Voronezh-M radar in Lekhtusi represents the current generation of Russian early warning system. (Image from wikipedia.org)A global surveillance intelligence system being finalized in Russia will track down anything that flies, sails or drives from thousands of kilometers away, a Defense Ministry source says. The system allegedly detects all known stealth technology.The Multi Intelligence Information System (MII
992
S) promises to be more effective than existing airborne, space and radar reconnaissance combined, a source in the Defense Ministry informed Izvestia daily.The tech specs of the program are most likely to stay top secret for years to come, but the source explained that modus operandi of the system is locating and tracking man-made objects and mechanisms which use waves of a different nature while operating.“Every civilian or military object, be it airborne or on the ground, uses various systems emitting radio waves. It could be radar stations, communication systems, navigation GPS and GLONASS complexes, radio altimeters etc. Aircrafts have thermal and other sorts of wave emissions. The principles of physics cannot be escaped, even by American stealth B2 and F22 military aircraft. The task of MIIS is to spot such emissions, get exact coordinates and track the movement,” the source shared.The MIIS is capable of classifying targets depending on the kind of waves emitted. It is expected that vehicles on the ground will be as easily to track as ships and aircraft already are.“Because the MIIS only monitors the space, it does not emit waves itself, therefore the enemy won’t know it has been spotted,” the source told Izvestia.The MIIS antennas require only a few dozens of square meters so system’s operational site is hard to disclose by aerial and space reconnaissance.“First tests of the system took place in 2009. The MIIS position located near Moscow successfully tracked down warships and aircraft of various types in the Barents Sea area (about 2,000km) within several meters of accuracy,” the source said, revealing that the MIIS system will be dual-purpose, both for military, which besides reconnaissance and surveillance will imply the use of high-precision weaponry, and for civilian navigation use.The Defense Ministry’s press-service refused to comment to RT on the issue.The report about deployment of global surveillance intelligence system coincides with the modernization of Russia’s missile defense systems. The Defense Ministry has reportedly invested 35 billion rubles (about US$1.12 billion) in the construction of two industrial plants producing the latest-generation hypersonic air defense missiles. … Read More
Russia to acquire cutting-edge tracking system by late 2013 – report
UK Continues To Criminalize Bad Taste And Stupidity In Online Postings
In the wake of the Twitter joke trial fiasco, which saw Paul Chambers dragged through the courts for two years before being acquitted, the UK’s Director of Public Prosecutions announced that there should be an “informed debate”
about the boundaries of free speech for social media. That really
can’t happen soon enough, as the UK continues to arrest and punish
people for the crime of posting stupid and tasteless messages online.
Here are some of the latest developments.
On Techdirt.
… Read More
EU Copyright Holders Cling To Old Levies, As New Ones Start To Appear On Cloud Storage
Levies on blank storage media are a relic of older times when copying
was a new possibility for copyright works. You no longer needed an LP
pressing plant, say, you could copy music in the comfort of your own
home, first on analog cassette tapes, then later on digital media like
CDs and MP3 players. At that time, it was easy to see each of those
copies as somehow replacing purchases, and so the argument for levies
was born: people should pay indirectly for the “lost” sales their
copying caused.
On Techdirt.
… Read More
News Bulletin – 2035GMT update
http://www.youtube.com/v/NK6LXZ5aWQ0?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Link to original: News Bulletin – 2035GMT update
Apple Likely to Introduce Smaller iPad in October Event
People are still having trouble buying Apple’s new iPhone, which is selling out in stores rapidly, but the company is already planning to introduce another new product in an event later this month: a smaller, lighter version of the iPad. … Read More
3 Portland Activists Indefinitely Detained for Refusing to Speak at Grand Jury Hearing
Since late July, three activists have had their lives torn apart by the police and the legal system, simply because they refused to answer any questions in a grand jury case, regarding crimes that they have absolutely no connection to. As of right now, all three are behind bars, with no clue when they will be able to get out.
The most recent to be sent away was Leah-Lynn Plante, this week she repeated the same process that she just watched her room mates go through. After being summoned to speak twice and refusing to speak both times, the prosecutors in the case enacted a legal loophole which waived her 5th amendment right to remain silent. This decision was made for her by the court against her will.
The sneaky legal trick that the prosecutors pulled was granting her immunity, which meant that anything she said to them would not incriminate her. This may sound ok at face value but when you are granted immunity, you lose your right to remain silent and can be thrown into prison for what is called “civil contempt”. This actually happens a lot, video journalist Josh Wolf, for example, served seven and a half months in 2006 and 2007 for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury and turn over his footage of a protest in San Francisco. Grand jury trials are very shady ordeals, which have totally different rules than the typical court case. Defense attorneys are not even allowed to be present, and the proceedings of the case are completely secret.
