Friday
Jan142011

2010 sets US home foreclosure record

US home foreclosures hit a new record in 2010, as millions of families faced a disastrous combination of joblessness, falling wages, and plunging home values. The latest foreclosure figures, released Thursday by Realtytrac.com, comes amidst a bout of negative economic statistics that underscore the depth of the social crisis.

Approximately 2.8 million properties had foreclosure actions taken against them in 2010, about 1 in 45 US households in all and an increase of 2 percent over 2009. The number of properties repossessed by banks jumped 14 percent, to over one million.

The new record comes in spite of an 11 percent curtailment of foreclosure filings and evictions in the fourth quarter. This short-term decline resulted from voluntary moratoriums put in place by some banks after it came to light that mortgage lenders were systematically falsifying documentation in order to speed Americans out of their homes. In the immediate aftermath of the scandal the Obama administration ruled out any punishment or investigation of the banks, and foreclosure processing accelerated.

Experts say the worst is yet to come. “The 2010 numbers came out significantly lower than we expected as a result of the mortgage documentation scandal,” said Daren Blomquist, Director of Marketing Communications for Realtytrac, in a telephone interview. “But those foreclosures which were halted—about a quarter million—will simply be pushed to next year.”

Realtytrac was already projecting record levels of foreclosures next year before the mortgage scandal, and now estimates that foreclosure levels could be between 10 percent and 20 percent higher in 2011 than in 2010.

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Wednesday
Jan122011

Illinois Legislators Approve 66% Tax Increase

NY TIMES

With only hours left before new state lawmakers were to take over, Illinois’s State Legislature narrowly approved early on Wednesday an increase of about 66 percent in the state’s income tax rate.

The vast size of the increase, the rarity of such increases here — the last one came two decades ago — and the hour of the vote (in the wee hours of Wednesday) all reflected the urgency and depth of this state’s fiscal crisis.

Even grudging supporters of the tax increase, which won no Republican support in a state capital controlled by Democrats, voiced a desperate sense of regret over the circumstances in which Illinois finds itself. State Representative Elaine Nekritz, a Democrat who voted for the increase, described her decision as an alternative “between bad and worse.” Another Democrat cautioned his colleagues: “We don’t have a better choice today.”

Many states are struggling with anemic revenues and the prospect of an end to additional federal funds, but Illinois faces a budget deficit of as much as $15 billion, owes some $8 billion in unpaid bills to social service agencies, doctors, dentists and others, and is receiving mounting signs of worry from bond investors.

Under the legislation, the income tax rate would, at least temporarily, rise to 5 percent from its current rate of 3 percent. Lawmakers had talked about an even steeper increase, but set that aside as the hours went by and the debate grew increasingly emotional. The rate for corporate taxes would rise to 7 percent from its current rate of 4.8 percent. As part of the deal, the state’s spending growth would be limited from one year to the next over the next four years.

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Tuesday
Jan112011

Synonymous Terms for Quantitative Easing 

I was having a leisurely breakfast with the family when I read where Philipp Bagus, writing at Mises Daily newsletter, quotes James Bullard, president of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank, as saying, "it's important to defend inflation from the low side as we would on the high side."

I thought to myself, "Defend inflation? Inflation needs to be defended from being too low? Arrgghhh!"

As indicated by the surprising use of the pirate-sounding phrase, "Arrgghh!" you can tell that this sublime idiocy drives me Up The Freaking Wall (UTFW), as soon indicated by a few almost-obligatory and loud Mogambo Screams Of Outrage (MSOO) emanating from my lips, which, unfortunately, upset my stupid family, and they all started complaining about the noise and the way that food was flying out of my mouth and getting all over everything.

Amid rude comments like, "Calm down, you idiot!" and, "Ewww!" I just explained, "Screw you!" got in my car and went to work.

As I was driving along, thinking about this idiot Bullard, and thinking about how the Federal Reserve has become a malignant organization that is going to destroy us with catastrophic inflation as a result of their terrifying creation of So Freaking Much Money (SFMM) so that the Obama administration can borrow the money and spend it, and thinking about how I can possibly save my job, which is hanging by a thread, when - suddenly! - I had a Brilliant Mogambo Idea (BMI)!

With mounting excitement, I stepped on the accelerator, horn blaring, swerved into the parking lot and, to save time, took the Handicapped Parking space.

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Tuesday
Jan112011

Could the U.S. central bank go broke?

