News 01/09/12 – Updated

During Pfc. Bradley Manning’s legal hearing last month, many observers thought the proceedings seemed scripted. It turns out that, at least in part, they were.

With the decline of America’s global preeminence, weaker countries will be more susceptible to the assertive influence of major regional powers. India and China are rising, Russia is increasingly imperially minded, and the Middle East is growing ever more unstable. The potential for regional conflict in the absence of an internationally active America is real. Get ready for a global reality characterized by the survival of the strongest.

Wow…

The Shady National Endowment for Democracy &The Prime Agenda of ‘Whoever’ is Next US President

China’s Ministry of defense warned the United States on Monday to be “careful in its words and actions” after announcing a defense rethink that stresses responding to China’s rise by shoring up U.S. alliances and bases across Asia.

According to “Diario de Noticias”, passing by the Prime Minister the matter to the ministry of public affairs, is de facto an investigation of alleged links with representatives of the Portuguese freemasonry intelligence services of the country, as well as top politicians, including MPs to parliament.

Thousands of British email addresses and encrypted passwords, including those of defence, intelligence and police officials as well as politicians and Nato advisers, have been revealed on the internet following a security breach by hackers.

Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, a former US marine of Iranian origin, convicted of spying in Iran.

As long as law enforcement officials claim to have reasonable suspicion that you might be involved with committing a crime, they are free to affix a GPS tracking device to your car without your knowledge and monitor your every movement. At least this is the opinion of US Magistrate Judge David Noce from the Eastern District of Missouri, who recently decided that no warrant is needed to secretly track individuals suspected of criminal behavior.

More than 100 soldiers were on lockdown Sunday after “sensitive” military equipment was stolen from a base in Fort Lewis, Wash.

Iran and Russia have replaced US Dollar with their own currencies in their trade ties, a senior Iranian diplomat announced on Saturday.

Microsoft has been granted a patent for its “avoid ghetto” feature for GPS devices.

Russian visit comes as Arab League scheduled to meet in Cairo to assess the performance of the a widely criticized observer mission; Syria activists say clashes between soldiers, defectors leave 11 dead.

Iran launched a military maneuver near its border with Afghanistan on Saturday, the semi-official Fars news agency reported, days after naval exercises in the Gulf increased tensions with the West and pushed up oil prices.

Here’s a crash course on how to further wreck the global economy.

Iran announced on Friday new military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, but the West has readied plans to use strategic oil stocks to replace almost all Gulf oil lost if Iran blocks the waterway, industry sources and diplomats told Reuters.

With their blue and white SUVs circled around the Main Street office, at least one official was posted on the door with a semiautomatic rifle, randomly checking identifications. And other officers, some with K-9s, sifted through the building.

Under an agriculture ministry plan, unmanned tractors will work fields where pesticides will have been replaced by LEDs keeping rice, wheat, soybeans, fruit and vegetables safe until robots can put them in boxes.

Two weeks after a U.S. Military convoy was seen in the northern Mexican city of Matamoros, the local head of Mexico’s military police has been relieved of duty. After denying rumors that he was being relieved, Brigadier General David Mejia quietly stepped down and was transferred to another duty station due to a ‘promotion’ according the Matamoros Public Safety Office.

How the New Indefinite Detention Provisions can be used on Americans

The first ever lawsuit concerning risks of nanotechnology was filed in federal court last month when several groups jointly sued the US Food and Drug Administration for its lack of response to a 2006 petition demanding that products with nanomaterials be labeled and their affects tested for safety.

Lagos Dissents Under IMF Hegemony

President Obama’s State Department announced, during a press briefing today, the creation of the Bureau of Counterterrorism, which will coordinate with United States entities such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and foreign governments to develop civilian counterterrorism strategies and operations.

It’s simply amazing how quickly the US managed to hit its debt target, pardon, debt ceiling all over again…And now the Social Security Fund pillaging begins anew until Congress signs off on the latest interim debt ceiling increase.

Innovative TED Talks Once Again Tainted by Globalist Salesmen.

