The Army is testing its $517 million spy blimp in the skies over the New Jersey military base where the German airship Hindenburg crashed in 1937.

The Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle spent more than 90 minutes around Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Ocean County on Tuesday.

Manufacturer Northrop Grumman says the 302-foot long airship is designed to be a high altitude observation platform.

It can be operated by a crew or by remote control.

Army spokesman John Cummings tells the Asbury Park Press the primary objective of the maiden flight was to perform a safe launch and recovery.

The airship is 100 feet longer than the Goodyear Blimp and is filled with helium.

The Hindenburg was filled with hydrogen when it burst into flames at Lakehurst, killing 36 people.

In back-to-back interviews on the Gary Null Show and the Tommy Schnurmacher Show, Gerald Celente sees another mega geopolitical quake to match the shock-and-awe of 9-11 in America's not-too-distant future.

"I'm worried about the drumbeats of war getting louder and louder," Celente told CJAD talk show host Tommy Schumacher, Monday. "It's coinciding, as well, with the economic collapse that's happening throughout Europe."

Celente went on to say that, when sociopath and psychopath politicians get into trouble with their constituents due to a poor economy, those pols, who can divert the public's attention away from the nation's financial problems and redirect the collective anger toward the threat of an outside enemy, will use their power to take that nation to war at a politically advantageous time.

"It's reaching a critical mass right now, and I haven't felt this way since December 14, 2000," said Celente, and noted that he senses desperation in the voice and actions of Israel's, Benjamin Netanyahu, the present and very unpopular prime mister in that Mideast country. "I have that feeling now" with Netanyahu, said Celente.

"This guy, Netanyahu, he has 60 percent disapproval rating right now, and I've seen it before," Celente continued. "I remember Bill Clinton, you know, wag the dog. Every time he'd get into trouble with Monica Lewinsky, it was bomb over Baghdad. They continually do this."

After wavering earlier this summer whether to remain in the U.S. or flee from a "fascist" dictatorship shaping up in America, the 65-year-old Celente told InfoWars' talk show super-star personality, Alex Jones, that he will not allow a "bunch of freaks" in Washington chase him out. Celente said he will stay and fight.

But the personal struggle on this question continues to weigh heavily on his mind.

Mitt Romney says corporations are people, but people are not corporations - at least when it comes to releasing his tax returns.

In an interview with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said he would not be releasing more than two years of tax returns because "I am not a business."

Executive editor Josh Tyrangiel asked Romney why the American people shouldn't be entitled to the same information from a presidential candidate that he would have required as the CEO of Bain Capital before investing in a company.

"If you're an investor and you're looking at a company, and that company says that its great strength is wise management and fiscal know-how, wouldn't you want to see the previous, say, five years' worth of its financials?" Tyrangiel wondered.

As part of an ongoing lawsuit against the U.S. government, a federal judge has ordered the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to release more documents relating to Cold War-era experimentation on American soldiers.

Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley in Oakland, California, ruled the VA must hand over documents pertaining to the use of at least 7,800 service personnel as "human guinea pigs" by the U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency.

"It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages."
-- Admiral William D Leahy, Chief of Staff to Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman

"The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn't necessary to hit them with that awful thing."- Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe

This week 67 years ago, a new era of global terror was born when the US dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Never before had the world witnessed such man-made power to destroy. And ever since the world has had to live with the threat of repeated devastation.

But the bombings were not merely terrible acts of war. They signaled a US policy of holding the world hostage to its global terrorism.

On this fateful day in August 1945, an American B-29 Flying Fortress unleashed a hell on earth over the Japanese city of Nagasaki with a single atomic bomb, nicknamed Fat Man.

The day before, Radio Tokyo and the American media were already reporting the devastation inflicted on the city of Hiroshima where, on the morning of 6 August, another American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, had dropped the first atomic bomb - codenamed Little Boy.

Libya's ruling national assembly picked Mohammed Magarief, leader of the National Front party, as its president on Thursday in a vote carried out a day after it took power from the outgoing National Transitional Council.

Magarief, a long-time opponent of ousted [murdered] leader Moammar Gadhafi, will head the 200-member congress, which will name a prime minister, pass laws and steer Libya to full parliamentary elections after a new constitution is drafted next year.

His National Front party, which won three seats in the July 7 vote for the national assembly, is an offshoot of the National Front for the Salvation of Libya, an opposition movement to Gadhafi established in 1981.

The vote counting was carried out in front of reporters and was televised live. Magarief won 113 votes versus independent Ali Zidan who secured 85 votes.

Google's Internet search engine is getting more personal by highlighting information drawn from its users' Gmail accounts on its main results page.

The feature announced Wednesday marks Google's latest attempt to deliver data that people are seeking more quickly as it tries to maintain the dominance of its lucrative Internet search engine.

Google is initially testing the feature with 1 million Gmail users who must sign up to participate.

Gmail's more than 425 million users already can search within their e-mail accounts to find something they need, such as an order from Amazon.com or an airline reservation.

Representatives of 27 world and regional states as well as the UN envoy to Tehran are participating in the international consultative conference on the developments in Syria, which started work here in Tehran on Thursday.

At the beginning of the Tehran conference on Syria, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi addressed the audience on Iran's position and policies to settle the crisis in the Arab country.

He underscored that the settlement of the crisis in Syria needs serious and comprehensive talks between the Syrian government and the opposition groups.

"We need serious and comprehensive talks between the opposition (forces) who have a position among people and the Syrian government in a background of tranquility and stability to settle the crisis in Syria," Salehi said.

There was a time, not too long ago (relatively speaking), that governments and the groups of elites that controlled them did not find it necessary to conscript themselves into wars of disinformation.

Propaganda was relatively straightforward. The lies were much simpler. The control of information flow was easily directed. Rules were enforced with the threat of property confiscation and execution for anyone who strayed from the rigid socio-political structure. Those who had theological, metaphysical or scientific information outside of the conventional and scripted collective world view were tortured and slaughtered. The elites kept the information to themselves, and removed its remnants from mainstream recognition, sometimes for centuries before it was rediscovered.

With the advent of anti-feudalism, and most importantly the success of the American Revolution, elitists were no longer able to dominate information with the edge of a blade or the barrel of a gun. The establishment of Republics, with their philosophy of open government and rule by the people, compelled Aristocratic minorities to plot more subtle ways of obstructing the truth and thus maintaining their hold over the world without exposing themselves to retribution from the masses. Thus, the complex art of disinformation was born.

IDF helicopters ferried masked, armed soldiers to isolated Palestinian village of Jinba, where they raided homes, photographing and mapping the site, say residents.

An unusual operation by the Israel Defense Forces in the South Hebron Hills region has intensified suspicions among Palestinian residents that Israel is moving forward with its plan to demolish villages in the area and expel their residents.

Two Israel Air Force helicopters landed soldiers on Tuesday in Jinba, an isolated village inhabited by cave dwellings in the southern West Bank. It is one of eight villages slated for demolition according to Defense Minister Ehud Barak's plan to allow the military to resume its training in the area, known as Firing Zone 918.

According to reports by the residents, the helicopters landed and took off at the site six times, each time carrying soldiers. The soldiers erected a command center in a tent outside the village, and two jeeps and a Hummer parked next to the tent.

The soldiers, who were masked and armed, raided the village, photographed and mapped the cave dwellings, the tents and the structures, and made extensive searches while causing property damage, the residents said. The soldiers also emptied out the contents of closets and poured out jugs of milk and cream.