According to the grand jury infosheet on antipolitics.com:
“Since their inception, both in England and in the United States, grand juries have been used against political dissidents, the jurors often being hand-picked to ensure indictment. A modern variation on this abuse of power relies on political activists’ reluctance to turn informant. Activists are subpoenaed with the expectation that they will refuse to testify, and thus end up in jail for lengthy periods. The person who was subpoenaed is thereby immobilized, while other activists are deterred from further participation.”
At the end of the day, beneath all of the rhetoric, she is being persecuted for refusing to obey and refusing to spy on fellow activists. She was targeted in the first place because of her activist work and a collection of what the feds call “Anarchist Literature”. Her roommates Katherine “Kteeo” Olejnik and Matthew Kyle Duran have been faced with the same situation and both were nailed with the same tricky legal loophole.
It all started on the morning of July 25th when their house was raided on the apparent grounds of their connection to a May Day protest, where unidentified members of a crowd carried out random acts of vandalism. These acts of vandalism were isolated and there has been no proof that these three activists are involved in any way.
In fact, they all have alibis, all three of them weren’t physically at the protests, nor were they even in town at the time. A statement released by Leah just before her final court date described the experience in detail, and discussed the events leading up to the grand jury summoning. The statement read in part:
“FBI agents from around Washington and Oregon and Joint Terrorism Task Force agents from Washington busted down the front door of my house with a battering ram, handcuffed my house mates and me at gunpoint, and held us hostage in our backyard while they read us a search warrant and ransacked our home. They said it was in connection to May Day vandalism that occurred in Seattle, Washington earlier this year.
However, we suspected that this was not really about broken windows. As if they had taken pointers from Orwell’s 1984, they took books, artwork and other various literature as “evidence” as well as many other personal belongings even though they seemed to know that nobody there was even in Seattle on May Day. While we know that knowledge is powerful, we suspected that nobody used rolled up copies of the Stumptown Wobbly to commit property damage.
We saw this for what it was. They are trying to investigate anarchists and persecute them for their beliefs. This is a fishing expedition. This is a witch hunt. Since then, thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, we have learned that this Grand jury was convened on March 2nd, 2012, two months before the May Day vandalism even took place.”
Her fourth and final court date in front of the grand jury was this week, October 10th, where again, she refused to speak, only this time she was jailed as a result. Although there were supporters outside of the courthouse in protest, there has been minimal mainstream coverage of this legal battle. Most of the coverage that has come has been through pnline blogs and activist websites. Due to the censorship and secrecy that has surrounded this case, what exactly took place inside the court room is still a mystery. So far, the only message about Leah’s condition has come from a post that a supporter has made to her tumblr page. The message reads as follows:
“Today, October 10th, 2012, Leah-Lynn Plante was thrown into prison for civil contempt.
This blog will now only be maintained by members of her support team, she will resume posting when she is free. Please keep following so you can get updates about her and how to help.
Thank you on behalf of Leah and all the PNW Grand Jury Resisters.”
Since these proceedings are completely secret there has been no word on her sentence, but it has been speculated that her room mate Matthew could be held in solitary confinement until March of 2014, and it appears that the same goes for Katherine and Leah as well.
Sadly, Mayday has a long history of false flag vandal attacks and activist witchhunts. Matthew Kyle Duran referenced one of the most popular of these instances, the Haymarket protests of 1886, in his last statement before being incarcerated. Part of his statement read:
When the Haymarket massacre took place all those years ago and the martyrs were hung for their desire for a better life, the State attempted to crush all radicals. Clearly, this did not work then and it won’t work now. If this was their desire, they have failed in every aspect of it as I have not seen anything other than flagrant disregard for them across the globe. Keep the struggle in your hearts and minds and do not bend to their will. They will never be able to destroy us no matter how hard they try.
As in their case, every single person who was taken in an executed after the Haymarket protests were in fact innocent, many of them also not even being in town at the time. This was an important but rarely talked about part of history, which i cover in detail in my hardback book “Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance“. In chapter 45 of the book i discuss how:
“Two days into the strike on May 3rd, 4 workers outside the McCormick Harvester company were indiscriminately killed by police during protests, and dozens of others were injured. The following day the protests grew as a result of the murders and prominent activists of the time began to call national attention to what was going on in Chicago.
