Pentagon Successfully Tests Hypersonic Flying Bomb
November 18th, 2011Via: AFP:
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.
Is the U.S. Getting Domestic Indefinite Military Detention for Thanksgiving?
November 17th, 2011Via: Mother Jones:
A bipartisan group of senators is poised to force through dramatic changes to how the US government handles suspected terrorists—over the objections of the White House and Senate Democratic leadership.
Legislative language that emerged from the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday afternoon would mandate the automatic, indefinite military detention of noncitizens apprehended in the United States who are suspected members of Al Qaeda or associated groups. The wording, which is part of a must-pass bill to fund the military, also appears to allow the indefinite military detention of citizens and legal permanent residents. The bill would also extend restrictions on transfers of detainees from Guantánamo Bay, though only for one year.
Research Credit: noncompliant
‘Super Soldiers’: The Quest for the Ultimate Human Killing Machine
November 17th, 2011Via: Independent:
The era of The Terminator, the perfect robotic killing machine, is decades away; to date, all efforts to create a humanoid robot that can climb the stairs, let alone fight the Taliban, have been risible. But scientists are reporting breakthroughs with the next-best thing – the creation of human terminators, who feel less pain, less terror and less fatigue than “non-enhanced” soldiers and whose very bodies may be augmented by powerful machines.
Efforts to understand the brain of the soldier and put this knowledge to good use have been going on for some time. Professor Jonathan Moreno, a bioethicist at Pennsylvania State University, studies the way neuroscience is being co-opted by the military. “Right now, this is the fastest-growing area of science,” he says.
Research Credit: Phantom Report
Russian Military Chief Warns of Nuclear War Risks
November 17th, 2011Via: AP / ABC:
Russia is facing a heightened risk of being drawn into conflicts at its borders that have the potential of turning nuclear, the nation’s top military officer said Thursday.
Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the General Staff of the Russian armed forces, cautioned over NATO’s expansion eastward and warned that the risks for Russia to be pulled into local conflicts have “risen sharply.”
Makarov added, according to Russian news agencies, that “under certain conditions local and regional conflicts may develop into a full-scale war involving nuclear weapons.”
A steady decline in Russia’s conventional forces has prompted the Kremlin to rely increasingly on its nuclear deterrent.
The nation’s military doctrine says it may use nuclear weapons to counter a nuclear attack on Russia or an ally, or a large-scale conventional attack that threatens Russia’s existence.
Russia sees NATO’s expansion to include former Soviet republics and ex-members of the Soviet bloc in eastern and central Europe as a key threat to Russia’s security.
Many Android Phones Ship with Rootkit/Surveillance System Called ‘CarrierIQ’
November 17th, 2011Via: Android Security Test:
Carrier IQ is able to query any metric from a device. A metric can be a dropped call because of lack of service. The scope of the word metric is very broad though, including device type, such as manufacturer and model, available memory and battery life, the type of applications resident on the device, the geographical location of the device, the end user’s pressing of keys on the device, usage history of the device, including those that characterize a user’s interaction with a device.
Monitoring #N17
November 17th, 2011Monitoring the Wall Street protest this morning: So far, the cops have it fully under control. They have barricaded the area around NYSE and are requiring that people show work IDs to get inside the zone.
Live video streams: Livestream, Ustream.
NYPD Manhattan Precincts 1-23 and Citywide 1-3 Live Audio Feed.
Monitor Twitter with monitter.com (great tool!). I’m using the following query: #n17 -RT
Middle-Class Areas Shrinking in U.S.
November 17th, 2011Via: AFP:
The number of middle-income neighborhoods in the United States has dwindled significantly over the past 40 years, as the rich-poor divide deepens across the country, a study released Wednesday showed.
In 2007, nearly a third of American families — 31 percent — lived in either an affluent neighborhood or a mainly low-income one, up from just 15 percent in 1970, according to the study conducted by Stanford University, and released in partnership with the Russell Sage Foundation and Brown University.
Meanwhile, 44 percent of American families lived in middle-class neighborhoods in 2007, down from 65 percent in 1970.
“Mixed income neighborhoods have grown rarer, while affluent and poor neighborhoods have grown much more common,” the study said.
Government Motors: U.S. Boosts Estimate of Auto Bailout Losses to $23.6 Billion
November 17th, 2011Via: Detroit News:
The Treasury Department dramatically boosted its estimate of losses from its $85 billion auto industry bailout by more than $9 billion in the face of General Motors Co.’s steep stock decline.
In its monthly report to Congress, the Treasury Department now says it expects to lose $23.6 billion, up from its previous estimate of $14.33 billion.
The Treasury now pegs the cost of the bailout of GM, Chrysler Group LLC and the auto finance companies at $79.6 billion. It no longer includes $5 billion it set aside to guarantee payments to auto suppliers in 2009.
The big increase is a reflection of the sharp decline in the value of GM’s share price.
For Americans, 80 Is the New 65 When It Comes to Retirement
November 17th, 2011Oh sure.
Via: Reuters:
When it comes to retirement, many middle class Americans said 80 is the new 65 and plan to delay retirement because of worries over money, according to a new survey.
Wells Fargo bank asked 1,500 Americans who earned between $25,000 and $99,999 and ranged in age from 20 into their 70s questions about retirement, savings and Social Security for its seventh annual retirement survey.
Three-fourths of those surveyed said they expect to work in their retirement years. One quarter said they will “need to work until at least age 80” to live comfortably in retirement.
Of Americans who will work in retirement, “47 percent said that they are going to continue in the same job or a similar job of similar responsibility,” Joe Ready, Well Fargo’s director of Institutional Retirement and Trust, told Reuters Insider.
“That raises a lot of social and economic implications. Will they have the physical ability to work, the mental capacity? What does that mean for the younger work force in terms of coming through and looking to get ahead?”
Fed Now Largest Owner of U.S. Government Debt—Surpassing China
November 17th, 2011Via: CNSNews:
At the close of business on Tuesday, the debt of the federal government exceeded $15 trillion for the first time–with the largest single owner of the publicly held portion of that debt being the Federal Reserve.
Over the past year, as the Federal Reserve massively increased its holdings of U.S. Treasury securities and entities in China marginally decreased theirs, the Fed surpassed the Chinese as the top owner of publicly held U.S. government debt.
In its latest monthly report, the Federal Reserve said that as of Sept. 28, it owned $1.665 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities. That was more than double the $812 billion in U.S. Treasury securities the Fed said it owned as of Sept. 29, 2010.
Meanwhile, as of the end of this September, entities in mainland China owned $1.1483 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities, according to data published today by the U.S. Treasury Department. That was down slightly from the $1.1519 trillion in U.S. Treasury securities the Chinese owned as of the end of September 2010, according to the same Treasury Department report.
Thus, at the end of September 2010, the Chinese owned about $339.9 billion more in U.S. Treasury securities than the Fed owned at that time. By the end of September 2011, the Fed owned about $516.7 billion more in U.S. Treasury securities than the Chinese owned.
