Archive
Cables show China used debt holdings to press US
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| © AFP/File |
WASHINGTON (AFP) – Leaked diplomatic cables vividly show China’s willingness to translate its massive holdings of US debt into political influence on issues ranging from Taiwan’s sovereignty to Washington’s financial policy.
China’s clout — gleaned from its nearly $900 billion stack of US debt — has been widely commented on in the United States, but sensitive cables show just how much influence Beijing has and how keen Washington is to address its rival’s concerns.
An October 2008 cable, released by WikiLeaks, showed a senior Chinese official linking questions about much-needed Chinese investment to sensitive Read more…
Population, Food, Oil … Collision?
World population and growth
Factoring the net birth minus death rate in the world each year, the annual increase to world population is about 75 million people. The current world population is about 6,900,000,000, or 6.9 billion.
Annually, we add to the planet the equivalent population of any of the following scenarios,
- New York City (9 of them!)
- Los Angeles (20 of them!)
- Chicago (27 of them!)
- San Francisco (94 of them!)
- Boston (117 of them!)
- Unites States of America (25 percent of the country!)
When you think about it, this is a startling number. And that’s in just one Read more…
Military Wants More Global Partnerships In Space
US Needs To Better Protect Satellites, Military Says
AP Photo/Department of Defense, Cherie Cullen
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Posted: 5:02 am EST February 20, 2011Updated: 10:21 am EST February 20, 2011
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military needs to better protect its satellites and strengthen its ability to use them as weapons as the uncharted battlefield of space becomes increasingly crowded and dangerous, Pentagon leaders say. A new military strategy for space, as mapped out by the Pentagon, calls for greater cooperation with other nations on space-based programs to improve America’s ability to deter enemies. “It’s a domain, like air land and sea,” said Gen. Kevin Chilton, who led U.S. Strategic Command until he retired late last month. “Space is not just a Read more…
A license to parent your own children
C. Patience Summers
Infowars.com
February 19, 2011
Today’s topics are the State Automated Child Welfare Informations Systems (SACWIS), the Child Abuse Central Index (CACI) and what they mean to us, as citizens of this great country.
The CACI is merely a registry that registers victims and those accused of committing child abuse. It is a registry that follows people their entire lives with only one way to get off of it: to write to the government and specifically ask them to remove you from the list and share good cause to be removed from it.
SACWIS, however, is a more in-depth registry that keeps track of any and all contact with Social Services. This includes unfounded Child Protection Services reports, any form of welfare and a complete history of a person if they were a foster child. If they had an attitude with a social worker at the age of five years old, it goes into the SACWIS file of that person.
Both are interlinked, but SACWIS is more in depth and there is no erasing anything placed on a SACWIS file, even when it’s proven by Social Services to be false.
The eventual goal of SACWIS is to have it interlinked from state to state, across the United States of America and to eventually pass a law making it standard to run everyone’s name through Read more…
Global systemic crisis / World geopolitical breakup – End of 2011: Fall of the “Petro-dollar wall”
– Public announcement GEAB N°52 (February 16, 2011) –
In sharp reversal, U.S. agrees to rebuke Israel in Security Council
Posted By Colum Lynch
The U.S. informed Arab governments Tuesday that it will support a U.N. Security Council statement reaffirming that the 15-nation body “does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlement activity,” a move aimed at avoiding the prospect of having to veto a stronger Palestinian resolution calling the settlements illegal.
But the Palestinians rejected the American offer following a meeting late Wednesday of Arab representatives and said it is planning to press for a vote on its resolution on Friday, according to officials familiar with the issue. The decision to reject the American offer raised the prospect that the Obama administration will cast its first ever veto in the U.N. Security Council.
Still, the U.S. offer signaled a renewed willingness to seek a way out of the current impasse, even if it requires breaking with Israel and joining others in the council in sending a strong message to its key ally to stop its construction of new settlements. U.S. officials were not available for comment, but two Security Council diplomats confirmed the proposal.
The Palestinian delegation, along with Lebanon, the Security Council’s only Arab member state, asked the council’s president late Wednesday to Read more…
Washington proposes $5.50 fee for Canadians entering U.S. by air, sea
The U.S. has been charging that fee to other international passengers, except Canadians, Mexicans and Caribbean nationals who have been exempt from paying it since 1997.
Obama said the fee would raise $110 million yearly to help reduce the country’s budget deficit. The fee would also apply to air and sea travelers from Mexico and the Caribbean.
An average of 16 million Canadians fly to their North American neighbor yearly. The $5.50 fee, if approved by the U.S. Congress, would raise about $110 million and help defray the cost of beefed up boundary security.
The fee would not apply to Read more…
More than 2,000 new weather records set in the US last week
Record event reports for Monday, February 7th, 2011 through Sunday, February 13th, 2011. (Hamweather.com)
CLEVELAND – Wow. Last week was a busy week for weather records across the United States.
From Monday, February 7, 2011 through Sunday, February 13, 2011, 2,219 new records were set. The majority were for cold temperatures and snowfall. Out of the 2,200 records, 655 were for new record low temperatures; 590 were for new record low high temperatures for a particular day; 573 new records were set for daily snowfall.
Only 66 new record high temperatures were measured last week.
New North Korean Space Launch Site Appears Completed
Steve Herman
Photo: GeoEye and Globalsecurity.org
Image taken from the Ikonos satellite, January 10, 2011
New satellite imagery seen by VOA News shows North Korea has completed a launch tower at its second missile launch facility, in the country’s northwest. Intelligence analysts in the United States and South Korea are keeping a close eye on the facility, near Tongchang-dong.
The site is seen as a critical element in Pyongyang’s quest to build a missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon across the Pacific.
The satellite pictures were taken during the past month. Most significantly, the photographs reveal Read more…
Kill Switch Beta: Government Blocks 84,000 Websites
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
February 16, 2011
Under the banner of fighting child pornography, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice knocked out 84,000 websites last week. The websites did not host or link to child pornography as the government claims.
“As part of ‘Operation Save Our Children‘ ICE’s Cyber Crimes Center has again seized several domain names, but not without making a huge error. Last Friday, thousands of site owners were surprised by a rather worrying banner that was placed on their domain,” reports TorrentFreak, a tech site.
Senator Joe Lieberman peddles his kill switch legislation under the rubric of the phony war on terror.
“Advertisement, distribution, transportation, receipt, and possession of child pornography constitute federal crimes that carry penalties for first time offenders of up to 30 years in federal prison, a $250,000 fine, forfeiture and restitution,” was the message visitors to the sites were Read more…
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