Reuters

The U.S. Federal Reserve's journey to the outer limits of monetary policy is raising concerns about how hard it will be to withdraw trillions of dollars in stimulus from the banking system when the time is right.

While that day seems distant now, some economists and market analysts have even begun pondering the unthinkable: could the vaunted Fed, the world's most powerful central bank, become insolvent?

Almost by definition, the answer is no.

As the monetary authority, the central bank is the master of the printing press. It can literally conjure up money at will, and arguably did exactly that when it bought about $2 trillion of mortgage-backed securities and U.S. Treasuries to push down borrowing costs and boost the economy.

The Fed's unorthodox steps helped it generate record profits in 2010, allowing it to send $78.4 billion to the U.S. Treasury Department. But its swollen balance sheet leaves the central bank unusually exposed to possible credit losses that could create a major headache at a time of increasing political encroachment on the Fed's independence.

Asked about the issue of potential losses during congressional testimony on Friday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke suggested the risks were minimal. If liabilities on the Fed's balance sheet were to exceed its assets, it would only be so because of rising interest rates in the context of a thriving economy, he suggested.

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Tuesday
Jan112011

The Fed’s QE2 Traders, Buying Bonds by the Billions

NY TIMES

In a spare, government-issue office in Lower Manhattan, behind a bank of cubicles and a scruffy copy machine, Josh Frost and a band of market specialists are making the Fed’s ultimate Wall Street trade. They are buying hundreds of billions of dollars of United States Treasury securities on the open market in a controversial attempt to keep interest rates low and, in the process, revive the economy.

To critics, it is a Hail Mary play — an admission that the economy’s persistent weakness has all but exhausted the central bank’s powers and tested the limits of its policy making. Around the world, some warn the unusual strategy will weaken the dollar and lead to crippling inflation.

But inside the Operations Room, on the ninth floor of the New York Fed’s fortresslike headquarters, there is no time for second-guessing. Here the second round of what is known as quantitative easingQE2, as it is called on Wall Street — is being put into practice almost daily by the central bank’s powerful New York arm.

Each morning Mr. Frost and his team face a formidable task: they must try to buy Treasuries at the best possible price from the savviest bond traders in the business.

The smallest miscalculation, a few one-hundredths of a percentage point here or there, could unsettle the markets and cost taxpayers dearly. It could also embolden critics at home and abroad who say QE2 represents a dangerous expansion of the Fed’s role in the markets.

“We are looking to get the best price we can for the taxpayer,” said Mr. Frost, a buttoned-down 34-year-old in a striped suit and rimless glasses.

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Monday
Jan102011

UN: Israeli settlement expansion illegal

The United Nations has voiced disappointment with Israel's illegal settlement construction in the occupied Palestinian territories despite international opposition.

"It is deeply regrettable that growing international concern at unilateral expansion of illegal Israeli settlements is not being heeded," UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said on Monday, AFP reported.

Condemning Israel's Sunday destruction of a hotel in the occupied East al-Quds (Jerusalem), he said, “Such actions seriously prejudice the possibility of a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

The move also occasioned damning statements by the Palestinian Authority and the European Union.

Israeli bulldozers razed the Shepherd Hotel in the predominantly-Palestinian neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah in East al-Quds to build 20 new settlement units.

Alongside other Palestinian and Arab territories, Tel Aviv occupied East al-Quds during the Six-Day War in 1967.

The occupation and later annexation of the city -- which the Palestinians have long been demanding as the capital of their future state -- has never been recognized by the international community.

“The secretary general once again calls on...Israel to take whatever steps are necessary to freeze settlement activity anywhere in occupied territory,” the official said on behalf of UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

Click to read more ...

Monday
Jan102011

Iran says it has arrested spy ring linked to Israel

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran has arrested a "network of spies" linked to Israel's Mossad intelligence service which it blames for the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist in 2010, Iran's state television reported on Monday.

Tensions are running high between Iran and Israel, which has not ruled out military strikes on the Islamic Republic if diplomatic efforts fail to resolve a row over Tehran's nuclear program.

Iran has vowed to retaliate for any strikes with missile strikes on Israel and U.S. targets in the Gulf.

"The Intelligence Ministry ... has identified and arrested members of a spy and terrorist network linked to the Zionist regime," state television quoted a statement issued by the ministry as saying. Iran does not recognize the state of Israel.

"The network of spies and terrorists linked to ... Mossad was destroyed. The network was behind the assassination of Masoud Ali-Mohammadi."

