Iran Replaces Dollar with Euro in Most Oil Dealings
December 6th, 2006Via: Mher News:
Iran has started replacing dollar with euro in majority of its crude oil exchanges in the last several months, an informed source with Iran’s Oil Ministry said here on Tuesday.
Oil Ministry has taken the policy to substitute dollar with euro, and begun to implement it for most of its oil dealings, the source who spoke on the condition of anonymity told the Mehr News Agency.
“This can maintain the real value of Iranian oil,†he added.
The majority of Iran crude’s customers are Asian and European states, the source noted.
Iran is the number two oil producing member of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). It also stands second behind Russia in terms of gas reserves in the world.
Say Hello to the Goodbye Weapon
December 6th, 2006This weapon is old news, but note the tenacity with which the military carried out the Dr. Mengele inspired research. How many hundreds or thousands of people have dedicated their careers to this thing? What could have been accomplished if all of this time, effort and money was directed at non-evil objectives?
This, actually, is nothing when you consider the time, effort and money that has been blown on nuclear weapons (about $5.5 trillion just up until 1996) and military/intelligence satellite projects (historical estimates: unknown due to appropriations secrecy, but roughly $20 billion just in 2006). Even the most hardened researchers into government profligacy are moved to tears by these numbers.
This is what happens when Machine induced psycopathy takes over. Peoples’ lives become absorbed with creating (and chasing) hideous grotesqueries rather than doing anything truly constructive or beneficial. The Myth of the Machine gets people to believe that what they’re doing is good, true and beautiful, even as they carry out the bidding of the most diabolical criminals on the planet. To what end? It’s simple. The technologies of death and control have created a world in which 2% of people own more than half of the wealth. There’s not much room at the top of the pyramid, after all.
Which begs the question…
I wonder if this weapon has a mode that hasn’t been publicized yet? A mode similar to what the aliens had in the War of the Worlds films. The beam hits you and all that’s left is a puff of ash. But not to fear, children. This weapon just induces excruciating, unimaginable pain. And the U.S. Air Force wants to use it on Americans first, in Jesus Land, before deploying it where “the terrorists” are holding up freedom and democracy in Iraq.
Freedom and democracy you can feel!
You need to be pretty smart (and have almost pathological tunnel vision) to be able to build a death ray, but just about anyone can see a pyramid scheme when you strip away the bullshit.
Added bonus on this article: It contains actual references to tinfoil. No really! Tinfoil, in the truest sense of the word. Tinfoil, in terms of protection from a government ray gun. You would, however, need a to wrap yourself up “like a turkey” to get any level of protection from this thing.
I’m sure some activists will don Obi-Wan Kenobi style robes made out of Reynolds wrap as they try to wave their peace signs at the directed energy weapons. Personally, I’m waiting for the twits to try tin foil reflector “LICK BUSH” signs, or maybe the good old trashcan lid fashioned into a microwave shield. My guess, however, is that if it was possible to bounce any of the energy back at the fascists running the directed energy machine, the cops/soldiers would simply blow the heads off of the protesters who tried it. Back to the drawing board for the full time activist class…
I don’t know who’s more nuts, Darth Vader, or the idiots who think they can wave signs at him and think it will accomplish anything.
Via Wired:
The crowd is getting ugly. Soldiers roll up in a Hummer. Suddenly, the whole right half of your body is screaming in agony. You feel like you’ve been dipped in molten lava. You almost faint from shock and pain, but instead you stumble backwards — and then start running. To your surprise, everyone else is running too. In a few seconds, the street is completely empty.
You’ve just been hit with a new nonlethal weapon that has been certified for use in Iraq — even though critics argue there may be unforeseen effects.
According to documents obtained for Wired News under federal sunshine laws, the Air Force’s Active Denial System, or ADS, has been certified safe after lengthy tests by military scientists in the lab and in war games.