The next day on May 4th a bomb was set off in the midst of the protests and although there was no indication of who was responsible for the bombing, the blame was placed on the demonstrators and a witch hunt ensued. 8 of the most prominent antiestablishment speakers and writers of the time were rounded up for “inciting a murder” and executed. Their only crime was exercising their right to free speech and speaking out against the establishment. 3 of the 8 activists that were executed were speaking and were nowhere near the explosion, the other 5 weren’t even in town at the time. The evidence that has surfaced since the Haymarket incident show that the blast was most likely set by an agent provocateur, in order to give the establishment an excuse to silence this growing political movement.”
Now over a hundred years later history is repeating itself, and these nonviolent people have been taken from their homes, their lives and their loved ones to be placed in a cage under constant supervision, with absolutely no clue when they will see the light of day again.
Websites have been established for Leah and her friends, but their futures are still uncertain. A massive public uproar could help spring them free sooner or later, so it is important for the alternative press and the activist community to stay up on this story and gather public support for their cause.
If you have any questions or disagreements feel free to email me at jgvibes@aotmr.com
J.G. Vibes is the author of an 87 chapter counter culture textbook called Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance and host of a show called Voluntary Hippie Radio. He is also an artist with an established record label and event promotion company that hosts politically charged electronic dance music events. You can keep up with his work, which includes free podcasts, free e-books & free audiobooks at his website www.aotmr.com .
Delivered by The Daily Sheeple
Contributed by J.G. Vibes of Alchemy of the Modern Resistance. … Read More
Why Mainstream Media, Main Street And Institutions Fail To See The Benefits Of Gold
Many of today’s investors have only lived through the long term bull market of financial assets, between 1980 and 2000. Those two decades have been characterized by strong growth in bond and equity markets. At the same time, gold & silver prices experienced a slow and steady decline. Nick Barisheff remembers it was remarkable how the Central Banks, Wall Street and the media were exploiting every opportunity to make negative comments about precious metals.
The cycle before that started in 1968. It included US President Nixon putting an end to the Gold standard in 1971 and peaked with the gold and silver mania in 1980. And here we are again; gold and silver have outperformed every other asset class for 12 years in a row. Still, precious metals are almost off the radar in the mainstream media. There is less than 0.5% of the total portfolio invested in bullion and mining stocks globally in institutions, while less than 1% is invested by the general public.
Here is the key point: if you’ve only lived through one cycle, it’s very difficult to change your mind. Clearly most people today aren’t able to see beyond the financial asset bull market; they still tend to ignore today’s spectacular gold bull market. Essentially it requires a major paradigm shift in your way of thinking. It’s at this point where the psychological factors come into play. In his book, Nick Barisheff mentions 3 psychological factors that are preventing people from looking at this with an open mind:
Complacency, which is the “routine” behavior that prevents us being open-minded to new evolutions or trends (in this context: willing to admit that the new economic cycle)
Cognitive dissonance indicates the difficulty of making a choice between conflicting options
Normalcy bias is our natural tendency to downplay the probability of a non-regular event (in this context: a currency collapse, a long period of economic stagflation, a hyperinflation)
If you take a closer look, you will recognize these patterns constantly around you. Unless you are able to move past these mental issues, you will stay blindfolded. It doesn’t matter which evidence is presented, like for example a ten-year gold price chart or the decline in value of currencies.
Main street public ignores gold’s real benefits
We have strong evidence of gold’s upward move, with a gold price that has gone from $ 275 in 2001 to a new 11 month high at $1,796.50 on October 10th. The economy continues to look worse with the day, as the Eurozone keeps on struggling with debts and the IMF just issued a grim warning of a weaker global economy. And yet, people keep on talking about gold being overpriced. The most common arguments you hear are that a further price increase is irrational and that it’s too late to invest. Apart from the earlier discussed mental factors that are into play, here is a more fundamental reason barrier: the lack of understanding of the monetary system. It’s mandatory to have a basic understanding of what money and currencies are.
Nick Barisheff often uses the following example. A lot of people still think that gold’s only purpose is for jewelry. With a price of nearly $1,8000, gold is probably overpriced as far as jewelry is concerned. This point becomes perfectly clear on a day like September 13th, when Bernanke announced QE3. The price of gold went up by more than $ 25 in less than an hour. So does that mean that everyone stood up to buy jewelry right after Bernanke’s speech? The central point here is that an announcement was made to debase the US dollar, without any limit, without any timeframe. Anybody with a basic understanding of how money and currencies work, could connect the dots. It’s almost a sure thing that the gold price will continue to rise.
