An Oil-Soaked Globe as Production Keeps Climbing and Demand Falls
Photo
An
oil well in Texas owned by Apache Corporation, the object of a failed
bid last week from Anadarko Petroleum. Many in the oil industry expect
large companies to buy small operators.Credit Spencer Platt/Getty Images
HOUSTON — Such is the state of the oil industry these days that there is sometimes nowhere to put the oil.
Off the coast of Texas, a line of roughly 40 tankers has formed,
waiting to unload their crude or, in some cases, for a willing buyer to
come along. Similar scenes are playing out off the coasts of Singapore
and China and in the Persian Gulf.
There is little sign that the logjam will ease, as the price of oil continued its yearlong plunge this week, declining by nearly $10 a barrel.
The
renewed collapse in crude prices is helping to again drive down
gasoline prices for American drivers, to a national average of $2.19 a
gallon for regular gasoline on Friday, according to the AAA motor club.
That is 9 cents below the price a month ago and 73 cents below the price
a year ago.
The
slide in oil companies’ fortunes has been significant because of
expanded production in Russia, Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf
states, as well as a slowdown in demand growth in China and the
expectation by commodity traders that the Iran nuclear deal will
introduce large quantities of oil to the glutted market.
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Something Very Strange Is Taking Place Off The Coast Of Galveston, TX
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 11/12/2015 21:43 -0500
Having exposed the world yesterday to the 2-mile long line of tankers-full'o'crude heading from Iraq to the US, several weeks after reporting that China has run out of oil storage space
we can now confirm that the global crude "in transit" glut is becoming
gargantuan and is starting to have adverse consequences on the price of
oil.
While the crude oil tanker backlog in Houston reaches an
almost unprecedented 39 (with combined capacity of 28.4 million
barrels), as The FT reports that from China to the Gulf of Mexico, the
growing flotilla of stationary supertankers is evidence that the oil
price crash may still have further to run, as more than 100m barrels of
crude oil and heavy fuels are being held on ships at sea (as the
year-long supply glut fills up available storage on land). The storage
problems are so severe in fact, that traders asking ships to go slow,
and that is where we see something very strange occurring off the coast near Galveston, TX.
FT reports that "the
amount of oil at sea is at least double the levels of earlier this year
and is equivalent to more than a day of global oil supply. The numbers
of vessels has been compiled by the Financial Times from satellite
tracking data and industry sources."
The storage glut is unprecedented:
Off
Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, Asia’s main oil hub, around 35m
barrels of crude and shipping fuel are being stored on 14 VLCCs.
“A
lot of the storage off Singapore is fuel oil as the contango is
stronger,” said Petromatrix analyst Olivier Jakob. Fuel oil is mainly
used in shipping and power generation.
Off China, which is on course to overtake the US as the world’s largest crude importer, five heavily laden VLCCs — each capable of carrying more than 2m barrels of oil — are parked near the ports of Qingdao, Dalian and Tianjin.
In Europe, a number of smaller tankers are facing short-term delays at Rotterdam and in the North Sea, where output is near a two-year high. In the Mediterranean a VLCC has been parked off Malta since September.
The latest U.S.
patrol in the disputed South China Sea occurred in advance of President
Barack Obama's visit to the region next week to attend Asia-Pacific
summits where he is expected the reassert Washington's commitment to
freedom of navigation and overflight in the area.
China claims
most of the South China Sea, through which more than $5 trillion in
global trade passes every year, and the United States has said it will
continue conducting patrols to assure unimpeded passage. Vietnam,
Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines and Taiwan have rival claims in the
region.
In the latest mission, which occurred overnight on Nov.
8-9, the bombers flew "in the area" of the Spratly Islands but did not
come within the 12-nautical-mile zones that China claims as territory
around islands it has built in the chain, said Commander Bill Urban, a
Pentagon spokesman.
"The B-52s were on a routine mission in the SCS (South China Sea)," taking off from and returning to Guam, Urban said.
Chinese ground controllers contacted the bombers but the aircraft continued their mission unabated, Urban said.
A mysterious bright light in the sky has sent Californians into panic - only for it to be explained soon afterwards.
