Strikes by US makes Russia angry

Strikes by US and its allies on Syrian territory require Syria’s consent — Russian FM (Source ITAR TASS) Strikes by the United States and its allies against targets in Syrian territory require not just formal notification of Damascus, but Syria’s consent or the adoption of a corresponding UN Security Council resolution, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday. “In connection with the just-started operation by the United Sates with support from some other countries to deal rocket and bombing strikes against the positions of the terrorist group Islamic State in Syria the Russian side recalls that such actions can be carried out exclusively within the framework of international law,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. “This implies not just unilateral formal notification of strikes, but the existence of an explicit consent from the Syrian government, or the adoption of a corresponding UN Security Council resolution.” “Russia’s fundamental position on the issue was confirmed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on September 22 in a telephone conversation with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. “The struggle with terrorism in the Middle East and North Africa requires concerted action by the whole world community under the auspices of the United Nations. Attempts to attain one’s own geopolitical aims by violating the sovereignty of countries in the region merely fuel tensions and destabilize the situation further.” “Moscow has warned more than once that the initiators of such use-of-force scenarios bear all international legal responsibility for their consequences,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said. “Attempts by US, its allies to attain geopolitical aims by violating other countries’ sovereignty fuel tensions, destabilize situation over Syria,” the statement said further.

New Record: Ground Beef $4 for the first time

NEW RECORD: POUND OF GROUND BEEF TOPS $4 FOR FIRST TIME (Source CNS News)

Although the overall Consumer Price Index dropped by 0.2 percent in August, the price index for food rose 0.2 percent, with the average price for a pound of ground beef rising to $4.013 per pound–the first time it has ever topped $4 per pound. In July, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price for a pound of ground beef had been $3.884 per pound—which was the record price up to that point.  From July to August, the average price jumped 12.9 cents, an increase of 3.3 percent in one month. A year ago, in August 2013, the average price for a pound of ground beef was $3.454 per pound. Since then, it has climbed 55.9 cents–or about 16.2 percent. Just five years ago, in August 2009, the average price for a pound of ground beef was $2.134, according to the BLS. The price has since climbed by $1.879 per pound—or 88.1 percent.

Superbugs, Do something about it

Do Something About Those Superbugs, President Obama Orders (Source nbcnews.com) President Barack Obama issued an executive order Thursday telling his administration to hurry up and do something about drug-resistant bacteria, which pose a “serious threat to public health and the economy.” Infections caused by antibiotic resistant bacteria kill 23,000 people every year, make 2 million more sick and cost $35 billion in productivity lost to sick days, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. “These are conservative estimates,” CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden told reporters. “The true number is actually much higher.” Experts have been screaming about it for years -– more and more infections resist most, if not all, antibiotics used against them and there are not any new drugs in the pipeline. Dr. John Holdren, Obama’s chief science adviser, sees “the potential for the runaway spread of infection” that can “undermine social stability.”

Know where to run nor hide

KNOWHERE TO HIDE AS MINORITY REPORT-STYLE FACIAL RECOGNITION TECHNOLOGY SPREADS ACROSS AMERICA (Source theeconomiccollapseblog.com) What is our society going to look like when our faces are being tracked literally everywhere that we go?  As part of the FBI’s new Next Generation Identification System, a facial recognition database known as the Interstate Photo System will have collected 52 million of our faces by the end of 2015.  But that is only a small part of the story.  According to Edward Snowden, the NSA has been using advanced facial recognition technology for years.  In addition advertising companies are starting to use Minority Report-style face scanners in their billboards and many large corporations see facial recognition technology as a tool that they can use to serve their customers better.  Someday soon it may become virtually impossible to go out in public in a major U.S. city without having your face recorded.  Is that the kind of society that we want? To the FBI, this technology does not represent an invasion of privacy.  Rather, they are very proud of the fact that they are not going to be so dependent on fingerprinting any longer.  The FBI has been developing the Next Generation Identification System for years, and this month it was announced that it is finally fully operational.

Google works like NSA

Spying and storing: Assange says ‘Google works like NSA’ (Source RT) WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange equated Google with the National Security Agency and GCHQ, saying the tech giant has become “a privatized version of the NSA,” as it collects, stores, and indexes people’s data. He made his remarks to BBC and Sky News. “Google’s business model is the spy. It makes more than 80 percent of its money by collecting information about people, pooling it together, storing it, indexing it, building profiles of people to predict their interests and behavior, and then selling those profiles principally to advertisers, but also others,”Assange told BBC. “So the result is that Google, in terms of how it works, its actual practice, is almost identical to the National Security Agency or GCHQ,” the whistleblower argued. Google has been working with the NSA “in terms of contracts since at least 2002,” Assange told Sky News. “They are formally listed as part of the defense industrial base since 2009. They have been engaged with the Prism system, where nearly all information collected by Google is available to the NSA,” Assange said. “At the institutional level, Google is deeply involved in US foreign policy.” Google has tricked people into believing that it is “a playful, humane organization” and not a “big, bad US corporation,” Assange told BBC. “But in fact it has become just that…it is now arguably the most influential commercial organization.” “Google has now spread to every country, every single person, who has access to the internet,” he reminded.