Nightmarish ‘supersoldier’ ants with huge heads and jaws have been created by activating ancient genes.

Economics Professor Jack Chambless of Valencia College in Florida had his sophomore students write a short essay on what the American dream means to them and what, specifically, they wanted the federal government to do to help them achieve that dream.

America’s classified X-37B spaceplane is probably spying on China, according to a report in Spaceflight magazine.The unpiloted vehicle was launched into orbit by the US Air Force in March last year and has yet to return to Earth. The Pentagon has steadfastly refused to discuss its mission but amateur space trackers have noted how its path around the globe is nearly identical to China’s spacelab, Tiangong-1. There is wide speculation that the X-37B is eavesdropping on the laboratory.

Vaccine and drug giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) has been fined 400,000 pesos (around the equivalent of $93,000) by an Argentinian judge for killing 14 babies during illegal lab vaccine trials that were conducted between 2007 and 2008.

A new Wall St. scam

The U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines must combine resources to thwart any efforts by countries such as China and Iran to block America’s access to the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf and other strategic regions, according to a draft of a Pentagon review.

A 4.0 magnitude earthquake in Ohio on New Year’s Eve did not occur naturally and may have been caused by high-pressure liquid injection related to oil and gas exploration and production, an expert hired by the state of Ohio said on Tuesday.

New York’s governor on Wednesday proposed making the state the first in the country to take mandatory DNA samples from anyone convicted of a crime, including relatively lesser offenses.

America’s longest economic recession since WWII, ended in June of 2009. The recession’s end means that our economy has allegedly been in recovery mode since July of 2009, more than two and a half years.

Iran escalated its war of words with the United States on Tuesday with a warning to Navy ships to stay out of the strategic Strait of Hormuz, remarks that rattled commodities markets and helped send oil prices soaring.

The ATF recommends that manufacturers voluntarily submit weapons for case-by-case determination. But those judgments are private and, it turns out, sometimes contradictory. Critics say nearly identical prototypes can be approved for one manufacturer but denied for another.

Indian activists have reacted in anger after 12 doctors were fined just 5,000 rupees (S$122) each for conducting secret drug trials on children and patients with learning disabilities.

MF Global unloaded hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of securities to Goldman Sachs in the days leading up to its collapse, according to two former MF Global employees with direct knowledge of the transactions. But it did not immediately receive payment from its clearing firm and lender, JPMorgan Chase & Co (NYSE:JPM – News), one of the sources said.

A murder inquiry has begun after human remains were found on the Queen’s Sandringham Estate in Norfolk.

Nicolas Sarkozy has been named by an investigation into an alleged party funding corruption scandal said to have led to the deaths of 11 French engineers in a Pakistan bomb attack.

Pakistani Islamist militants on Sunday pledged to cease their four-year insurgency against Pakistani security forces, and join the Taliban’s war against NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, said young people’s reading and conversational skills were being put at risk by overexposure to modern technology.

Governments of the world’s leading economies have more than $7.6 trillion of debt maturing this year, with most facing a rise in borrowing costs.

While a sudden, massive crisis of the American system — for instance, another financial crisis — would produce a fast-moving chain reaction leading to global political and economic disorder, a steady drift by America into increasingly pervasive decay or endlessly widening warfare with Islam would be unlikely to produce, even by 2025, an effective global successor.

The Internet’s most popular destinations, including eBay, Google, Facebook, and Twitter seem to view Hollywood-backed copyright legislation as an existential threat.

The Iranian Riyal fell to a record low against the US dollar on Monday, after fresh US sanctions imposed severe penalties and restrictions on foreign financial institutions that had dealing with the Iranian central bank.

The development opens up the possibility of infertile men being able to father their own children rather than using donor sperm.

For each of the past forty-eight years, Congress has passed the misnamed National Defense Authorization Act to set forth the budget of the Defense Department. President Obama just signed into law the latest version of the NDAA, but not without some controversy.

According to the FBI, over 1.5 million background checks on customers were requested by gun dealers to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in December. Nearly 500,000 of those were in the six days before Christmas.