Wall St. Bailout: $9 trillion disaster….

Secret U.S. Space Plane May Be Too Mysterious…

By David Axe

Transparency. Openness. International cooperation. These are some of the principles the United States should embrace in order to “safeguard U.S. satellites and protect space,” according to a new report from the Union of Concerned Scientists. Problem is, one of America’s latest and greatest space gizmos runs afoul of those noble ideas. With its secretive X-37B “space plane,” the United States has been anything but transparent, open and cooperative.

The Air Force launched the 29-foot-long, Boeing-built X-37 in April. Now six months into a potential nine-month deployment, the X-37 periodically changes orbits, frustrating amateur satellite-spotters.

Similar to the Space Shuttle, only smaller and fully robotic, the highly maneuverable X-37 includes a payload bay that can accommodate, well, practically anything. “You can put sensors in there, satellites in there,” said Eric Sterner, from The Marshall Institute. “You could stick munitions in there, provided they exist.”

The X-37’s flexibility — “dual-use” is the technical term — itself could be a little alarming to other nations. Worse, the Air Force has declined to say exactly what X-37 is doing now and in the future. Gary Payton, Under Secretary of the Air Force for Space Programs, was as vague as possible in describing the bot’s mission. “Take a payload up, spend up to 270 days on orbit. They’ll run experiments to see if the new technology works.”

But it’s not science experiments that have other countries worried.

They’re concerned that the X-37 could be used to spy on or even “hijack” their own satellites, using “inspection” gear tucked in its payload bay.

Washington could get away with this sort of space espionage because no other government has the technology to comprehensively track the activities of other nations’ space vehicles. “When another state, say Russia or China, uses their dual-use technology, the U.S. has the ability to determine that that was not a hostile act,” said Brian Weeden, from the Secure World Foundation. “But when the U.S. does it, in most cases no one else has information to independently verify what’s going on. That creates a problem.”

To defuse the world’s alarm regarding the X-37, the United States should share space-tracking technology and data, Weeden said. That could result in a “verification regime” for space, similar to what the United States and Russia use to keep tabs on each other’s nuclear-armed bombers and missiles here on earth. “The tricky part, of course, is doing that while still protecting the pieces of that data that are essential to national security,” Weeden said. “It can be done, but it takes a fine balance.”

Despite promising to promote “responsible behavior in space,” the Obama administration’s actions, particularly with the X-37, have had the opposite effect. ”

Increasingly, insecurity about space activities and the motives behind them are creating friction among space-faring countries,” said Laura Grego, one of the UCS report’s authors. “If the Obama administration adopted our recommendations, it could help defuse these tensions and ensure a more secure future in space.”

Author’s note: The mysterious space plane and its capabilities were the subject of a detailed piece I wrote for The Diplomat this summer.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/11/secret-spaceplane-eludes-observers-spooks-governments/

Experts: Mystery contrail was from Chinese missile…’Muted response’ was decision ‘made by the president himself’…

FROM JOSEPH FARAH’S G2 BULLETIN

Although the U.S. Defense Department and North American Aerospace Defense Command have speculated publicly that the unidentified contrail of a projectile soaring into the skies off the California coast – and recorded by a KCBS television crew – came from a jet and posed no security threat to the U.S., several experts are raising provocative and disturbing questions about the government’s officialresponse, reports Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin.

Two governmental military experts with extensive experience working with missiles and computer security systems have examined the television video and conclude the mysterious contrail originating some 30 miles off the coast near Los Angeles did not come from a jet – but rather, they say the exhaust and the billowing plume emanated from a single source nozzle of a missile, probably made in China.

They further suggest the missile was fired from a submerged Chinese nuclear submarine offAmerica’s coast, and point out that the timing of the alleged Chinese missile shot coincided with an increasing confrontation between the U.S. and China, and was likely meant to send a message to Washington.

Indeed, the Federal Aviation Administration documents that there were no aircraft flying in the area at that time, the night of Nov. 8.

“The question that still must be answered is why NORAD’s muted response was simply that North America was not threatened, and later our government approved the lame excuse that the picture recorded was simply an aircraft leaving a contrail,” said retired U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Jim Cash.

A former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot and commander of an F-15 squadron and an F-16 wing, Cash was assigned to NORAD as an assistant director of operations at the Cheyenne Mountain complex near Colorado Springs, Colo., and is fully knowledgeable of NORAD procedures.

“There is absolutely no doubt that what was captured on video off the coast of California was a missile launch, was clearly observed by NORAD, assessed by a four-star general in minutes, and passed to the president immediately,” he said.

Even more ominously, cautioned Cash: “We must question the timing of this shot across our bow. The president was abroad being diplomatic, which means trying to placate China which is becoming overly concerned with our handling a totally out-of-control deficit in spending.”

Wayne Madsen, a former naval officer who has worked at the National Security Agency and the Naval Data Automation Command, said the inability to pick up what he described as a Chinese Jin-class submarine-launched ballistic missile isn’t the first time U.S. Navy anti-submarine warfare sensors have failed.

Madsen, who today is an investigative journalist, said the Pentagon is working “overtime with the media and on the Internet to cover up the latest debacle. However, even some reporters who cover the Pentagon full-time are beginning to question the Pentagon’s version of events … over the skies west of Los Angeles.”

Dr. Lyle J. Rapacki of Sentinel Intelligence Services, LLC, said the contrail incident off the Los Angeles coast is “fraught with peril” due to the defense systems and protocols in place that should have detected the alleged submarine.