The ADS shoots a beam of millimeters waves, which are longer in wavelength than x-rays but shorter than microwaves — 94 GHz (= 3 mm wavelength) compared to 2.45 GHz (= 12 cm wavelength) in a standard microwave oven.
The longer waves are thought to limit the effects of the radiation. If used properly, ADS will produce no lasting adverse affects, the military argues.
Documents acquired for Wired News using the Freedom of Information Act claim that most of the radiation (83 percent) is instantly absorbed by the top layer of the skin, heating it rapidly.
The beam produces what experimenters call the “Goodbye effect,” or “prompt and highly motivated escape behavior.” In human tests, most subjects reached their pain threshold within 3 seconds, and none of the subjects could endure more than 5 seconds.
“It will repel you,” one test subject said. “If hit by the beam, you will move out of it — reflexively and quickly. You for sure will not be eager to experience it again.”
But while subjects may feel like they have sustained serious burns, the documents claim effects are not long-lasting. At most, “some volunteers who tolerate the heat may experience prolonged redness or even small blisters,” the Air Force experiments concluded.
The reports describe an elaborate series of investigations involving human subjects.
The volunteers were military personnel: active, reserve or retired, who volunteered for the tests. They were unpaid, but the subjects would “benefit from direct knowledge that an effective nonlethal weapon system could soon be in the inventory,” said one report. The tests ranged from simple exposure in the laboratory to elaborate war games involving hundreds of participants.
The military simulated crowd control situations, rescuing helicopter crews in a Black Hawk Down setting and urban assaults. More unusual tests involved alcohol, attack dogs and maze-like obstacle courses.
In more than 10,000 exposures, there were six cases of blistering and one instance of second-degree burns in a laboratory accident, the documents claim.
The ADS was developed in complete secrecy for 10 years at a cost of $40 million. Its existence was revealed in 2001 by news reports, but most details of ADS human testing remain classified. There has been no independent checking of the military’s claims.
The ADS technology is ready to deploy, and the Army requested ADS-armed Strykers for Iraq last year. But the military is well aware that any adverse publicity could finish the program, and it does not want to risk distressed victims wailing about evil new weapons on CNN.
This may mean yet more rounds of testing for the ADS.
…
The beam penetrates clothing, but not stone or metal. Blocking it is harder than you might think. Wearing a tinfoil shirt is not enough — you would have to be wrapped like a turkey to be completely protected. The experimenters found that even a small exposed area was enough to produce the Goodbye effect, so any gaps would negate protection. Holding up a sheet of metal won’t work either, unless it covers your whole body and you can keep the tips of your fingers out of sight.
Wet clothing might sound like a good defense, but tests showed that contact with damp cloth actually intensified the effects of the beam.
System 1, the operational prototype, is mounted on a Hummer and produces a beam with a 2-meter diameter. Effective range is at least 500 meters, which is further than rubber bullets, tear gas or water cannons. The ammunition supply is effectively unlimited.
Registered Traveler Program
December 5th, 2006Via: NY Times:
READY or not — and some critics say not — the long-delayed Registered Traveler program is moving forward, with the single existing operator planning a succession of openings soon at four airports, while a competitor says it is about to join in.
…
The Registered Traveler program provides identity cards, which include not only data on place of birth and home address but also fingerprints and iris scans. Travelers who pay an annual fee after passing a federal background check can then go through expedited security in special lanes. Clear charges $99.95 a year, which includes a federal fee for the security clearances. Once the program expands, Registered Traveler identity cards will be interchangeable at various suppliers’ lanes.
Richest Two Percent of People Own More than Half the World
December 5th, 2006Via: Reuters:
Two percent of adults have more than half of the world’s wealth, including property and financial assets, according to a study by the U.N. development research institute published on Tuesday.
While global income is distributed unequally, the spread of wealth is even more skewed, the study by the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the U.N. University said.
“Wealth is heavily concentrated in North America, Europe and high income Asia-Pacific countries. People in these countries collectively hold almost 90 percent of total world wealth,” the survey showed.