State television later aired footage of a young man identified as Majid Jamalifash, who it said was the "main element" behind the assassination of the scientist.

Jamalifash said Israeli officers trained him in a military base near Tel Aviv in surveillance and counter-surveillance techniques, as well as how to collect "information from a specific place and sticking a bomb under a car."

He also said he had practiced detonating bombs in that base "several times," according to state television's website.

A remote-controlled bomb killed the Tehran University scientist in Tehran on January 12 last year. Iran blamed the United States and Israel for the killing of Ali-Mohammadi, a charge Washington has rejected as "absurd."

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Sunday
Jan092011

CIA Asset Susan Lindauer blows the whistle on 9/11, Iraq 

Susan Lindauer, author of Extreme Prejudice, is the first CIA asset to have spoken out, under her own name and for the record, on Israeli complicity in 9/11, the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center, and the specific, detailed foreknowledge of the time, target, and means of the 9/11 attacks held throughout the months prior to 9/11 by the CIA in general and Lindauer's CIA handler, Richard Fuisz, in particular. She has also exposed her first-hand knowledge of pre-war intelligence and negotiations showing that Iraq was willing to give the US "anything it asked" and that the war was therefore--from the perspective of US interests--not only utterly unnecessary, but wildly counterproductive. Lindauer's evidence points strongly to 9/11 being a coup d'etat by hard-line Zionists determined to steer the US into a self-destructive war on Israel's enemies.

Listen to my complete interview with Susan Lindauer here. Below is a transcript of the first half of the interview.


Barrett
I understand that you had some 9/11 foreknowledge, but were actually busted for trying to explain to the Bush Administration through your cousin Andrew Card, that invading Iraq was insane, that the Iraqis were basically going to do anything we wanted anyway--they'll agree to anything for peace--and that there would be a terrible resistance and a terrible war if there was an invasion. And for that very accurate and prescient warning, they went after you.

Lindauer
Well, you have a very good grasp of this issue, I will tell you. It is a complicated story. I was one of the very few (CIA) assets covering Iraq before the war.

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Saturday
Jan082011

How the US let al-Qaida get its hands on an Iraqi weapons factory

Haki Mohammed and his brothers were shovelling manure on their farm in Yusifiyah in the spring of 2003 when the soldier arrived. Dishevelled and distressed, the man had run a great distance. "Please," he entreated, "are you true Arabs?"

The Iraqis, raised in a culture of obligatory hospitality towards needy strangers, immediately understood the subtext. The man needed help. Even had he not been a soldier (Haki thought he recognised the uniform of a Special Republican Guard), they were honour-bound to offer assistance. "Of course," Haki assured the man. "What is it you need?"

The soldier held out his AK-47. "Take it." He indicated the webbing around his waist, stuffed full of charged magazines. "Take them all. I don't want them. But I need a dishdasha or a robe. Anything that isn't a uniform." Then the soldier started to undress.

The Mohammeds were indeed good Arabs. They fetched a dishdasha and the man slipped it on. Then, without warning, he flung the ammunition and the rifle down and ran off into the desert. Bemused, the Yusifiyans examined his belongings. He wasn't a Republican Guard at all. His uniform, bereft of rank badges, was that of a rarer outfit: Manzaumat al-Amin, the Iraqi military's security and protection agency.

A small, nondescript town of a few thousand souls 25km south-west of Baghdad, Yusifiyah is known for its rich soil, which enables the production of potatoes famous throughout Iraq for their size and flavour. The singer Farouk al-Khatib was born here. But that's about it. For those uninterested in either potatoes or Iraqi popular music, there's little of interest: farms criss-crossed by irrigation ditches, a great deal of sand, and not much else.

Yusifiyah's obscurity, however, together with its convenient location – less than 30 minutes' drive from Baghdad airport – make it perfect for certain purposes: hiding things, for example. Things you'd rather no one ever knew about. Secret things.

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Saturday
Jan082011

Physics Instructor David Chandler gives NIST another whack with the ruler

There are several outstanding leaders in the 9/11 truth movement. High school and community college physics instructor David Chandler has found his place among them. With 30 years of experience teaching physics, math, and astronomy in a variety of schools in the US and India, Chandler easily guides the layperson through the basic physics of 9/11. His articulate, detailed website, co-produced with AE911Truth’s Jon Cole, another prominent contributor to our mission, provides valuable documentation of the controlled demolition of all three WTC skyscrapers. For instance, he has produced a premier article on Building 7 which he says presents physics at the level of “the first month of a high school physics course” in a Resistance Radio interview with Tod Fletcher. The NIST report on Building 7 is inconsistent with basic physics as we know it. Chandler notes “if the NIST report on Building 7 had been turned in by a first-year student in one of my classes, it would have received a D or an F.” Its 1,000 pages of error, negligence, and fraud are exposed by Chandler’s simple, historic papers and videos.

