Russia to build new naval bases in the Arctic

Arctic nuclear-powered icebreaker.(RIA Novosti / Nikolai Zaytsev)

RT
Aug 7, 2012

Russia is going to build bases for the Navy and Border Guard Service along the northern sea route which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, says Security Council chief Nikolay Partushev.

The location of the bases, in some of the most remote areas of the Arctic Sea, has already been drawn up, Patrushev told the council’s meeting in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, on Monday.

However, he says the work on getting them up and running is going slowly.

“It was suggested we set up a patrol group, organize sorties along the northern sea route and develop a respective legal base, however, a lot of that hasn’t been done yet,” Patrushev said, as cited by RIA-Novosti.

The five Arctic powers – Russia, Norway, the United States, Canada and Denmark – have been at odds over how to divide up the region, which is believed to hold huge oil and gas reserves. The dispute has been heating up as rising temperatures make sea ice melt, and provide access to deposits, while record high oil prices make offshore drilling in the Arctic more economic.

Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, an economic zone belonging to a state is limited to 200 nautical miles from the coastline. However, that zone can be extended if a state proves that the continental shelf is a geological extension of the country’s territory.

Since 2007, Russia has conducted several expeditions with the goal to prove that an underwater mountain range is part of its own landmass. Moscow has planned to submit its claim to redraw the map of the Arctic by 2013.

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Navy tests ocean drones in RI's Narragansett Bay

myfoxny.com
August 7, 2012

MICHAEL MELIA, Associated Press

NEWPORT, R.I. (AP) — Just beneath the placid, sailboat-dotted surface of Narragansett Bay, torpedo-shaped vehicles spin and pivot to their own rhythm, carrying out missions programmed by their U.S. Navy masters.

The bay known as a playground for the rich is the testing ground for the Naval Undersea Warfare Center in Newport, where the Navy is working toward its goal of achieving a squadron of self-driven, undersea vehicles.

One of the gadgets recently navigated its own way from Woods Hole, Mass., to Newport, completing several pre-set tasks in what the military calls an unprecedented feat.

Technology under consideration by the military is often tested aboard cylinder-shaped vehicles with a diameter of about 20 inches. But the center also tests its own prototypes, including one dubbed Razor, which can propel itself by using flippers, like a turtle, for stealth.

The Navy hopes its drones will eventually pilot themselves across oceans. The vehicles are already used to detect mines and map the ocean floor and, with tweaks over the next several years, the military says they will be applied more to intelligence gathering and, in the more distant future, anti-submarine warfare.

"We do see these autonomous undersea vehicles as game changers," said Christopher Egan, a program manager at NUWC.

Compared with aerial drones, the undersea vehicles can be challenging to control from a distance. The water distorts the transmission of signals, and the drones have to contend with boat traffic, swirling currents, and obstacles on the ocean floor.

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Sikhs say attacks on community are 'collateral damage' of 9/11

As Sikhs confront Wisconsin temple shooting tragedy, members of the community reflect on 11 years of 'Bin Laden' taunts and misunderstanding

Guardian
August 7, 2012

It is not clear whether the gunman targeted the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin in the mistaken belief that its worshipers were Muslim. Photograph: Jeffrey Phelps/AP

Harjit Jeji Shergill would not go so far as to say there was an inevitability to the murder of six Sikh worshipers at his local temple, but after years of people venomously calling him "Bin Laden" he feared it might come to this somewhere in America.

As Oak Creek's Sikh community grapples with Sunday's tragedy it is buffeted by shock and mourning for some its best-known figures. There is also appreciation for the police officers who stopped the gunman – including one who took several bullets – and almost certainly saved other lives.

But underpinning everything is a pouring forth of frustration, just short of anger, at what Sikhs in Oak Creek and other parts of the US say is the frequent assumption that because of their turbans and beards they are Muslims – with all the weight that carries since 9/11.

One Sikh leader said that is an assumption "with deadly consequences". Another said that the Oak Creek killings are the "collateral damage" of the al-Qaida attacks.

Jeji Shergill, 62, said that since 9/11 he has regularly been assumed to be Muslim and that routinely spills over into abuse. "They compare us to the Muslims and we're completely different," he said. "I own a gas station. I am working there. People, they call me Bin Laden. Then I explain to them: sorry, you are misunderstanding. You are mixing us up with the Muslims. You try to explain about the turban and the beard. They still call you Bin Laden."

Shergill showed no great sympathy or solidarity with American Muslims who themselves endure unjustified abuse in the aftermath of 9/11, saying that Sikhs were better off getting away from them. But his account of being derisively called Bin Laden was not uncommon in Oak Creek.

Satinder Singh, who lives close to the temple and left it shortly before the shooting because he had work to attend to, said he was subjected to verbal abuse on occasions but never felt physically threatened.

