SpaceX Heavy-Lift Rocket Will Launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base
July 15th, 2011Via: space.com:
The company Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, broke ground Wednesday (July 13) on a new launch site for its massive heavy-lift rocket.
SpaceX is upgrading a site called Space Launch Complex 4-East at Vandenberg Air Force Base near Santa Barbara, Calif. The refurbished launch complex will host SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, which the company says will be more powerful than any launch vehicle currently in service.
…
According to the Los Angeles Times, SpaceX is pouring about $30 million into the new launch site, with the aim of securing large launch contracts with the Air Force. Currently, the United Launch Alliance — a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin — launches all payloads for the United States Department of Defense.
Musk made it clear that SpaceX wants a piece of the military satellite market.
Cryptogon Reader Sends Contribution
July 15th, 2011Thanks to Auckland Subscriber HH for sending NZ$50.
Charges Dropped Against Oak Park Woman Over Veggie Garden; City May Now Prosecute Her for Absurd Pet Issue
July 15th, 2011Via: The Detroit News:
Charges against the woman who planted a vegetable garden in her front yard have been dropped, her attorney said Thursday.
But other charges against Julie Bass have been resurrected for not having licenses for her two dogs — even though she took care of that issue, lawyer Solomon Radner said.
“This is really nothing other than a personal vendetta against the Basses either because somebody doesn’t like them, or because they had the nerve to fight this unjust prosecution,” said Radner, who plans to file a motion to dismiss.
City officials could not be immediately reached for comment.
Bass was charged with a misdemeanor for growing cucumbers, tomatoes and other vegetables in raised beds in her front yard, leading to a blog and Facebook page — “Oak Park Hates Veggies.”
Fukushima Cleanup Recruits ‘Nuclear Gypsies’ from Across Japan
July 14th, 2011Nuclear Ginza (1995)
Part 1
Part 2
Via: Guardian:
Four months on from the start of the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl, this hot-spring resort in north-east Japan has been transformed into a dormitory for 2,000 men who have travelled from across the country to take part in the clean-up effort 30 miles away at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant.
Iwaki-Yumoto has come to resemble corporate Japan in microcosm. Among its newest residents are technicians and engineers with years of experience and, underpinning them all, hundreds of labourers lured from across Japan by the prospect of higher wages.
They include Ariyoshi Rune, a tall, wiry 47-year-old truck driver whose slicked-back hair and sideburns are inspired by his idol, Joe Strummer.
For five days a week, Rune is in thrall to the drudgery of life as a “nuclear gypsy”, the name writer Kunio Horie gave to contract workers who have traditionally performed the dirtiest, most dangerous jobs for Japan’s power utilities.
The industry has relied on temporary workers for maintenance and repair work since the nuclear plant construction boom in the 1970s. Now, as then, those from the lowest rungs of Japanese society work for meagre wages, with little training or experience of hazardous environments.
Fallout Tainted Beef Hits Japanese Market
July 14th, 2011Via: Wall Street Journal:
Japan grappled with a fresh radiation scare Tuesday, as authorities found that beef contaminated with radioactive cesium had been shipped to shops and restaurants throughout the country.
The beef, from six cattle raised on a farm near the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, registered radioactive-cesium levels up to seven times that permitted by Japanese food-safety standards. Some of the meat had already likely been eaten, government officials said.
Moody’s Puts U.S. AAA Bond Rating On Review for Possible Downgrade
July 14th, 2011I could definitely be wrong, but I continue to hold the opinion that there is hardly any chance that, through legislative inaction, the U.S. will default.
Via: USA Today:
As President Obama and congressional leaders haggled over the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling this afternoon, they got a stark reminder of the financial stakes.
Moody’s Investors Service has placed the nation’s Aaa bond rating on review for possible downgrade, citing “the rising possibility that the statutory debt limit will not be raised on a timely basis, leading to a default on Treasury debt obligations.”
Ron Paul to Ben Bernanke: Is Gold Money?
July 14th, 2011Via: CSPAN Clip on YouTube:
Liberation from the Taliban: U.S. Builds New Jails Across Afghanistan
July 14th, 2011Via: Wired:
The U.S. military is supposed to turn its massive jail on the outskirts of Bagram Air Field over to the Afghan government this year. But the U.S. is going to keep holding detainees in Afghanistan for a long, looooong time to come — as new military construction contracts reveal.
U.S. Used Strategic Bombers Against Libya
July 14th, 2011Via: Air Force Magazine:
A quick symphony of planning allowed USAF’s heavy bombers to strike 150 targets in Libya.
On March, five Air Force bombers—three B-2s and two B-1Bs—attacked targets in Libya as part of NATO’s mission to protect civilians from government attack in that country’s uprising and civil war.
On the first night of the operation, March 19, three B-2s of the 509th Bomb Wing struck 45 targets at an airfield in Ghardabiya, Libya. Photos of the airfield released by the Pentagon the next day showed hardened aircraft shelters at that base struck with great precision. All were collapsed or showed blackened trails emanating from their entrances, confirming that whatever was inside exploded and burned.
The B-2s flew directly from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri and recovered there as well, as they had done in previous operations in Afghanistan and Serbia.
Just days later, B-1Bs destroyed ammunition depots, combat aircraft and vehicle maintenance facilities, command and control buildings, and Libyan air defense sites. The B-1s, too, attacked Libya directly from their base in the continental US, but recovered in Europe before striking at more targets en route to home base.
Collectively, the bombers destroyed nearly 150 targets. All the aircraft returned home unscathed. The missions marked a number of organizational and operational firsts for the Air Force, especially with regard to how USAF coordinates the planning and execution of long-range strikes.
The operation marked the first global strike mission under the direction of US Strategic Command and its relatively new air component, Air Force Global Strike Command. It was the first combat operation for US Africa Command, another relatively young organization. It was also the first combat operation run for STRATCOM out of its own global strike air operations center, the 608th Air and Space Operations Center (AOC) at Barksdale AFB, La.
The “War On Drugs” Is A $2.5 Trillion Racket: How Big Banks, Private Military Companies And The Prison Industry Cash In
July 14th, 2011Via: AmpedStatus:
Anyone who researches the “War on Drugs” already knows that it has been a very costly disaster. As the Global Commission on Drug Policy recently reported:
“The global war on drugs has failed, with devastating consequences for individuals and societies around the world….
Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption….
Government expenditures on futile supply reduction strategies and incarceration displace more cost-effective and evidence-based investments in demand and harm reduction.”
The War on Drugs has cost US taxpayers over $2.5 trillion dollars. From 1998 – 2008, a UN study estimates that the use of opiates has increased 35 percent and cocaine use has increased 27 percent. Due to nonviolent drug offenses, the US prison population has increased “more than twelvefold since 1980.”
The War on Drugs has also fueled organized crime and drug related violence has dramatically increased over the past few years. Due to drug war violence, since December of 2006, a stunning 45,000 people have been killed in Mexico alone.
Despite numerous reports and a mountain of evidence proving the utter failure of the War on Drugs, the Obama Administration has defended the effort and escalated the war. What many reports criticizing the War on Drugs fail to discuss is how successful the war has been at enriching the global financial elite. The War on Drugs, just like the War on Terror, is another criminal racket set up to benefit profiteering banks, military companies and the prison industrial complex at our tragic expense.