The light was spotted travelling quickly over Orange County and neighbouring areas late on Saturday, leading to fevered speculation online over its origin.
The Orange County sheriff said the light was from a naval test fire made off the California coastline.
Aviation officials had warned of possible US military activity.
Videos posted online show a bright flare rising high, before a wide, bright blue flash emerges in a cone shape. Many videos continue to track the light for several minutes.
On Friday, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said night-time flights to and from Los Angeles International (LAX) would avoid flying over the Pacific Ocean to the west of the airport, the second busiest in the US.
The FAA did not disclose the reason for the change, but indicated that military activity in the area would take place between Friday and Thursday.
Media in California confirmed that the light came from an unarmed Trident missile fired from the USS Kentucky navy submarine.
The platinum-selling singer Josh Groban was one of those who tweeted his shock at the light:
A Trident missile the Navy tested off Los Angeles Saturday night is shown from the Fourth Street bridge over 110 Freeway in Los Angeles. Photographer Preston Newman was on a photo shoot at the time. — Preston Newman Photography, on Instagram at @Newman_Photos
A mysterious light that streaked across San Diego’s night sky Saturday, visible as far away as Nevada and Arizona, was a Trident missile test-fired by the Navy.
Navy Strategic Systems Programs conducted the scheduled Trident II (D5) missile test flight at sea from the Kentucky, an Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine, in the Pacific Test Range off the coast of Southern California, a Navy spokesman said.
Mystery light over San Diego
Shot by Jim Boydston.
The test was part of a scheduled, on-going system evaluation test, said Cmdr. Ryan Perry with the Navy’s Third Fleet.
Perry said launches are conducted on a frequent, recurring basis to ensure the continued reliability of the system. “Each test activity provides valuable information about our systems, thus contributing to assurance in our capabilities,” he said in a statement.
The missile was not armed and Strategic Systems Programs does not routinely announce missile testing. Information regarding the test launch of such missiles is classified prior to the launch, Perry said.
The test range is a massive area northwest of Los Angeles. The Navy periodically uses the range to test fire Tomahawk and Standard cruise from surface ships and submarines.
Read More Here
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Thermonuclear missile launch near Los Angeles is final sign of World War III on the precipice... US, China and Russia all escalating covert attacks in run up to global war
Sunday, November 08, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
(NaturalNews) "A mysterious bright light in the sky has sent Californians into panic," reports the BBC. "Videos posted online show a bright flare rising high, before a wide, bright blue flash emerges in a cone shape. Many videos continue to track the light for several minutes."
Last night, Californians immediately leapt to social media to propose their theories of the phenomenon, ranging from a nuclear missile attack to meteors. "Law agencies and news media in San Diego were flooded with calls about 6 p.m. from people reporting everything from a flare to a comet to a nuclear bomb in the western sky," reports the San Diego Union Tribune.
Just a day earlier, the FAA had issued flight restrictions for the Los Angeles International Airport, denying aircraft access to one of the most frequent approach paths for international and domestic travel.
The official explanation is a lie
The "official" explanation of this event -- and remember that "official" explanations are almost always cover stories -- is that the U.S. Navy launched a test missile just because they "routinely" test missiles.
"Media in California confirmed that the light came from an unarmed Trident missile fired from the USS Kentucky navy submarine," reports the BBC. While they call the missile "unarmed," they fail to mention that the Trident missile normally carries a thermonuclear warhead. There's also no way for the media to know whether this missile was really unarmed or not, as the sole source on that question is the U.S. Navy itself.
Apparently the media thinks the public is so incredibly stupid that they'll believe the U.S. Navy has nowhere else to launch a test missile other than right next to Los Angeles. Somehow we're supposed to believe the entire Pacific Ocean won't work for such a test launch, so they have to launch it adjacent to the airport and thereby inconvenience commercial aviation traffic for an entire week.
Obviously, the official cover story is pure bunk. So what's the real story behind this? It all has to do with China and the covert war that's already underway between China, the US and Russia.
China's military submarines are a huge threat to U.S. national security
To get up to speed on what's really happening, read this report from the Congressional Research Service (PDF) found at http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33153.pdf
Authored by Ronald O'Rourke, Specialist in Naval Affairs, and just released on Sep. 21, 2015, the report is entitled, "China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities."