This is so important to understand: it’s the currency that is being debased. The announcement of Ben Bernanke on September 13th stated that the currency was debased to infinity. The rise of the gold price is simply a natural result of that event.
Again, main street public can’t connect the dots as they don’t understand the dynamics of money and currency. They are not to blame in fact, as it wasn’t taught in school or in economic classes. There is even no economic course or university that goes in to the fundamentals of money, how it’s created, the dynamics in that market and so on. The only exception is the Austrian School of Economics.
When you start looking at the history of currencies, there isn’t one example in human history where fiat currency didn’t go through a hyperinflation or complete collapse. Not one! Now for the first time ever we have a reserve currency and a global fiat currency system that is one way or another tied to the US dollar. History is about to repeat once again as we are moving to the same kind of end game.
You really need to get acquainted with topics like money, how the Federal Reserve and the fractional reserve system work, how currencies are being debased and the roles of interest rates and inflation. That’s quite an effort in terms of education for most people.
The primary condition for a better understanding: education
Nick Barisheff is not saying it’s easy to get up to speed with monetary topics. The day-to-day pressure in our society makes it very hard to step back and educate oneself. Today in a typical family, both partners are working. They need to manage their financial and retirement issues, their daily household issues, etc. Our world is subject to a greater level of change than ever before (business, legislation, technological advances, etc). So it’s a big challenge to take the education that is required.
Unfortunately that’s exactly the kind of thing that will cause many people to be blindsided. Educational sites, interviews or books are going to help some people but not the entirety. Most people will jump on board when it becomes totally obvious; that’s probably when hyperinflation hits. For sure it will be too late. That will be the time when gold will be a discussion topic on all cocktail parties and when you will see taxi drivers convincingly explain to people why they should own gold. However, most of them won’t understand why they are investing in it even when the price of gold will probably be rising $100 a day.
We see today already a loss in confidence in traditional institutions like for example the government, banks and (traditional) media. In fact, that trend has been going on for quite some years but it has been accelerating in the past decade. It could bring us faster to the tipping point, as an increasing number of people could turn to alternative media (freely available on the internet) in order to educate themselves.
We saw it all before
You can compare today’s situation with the bull market of the 80’s and 90’s in the high tech stocks on NASDAQ. Although the bull started its run in 1982, it was only in 1998 that 90% of investors started investing. Obviously that was just in time to totally get crushed. A similar evolution took place in the gold bull market of the 70′s.
As from 1974, the US government allowed their citizens to own gold again. If you look at the newspapers back in the 70′s, the main message that was given to the people was how the US dollar was declining x percent against gold. They didn’t say that gold went up with x percent. That’s exactly how the right perception was created. Today’s focus of most media is “how the gold price is going up … for no apparent reason”. All Western economies are accelerating the printing of money, that’s enough reason on itself for gold’s appreciation.
All economic forces are stronger right now compared to the previous gold bull market. Excessive money printing is taking place on a global scale. Also, the 70’s bull market wasn’t global in nature. It was a US phenomenon primarily because the US dollar was declining after it was removed from the gold standard. Gold went up to a lesser extent in Canada and the UK. However, it did not appreciate in German Marks or Swiss Francs.
Why mainstream media avoids talking about the real benefits of gold
There are still big entrenchments from the financial community. The wealth managers, money managers, private banks, pension funds … they are still against the rise of precious metals, perpetuating the idea that gold is a risky asset and that it’s useless as it doesn’t pay any interest or dividend. Those arguments are all easily refuted. But still these negative articles keep on appearing, even now after a fantastic 12 year bull ride. You don’t see something similar in other asset classes. There are considerably less negative articles about oil, potash or natural gas to name some examples. Nick Barisheff admits that he doesn’t know if it’s on purpose, if it’s going to change or when it could change.
Coincidence or not, Forbes announced an article devoted to gold almost exactly the same time of this Q&A with Nick Barisheff: Gold can save us from disaster. The article is written by Steve Forbes himself and will appear in their magazine as well. Could this be a sign that the tide is turning? Are we right now close to the tipping point? Only time will tell, but things are worsening every day in our economy and the least we can say is that the situation is alarming. Do you own physical gold and silver?
Note that BMG offers a lot of valuable insights and resources with an educational character on their website. The information is freely available. Much more insights are published in Nick’s book “$10,000 Gold: Why Gold’s Inevitable Rise is the Investor’s Safe Haven” which will be released later this year and is available for pre-order on Amazon.com.
Read the previous article with Nick Barisheff The Destruction Of Currency And Rise Of Gold
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Contributed by Contributing Author of Gold Silver Worlds. … Read More