“The decision to officially announce that North America was not threatened,” he said, “and all the excitement was due to an aircraft leaving a contrail is a decision that reaches beyond the four-star general level and goes directly to a decision made by the commander-in-chief.”

G2 Bulletin calls to the Pentagon and NORAD for comment beyond previous officialstatements were not returned.

Keep in touch with the most important breaking news stories about critical developments around the globe with Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, the premium, online intelligence news source edited and published by the founder of WND.

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=230425

For the complete report and full immediate access to Joseph Farah’s G2 Bulletin, subscribe now.

World Economic Collapse Explained in 3 Minutes…lolll

Things Could Get Ugly Fast

‘Everybody knows U.S. gold reserves are leased and shorted’ …

‘Everybody knows U.S. gold reserves are leased and shorted’

Submitted by cpowell on 05:46AM ET Wednesday, November 11, 2009. Section: Daily Dispatches
A Rock-Solid Case for Gold Reserves

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-investor/investment-ideas/features/…

There’s one mention of the word gold in the Bank of Canada‘s latest annual report. There are no mentions of bullion.

Canadians once owned 30 million ounces. Now we own none, preferring to back our currency with rock-solid things such as U.S. dollars and other pieces of paper worth something only as long as we all agree they’re worth something.

Meanwhile, India is buying gold. So are other countries, especially those not in the sphere of U.S. influence. Latvia and Honduras, have more than we have, which isn’t saying much, but seems to emphasize the point.

It’s also a huge problem if you consume with vengeance and produce relatively less. And look at them now.

Geo-Strategic Chessboard: War Between India and China?‏

Petition Opposing Cap-and-Trade…

Sign the Petition : 22,380 Letters and Emails Sent So Far
WHEREAS the proposed United Nations Global Climate Treaty intends to establish an un-democratic world government which would override our United States Constitution and surrender our national sovereignty; and

WHEREAS the Waxman-Markey Cap and Trade bill, also known as ACES (the American Clean Energy and Security Act – HR 2454), will essentially impose an ‘energy tax’ on all goods and services produced in the United States; and

WHEREAS gasoline and electricity prices will, in President Obama’s own words, “necessarily skyrocket” under a cap-and-trade scheme; and

WHEREAS cap-and-trade schemes are projected to cost US taxpayers over $1 trillion per year; and

WHEREAS the adoption of cap-and-trade would result in millions of additional US job losses; and

WHEREAS the U.S. economy is already in deep recession and cap-and-trade schemes could result in an additional $7 trillion loss in our Gross Domestic Product; and

WHEREAS the claims of carbon-driven anthropogenic global warming (AGW) are unproven and are, in fact, contested by over 31,000 scientists (compared to fewer than 50 on the United Nation’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) who claim AGW is a serious and immediate problem); and

WHEREAS global temperatures have not risen since 2000 and data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration demonstrates that the earth has actually been cooling for the last 4 years; and

WHEREAS new research from MIT has dispelled one of the key underpinnings of anthropogenic global warming theory (the notion that more long-wave radiation is trapped in the earth’s atmosphere when temperature rises); and

WHEREAS the touted, climate benefit of cap-and-trade schemes is that global surface temperatures will be one-tenth-of-one-degree cooler than currently projected in one hundred years, if one even accepted the contested claims of AGW.

THEREFORE I petition President Obama not to sign the United Nations Climate Treaty. I also petition my US Senators to forcefully oppose ratification of the treaty and Congress to oppose any legislation that would create a cap-and-trade scheme in United States law.

Cap-and-trade would benefit a select group of wealthy individuals on the backs of hard-working American families who will see absolutely no benefit, not even after paying for a cap-and-trade scheme for 100 years.

Say “NO” to all cap-and-trade schemes.

I implore all to please go HERE and sign this petition….~jude/rockingjude

oh sh*t, the dollar is doomed

h/t @gold_tracker

NY Post:

Over the last three months, banks put 63 percent of their new cash into euros and yen — not the greenbacks — a nearly complete reversal of the dollar’s onetime dominance for reserves, according to Barclays Capital. The dollar’s share of new cash in the central banks was down to 37 percent — compared with two-thirds a decade ago.

Currently, dollars account for about 62 percent of the currency reserve at central banks — the lowest on record, said the International Monetary Fund.

Bernanke could go down in economic history as the man who killed the greenback on the operating table.

After printing up trillions of new dollars and new bonds to stimulate the US economy, the Federal Reserve chief is now boxed into a corner battling two separate monsters that could devour the economy — ravenous inflation on one hand, and a perilous recession on the other.

Special Donation Drive for Victims of Typhoon Ketsana

Please support the relief efforts

Global Research, October 15, 2009

Dear Readers,

We are coming to you with a special request.

At the end of last month, Typhoon Ketsana (Ondoy) hit the Philippines and surrounding countries with devastating force, causing some of the most widespread damage seen in recent history. Metro Manila was besieged by the record-breaking flood levels and entire settlements have been displaced. Infrastructure and agriculture systems have been severely damaged on a broad scale. More than 700,000 families have been affected by this disaster: lives have been lost, homes have been destroyed, and clean water and electricity are still not available in many regions. The need for aid and reconstruction is urgent.

The extent of disaster which has affected the lives of 4 million people has not been highlighted by the Western media.