The Helsinki-based institute said its study was the first global research on the topic, for which there is only limited data.
“We’ve estimated that the richest 2 percent of adults own more than half of global wealth, while the bottom half own 1 percent,” said institute director Anthony Shorrocks.
He likened the situation to that where, in a group of 10 people, one person has $99, while the remaining nine share $1.
“If you think income has been distributed unequally, wealth has been distributed even more unequally,” Shorrocks said.
According to the study, in 2000 a couple needed capital of $1 million to be among the top 1 percent on the wealth list — the richest 37 million people in the world.
More than one in every two of those people lives in the United States or Japan.
And it found that net assets of $2,200 per adult would put a household in the top half of the world wealth distribution.
U.S. Plans Permanent Base on Moon
December 5th, 2006If this turns into, “We need the helium 3 because of peak oil,” friend, ask for extra sugar with your KoolAid.
What will the U.S. national debt be by the time they light the fuse on Bozo’s rocket ship to the moon? $20 trillion? $100 trillion? The Chinese better keep buying up that U.S. debt……………………
Via: Washington Post:
NASA unveiled plans yesterday to set up a small and ultimately self-sustaining settlement of astronauts at the south pole of the moon sometime around 2020 — the first step in an ambitious plan to resume manned exploration of the solar system.
The long-awaited proposal envisions initial stays of a week by four-person crews, followed by gradually longer visits until power and other supplies are in place to make a permanent presence possible by 2024.
The effort was presented as an unprecedented mission to learn about the moon and places beyond, as well as an integral part of a long-range plan to send astronauts to Mars. The moon settlement would ultimately be a way station for space travelers headed onward, and would provide not only a haven but also hydrogen and oxygen mined from the lunar surface to make water and rocket fuel.
NASA officials declined to put a price tag on what will clearly be an extremely expensive venture. But they said that with help from international partners and perhaps space businesses, the agency would have sufficient funds to undertake the plan without any dramatic infusion of new money.
If the project goes ahead as planned, it would return humans to the moon for the first time since 1972.
NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale said the agency met with hundreds of scientists, potential international partners and space businesses over the past year to discuss lunar options — most pressingly, whether the plan should be based around a series of sorties to the moon or a permanent outpost and later settlement. The conclusion, she said, was that an outpost would be the best both for science and to prepare for exploration deeper into space.
Scott Horowitz, chief of lunar exploration, said: “The lunar base will be a central theme in our going forward plan for going back to the moon in preparation to go to Mars and beyond. It’s a very, very big decision, and it’s one of the few where I’ve seen the scientific community and the engineering community actually agree on anything.”
Dale said that once the team endorsed the concept of an outpost, which would be about the size of the Mall, the next debate was over where to put it, with a focus on either of the moon’s poles.
“Conditions at the south pole appear to be more moderate and safer,” she said. The south pole is almost constantly bathed in light and would be an ideal place to set up solar-power collectors for an electrical system — a precondition for achieving the kind of “living off the land” that NASA is aiming for.
Horowitz also said the polar sites are scientifically exciting because “we don’t know as much about the lunar poles as we know about Mars.” Officials said the area around the south pole has craters that probably hold volatile gases that could be collected for commercial purposes. Highest on the list of possible resources is helium-3, a form of the gas seldom found on Earth that could be well suited for nuclear power fuel.
New on the Web: Politics as Usual
December 4th, 2006Politicians are now buying bloggers. And if you thought it was cheap for a corporation to buy a politician, wait until you see how cheap it is for a politician to buy a blogger (chart)!
Via: NY Times:
“THE Netroots.” “People Power.” “Crashing the Gate.” The lingo of liberal Web bloggers bespeaks contempt for the political establishment. The same disdain is apparent among many bloggers on the right, who argued passionately for a change in the slate of House Republican leaders — and who wallowed in woe-is-the-party pity when the establishment ignored them.
