The 64 Trillion Dollar ARM [video]

The “jobless recovery” visualized

This can’t be leading anywhere good.

Animated unemployment graph (click for full size version)
by Latoya Egwuekwe

Laser weapons down 6 planes in test

Albuquerque (UPI) Nov 18, 2009

New laser weaponry being developed at Boeing has dealt a telling blow to airborne aircraft — all of them unmanned — in successful tests that take military laser technology a few steps closer to assuming a key role in future conflicts.Laser weapons are seen by industry analysts as a major step toward a more effective — and more cost-effective — deterrent to enemy threats from the air. Laser weapons can be fired at enemy targets without any apparent risk to human crews involved. However, most defense laser technologies are still many stages behind fictional depictions of laser weapons in Hollywood films.

Boeing units in Albuquerque and St. Louis, as well as the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army and Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, Calif., took part in the tests to advance the feasibility of lasers in warfare.

The Boeing Co. said its tests demonstrated the ability of mobile laser weapon systems to track and destroy small unmanned aerial vehicles — until then a unique mission.

During the U.S. Air Force-sponsored tests at the Naval Air Warfare Center in China Lake, the mobile weapon, called the Mobile Active Targeting Resource for Integrated Experiments, took part in the tests.

MATRIX was developed by Boeing under contract to the Air Force Research Laboratory. It is a mobile, trailer-mounted test bed that integrates with existing test-range radar. MATRIX used a single, high-brightness laser beam to shoot down five UAVs at various ranges. The sixth aircraft was shot down by Laser Avenger, a Boeing-funded initiative. Representatives of the Air Force and Army watched the tests.

“The Air Force and Boeing achieved a directed-energy breakthrough with these tests,” said Gary Fitzmire, vice president and program director of Boeing Missile Defense Systems’ Directed Energy Systems unit. Industry analysts said the potency of the laser beam was one of the issues being worked on before the tests.

Boeing indicated the tests allowed for powerful laser beams to home in on and destroy the intended targets. “MATRIX’s performance is especially noteworthy because it demonstrated unprecedented, ultra-precise and lethal acquisition, pointing and tracking at long ranges using relatively low laser power,” said Fitzmire.

As warfare becomes technologically advanced there is support on all sides for developing technologies that involve less and less of the human resource that is considered most politically sensitive, analysts said.

Wars that are fought with minimum human input from members of a nation’s armed forces are seen less likely to be controversial than conflicts that involve greater human input, as with ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, analysts said.

Bill Baker, chief scientist of the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Directed Energy Directorate, praised his team and Boeing for the successful UAV shootdowns.

“These tests validate the use of directed energy to negate potential hostile threats against the homeland,” Baker said. “The team effort of Boeing and the Air Force in developing MATRIX will pay major dividends for the warfighter now and in the years ahead,” he added.

As part of the overall counter-UAV demonstration, Boeing also successfully test-fired a lightweight 25mm machine gun from the Laser Avenger platform to potentially increase the capability against UAV threats. This test falls into the category of a hybrid, combining laser with conventional methods.

Boeing Integrated Defense Systems, a unit of The Boeing Co. with headquarters in St. Louis, is one of the world’s largest space and defense businesses and a versatile manufacturer of military aircraft. It is a $32 billion business with 70,000 employees worldwide.

32% Inflation in UCLA Tuition Causes Near Riots (14 Arrested, 1 Tasered) [update]

Analysis from RevolutionNot

Basically, all state funded education institutions are looking down the barrel of this gun. This could be further exasperated by any corrections in the market that impact school endowments.

The point is that all institutions, companies, and individuals need to scale back. Our wealth is evaporating. It is being squandered on failed bailouts to failed companies. These actions are not creating jobs and this directly affects those in higher education because when the students are done with school… there are no places left for them except back home. Is an education worth it at this point? Being straddled with student debt for the next 30 years is not going to create wealth in the US.

This is just the beginning people. Things can only get worse as our dollar is intentionally or unintentionally devalued.

If the federal government decided tomorrow that it won’t be paying interest on its own debt money to the Federal Reserve, there would be enough cash for US government to finance all the state deficits twice over without any impact. We could also stop these pointless wars (Iraq, Afghanistan, Drugs, etc) and pay for the state deficits 6-10 times over without having to monetize the gap. Also, instead of supporting fascism in America, would could let capitalism run free and let failed companies actually fail like they are supposed to. That bailout money could have financed state deficits 6-8 times over. If you use the real projections of $10 trillion that would be 100 times over.

What do we have to show for the bailouts? Well, a good number of those companies are going bad again and rightly so… their failed business model was never fixed with the bailouts. They only got some limited life support. The rest of us get our daily prozac from TV. Awesome.

