Scientists have taken a leaf from the book of nature and developed a thin, long-lasting, efficient and environmentally friendly battery that uses wood.
According to Design and Trend, the components in the battery, tested by scientists at the University of Maryland, are a thousand times thinner than paper.
Researchers Liangbing Hu, Teng Li and others emerged from their smoke filled labs having made a battery built around a sliver of wood coated with tin.
They think it is much better than batteries that use stiff, non-flexible substrates. Current batteries are too brittle to withstand the swelling and shrinking that happens as electrons are stored in and used up from the battery.
Hu said that idea came from looking at trees. Wood fibers that make up a tree once held mineral-rich water, and so are ideal for storing liquid electrolytes, making them not only the base but an active part of the battery.
They used wood as the base of an experimental sodium-ion battery, choosing sodium over lithium.
Sodium does not store energy as efficiently as lithium, so would not be as much use in mobile phones - instead, its low cost and common materials would make it ideal to store huge amounts of energy at once such as solar energy at a power plant.
The team noticed that after charging and discharging the battery hundreds of times, the wood ended up wrinkled but intact. Computer models showed that that the wrinkles effectively relax the stress in the battery during charging and recharging, so that the battery can survive many cycles, putting it among the longest lasting of all sodium-ion nanobatteries.
Wood fibers are soft enough to serve as a mechanical buffer, and so can accommodate changes in tin, which the researchers say is key to their long-lasting sodium-ion batteries.
Better to side with the seculars who support "women, ethnic and religious minorities" than Islamists who want to impose Sharia
Editorial, Paul Nuttall, currently deputy leader of the UK Independence Party and MEP for England North West, Thecommentor.com, "We need to keep out of Syria - No good can come of an intervention in Syria, argues UKIP's deputy leader":
if you ask the question: would women, Christians and ethnic minorities be better off under a secular Assad regime or under extreme Islamists who are currently seeking a foothold there? We already know the answer. The nation of Syria has had a long tradition of Sunnis, Shia, Alawite, Christian, Armenians, and Jews, all living together in peace.
Assad has many faults but he has long defended the rights of women, ethnic and religious minorities within the borders of his country. It is a simple fact, that after the fall of Arab dictators like Gaddafi, Hussein, Mubarak etc, the situation for women and Christians in the Arab world has sharply deteriorated.
These Arab strongmen lost power to Islamist extremists. The conflict in Syria, in a very broad brushstroke, is between those who want to see a tolerant Syria where everyone has a place and a divided Syria dominated by those with connections to or sympathy for Al Qaeda. The CIA has stated that a number of groups fighting on behalf of the rebels are linked to Al Qaeda, and the Iraqi government has confirmed that Al Qaeda fighters have crossed the border from northern Iraq to take up arms on behalf of the rebels.
If Cameron's scheme comes to life, the British people would be arming Islamists and terrorists who could possibly attack British soldiers in the future. Have we learnt nothing from what happened in Afghanistan and Iraq? I think it is about time we did.
The following is a non-verbatim rendition of a talk entitled “Replacing the Welfare-Warfare State with a Free Society” that FFF president Jacob Hornberger delivered to the Fairfax County, Virginia, Young Republicans on June 19, 2013:
Thank you. It’s very nice to be here to share ideas on liberty with the Fairfax County Young Republicans.
Everywhere you look, there is a crisis.
Social Security. There isn’t a fund, there never has been a fund, and there never will be a fund. The system is busted, bankrupt.
Medicare and Medicaid. Healthcare costs continue to soar. Doctors are retiring early in disgust over the medical system. This program is busted too.
The war on immigrants. A perpetual series of crises. In fact, I thought they told us that that long, expensive Berlin Fence that they were constructing on the U.S.-Mexico border was going to finally bring an end to never-ending immigration crises. Yet, here we are, in the midst of another big crisis.
The war on drugs. Decades of warfare and all we have are the same mantras and the same death, destruction, and ruination of lives. You’re too young to realize that the mantras you’re hearing today are the same ones that they were using when I was your age. When I went back to my hometown of Laredo, Texas, to practice law, the very first case I handled was a criminal case in federal court involving drugs. The DEA agents and the prosecutors were saying the same things that theirs successors are saying today. It’s just one great big federal machine that continues grinding on despite its manifest failure, death, and destruction. How many dead people are there in Mexico now? 60,000 in the last 6 years alone. That’s due to the drug war, not drugs.
There’s also the terrorist crisis. And the crises in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Torture, assassination, and now the NSA crisis, arising out of the government’s attempt to keep us safe –safe from the very threats that the government itself produces with its foreign policy.
And let’s not forget the dollar crisis, one in which the Federal Reserve has debased the value of our currency over a period of several decades.
Out of control federal spending. That’s a crisis most everyone is aware of.
And there’s the debt-ceiling crisis which pops up every few years. The ceiling tells us that too much government debt is a bad thing. Yet, they keep raising the limit and adding to the debt. Their attitude is: Why worry? Just pass it on the young generation. That’s you they’re talking about.
We’re told that all these crises are a normal and essential part of living in America, of living in a free society.
But they’re not normal. They are aberrant and bizarre. And they have absolutely nothing to do with a free society.
The question naturally arises: Why do we have all these ongoing crises?