You might think that with the kind of rhetoric bloggers regularly muster against politicians, they would never work for them. But you would be wrong.
Over the past few years, bloggers have won millions of fans by speaking truth to power — even the powers in their own parties — and presenting a fresh, outsider perspective. They are the pamphleteers of the 21st century, revolutionary “citizen journalists†motivated by personal idealism and an unwavering confidence that they can reform American politics.
But this year, candidates across the country found plenty of outsiders ready and willing to move inside their campaigns. Candidates hired some bloggers to blog and paid others consulting fees for Internet strategy advice or more traditional campaign tasks like opposition research.
After the Virginia Democratic primary, for instance, James Webb hired two of the bloggers who had pushed to get him into the race. The Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont in Connecticut had at least four bloggers on his campaign team. Few of these bloggers shut down their “independent†sites after signing on with campaigns, and while most disclosed their campaign ties on their blogs, some — like Patrick Hynes of Ankle Biting Pundits — did so only after being criticized by fellow bloggers.
See: Astroturfing
Arrested American, Europeans in ‘Terrorist’ Cell, Egypt Says
December 4th, 2006Imagine my shock!
Via: CBC:
Egyptian police have arrested an American, 11 Europeans and several others from Arab countries for allegedly plotting terrorist attacks in Middle Eastern countries, including Iraq, the Interior Ministry said Monday.
The group was part of an Islamic militant terror cell that had adopted extremist ideas and were living in Egypt under the guise of studying Arabic and Islamic studies, the ministry said in a statement.
Along with the American, police arrested two Belgians, nine French and several others from Egypt and other Arab countries, including Tunisia and Syria, the statement said.
The ministry did not provide names or say how many Egyptians and Arabs had been arrested.
“Investigations have confirmed that those elements are related to some terrorist organizations abroad,” the ministry said. “They were seeking to recruit others, teach them destructive beliefs, urging them for jihad, traveling to Iraq to carry out operations via other countries in the region.”
The U.S. Embassy in Cairo declined to comment about the arrests.
Related: Two British SAS Soldiers Dressed as Arabs, Shoot at Iraqi Police
Related: Pseudo Operations and Counterinsurgency: Lessons from Other Countries
The House of Death
December 4th, 2006Via: The Guardian:
Luis Padilla, 29, father of three, had been kidnapped, driven across the Mexican border from El Paso, Texas, to a house in Ciudad Juarez, the lawless city ruled by drug lords that lies across the Rio Grande. As his wife tried frantically to locate him, he was being stripped, tortured and buried in a mass grave in the garden – what the people of Juarez call a narco-fossa, a narco-smugglers’ tomb.
Just another casualty of Mexico’s drug wars? Perhaps. But Padilla had no connection with the drugs trade; he seems to have been the victim of a case of mistaken identity. Now, as a result of documents disclosed in three separate court cases, it is becoming clear that his murder, along with at least 11 further brutal killings, at the Juarez ‘House of Death’, is part of a gruesome scandal, a web of connivance and cover-up stretching from the wild Texas borderland to top Washington officials close to President Bush.
Boston Massacre: Real Estate Prices Now at 2004 Levels
December 4th, 2006Remember what I wrote about downward momentum increasing…
Via: Boston Herald:
Boston house prices plunged last month at their fastest pace in more than 13 years, erasing all gains recorded since early 2004, new figures show.
Market tracker The Warren Group reported yesterday that median house-sale prices in Suffolk County, which mostly consists of Boston, fell to $325,950 – a stunning 13.31 percent decline from October 2005.
That drops prices back to May 2004 levels. It’s also the sharpest 12-month pullback since 1993.
“The October numbers continue a trend we’ve been seeing for some time now – a pronounced slowdown that’s affecting every facet of the housing market,†Warren Group CEO Tim Warren said.
Research Credit: Housing Panic
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December 3rd, 2006Thanks, EP, for your continued and generous support.