Chandler has just released a new DVD which is a well-edited compilation of his many videos that spells out in no uncertain terms some of the physically impossible and obviously false features of the official explanation for what transpired on 9/11, as they relate to the Twin Towers and WTC 7.

This DVD is now for sale in the AE911Truth online store.

WTC Building 7 in Free-fall

Click to read more...

Saturday
Jan082011

WikiLeaks: US demanding our Twitter account info

LONDON – U.S. officials have issued a subpoena to demand details about WikiLeaks' Twitter account, the group announced Saturday, adding that it suspected other American Internet companies were also being ordered to hand over information about its activities.

In a statement, WikiLeaks said U.S. investigators had gone to the San Francisco-based Twitter Inc. to demand the private messages, contact information and other personal details of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and other supporters, including the U.S. Army intelligence analyst suspected of handing classified information to the site and a high-profile Icelandic parliamentarian.

WikiLeaks blasted the court order, saying it amounted to harassment.

"If the Iranian government was to attempt to coercively obtain this information from journalists and activists of foreign nations, human rights groups around the world would speak out," Assange said in the statement.

A copy of the court order, dated Dec. 14 and posted to Salon.com, said the information sought was "relevant to an ongoing criminal investigation" and ordered Twitter not to disclose its existence to Assange or any of the others targeted.

The order was unsealed "thanks to legal action by Twitter," WikiLeaks said.

Twitter has declined comment on the claim, saying only that its policy is to notify its users, where possible, of government requests for information.

Click to read more...

Thursday
Jan062011

U.S. tells agencies: Watch 'insiders' to prevent new WikiLeaks 

The Obama administration is telling federal agencies to take aggressive new steps to prevent more WikiLeaks embarrassments, including instituting “insider threat” programs to ferret out disgruntled employees who might be inclined to leak classified documents, NBC News has learned.

As part of these programs, agency officials are being asked to figure out ways to “detect behavioral changes” among employees who might have access to classified documents.

A highly detailed 11-page memo prepared by U.S. intelligence officials and distributed by Jacob J. Lew, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, suggests that agencies use psychiatrists and sociologists to measure the “relative happiness” of workers or their “despondence and grumpiness” as a way to assess their trustworthiness. The memo was sent this week to senior officials at all agencies that use classified material.  

The memo also suggests that agencies take new steps to identify any contacts between federal workers and members of the news media. “Are all employees required to report their contacts with the media?” the memo asks senior officials about the policies at their agencies.

The memo is the latest step in a high-priority administration initiative begun in the wake of the WikiLeaks debacle. It has taken on potentially even more significance in recent days with the disclosure this week that Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., the new chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, plans to investigate what policies the White House is implementing to prevent future leaks.

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Thursday
Jan062011

Police State: Drug-sniffing dogs in traffic stops often wrong

Drug-sniffing dogs can give police probable cause to root through cars by the roadside, but state data show the dogs have been wrong more often than they have been right about whether vehicles contain drugs or paraphernalia.

The dogs are trained to dig or sit when they smell drugs, which triggers automobile searches. But a Tribune analysis of three years of data for suburban departments found that only 44 percent of those alerts by the dogs led to the discovery of drugs or paraphernalia.

For Hispanic drivers, the success rate was just 27 percent.

Dog-handling officers and trainers argue the canine teams' accuracy shouldn't be measured in the number of alerts that turn up drugs. They said the scent of drugs or paraphernalia can linger in a car after drugs are used or sold, and the dogs' noses are so sensitive they can pick up residue from drugs that can no longer be found in a car.

But even advocates for the use of drug-sniffing dogs agree with experts who say many dog-and-officer teams are poorly trained and prone to false alerts that lead to unjustified searches. Leading a dog around a car too many times or spending too long examining a vehicle, for example, can cause a dog to give a signal for drugs where there are none, experts said.

"If you don't train, you can't be confident in your dog," said Alex Rothacker, a trainer who works with dozens of local drug-sniffing dogs. "A lot of dogs don't train. A lot of dogs aren't good."