The answer is simple: We live under a governmental system that is rotten to the core. Notice that I didn’t say that the people working within the system are rotten. I said that the system itself is rotten.
Consider the role of the federal government in our domestic lives. Its primary role is to take money away from those to whom it belongs and give it to people to whom it does not belong. That’s what such welfare-state programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farms subsidies, education grants, food stamps, public housing, and aid to foreign dictators are all about—taking money from those to whom it belongs to give it to those to whom it does not belong.
If I were to do that on a private basis, everyone would recognize the fundamental immorality of my conduct. Suppose I rob everyone in this room and use all of the money to help the poor to get healthcare and an education. Would I be considered a good, compassionate person? On the contrary, I’d be considered a thief. If I pointed out how I had used the money to help the poor, your response would be: “Tell it to the judge at sentencing. You had no right, morally or legally, to take our money and be good with it. You should have used your own money. Or you could have asked us for a donation, a request that we would have the right to decline.”
Yet, as soon as the federal government enters the pictures, people’s attitudes change. That’s because they have come to view the federal government as an idol, one that can magically convert an immoral act into a moral act. The entire welfare state is based on forcibly taking money from those to whom it belongs and giving it to people whom the government feels deserve it more.
And it’s all considered to be moral, compassionate, and caring. In fact, Republicans call themselves “compassionate conservatives” for their support of the welfare state. Like liberals, they think that the welfare state reflects what a good, caring, and compassionate society in which we live.
Who are the saints in a welfare state? The IRS agents that terrorize people into paying their taxes? The bureaucrats who distribute the money? The members of Congress who enact the programs? The president, who signs the welfare-state bills into law? The taxpayers? The voters? The citizens?
The answer is: None of the above. Caring and compassion is antithetical to force, and it’s force that drives the welfare-state and the taxes that fund it. When people are forced to care for others, care and compassion disappear from the scene. The only genuine meaning of care and compassion is when it comes from the voluntary, willing heart of the individual, not when it comes through the force of government.
That’s why Americans are besieged with perpetual crises. They have embraced a system that is antithetical to basic principles of morality and fundamental religious principles. Moreover, they have abandoned the founding principles of America, a country that once rejected such socialist and interventionist programs as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, farm subsidies, education grants, aid to dictatorships, immigration controls, drug laws, and economic regulations.
In fact, the term “free enterprise” meant something entirely different to our American ancestors than it does to modern-day Americans. Today’s Americans think that “free enterprise” means enterprise that is regulated by the government. Our ancestors understood that the term meant “enterprise that is free of government regulation, control, or taxation.”
When you’ve embraced a rotten governmental system, you’re going to reap what you sow. God has created a consistent universe, one in which a bad tree is going to bear bad fruit.
And it doesn’t matter one iota how convinced Americans are that all this is “freedom and free enterprise.” In fact, one of my favorite parts of going to watch the Washington Nationals is what happens in the third inning or so. Most everyone stands and, with a tear in his eye, reverently sings, “Thank God I’m an American because at least I know I’m free” as they praise the troops for “protecting our freedom” by killing people thousands of miles away from American shores.
It’s what might be called the “life of the lie” or “the life of delusion.” The plight of the American people is best summed up in the words of the German thinker Johann Goethe, who said, “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
How can people honestly be considered free when the government has the power to take whatever amount of their income it wants and give it to others? With the income tax, people’s income has effectively been nationalized. The government decides how much people are going to be permitted to keep. It’s no different from an allowance that a parent gives a child.
Or consider drug laws, perhaps the clearest manifestation of the serf-like existence of the American people. We can all understand why a murderer, robber, or rapist should be punished by the state. But imagine a person quietly sitting in the privacy of his own home drinking booze, smoking cigarettes, smoking dope, snorting cocaine, and injecting heroin. The government wields the authority to bust his door down and punish him for engaging in purely self-destructive behavior. The notion is that he belongs to society. He belongs to the collective. He exists to serve the greater good. He must be fixed so that he can be made to be a healthy and productive member of society.
It would be difficult to find a clearer violation of the principles of freedom than that. Freedom doesn’t entail the right to do the correct or responsible thing. It entails the right to do the incorrect or irresponsible thing, so long as it doesn’t involve the initiation of force against someone else. When a person can be jailed and punished by the state for engaging in self-destructive behavior, there is no rational way that that can be considered a free society.
And believing that one is free, when it just isn’t so, doesn’t change reality. It just engenders psychosis. In fact, my hunch is that one of the big reasons why there is such a big drug problem in America is precisely because people honestly believe that they live in a free society. It is so despairing to them that a “free” society entails a bizarre life of perpetual crises that they turn to drugs to escape it.
The warfare state, of course, is no different. We live under a governmental system in which the president, the military, the CIA, and the NSA now wield powers that the greatest dictators in history have wielded. The powers to assassinate people, to indefinitely detain people without due process or trial by jury, to kidnap and rendition people, to torture people, to subject people to LSD experiments, to invade and occupy foreign countries, to support coups in foreign lands, to install, train, maintain, and support brutal dictatorial regimes, to spy on and monitor the activities of people everywhere. In other words, the dark type of things that Americans used to complain that communist or totalitarian regimes were engaged in. It’s all become a normal part of American life.
Oh, and it’s all considered “freedom” too. “Thank God I’m an American because at least I know I’m free.” Praise the troops for defending our “freedom.”
