Archive
Military spending in South-East Asia
THE tiny island-state of Singapore, home to just over 5m people, has a well-deserved reputation as a quiet, clean-cut hub for banking, lawyering and golf. Yet beyond the fairways it bristles with weapons.
According to a report from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), Singapore is now the fifth-largest arms importer in the world, bested only by some obvious behemoths—China, India and Pakistan—plus South Korea. Singapore accounts for 4% of the world’s total spending on arms imports. Its defence spending per head beats every country bar America, Israel and Kuwait. This year $9.7 billion, or 24% of the national budget, will go on defence.
These are striking figures, but then Singapore has been one of the Read more…
Russia’s Anti-BMD Alliance?
Andrew Riedy
Russia is seeking to form an ad-hoc “coalition of the willing” to delegitimize U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) plans and paint the United States as a major threat to global stability. As part of this strategy, Moscow is preparing an all-out information campaign that it’s expected to unveil at a conference in Moscow on May 3 to 4 to highlight what it sees as the real reason for NATO and U.S. plans to deploy ballistic missile defenses to Europe and expand cooperation with countries like India and Japan, namely tipping the strategic balance in favor of Western Powers.
Russia is hoping to form a consolidated political group to stand with it in opposing U.S. and NATO BMD deployments, and any such coalition is likely to include China. But there are dangers to bringing Beijing on board that Moscow has either not accounted for, or is at least willing to accept.
As Manpreet Sethi suggested this week, BMD has long been an irritant in the U.S.-Russian relationship. The issue was regulated until 2002 by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, but since the United States unilaterally withdrew from the treaty, the BMD question has been a major Read more…
Exposed… Google Spying On Laptops Using Microphone!
I like to bring in this article a confirmed surveillance attempt by Google of my laptop microphone around April of 2011. Note… Also before I am writing this my laptop was attacked by hackers again. Now I have to restore my laptop again right around when I am suppose to interview Dr. Michael Coffman via Webcam and Microphone. ~ Brian D Hill
It was even admitted on The Register in Sep 2006 that Google was developing eavesdropping software, that uses Audio ‘fingerprint’ for content-relevant ads, and that as I quote from their news website “to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down.
The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that’s adverts or Read more…
Saudi Arabia And China Team Up To Build A Gigantic New Oil Refinery – Is This The Beginning Of The End For The Petrodollar?
The largest oil exporter in the Middle East has teamed up with the second largest consumer of oil in the world (China) to build a gigantic new oil refinery and the mainstream media in the United States has barely even noticed it. This mammoth new refinery is scheduled to be fully operational in the Red Sea port city of Yanbu by 2014. Over the past several years, China has sought to aggressively expand trade with Saudi Arabia, and China now actually imports more oil from Saudi Arabia than the United States does. In February, China imported 1.39 million barrels of oil per day from Saudi Arabia. That was 39 percent higher than last February. So why is this important? Well, back in 1973 the United States and Saudi Arabia agreed that all oil sold by Saudi Arabia would be denominated in U.S. dollars. This petrodollar system was adopted by almost the entire world and it has Read more…
Video: TSA Stopping People On US Highways Without Warrants Or Probable Cause
Better prepared: Mexico’s 7.4 quake causes damage, but no deaths
By the time the powerful 7.4 earthquake rumbled in Mexico City Tuesday, the 56 students ages 6 months to 6 years attending the Montessori Kid’s Place in Mexico City were already evacuated, gathered in the front lobby of the school, a location city engineers had earlier indicated as the safest spot.
“For a few seconds nothing happened, and we thought it might be a false alarm,” says Claudia Yañez, the school director. She had purchased two alarms last year, each the size of a book, which warns them of seismic activity in Guerrero state. If an earthquake over the magnitude of 5 strikes, an alarm sounds and a voice warns “earthquake,” as it did Tuesday, giving them a minute of time to implement the drills they practice monthly. The minute represents the time between Read more…
Feds Buying Up All Surplus Ammo, Ordering Stores To Cease Sales?
Source Says Feds Are Buying Up All Surplus Ammo
Just days ago a military ammunition supplier announced that the Department of Homeland Security had entered a contract to purchase 450 million rounds of .40 Caliber ammunition, which is more than on bullet for every man, woman and child in the United States.
ATK Awarded Contract to Supply 450 Million Rounds of .40 Caliber Ammunition to the Department of Homeland Security
ATK has secured a major Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity deal to supply up to 450 million rounds of .40 caliber ammunition to the Department of Homeland Security.
The 1 year contract with four option years comes at a time when many Americans believe that DHS, along with certain aspects of the military, will soon turn their sights on the American people during some sort of martial law scenario.
“We are proud to extend our track record as the prime supplier of .40 caliber duty ammunition for DHS, ICE,” said Ron Johnson, the president of ATK’s Security and Read more…
Japanese surveillance system scans 36 million faces in seconds (VIDEO)
March 22, 2012, 1:52 PM — Interesting stuff out of Japan – DigInfo has a video showing a new system created by Hitachi Kokusai Electric that can scan more than 36 million faces based on surveillance footage or regular photos in about a second. The high speed is “achieved by detecting faces through image recognition when the footage from the camera is recorded, and also by grouping similar faces,” a spokesman says.
It’s unclear whether this achieves the level of tech on the old “24” TV show, where Jack Bauer could identify people on surveillance footage in a matter of seconds, but it’s still an interesting scenario for large-scale security setups.
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