The dog teams are not held to any statutory standard of performance in Illinois or most other states, experts and dog handlers said, though private groups offer certification for the canines.

Click to read more...

Thursday
Jan062011

Ex-CIA officer charged with leak to Times reporter

WASHINGTON – A former CIA officer has been indicted on charges of disclosing national security secrets after being accused of leaking classified information about Iran to a New York Times reporter.

Federal prosecutors charged Jeffrey Sterling with 10 counts related to improperly keeping and disclosing national security information.

The indictment did not say specifically what was leaked but, from the dates and other details, it was clear that the case centered on leaks to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Risen for his 2006 book, "State of War." The book revealed details about the CIA's covert spy war with Iran.

Sterling, 43, of O'Fallon, Mo., was arrested Thursday and appeared in federal court in St. Louis later in the day. U.S. Magistrate Judge Terry I. Adelman told him he would be detained through the weekend because the government had declared him a danger to the community. There was no plea entered. Another detention hearing was scheduled for Monday afternoon.

Sterling served on the Iranian desk at the CIA and handled Iranian spies who had defected to the United States. In Chapter 9 of the book "A Rogue Operation," Risen detailed how a CIA officer mistakenly revealed the CIA's network in Iran in 2004.

Iranian security officials were able to "roll up" the CIA's agent network in the country. Risen called it an "espionage disaster."

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Thursday
Jan062011

U.S. to send 1,400 Marines to Afghanistan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will temporarily send 1,400 more Marines to Afghanistan in an effort to hold onto fragile security gains, but overall U.S. troop levels will not surpass previously announced limits, the Pentagon said on Thursday.

The short-term deployments were ordered by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, and come months before President Barack Obama plans to start withdrawing U.S. forces in July from the unpopular war against the Taliban.

"This will allow us to keep our momentum," said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell. The troops would mainly be deployed in southern Afghanistan, he said, where fighting is the fiercest.

Britain's top military officer, General David Richards, told reporters in Washington that Britain had no similar plan to boost force levels in Afghanistan but indicated that could change depending on the need of ground commanders.

"Troop levels are not set in concrete. They never have been," Richards, Britain's chief of Defense Staff, told a briefing at the Atlantic Council think tank in Washington. "If there's a good case for sending a few more people ... we'll remain open-minded about it."

Violence is at its worst in Afghanistan with record casualties on all sides of the conflict and with the insurgency spreading from traditional strongholds in the south and east into once-peaceful areas in the north and west.

A review by President Barack Obama last month found U.S. and NATO forces were making headway against the Taliban and al Qaeda, but serious challenges remained. It said the Taliban's momentum had been arrested in much of Afghanistan and reversed in some areas.

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Thursday
Jan062011

Dem Congresswoman: Afghanistan Is A "National Embarrassment"

Thursday
Jan062011

U.S. and NATO allies plan to spend $11.6 billion this year for Afghan security

KABUL - The United States and its NATO allies plan to spend $11.6 billion this year building Afghanistan's security forces, the largest yearly sum to date, as pressure mounts to shift responsibility for fighting the Taliban from the U.S.-led force toward local troops.

The new funding pushes the total for 2010 and 2011 to nearly $20 billion, as much as in the seven previous years combined, said Lt. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the commander of NATO's training mission in Afghanistan. Funds already spent have purchased, among other things, 24,000 Ford Rangers, 108,000 9mm pistols, 74,000 handheld radios, 44 helicopters and four bomb-sniffing robots.

"It's an enormous undertaking that we do," Caldwell said.

NATO's decision to offer details Wednesday about the vast quantity of equipment provided and the steep cost to foreign taxpayers follows public criticism by Afghan officials that the West has not given Afghan troops and police officers adequate weaponry. Last month, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman, Waheed Omer, said he agreed that time and effort had been expended training the Afghan national security forces.

"But we will not agree that a lot of time and effort was spent in equipping" the forces, Omer said, a day after 14 Afghan soldiers and police were killed in separate attacks.

Defense Minister Rahim Wardak, a former mujaheddin commander, said in an interview last fall that "when I was fighting the Soviets, I had much better, more sophisticated, more heavy weapons than the [Afghan National Army] today."

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Thursday
Jan062011

1.5 Billion Dollar NSA Spy Center Being Built

Today's groundbreaking for a $1.5 billion National Security Administration data center is being billed as important in the short term for construction jobs and important in the long term for Utah's reputation as a technology center.