Never mind that it’s the national- security state itself engenders the threats that they then use as the excuse to “temporarily” deprive us our rights and freedom. They go abroad with their foreign military bases, sanctions, embargoes, invasions, occupations, assassinations, regime-change operations, kidnappings, and support of brutal dictatorial pro-U.S. regimes. Then, when victims retaliate with terrorist strikes, U.S. officials cry, “We’ve been attacked because foreigners love our foreign policy but hate us for our freedom and values.” We now have to have ‘temporary’ emergency powers to ‘keep you safe.’”
It’s one of the oldest rackets in history. Produce the threat and then convince people to surrender their rights and freedoms, “temporarily” of course, all the while convincing them of how tyranny constitutes freedom when it comes at the hands of their own government that loves them, takes care of them with welfare, and keeps them “safe” from the dangers it produces, all the while convincing people that the Founding Fathers and the Framers were wrong to suggest that the federal government constitutes the biggest threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people.
So, what can be done about all this?
One option is to accept and embrace the welfare-state way of life. Just acknowledge that this is the system that you have been born and raised in and that it is here to stay, as a permanent part of American life. Dream about when you get to be 65 when you can say to yourself, “Finally I get the chance to plunder and loot people in their 20s, just like people in their 60s were doing to me when Jacob Hornberger gave that talk to the Fairfax County Young Republicans some 35 years ago.”
You can spend your life, your energy, and your money trying to fix or reform the system. But I think that after 20 or 30 years going down that road, you are going to discover that you have wasted a large part of your life and your money. A rotten system cannot be fixed or reformed. In fact, any reforms inevitably produce new and bigger crises, which then necessitate bigger, more expensive and more intrusive reforms, as we have seen with Social Security, healthcare, immigration, drug laws, and the rest of the welfare-regulatory state.
But if you decide to go down the reform route, at least don’t call it “freedom” or “free market approaches,” as we often hear proponents of things like school vouchers, Medical IRAs, or Social Security reform plans refer to their proposals.
Think about it like this: Imagine that you were living in 1850 Virginia. I come to you and say, “Slavery is a rotten system.” You agree and devote your life to getting a 5-day work week for the slaves, 50-hour work days, and families get to stay together. I say to you: You’re doing fine work improving the life of the slaves. But please don’t say to me or teach your children that the slaves are now free and living in a free society or that your reforms constitute a “free-market approach” to slavery. What you have done is improve the plight of the slaves, but that is not freedom.
The same applies to efforts to reform the welfare-warfare state. It might, or might not, improve the lives of the American people. But it is not freedom.
Genuine freedom entails a dismantling — repeal — of the welfare state and the warfare state, including Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid and the entire national-security state apparatus that was grafted onto our constitutional order without even the semblance of a constitutional amendment. Socialist and interventionist programs as well as an enormous standing army, a vast military-industrial complex, the CIA, and the NSA are antithetical to a genuinely free society.
So, you have another choice — to lead America and the world out of the statist muck in which our country and the world is stuck. I’m challenging you to rise to the occasion — to join the ranks of people who brought us Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Declaration of Independence, habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights, religious liberty, and economic liberty.
People tell you that you are the key to future. I say: You are a key to the present.
No generation can bind you into accepting their particular economic or political system. The older generations have chosen socialism, interventionism, militarism, and imperialism.
That doesn’t have to be your choice. You can choose individual liberty, free markets, and a constitutionally limited republic. You can change the system and bring an end to the never-ending crises. You can restore freedom, harmony, prosperity, and normality to the lives of the American people, including your own.
The country and the world are crying out for leadership. The choice is yours.
The recent disclosures from Barrow-in Furness and Kendal coupled with the earlier revelations from Stafford prove beyond any doubt we should NEVER trust any government mouthpiece in relation to our own safety and wellbeing.
First we saw the courage of Julie Bailey and then that of Kay Sheldon and we learn of the subsequent and disgraceful persecution of both these principled upstanding ladies at the hands of the "gulag" administrators. Anyone involved and who knew of these failures but did not act or acted illegally should be fired without benefits. Unfortunately in the fascist state we now endure, those same criminals (for that is what they are) will receive a princely sum on "retirement" or relocation to another position in some othe nhs or government gulag.
They will be allowed to wallow in their delusional grandeur of state sponsored self importance, non-accountability and the all important anonymity within society.
They should all from top to bottom be prominently named and shamed.! A truly responsible and fully accountable management would expect nothing less.
Empire with no shame: The new baby deaths cover-up proves secrecy infects the entire NHS bureaucracy, says JULIE BAILEY, who exposed the Mid-Staffs scandal
Like most British people, I have been a strong supporter of the National Health Service all my life. At its best, it is a wonderful institution, more admired than any other public body.
But in recent years something has gone badly wrong with certain parts of the healthcare system. The uplifting rhetoric about service is not always matched by the reality of practice in some of our NHS hospitals, where patients have been put at sometimes fatal risk by incompetence, squalor and neglect.
Just as disturbingly, instead of addressing these problems, the bureaucracy of the NHS tries to cover them up. A culture of deception and bullying has been allowed to spread across officialdom in the drive to hide the truth from the public, backed up by gagging orders, threats of legal actions, misleading reports and harassment of whistleblowers.
