which will see the US armed forces increasingly reliant on unmanned aircraft as well as water and ground-based robots in the coming decades.

The Department of Defense is looking to enhance the precision navigation, swarming munitions and increased autonomy of future drones, according to the document.

The satellite signals behind the Global Positioning System (GPS) which unmanned aircraft currently depend on for navigation are often weak and easily jammed. The Pentagon therefore has tasked the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to address the problem and work on the so-called pinpoint inertial guidance systems that are jam-proof.

Comment: Have you noticed there's always enough money for drones?


Star of David

Palestinian boy shot by Israelis dies

israeli troops
A Palestinian youth, who was wounded by the Israeli gunfire in the besieged Gaza Strip, has died of his injuries, medical sources say.

According to Israeli and Palestinian officials, the 16-year-old, identified as Adnan Abu Khater, succumbed to his wounds on Friday a day after Israeli forces shot him in the leg in the Jabalia city, located four kilometers north of Gaza City.

An Israeli military spokeswoman, speaking on condition of anonymity, commented on the Thursday incident, claiming that Israeli troops opened fire on a group of "suspects," who were damaging the border fence. Abu Khater was also among the group.

Israel has recently intensified its military operations on the besieged Palestinian territory.

Comment: Gulag Gaza: 'No one responsible' for deaths of 21 Palestinian civilians says Israeli military
Video: Israel Targeting Civilians And Ambulances - Definitive Proof (As If it Was Needed)
Murdering Children - Israel's Domestic Policy
Israel accused of indiscriminate phosphorus use in Gaza
Israel ignores international law with Gaza bombing, enjoys U.S. and UK support
Israeli reporter admits suppressing images of 'piles of bodies of civilians' when Israel went 'crazy' in Gaza
Why didn't the US invade Israel when it used chemical weapons on Palestinians?


Bulb

Snowden affair: the case for a pardon

Image
Snowden gave classified information to journalists, even though he knew the likely consequences. That was an act of courage

In an interview with the Washington Post just before Christmas, Edward Snowden declared his mission accomplished. At first sight it seemed a grandiose, even hubristic, statement. In fact, it betrayed a kind of modesty about the intentions of the former NSA analyst. "I didn't want to change society," he explained. "I wanted to give society a chance to determine if it should change itself."

Mr Snowden - through journalists, in the absence of meaningful, reliable democratic oversight - had given people enough knowledge about the nature of modern intelligence-gathering to allow an informed debate. Voters might, in fact, decide they were prepared to put privacy above security - but at least they could make that choice on the basis of information.

That debate is now actively happening. In a remarkable week before Christmas, a US judge found that the "almost Orwellian" techniques revealed by Mr Snowden were probably unconstitutional. A review panel of security experts convened by President Obama himself made more than 40 recommendations for change. The leaders of the eight major US tech companies met the president to express their alarm. Parliamentarians, presidents, digital engineers, academics, lawyers and civil rights activists around the world have begun a wide-ranging and intense discussion. Even the more reasonable western security chiefs acknowledge a debate was necessary.

Rocket

Israel and U.S. test Interceptor missile

arrow II
© Reuters/Nir EliasAn Arrow II missile interceptor
Arrow III, an upgraded component of the Israeli missile shield, was successfully tested for the second time, the country's Defense Ministry announced. The kamikaze satellites launched by the system are capable of intercepting missiles in space.

A long-range Arrow III interceptor was fired from Palmahim air base, south of Tel Aviv, on Friday morning. It left the Earth's atmosphere, carried out maneuvers in space and having fulfilled its mission fell into the Mediterranean. The test lasted 10 minutes. No real missiles were targeted.

"The Arrow III interceptor successfully launched and flew an exo-atmospheric trajectory through space," Israel's Defense Ministry said in a statement, Reuters reported.

The kamikaze satellites, fired by the Arrow III system, have been also known as "kill vehicles." They are able to identify and trail chemical, biological or nuclear warheads above the Earth's atmosphere. The interceptors then ram into the missiles and destroy then at an altitude, where the disintegration is safe.

Bulb

Assange likens surveillance to reformation-era Catholic Church on BBC 'religion' show

Image
© AFP Photo
BBC Radio 4′s Today program has WikiLeaks founder in religious slot, as chosen by guest editor - musician PJ Harvey

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has used the unlikely platform of the religious slot on the BBC's Today program to condemn attempts by US and UK governments to acquire a "god-like" knowledge of citizens through mass surveillance.

Assange, who has been holed up in an embassy in London for more than a year, delivered a sermon about the importance of freedom of information, and liberating "hoarded knowledge", in an alternative Thought for The Day on the Today Program.

He said disclosures by the security contractor Edward Snowden about the scale of mass surveillance by the US and UK security services had exposed how governments and corporations seek to "know more and more about us" while "we know less and less about them".