"This will bring 5,000 to 10,000 new jobs during its construction and development phase," Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said on Wednesday. "Once completed, it will support 100 to 200 permanent high-paid employees."

Officially named the Utah Data Center, the facility's role in aggregating and verifying dizzying volumes of data for the intelligence community has already earned it the nickname "Spy Center." Its really long moniker is the Community Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative Data Center — the first in the nation's intelligence community.

A White House document identifies the Comprehensive National Cyber-security Initiative as addressing "one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation, but one that we as a government or as a country are not adequately prepared to counter." The document details a number of technology-related countermeasures to the security threat.

Hatch said Utah was chosen for the project over 37 other locations. He characterized the cyber-security center as the "largest military construction project in recent memory."

Hatch said he promoted Utah's favorable energy costs, Internet infrastructure, thriving software industry and proximity to the Salt Lake City International Airport in the bid process that ended up with Camp Williams earning the data center.

The Army Corps of Engineers is overseeing the project that is under contract to a joint venture between Big-D Construction in Salt Lake City, U.K.-based Balfour Beatty Construction and DPR Construction out of California.

"This project is going to give an opportunity for an awful lot of Utahns" who have seen construction jobs in Utah drop from 100,000 in 2008 to about 66,000 today, said Rob Moore, president and COO of Big-D and chairman of the Associated General Contractors in Utah. "My subcontractors, suppliers and vendors are very appreciative of the work that will be available on this project."

Click to read more

Thursday
Jan062011

DARPA Kicks Off Mind’s Eye Program

Ground surveillance is a mission normally performed by human assets, including Army scouts and Marine Corps Force Recon. Military leaders would like to shift this mission to unmanned systems, removing troops from harm’s way, but unmanned systems lack a capability that currently exists only in humans: visual intelligence. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is addressing this problem with Mind’s Eye, a program aimed at developing a visual intelligence capability for unmanned systems.

Humans perform a wide range of visual tasks with ease, something no current artificial intelligence can do in a robust way. They have inherently strong spatial judgment and are able to learn new spatiotemporal concepts directly from the visual experience. Humans visualize scenes and objects, as well as the actions involving those objects and possess a powerful ability to manipulate those imagined scenes mentally to solve problems. A machine-based implementation of such abilities is broadly applicable to a wide range of applications, including ground surveillance.

The joint military community anticipates a significant increase in the role of unmanned systems in support of future operations including jobs like persistent stare. By performing persistent stare, camera-equipped unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) would take scouts out of harm’s way. Such a capability, however, would not constitute a force multiplier because human analysts would have to interpret streaming video from these platforms to detect operationally significant activities. A truly transformative capability requires visual intelligence, enabling these platforms to detect operationally significant activity and report on that activity so warfighters can focus on important events in a timely manner.

DARPA has contracted with 12 research teams to develop fundamental machine-based visual intelligence: Carnegie Mellon University, Co57 Systems, Inc., Colorado State University, Jet Propulsion Laboratory/CALTECH, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, SRI International, State University of New York at Buffalo, TNO (Netherlands), University of Arizona, University of California Berkeley and University of Southern California.

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Thursday
Jan062011

World food prices enter 'danger territory' to reach record high

Soaring prices of sugar, grain and oilseed drove world food prices to a record in December, surpassing the levels of 2008 when the cost of food sparked riots around the world, and prompting warnings of prices being in "danger territory".

An index compiled monthly by the United Nations surpassed its previous monthly high – June 2008 – in December to reach the highest level since records began in 1990. Published by the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the index tracks the prices of a basket of cereals, oilseeds, dairy, meat and sugar, and has risen for six consecutive months.

Abdolreza Abbassian, FAO economist, told the Guardian: "We are entering a danger territory." But he stressed that the situation was not yet as bad as 2008.

Sugar and meat prices are at record levels, while cereal prices are back at the levels last seen in 2008, when riots in Haiti killed four people and riots in Cameroon left 40 dead.

Abbassian warned prices could rise higher still, amid fears of droughts in Argentina and floods in Australia and cold weather killing plants in the northern hemisphere.

"There is still room for prices to go up much higher, if for example the dry conditions in Argentina tend to become a drought, and if we start having problems with winterkill in the northern hemisphere for the wheat crops," Abbassian said.

Prices have been rising steadily but Abbassian said that by now he had been expecting food prices to start to fall because many poorer countries had good harvests last year.

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