"Sometimes they call you a Muslim or Bin Laden. It's the way they say it. They are not fair to everybody," said Singh who immigrated from India 14 years ago. "But I have not seen violence before. We did not expect it. We are peaceful. We open our arms to everyone."

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HUNDREDS of Tanks Moving Through Burbank, California … Without Desert Camouflage

Infowars.com
Aug 7, 2012

It is possible that they are being shipped to an army base in Southern California to be painted with camouflage. But no Southern California civilians have ever seen so many tanks before.

Keep watching as they roll on and on (Warning – explicit language):

Monti Calls For More Crisis-Fighting Urgency In ECB Standoff

Bloomberg
August 6, 2012

Spanish National Police face taxi drivers from several Spanish regions during a protest against a government plan to liberalize public transport in Madrid on July 27, 2012.

Italy’s Prime Minister Mario Monti warned of a potential breakup of Europe without greater urgency in efforts to lower government borrowing costs, as a standoff over European Central Bank help for Italy and Spain hardened.
Monti, in an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine published yesterday, said that disagreements within the 17- nation euro area are detracting from the policy response to the debt crisis and undermining the future of the European Union.

“The tensions that have accompanied the euro zone in the past years are already showing signs of a psychological dissolution of Europe,” Monti told Der Spiegel. While he backed the ECB’s willingness to address “severe malfunctioning” in the government bond market, Monti said the problems “have to be solved quickly now so that there’s no further uncertainty about the euro zone’s ability to overcome the crisis.”

Spain and Italy, whose surging borrowing costs have shunted them to the heart of the turmoil in the euro area, are resisting pressure from ECB President Mario Draghi to formally request aid in return for strict conditions before the central bank will buy their bonds. Monti and Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoyhave both said they will await further details as the ECB works up its plan. The German government said for the first time today that Chancellor Angela Merkel supports Draghi’s proposals.

French President Francois Hollande is pushing Monti and Rajoy to request aid from Europe’s bailout fund to help ease markets and protect France from speculation, Italian newspaper la Repubblica reported, without citing anyone. Monti may speak with Draghi today, the newspaper said.

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Sikh Temple Shooting: Another "False Flag" Event to Destroy the 2nd Amendment?

SIC SEMPER TYRANNIS!!!
Mark Matheny
August 6, 2012


Mark Matheny covers the latest breaking news concerning the shooting in Wisconsin at a Sikh Temple.

Sikh Shooting Ties Into DHS ‘Veterans as Terrorists’ Narrative

Lone gunman identified as US Army vet while reports of multiple shooters ignored

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Monday, August 6, 2012

The tragic shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, which is now being treated as an act of domestic terrorism by the federal government, is set to be blamed on a US Army veteran, fitting perfectly the narrative pushed by the Department of Homeland Security that veterans are a terror threat on a par with Islamic extremists.

“The gunman who shot six people to death and wounded three others during a rampage at a Sikh temple in a Milwaukee suburb was an Army veteran who may have been a white supremacist, according to a law enforcement source involved in the investigation,” reports CNN.

The man was also described as having a “9/11″ tattoo on one arm, indicating to temple member Kanwardeep Singh Kaleka “that there’s some level of hate crime there.”

Of course, Sikhs adhere to a completely different religion than Muslims but that hasn’t stopped them falling victim to a number of racially charged attacks since September 11, 2011.

Despite the fact that a number of different eyewitnesses reported multiple shooters, the narrative of the lone gunman, a disgruntled US Army veteran, has now been fixed. This conveniently dovetails with recent efforts by the feds to demonize returning veterans as potential terrorists, which itself is part of the wider move to smear conservatives as domestic extremists.

The FBI has also gone out of its way to characterize returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan as a major domestic terrorist threat. Additionally, Janet Napolitano said she stood by an April 2009 DHS intelligence assessment that listed returning vets as likely domestic terrorists.

Just a month later, the New York Times reported on how Boy Scout Explorers were being trained by the DHS to kill “disgruntled Iraq war veterans” in terrorist drills.

Just as with the James Holmes ‘Batman’ massacre, overwhelming evidence of a wider plot has been immediately brushed aside while authorities and the media work feverishly to massage the narrative behind the SIkh shooting.

Testimony from one eyewitness that four men carried out the attack has been dismissed, despite the fact that his story is corroborated by other victims who told family members that there were “multiple shooters” involved.

In addition, the Chairman of the temple stated that there were a “few suspicious men were seen on Temple premises,” again clearly suggesting the involvement of more than one person.

Such testimony will be suffocated in a blitz of media hype and hand-wringing over the threat posed by veterans, conservatives and gun owners as the federal government further greases the skids for eviscerating Posse Comitatus and re-focusing the weaponry of the war on terror domestically to target adversaries of big government tyranny.

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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show and Infowars Nightly News.