Mean while, we are trying to stop the actual, and direly needed, correction. If it takes a depression to fix things then I’m all for it. The longer we put off the pain the worse it will be. If Greenspan stopped making bubbles in the 90s then that resulting recession would have been worse but we wouldn’t be in this situation.

So, my heart goes out to the students at UCLA… and, soon, all the students in America.

U.S. Army Sends Infant to Protective Services, Mom to Afghanistan

Dahr Jamail | IPS

VENTURA, California, Nov 13 (IPS) – U.S. Army Specialist Alexis Hutchinson, a single mother, is being threatened with a military court-martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan, despite having been told she would be granted extra time to find someone to care for her 11-month-old son while she is overseas.

Hutchinson, of Oakland, California, is currently being confined at Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, after being arrested. Her son was placed into a county foster care system.

Hutchinson has been threatened with a court martial if she does not agree to deploy to Afghanistan on Sunday, Nov. 15. She has been attempting to find someone to take care of her child, Kamani, while she is deployed overseas, but to no avail.

According to the family care plan of the U.S. Army, Hutchinson was allowed to fly to California and leave her son with her mother, Angelique Hughes of Oakland.

However, after a week of caring for the child, Hughes realised she was unable to care for Kamani along with her other duties of caring for a daughter with special needs, her ailing mother, and an ailing sister.

In late October, Angelique Hughes told Hutchinson and her commander that she would be unable to care for Kamani after all. The Army then gave Hutchinson an extension of time to allow her to find someone else to care for Kamani. Meanwhile, Hughes brought Kamani back to Georgia to be with his mother.

However, only a few days before Hutchinson’s original deployment date, she was told by the Army she would not get the time extension after all, and would have to deploy, despite not having found anyone to care for her child.

Faced with this choice, Hutchinson chose not to show up for her plane to Afghanistan. The military arrested her and placed her child in the county foster care system.

Currently, Hutchinson is scheduled to fly to Afghanistan on Sunday for a special court martial, where she then faces up to one year in jail.

Hutchinson’s civilian lawyer, Rai Sue Sussman, told IPS, “The core issue is that they are asking her to make an inhumane choice. She did not have a complete family care plan, meaning she did not find someone to provide long-term care for her child. She’s required to have a complete family care plan, and was told she’d have an extension, but then they changed it on her.”

Asked why she believes the military revoked Hutchinson’s extension, Sussman responded, “I think they didn’t believe her that she was unable to find someone to care for her infant. They think she’s just trying to get out of her deployment. But she’s just trying to find someone she can trust to take care of her baby.”

Hutchinson’s mother has flown to Georgia to retrieve the baby, but is overwhelmed and does not feel able to provide long-term care for the child.

According to Sussman, the soldier needs more time to find someone to care for her infant, but does not as yet have friends or family able to do so.

Sussman says Hutchinson told her, “It is outrageous that they would deploy a single mother without a complete and current family care plan. I would like to find someone I trust who can take care of my son, but I cannot force my family to do this. They are dealing with their own health issues.”

Sussman told IPS that the Army’s JAG attorney, Captain Ed Whitford, “told me they thought her chain of command thought she was trying to get out of her deployment by using her child as an excuse.” ‘

Major Gallagher, of Hutchinson’s unit, also told Sussman that he did not believe it was a real family crisis, and that Hutchinson’s “mother should have been able to take care of the baby”.

In addition, according to Sussman, a First Sergeant Gephart “told me he thought she [Hutchinson] was pulling her family care plan stuff to get out of her deployment”.

“To me it sounds completely bogus,” Sussman told IPS, “I think what they are actually going to do is have her spend her year deployment in Afghanistan, then court martial her back here upon her return. This would do irreparable harm to her child. I think they are doing this to punish her, because they think she is lying.”

Sussman explained that she believes the best possible outcome is for the Army to either give Hutchinson the extension they had said she would receive so that she can find someone to care for her infant, or barring this, to simply discharge her so she can take care of her child.

Nevertheless, Hutchinson is simply asking for the time extension to complete her family care plan, and not to be discharged.

“I’m outraged by this,” Sussman told IPS, “I’ve never gone to the media with a military client, but this situation is just completely over the top.”

(END/2009)

Libertarian freedom activist forcibly hospitalized and drugged

Veteran libertarian civil rights activist Julian Heicklen calls it “an out-and-out kidnapping” when Homeland Security Police forcibly transported him to a hospital where he was injected with Thorazine against his will.

November 4, 11:07 AM Libertarian News Examiner Garry Reed

When faced with arrest, Heicklen goes limp and silent as he did on
October 26 during his previous attempt to exercise his free speech rights
on public property. (Screen capture from YouTube video shot by Derek
DeMarco)

Veteran libertarian civil rights activist Julian Heicklen calls it “an out-and-out kidnapping” when Homeland Security Police forcibly transported him to a hospital where he was injected with Thorazine against his will.