In recent years something has gone badly wrong with certain parts of the healthcare system. The uplifting rhetoric about service is not always matched by the reality of practice in some of our NHS hospitals
That was certainly my experience in the Mid-Staffordshire hospital scandal, which is estimated to have led to the deaths of between 400 and 1,200 patients through the failure to provide adequate healthcare.
My own dear mother Bella was among the victims of this appalling neglect, and it was her death that prompted me to organise a campaign to improve care standards in the NHS.
During the inquiry into what happened at Mid-Staffs, it emerged that the Healthcare Commission — the body which was meant to protect patients, and was succeeded by the Care Quality Commission in 2009 — had failed dismally in its duty.
Instead of exposing failure, it had shamefully colluded with it. Yet despite all the evidence of institutional breakdown, not a single official from either the Healthcare Commission or the Care Quality Commission was sacked, nor were any members of staff from the Mid-Staffs hospitals, whether in management or on the frontline.
‘It must never happen again,’ we were constantly told, once the story was made public. Changes would be made, procedures transformed. But so much of that language is hollow.
Now we learn the same kind of nightmare is occurring again, this time at Morecambe on the north Lancashire coast. And the Care Quality Commission, so full of fine words, is at the centre of this grim saga.
As in Mid-Staffordshire, a collapse in basic standards had a lethal impact at the Morecambe Bay NHS Trust. At least 16 babies and two mothers are estimated to have died through neglect.
Even essential tasks, like providing antibiotics to combat infections, or freeing a newborn child from the umbilical cord, seem to have been ignored. Yet all this happened at the very time when the Care Quality Commission was giving the Morecambe Bay NHS Trust a clean bill of health.
A collapse in standards had a lethal impact at the Morecambe Bay NHS Trust (based at Westmorland General Hospital in Kendal, Cumbria - pictured). 16 babies and two mothers are said to have died through neglect.
Through supreme naivety and lack of professionalism, the inspectors from the Commission appear to have ignored the evidence that should have been right in front of them. Effectively, their inspection reports about Morecambe were worthless.
What was so absurd was that, in the wake of Mid-Staffs, the Care Quality Commission promised it had changed its ways. At the Francis Inquiry into Mid-Staffs, the Commission’s bosses made sweeping claims about how there were more rigorous systems and a new forensic management in place.
But, as Morecambe proves, it was all nonsense. The same culture of collusion and inadequacy was still all too prevalent.
One of the most striking features of the Commission’s role in Mid-Staffs and Morecambe was its absolute determination to suppress any dissent.
Morecambe's chief executive, Tony Halsall, was allowed to leave his job last year with a severance package worth £250,000
Like the rulers in the old communist tyrannies, it refused to tolerate any challenge to its operations. In a climate of autocracy, what mattered was protecting not patients, but its own image. Staff had to be muzzled and failure hidden. So when the Commission launched an internal inquiry into the inspection report which had cleared Morecambe Bay Trust in 2010, the findings of that inquiry had to be kept quiet.
‘This can never be in the public domain nor subject to a freedom of information request... read my lips,’ ordered one Commission manager with a chilling contempt for accountability.
Yesterday, a report into the cover-up by the Commission of its failure to inspect Morecambe properly was published, but it only served to spark more anger because it did not name the officials involved.
We were told their names could not be revealed because such a move would carry the risk of libel actions, and would contravene the Data Protection Act. This stance is deeply unconvincing.
Many legal experts maintain there is nothing in the Data Protection Act to stop the naming of public officials who’ve failed in their duty to the public.
Just as important, the threat of a libel case should be met head-on. I would love to see some of these bureaucrats go to court to try to justify their conduct. I bet they wouldn’t dare. We heard exactly the same bluster over Mid-Staffs and, sadly, it worked then. The Government should have more courage.
The depths the Care Quality Commission has been willing to plumb are graphically illustrated by the experience of Kay Sheldon, a non-executive director at the CQC, who gave evidence to the public inquiry into Mid-Staffordshire and who was one of the first to raise concerns about the cover-up at Morecambe.
But instead of being thanked for her spirit of responsibility, she has been persecuted.
Not only did the Commission’s then chairman, Dame Jo Williams, write to the Department of Health urging the immediate suspension of Ms Sheldon, but she even allegedly used public funds in seeking to have Ms Sheldon declared mentally ill.
The Tap Blog is a collective of like-minded researchers and writers who've joined forces to distribute information and voice opinions avoided by the world's media.
Following considerable press attention on high profile cases both the Conservative and Labour parties have been calling for increased use of web filtering. A "web summit" was held at No 10 to discuss issues of child protection and the Internet. Tuesday's meeting in Downing Street, chaired by Culture Secretary Maria Miller, was attended by Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, BT, Sky, Virgin Media, TalkTalk, Vodafone, O2, EE and Three.
Andy Halsall, Pirate Party Campaigns Officer said:
"It appears that after today's government online safety summit, not very much has changed in the way Internet Service Providers or search engines deal with images of child exploitation online. Indeed the most concrete recent changes when it comes to actual child protection is the cutting of government funding for CEOP and similar initiatives. Exactly the opposite of what we should be doing to ensure that there is an effective, holistic approach to dealing with abuse."