Assange, who has been granted asylum by Ecuador but faces arrest if he leaves the country's London embassy, was chosen to appear by Today's guest editor, musician PJ Harvey, who introduced him as a "person of great courage". She said he had "opened a door to freedom that ought to be the essence of democracy".

Vader

NSA spying program threatens entire world, says International Action Center

Image
The US National Security Agency's massive surveillance activities revealed during the past months "threaten the entire world," an analyst says.

"This is an institution that is attempting to gather everything, everything and use it constantly and threaten the entire world," Sara Flounders, co-director at Intl. Action Center, told Press TV on Saturday.

"NSA spying was always unnecessary, but will it stop? This is happened above and beyond of any of these institutions," she added.

Former NSA contractor Edward Snowden has leaked several documents since June, showing the scale of Washington's spying activities around the world.

Megaphone

Best of the Web: Patrick Basham, Cato Institute: U.S. is greatest threat to world peace

Image
America's military interventions and its deadly drone strikes overseas along with its massive spying efforts have turned the country into the "greatest threat to world peace," a US policy analyst says.

A recent WIN/Gallup International survey suggests the US is considered the greatest threat to peace in the world. According to the poll, 24 percent of people worldwide see the United States as the biggest threat.

"The new poll results are very bad news for the United States as they show increasingly that around the world, people view America as the greatest threat to global peace, said Patrick Basham, a scholar with the Cato Institute and founding director of Democracy Institute in Washington.


Dollar

Why is the IRS fighting efforts to unmask Karl Rove and U.S. Chamber of Commerce political money laundering?

Image
© Priog.orgDr. Robert Jacobson, IRS Whistleblower
An IRS whistleblower lawsuit that attempts to finger an overseas non-profit affiliated with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as a dark money conduit that put tens of millions into Karl Rove's hands during the 2010 elections may soon die in an obscure federal court - unless the judge allows evidence-gathering over the IRS's objections.

Robert Jacobson, a Tuscon, Arizona physician who brought the lawsuit, believes that a nonprofit created by the State Department in conjunction with the U.S. Chamber to build a much-ridiculed exhibition at the 2010 Shanghai Expo in China had another purpose - diverting large slices of the $70-plus million in donations to Rove for campaigns to retake the House. The idea was that money from GOP-friendly corporations and even the Chinese government would evade oversight by flowing through barely regulated nonprofits.

"I took it to U.S. Tax Court to do discovery," Jacobson said this week (discovery is the legal term for gathering evidence). "We were in the midst of doing informal discovery, which is the process the IRS has to avoid trials. The [tax agency's] chief counsel hates whistleblowers... They have a routine to kill whistleblowers."

Suffice it to say that federal courts have ruled,and the Supreme Court has affirmed, that the IRS doesn't have to pursue whistleblowing investigations if it finds there is no penalty money to be collected. Jacobson filed his case against Shanghai Expo three years ago. Between 2008 and 2012, the IRS received 33,064 whistleblower complaints and made 630 awards, recouping $1.46 billion and paying $180.1 million in awards, it reported to Congress. Last year, the IRS concluded that since the Shanghai Expo nonprofit had disbanded there was no point in pursuing a further investigation.

Handcuffs

Croatia arrests ex-spy chief wanted in Germany

Image
© Press TVCroatia's former spy chief Josip Perkovic was arrested on January 1, 2014.
Croatian police has arrested a former top spy sought by Germany in a case that sparked a row between the European Union and Zagreb.

Josip Perkovic, a former Yugoslav secret service agent and Croatia's ex-intelligence chief, was taken into custody on Wednesday, his lawyer Anto Nobilo said.

The former spy is wanted for his alleged role in the killing of a Croatian dissident in 1983 in Germany.

Nobilo said Perkovic would oppose extradition to Germany and that a Zagreb court was to rule on the case within eight days.

The arrest came on the same day as Zagreb lifted a limitation it had imposed on extraditions with the EU.

Croatia had changed its laws a few days before it joined the bloc on July 1, effectively stopping an extradition of Perkovic.

Cards

Putin discusses security in Volgograd

Image
© Press TVRussian President Vladmir Putin
Russia's President Vladimir Putin has discussed public security and anti-terrorism measures in Volgograd, following two recent bomb attacks in the southern city.

At least 18 people were killed in a bomb blast in Volgograd's main railway station on December 29 followed by a second explosion on a trolley bus during rush hour on December 30, which left 16 dead.

The Russian president met with top regional and federal officials after reaching Volgograd on Wednesday to discuss "what is being done here and all across the country to maintain public security," RIA Novosti reported.

The meeting was attended by Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) chief, interior minister, health minister as well as Volgograd region governor among others.

After the meeting, Putin laid flowers at one of the bomb sites and exchanged sympathies with survivors at a hospital in the city.