It began shortly after Heicklen arrived at the US District Courthouse in New York City for the third Monday in a row to pass out pamphlets to prospective jurors.

The pamphlet, produced by the Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) entitled “A Primer for Prospective Jurors” informs jurors of their right to judge the law and its application as well as the facts in a case, regardless of the judge’s instructions to the contrary.

As in the past, (Jury activist arrested for exercising First Amendment rights) Homeland Security police told him he couldn’t do that on federal property and ordered him to leave. As in the past, Heicklen explained that the First Amendment recognized his right to do what he was doing.

Then, as Heicklen tells it in his email report to supporters, “One of them said that I was under arrest, get his hands behind his back and handcuff him.”

As Heicklen always does when faced with arrest, he dropped to the ground and went limp and silent.

In the past, he was arrested, handcuffed, placed on a gurney and transported to a hospital where he was examined and eventually released in time to be home later the same day.

(Full accounts of this and his first two trips to Manhattan can be read on the New Jersey Libertarian Party website.)

But this time something different happened. “I remained in that position for over an hour,” Heicklen says, “before I was lifted onto a gurney and strapped securely. I was never handcuffed nor received a citation or summons. It was an out-and-out kidnapping.”

At Bellevue Psychiaytric Hospital he remained nonresponsive to questions.

Around 3:00 PM, radio reporter Chris Goldstein called to say that he would start the publicity rolling.

After 4:00 PM or so, Heicklen continues, “I made a fuss to see someone in charge, so that I could either be released or brought in front of a magistrate. My requests were ignored, and became more persistent. Against my wishes four attendants grabbed me and gave me a shot of Thorazine to calm me down. It worked, I got an excellent night’s sleep.”

Heicklen asserts that Dr. Lowe, head psychiatrist for the Bellevue unit, made it a point to see that he was not interviewed the first day.

On Tuesday morning, after being interviewed by two people he identifies as psychiatrist Dr. Striker and social worker Kari Wolf, Heicklen was released at 11:55 AM, just over 24 hours after arriving at the courthouse.

Ever upbeat, Heicklen reports his release this way: “I signed all documents ‘John Galt.’ I was released at 11:55 AM and voted for Ken Kaplan for Governor of New Jersey on my way home.

Ken Kaplan, of course, was the Libertarian Party candidate.

Unfortunately, Heicklen’s report ends on this ominous note:

Warning: You should know that The Federal Protective Service is intercepting my e-mails. Another violation of our civil liberties.

EDITORIAL COMMENT
If it’s true that the government is reading all of the emails that pass between Julian and his supporters and well-wishers, let’s force them to violate everyone’s rights. EVERYONE who reads this article should get on Julian’s email list. Make them spy on the entire American freedom movement. Maybe they’ll even join us! Send your email address to jph13@psu.edu and ask Julian to add you to the “Do Not Spy On Me” list. It will be one small way you can show your support for Julian and for freedom.

This YouTube video shot by Derek DeMarco is from October 26, 2009

New University of Bristol study contradicts alarmist climate change theories

This suggests that terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans have a much greater capacity to absorb CO₂ than had been previously expected.

The results run contrary to a significant body of recent research which expects that the capacity of terrestrial ecosystems and the oceans to absorb CO₂ should start to diminish as CO₂ emissions increase, letting greenhouse gas levels skyrocket. Dr Wolfgang Knorr at the University of Bristol found that in fact the trend in the airborne fraction since 1850 has only been 0.7 ± 1.4% per decade, which is essentially zero.

The strength of the new study, published online in Geophysical Research Letters, is that it rests solely on measurements and statistical data, including historical records extracted from Antarctic ice, and does not rely on computations with complex climate models.

This work is extremely important for climate change policy, because emission targets to be negotiated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen early next month have been based on projections that have a carbon free sink of already factored in. Some researchers have cautioned against this approach, pointing at evidence that suggests the sink has already started to decrease.

So is this good news for climate negotiations in Copenhagen? “Not necessarily”, says Knorr. “Like all studies of this kind, there are uncertainties in the data, so rather than relying on Nature to provide a free service, soaking up our waste carbon, we need to ascertain why the proportion being absorbed has not changed”.

Another result of the study is that emissions from deforestation might have been overestimated by between 18 and 75 per cent. This would agree with results published last week in Nature Geoscience by a team led by Guido van der Werf from VU University Amsterdam. They re-visited deforestation data and concluded that emissions have been overestimated by at least a factor of two.

Pay into public eugenics “health” insurance plan or go to prison