"Far from dealing with issues of exploitation, Maria Miller's statement in the Daily Mail on Saturday makes clear that she wants the likes of Google to "Protect my children from the depravity of internet porn", that ISP's, not parents should be responsible for protecting children on-line. But let's be clear, regulating the internet in the home is a very different issue from child exploitation and personally I prefer to take responsibility for how my children use the internet, rather than outsourcing it."
"Conflating the very serious issue of child exploitation with simply anything that someone may find objectionable online may be a good way to get headlines in the tabloids. But government has a duty to act more responsibly. The rush to blame the Internet won't solve complex social problems."
When John F. Kennedy delivered his “Ich Bin Ein Berliner” speech in front of the Brandenburg Gate on June 26, 1963, 450,000 people flocked to hear him. Fifty years later a far more subdued invitation-only crowd of 4,500 showed up to hear Barack Obama speak at the same location in Berlin. As The National Journal [...]
Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Sen. Ron Wyden write about their proposed revisions to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: In drafting Aaron’s Law — the text of which is available here, along with a detailed summary here – we did not opt for a quick fix of the CFAA that could bring with it unintended consequences. Read their [...]
Falkland Islands representatives told the Special Decolonization Committee that under UN resolutions non self governing territories are entitled to exercise self determination and self government and C24 does not have the responsibility to judge on that right. Likewise the Falklands’ representatives again invited C24 to visit the Islands (seventh time) but with no reply.
Tweeters have a right to right to ‘freedom of expression’, says the DPP (Picture: PA)
Offensive Twitter and Facebook users who post sick messages online can be prosecuted only if they are ‘more than offensive’, guidance states.
Prosecutors must recognise the right to ‘freedom of expression’, says director of public prosecutions Keir Starmer.
But it must be more than ‘shocking or disturbing, even if distasteful or painful to those subjected to it’ to warrant charges.
The new terms of law come in final guidelines just published but the move is likely to anger some religious and minority groups.
It means that a tweet must constitute a ‘credible threat of violence’ before it can be prosecuted. Or it must breach court orders or be ‘grossly offensive’.
In 2001, an appeals court ruled that New Jersey’s practice of not allowing anyone to register to vote as anything other than Democrat, Republican, or Independent was unconstitutional. This was the result of a lawsuit brought by a coalition of political parties, including the NJ Libertarian Party.
Since then the number of registered libertarians has been steadily growing. The 2013 numbers (as of May) show 2,164 registered Libertarians. This is a 13.9% growth from the report from just before the 2012 General Election.
We are 70% larger than the next biggest party (the Green Party at 1,268) making us without a doubt the largest third party in the state of New Jersey. The other four third party registered voter numbers range from 37 to 594. Over 2.6 million voters are unaffiliated, 52% of total registered voters. Just six months prior to this report only 47% of the total were unaffiliated. (Note: The Conservative Party of New Jersey has 594 members, the Constitution Party has 171 members, the Reform Party has 71 members and the Natural Law Party has 37 members – KL).
Also of note is that in the past six months the Democrat and Republican parties both dropped in size, 0.46% and 1.3% respectively with a loss of 22,081 voters.
Summary of Registered Libertarians
Note that for most numbers it is as of the general election. For 2013 is as of May 7th.
Year
Number
Growth
2013
2,164
13.9%
2012
1,899
28.1%
2011
1,482
6.8%
2010
1,387
10.8%
2009
1,251
18.0%
2008
1,060
61.6%
2007
656
20.1%
2006
543
7.3%
2005
506
12.9%
2004
448
52.3%
2003
294
41.3%
2002
208
N/A
Additionally, Libertarian candidate for state assembly in district 16 Patrick McNight gained ballot status for the November 2013 elections. Read a statement from McKnight about about his candidacy at the following link:
Libyan judicial authorities should immediately drop all criminal charges that violate freedom of speech over election poster cartoons against two Libyan National Party officials. Under the laws being applied in this case, the men could face the death penalty over posters their party displayed during the 2012 election campaign for the General National Congress. Authorities [...]
The post Libya: Blasphemy Charges Over Election Posters appeared first on Eurasia Review.
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China has certainly been busy since it won observer status at the May Arctic Council summit in Kiruna, Sweden.
First, Yu Zhengasheng, Chairman of China’s Political Consultative Conference, visited Finland, Sweden and Denmark with an eye to boosting general trade and cooperation, particularly in the Arctic.
China then announced an expanded research and scientific polar institute that will collaborate with Nordic research centers to study climate change, its impact and desired Arctic policies and legislation. With this, Beijing made clear it did not intend to be a passive member of the Council; it planned to have a real say in its future proceedings. China National Offshore Oil Corporation meanwhile announced a deal with Iceland’s Eykon Energy firm to explore off Iceland’s Southeast coast.
State-owned mining firm Sichan Xinue Mining has also agreed to finance a major international mining project at Greenland’s Isua iron-ore field. If this venture succeeds, other Chinese state-owned mining companies, such as Jiangxi Zhongrun Mining and Jiangxi Union Mining, which have prospected in Greenland but have not yet started production, would then join it to explore for gold and copper. And other projects like aluminum smelting are already taking shape or will begin, espeically if the Isua project is successful.