 

Fireball in sky was a Russian Spy Satellite, Experts say

 

Fireball Was Russian Spy Satellite, Experts Say (Source news.sky.com) Military experts believe a mystery object spotted streaking across the sky over the US was a Russian spy satellite. More than three dozen witnesses reported seeing a bright object that broke apart into three “rocks” with glowing red and orange streaks as it moved northward over the Rocky Mountains on September 2. Russia has denied claims that the fireball spotted at 10.30pm was a piece of the Cosmos 2495 satellite, which was designed to shoot reconnaissance photos and send them back to Earth in capsules.  But Mike Hankey from the American Meteor Society said a meteor would have burned up too quickly to be seen over such a large area, while fragments from the unidentified object were big enough to show up as a weather event on radar east of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Charles Vick, an aerospace analyst with military information website Globalsecurity.org agreed that the object was probably a piece of the Russian satellite, which was launched in May. Globalsecurity.org’s director John Pike said Russia continues to spy on similar targets to those it focused on during the Cold War. “Deployed hardware, airplanes, ships, tanks, factories, new intelligence facilities, all that stuff,” he said. “They’re looking for the same things that our spy satellites are looking for.” The US Strategic Command, responsible for American nuclear war fighting forces, confirmed that Cosmos 2495 re-entered the atmosphere and was removed from the US satellite catalogue on September 3.

Europe: The Rise the Fringe Parties

Europe: The Rise of the Fringe Parties Continue (Source thetrumpet.com) Germany’s newest party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) continued its dramatic rise on September 14. This time last year, in Germany’s federal elections, it fought its for first-ever election campaign. It started strong, but with 4.7 percent of the vote, it fell just short of the 5 percent threshold necessary to enter Germany’s parliament.

In May, it did much better, winning 7.1 percent of the vote in the European Parliament elections. Then, on August 31, the AfD won its first seats in the German regional parliament in Saxony, with just under 10 percent of the vote. This Sunday the party repeated that success, winning 10.6 percent of the vote in Thuringia and 12.2 in Brandenburg. The AfD has officially arrived on the German political scene. The AfD rise shows that a large number of Germans reject the traditional political parties. We saw the same trend with the sudden rise, and then fall, of the Pirate Party. A growing number of voters want a change from business as usual. Europe saw this same process play out in the 1930s. In the ’30s, the extremist groups took power. It won’t necessarily play out the same way today, but the same instability is there. So is that same desire for a new way of doing things, a new type of politics with new leaders. Europe has been a relatively stable and prosperous place for the past 70-odd years. But that prosperity stopped growing in 2008, and more and more voters think Europe needs a new way forward. Watch for this dissatisfaction to bring about a political transformation across Europe.

The Pope says WWIII is happening already

War is madness’: Pope Francis says WWIII is happening already (Source RT) Pope Francis has compared the current situation internationally to a third World War “fought piecemeal, with crimes, massacres and destruction.” Calling wars irrational, the Pontiff lamented conflicts are often “justified by an ideology.” In the past few months, Francis has repeatedly called for the end of military conflicts in Ukraine, Iraq, Syria, Gaza and throughout Africa. In July, he also made an emotional appeal to the world, calling to stop war, especially in the Middle East and Ukraine, saying that the children who live in conflict zones are suffering most and are deprived of hope and a future. During his visit to Korea in August, the Pope said that humanity was in the midst of a Third World War.

 

Iran: We turned down US’ Isis offer

Iran: We Turned Down US’ ISIS Offer (Source Newser)  Iran wants the world to know that the United States came knocking—and it didn’t answer the door. Though it was previously reported that John Kerry had barred the country from joining a coalition formed to combat the self-proclaimed Islamic State, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei today said that it was Iran who turned America down. “They are lying,” he said, per Reuters. As for how it went down, Khamenei says the American ambassador in Iraq asked the Iranian ambassador in Iraq “for a session to discuss coordinating a fight against” ISIS. And while some Iranian officials were receptive to the idea, “I was opposed,” Khamenei said. “I saw no point in cooperating with a country whose hands are dirty and intentions murky.”

New Sanctions against Russia hit Exxon

OOPS, NEW SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA HIT EXXON (Source oilprice.com) The United States and the European Union imposed a new round of sanctions on Russia in response to Moscow’s intervention in eastern Ukraine and following its annexation of the Crimean peninsula in March. The goal is to clamp down further on the Russian economy, but it will significantly affect the drilling plans of western oil giants ExxonMobil and BP. In fact, this closes a loophole that allowed Exxon to begin drilling Russia’s first exploratory well in the arctic Kara Sea last month — a well that could have to shut down in less than two weeks. Exxon’s lawyers were reportedly reviewing the sanctions to determine if they would have to alter operations in the Kara Sea and in another consortium-led oil and gas operation on Sakhalin Island. Prior rounds of sanctions have primarily targeted the Russian banking and defense sectors, but in late July, the U.S. and E.U. agreed to crack down on Russia’s access to Western fossil fuel technology for future development of deepwater, Arctic offshore, and shale oil and gas deposits. Russia has the largest combined oil and gas reserves in the world but lacks the oil and gas technology needed to access complex and dangerous deposits like those deep under the waters under Russia’s Arctic coast. So it enters into deals with the Western oil giants — most prominently Exxon — to exploit those resources. Exxon and Russia agreed to a $3.2 billion deal that gives the company access to a Texas-sized chunk of the Arctic. To kick off the Exxon offshore well in August, President Vladimir Putin got on a video conference call with the CEO of Rosneft — Russian state-owned oil giant — and Glenn Waller, Exxon’s top man in Russia, to laud the promise of international cooperation on display. “I am convinced that the joint projects between Rosneft, Exxon Mobil and other companies will benefit our national economies, will contribute to strengthening the global energy situation,” Putin said.  Waller responded that “our cooperation is a long-term one,” and that Exxon was excited to keep working in Russia because “we see big benefits here and are ready to work here with your agreement.”