These moves come on top of recently announced deals with Rosneft and Gazprom to explore Arctic fields for oil and gas. At the recent Sino-Russian summit, China concluded a contract with Rosneft to triple the size of current oil deliveries to China to 900,000 BPD, putting it on a par with Saudi deliveries to China, according to a recent report in the Financial Times print edition.
But Rosneft won that contract only by accepting further huge Chinese loans of $25-30 billion as cash infusions and agreeing to facilitate the acquisition of oil and gas assets in Russia by Sinopec, an oil and gas company. In other words, as part of its huge energy deals in the Arctic and the Russian Far East (RFE), China has added to Rosneft’s already sizable indebtedness to China, going back to the 2009 deal for the East Siberia Pacific Ocean pipeline. This indebtedness and the size of the planned oil deliveries from Rosneft will give China substantial leverage in the region.
Rosneft will consequently consider Sinopec’s participation in its large-scale project in the RFE, namely the Eastern Petrochemical Refinery jointly established in 2007 by Rosneft and Sinopec’s rival CNPC, China National Petrochemical Corporation. While China will loan Rosneft $2 billion backed by 25 years of oil supply, Rosneft will boost oil exports to China by 800,000 metric tons this year. Annual exports may reach 31 million tons annually or 620,000 barrels a day, more than doubling present volumes.
Igor Sechin, Rosneft’s boss and Putin’s right-hand man, even hinted at going to 50 million tons per annum. Rosneft’s other deal deal with CNPC to drill in the Pechora and Barents Seas in the Arctic similarly highlights CNPC’s growing clout in global markets.
Gazprom also announced its intention to conclude a long-awaited gas deal with China in 2013 by signing a Memorandum of Understanding to that effect. That deal, too, might involve advance payments from China to an increasingly vulnerable Gazprom.
Given Russia’s equally strenuous efforts to explore and exploit the Arctic’s hydrocarbon and mineral resources, it is understandably unnerving for it and possibly other governments to see this flood of vigorous Chinese activity, which comes on top of the opening up of the Northern Sea Route to intercontinental trade from Europe to Asia. Certainly, it seems Moscow is concerned, even though it is Beijing’s “strategic partner.”
China is clearly after more than simply investment and trade opportunities as it continues to display its obsession with securing energy and other supplies where the U.S. Navy cannot or will not go. Beijing Review claimed that other actors were trying to exclude China, but by dint of enormous exertions and large outlays to finance energy infrastructure in Russia and Canada, as well as its own scientific program of Arctic research, “China has ultimately managed to reshuffle the Arctic balance of power in record time.”
More crassly, we might say that China has paid dearly for its newfound status. Still, it will achieve some tangible goals. For instance, in its deal with Iceland, China will not only gain real access to state-of-the-art Icelandic clean energy technologies, it will also acquire leverage and influence in Iceland itself and that influence, once Iceland joins the Council, will redound to China’s benefit.
But beyond even these considerable commercial and energy, investment and trade access benefits, China gains strategically in Northern Europe and Russia, if not Canada. It now possesses a venue where it can fully participate in addressing issues of climate change that could, if unchecked, affect China’s climate to extent of eroding its agricultural capacity or rendering it vulnerable to flooding because of its low-lying coast.
In addition, as the Northern Sea Route opens up as a cheaper alternative for transcontinental shipping and trade, Russia will almost certainly seek to establish an advantageous tariff regime; China can now make certain that Russia heeds its voice in setting those tariff rates.
China will also now have a secure footing from which it can defend what it will claim to be its “legitimate rights” in the Arctic. It is quite conceivable that China will now use that foothold to demand as well a voice in the resolution of Arctic territorial boundaries that are up for decision. In 2009-10 it had claimed that no state had sovereignty in the Arctic, a clear slap at Russian claims. Now, to join the Council, it had to repudiate that earlier position and state that it respected the sovereignty of all the states claiming territory in the Arctic but accept that the decision will be made in the future, a sharp contrast to its rigid insistence on its “core interests” and sovereignty in the Senkakus and the South China Sea. Indeed, given those claims on the seas adjacent to China, it had no choice but to recognize existing exclusive economic zones and boundaries if it wanted to be a member of the Council. Nonetheless, it now calls itself a “near-Arctic state” and an “Arctic stakeholder.”
Probably this is what is unnerving for Moscow. According to Interfax, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, with no apparent cause, told an interviewer in Norway on June 4 that “China is trusted. But it is you and us who draw up the rules of the game, that is to say the Arctic states.” Medvedev went on to claim that while Moscow wants productive cooperation with all Council members, including China, and has purely “peaceful and pragmatic goals” there, only Arctic Council members should determine the rules on these questions because, “This is natural, this is our region, we live here. This is our native land.”
Unfortunately for Moscow, not only China but also the other new Asian members will seek to maximize their influence in the Council for many of the same reasons. The Arctic may be Russia’s home, but it can no longer be its castle.
Stephen Blank is Research Professor of National Security Affairs at the Strategic Studies Institute.
New guidance on prosecutions was published today after Paul Chambers (pictured) was hauled before a court in 2010 for threatening to blow up an airport in a jokey Tweet.
Expect much more of this kind of thing, as the banksters trouser your pension, savings, and income, to keep themselves nice and wealthy under the privileged system of government-run fractional reserve banking.
Kim Dotcom has accused the US government and Leaseweb, one of the hosting providers of former file-sharing site Megaupload, of deleting millions of personal files "without warning."
The information stored on the dormant servers – “petabytes of pictures, backups, personal & business property” – was what Dotcom called evidence in the case US authorities launched against him in January 2012. Dotcom is wanted in the US on criminal charges for facilitating copyright fraud on a massive scale.
“This is the largest data massacre in the history of the Internet,” Dotcom wrote on Twitter.
Lawyers representing his former company “have repeatedly asked Leaseweb not to delete Megaupload servers while court proceedings are pending in the US,” he added.
The Tap Blog is a collective of like-minded researchers and writers who've joined forces to distribute information and voice opinions avoided by the world's media.
More than half a billion dollars will buy you a lot of cloud computing, and now, according to postings on Amazon’s own jobs site, the company is staffing up to meet the demand the new contract will require. Specifically, Amazon is looking for engineers who already have a “Top Secret / Sensitive Compartmented Information” clearance, or are willing to go through the elaborate screening process required to get it. TS/SCI is the highest security clearance offered by the US government, and getting it requires having your background thoroughly vetted.
One thing that’s mysterious, and possibly telling, about Amazon’s job announcement for a “Systems Engineer—Government Cleared” is that the location of this job—Herndon, Virginia—may or may not coincide with the location of the CIA’s own cloud computing centers. CIA headquarters is in Langley, but Herndon, about 15 miles to the west, is also thought to be home to a CIA building. Amazon’s original contract with the CIA required Amazon to physically place the servers required inside CIA facilities, according to the GAO. (Amazon has a data center of its own in Ashburn, another 8 miles or so further northwest of Herndon.) Amazon’s existing private cloud for the US government, called GovCloud, appears to have its servers on the West Coast, which already handles less sensitive matters like streaming video to the public from NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover. While Amazon’s systems engineers can and often do work from any of the company’s offices, accessing servers remotely, if Amazon is hiring specifically in Herndon, Virginia, it suggests that it’s building systems—either yet to be announced, or within the CIA’s own data centers—right there.
The Tap Blog is a collective of like-minded researchers and writers who've joined forces to distribute information and voice opinions avoided by the world's media.
New Laser Inertial Navigation System LINS-100RS is presented at the Russian stand at the Le Bourget Air Show. This is the development of the Russian-French PC Alliance Company. It is designed for new and modernized aircrafts and helicopters, including fighters of the fifth generation.
Among the exhibits of the 50th Air Show, which takes place these days in the Paris suburb of Le Bourget, the stand of the RS Alliance joint Russian-French enterprise is not distinguished by anything special. It is very difficult for uninitiated people to recognize an unprecedented example of the Russian-French cooperation in the sphere of military aviation in a small square black device. This is a joint Russian-French development of a unique navigation system, which is intended for Russian combat aircrafts. The PC Alliance joint venture was planned back in 2011, during the Zhukovsky Air Show, and already by the end of 2020, the company plans to occupy at least 75% of the market of supplying such systems for all Russian projects. In addition to planes, such systems will be mounted on the Ka-52 combat helicopters, for which there is a special modification. The annual revenue of the enterprise after reaching the maximum production cycle should be about 30 million euros, experts hope.
Development of the complex was almost entirely carried out by Russian specialists; however, France's participation in the project is essential. The French company SAGEM supplies the most important component – the block of sensitive elements. Managing Director of the company Andrey Trebukhov has shared the details of the work:
“The enterprise was established by the decree of the President and the government of the RF. Now we may say that it is beginning its full-fledged operation. Our navigation system is a product of world level, corresponding to all modern world standards. This year we must produce about 60 such systems, which will be mounted on the Russian MIG-29 airplanes, KA-52 helicopters, and negotiations are underway on installing this system on the YAK-130 airplane. The demand for this system is great, and next year we plan to sell about 100 systems”.
In the future, Russian and French specialists are planning joint work on other systems, in particular, on systems of average accuracy. Andrey Trebukhov hopes that PC Alliance’s advanced products will be in demand both on the domestic, Russian, and on the world market, thus increasing the competitiveness of the Russian aviation.
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In its monthly crack-down on governments that fail to properly implement EU law, the European Commission Thursday announced it was issuing 47 "reasoned opinions" telling governments they are not obeying the letter of the law and bringing 12 cases before court, including four with financial penalties (Belgium, Portugal and Italy).
The culture agency in the authoritarian ex-Soviet state Uzbekistan has banned several pop singers and bands from performing live due to “meaningless” songs that failed to “praise the Motherland,” a statement on the agency’s website says.
A spy network formed by two Tunisians, three Moroccans and an Algerian collecting strategic information on behalf of Mossad comes to be dismantled in Algeria. «Plans vital strategic sites of the wilayas of the East of the country, Tebessa, Skikda and Annaba, as well as in Algiers, were seized by the security services». The members of the network recruited girls in the wilayas of Eastern Algeria, for the purposes of its spying mission, promising them send them to Europe, against the information they provide.
And they're off. James Wharton publishes his referendum Bill today. He's chosen to produce it in its full form for First Reading rather than as a draft. The European Union (Referendum) Bill 'Makes provision for the holding of a referendum in the United Kingdom on the United Kingdom's membership of the European Union'. It's been [...]
UKIP’s efforts to do battle online are clearly paying off. According to analysis done by UK General Election 2015, the party is gaining Twitter followers and Facebook likes at a considerably greater rate than its opponents, with the Tories in particular falling way short. By way of comparison, over the same period @GuidoFawkes gained some 7,000 followers and now has 109,745 followers – more than any UK political party. Social media campaigning will have a big part to play over the next two years, so these stats make interesting reading…
Tomorrow sees a Scottish council by-election up in Gilmerton following the death of councillor Tom Buchanan. The SNP’s leafleting tactics are somewhat interesting:
Guido is all for freedom for Scotland, but telling voters it is an “SNP by-election” and that they have to “find a replacement SNP councillor” is surely a step too far…
Despite a high rate of approval for the European project, Lithuanians appear to have little interest in the country’s first stint at leading the rotating presidency of the EU, starting 1 July, Prime Minister Algirdas Butkevičius told EurActiv Germany in an exclusive interview.
Al-Qaida’s (AQ) international terrorist network will rebound but shift tactics – seeking more frequent smaller-sized attacks in the coming years, a newly released Canadian intelligence report finds.
“The death of Osama bin Laden, the popular uprisings spreading across the Middle East and North Africa, and the global recessionary pressures that are causing governments to re-evaluate their [counter terror] strategies are amongst the many far-reaching developments that will influence AQ’s future prospects,” the report said.
The report emanated from the findings of a workshop sponsored by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Academic Outreach program in January. It sought to explore AQ’s future in the next decade. It relied solely on open-source information and studied different variables that would influence AQ’s evolution in the coming years, including the network’s external and internal environments.
Instability in AQ strongholds in the Middle East and Africa, combined with preoccupation of regional and Western governments with local security concerns such as mass violence and regime collapse may help the terrorist group “cultivate popular support; attract new recruits; inspire homegrown Western terrorists; acquire new weapons and funding; secure existing safe havens; and reach into new operating theatres,” the report said.
Al-Qaida’s future also will be shaped by its ideological goals, leadership, structure, and resources. This would include the internal debate raging in AQ affiliates regarding global v. local jihad as well as the leadership crisis resulting from the killing of senior al-Qaida leaders.
Since AQ “does not accept defeat,” the report concludes, it will shift its focus to waging more “small rudimentary attacks.” To the extent anti-Western sentiment continues to sell among the local population, AQ’s political and other sympathizers will “succeed in embedding the network’s extremist views in state institutions.” AQ’s antipathy towards the West will then be “expressed through both terror attacks and indirect state-to-state tensions.”
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A Jordanian with alleged an extremist jihadist group has admitted to the Lebanese Army intelligence that he provided military assistance to Syrian armed groups via Lebanon.
According to al-Akhbar newspaper, 43-year-old Mahmoud S. was detained 10 days ago in in the Bekaa district of Baalbek in his possession a fake identification card for a Palestinian man called Ahmed Hujeir.
The Jordanian man “proudly” admitted, without any pressure, that he is funding Islamist jihadist groups, al-Akhbar report said.
“The detainee acknowledge during interrogations that he received $2,200,000 from an official in the Qatari Red Crescent Khaled Diab to hand it over to a Lebanese Sheikh identified as A. A.,” the report said.
The newspaper reported that the Lebanese Shiekh resides in the town of Ber Elias in Bekaa and is a member of an association known as “Muslims Without Borders.”
The suspect allegedly bought 30 RPGs and 300 rockets that were smuggled into Syria through a Syrian man.
The report added that the Jordanian man “bought 100 Kalashnikov and ammunition from Ain el-Hilweh Palestinian Refugee camp (near the port city of Sidon) at the cost of $40,000.”
The suspect reportedly paid a sum of money to a well-known Salafist Sheikh, who hails from the northern city of Tripoli, to push his supporters to continue their battle against the Alawite Jabal Mohsen.
The detainee, according to al-Akhbar, that at the beginning of the turmoil in Syria in March 2011 he decided to “aid the Syria rebels.”
The report pointed out that the suspect was referred to the military court.
Syria's civil war has exacerbated sectarian tensions in Lebanon and its security situation has deteriorated due to various groups intervention in battles in the neighboring country.
Although Lebanon has officially adopted a position of neutrality in Syria's war, its people are sharply divided with Hizbullah and its allies backing President Bashar Assad's regime and the March 14 coalition supports the rebellion.
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Cypriot president Nikos Anastasiadis has come under pressure from opposition politicians to explain why he made a formal trip to Paris last week on the plane of a Russian billionaire, reports Vestnik. Anastasiadis says he turned to his friend due to a strike by French air traffic controllers.
French-based NGO Attac told German daily Suddeutsche Zeitung on Monday that €160bn out of €207bn of EU bailout money for Greece is earmarked for banks and wealthy investors. The NGO's Lisa Mittendrein said the "widespread belief" that EU rescues are designed to help ordinary people "is no longer tenable."
Better to side with the seculars who support "women, ethnic and religious minorities" than Islamists who want to impose Sharia
Falkland Islands representatives told the Special Decolonization Committee that under UN resolutions non self governing territories are entitled to exercise self determination and self government and C24 does not have the responsibility to judge on that right. Likewise the Falklands’ representatives again invited C24 to visit the Islands (seventh time) but with no reply.