The report states:
China is building a modern and regionally powerful navy with a limited but growing capability for conducting operations beyond China’s near-seas region. Observers of Chinese and U.S. military forces view China’s improving naval capabilities as posing a potential challenge in the Western Pacific to the U.S. Navy’s ability to achieve and maintain control of blue-water ocean areas in wartime -- the first such challenge the U.S. Navy has faced since the end of the Cold War.
China’s naval modernization effort encompasses a broad array of platform and weapon acquisition programs, including anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs), submarines, surface ships, aircraft, and supporting C4ISR (command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) systems.
The most important section of this report, in my assessment, is this description of China's ship-killing ballistic missiles:
China is fielding an ASBM, referred to as the DF-21D, that is a theater-range ballistic missile equipped with a maneuverable reentry vehicle (MaRV) designed to hit moving ships at sea. DOD states that China continues to field an ASBM based on a variant of the CSS-5 (DF-21) MRBM that it began deploying in 2010. This missile provides the PLA the capability to attack aircraft carriers in the western Pacific. The CSS-5 Mod 5 has a range exceeding 1,500 km [about 810 nm] and is armed with a maneuverable warhead.
China, in other words, has weapons capable of destroying U.S. aircraft carriers, destroyers and other ships. The 1,500 km range is key because it allows a very wide operational range.
Just recently in August, the Chinese and Russians held their largest naval joint exercise in history as a way to "counter U.S. influence in Asia." As reported by Collapse.news:
The Russian and Chinese navies are set to hold their largest joint exercises ever, featuring scores of warships, hundreds of troops and an amphibious landing, in what appears to be a deepening of ties meant to counter a rising U.S. military presence in Asia.
In September, Chinese warships were spotted operating near the coast of Alaska. This was reported across the mainstream media, including in the Wall Street Journal in an article entitled, "Five Chinese Navy Ships Are Operating in Bering Sea off Alaska."
Fox News also covered the same story: "5 Chinese warships spotted off Alaska coast during President Obama's visit."
In response to that territorial provocation, the U.S. Navy sent the USS Lassen destroyer to within 12 nautical miles of China's newly-constructed military bases in the Spratly Islands.
China's communist government openly condemned the act as a provocation of war. From the Straits Times:
China claims most of the South China Sea and on Oct 9 its Foreign Ministry warned that Beijing would "never allow any country to violate China's territorial waters and airspace in the Spratly Islands, in the name of protecting freedom of navigation and overflight."
Secret space weapon attacks on China's industrial infrastructure
This is all on top of the Pentagon's secret space weapon attacks on China's industrial infrastructure.
As I wrote on August 17 of this year, Natural News was informed by mainland Chinese dissidents that they believe the string of mysterious industrial explosions such as the massive Tianjin explosion was caused by kinetic strikes from orbital platform weapons operated by the United States.
China then retaliated by covertly destroying a U.S. weapons depot in Tokyo, using old-school sabotage techniques. Two additional industrial explosions in China soon followed.
Taiwan surrenders to China with insane "One China" admission by President Ma
China's war of aggression is also in high gear on the geopolitical side, with China pressuring Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou to publicly state yesterday that Taiwan is now part of China!
A massive cultural backlash in Taiwan is now surging, as most of the country's citizens do not want to be part of communist China. Taiwan's DPP party is rapidly rising to prominence on the platform of Taiwan as a sovereign nation, but China remains in an aggressive military stance, always threatening Taiwan with an armed invasion if Taiwan attempts to "secede" from China. (Taiwan's GMT party, which is a "pro-China" party, has been plagued by an endless stream of scandals and corruption.)
From Channel News Asia: "Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou emphasised the island must continue to uphold the 1992 Consensus with China’s Communist Party in order to promote cross-strait relations and development, as he marked the 22nd anniversary of the historic talks between Taipei and Beijing in Singapore."
Taiwan is a critical strategic island for U.S. influence over the Pacific naval theater of operations. Taiwan's airports and military basis provide key strategic locations for staging U.S. aircraft and even bombers if conflict breaks out with China.
As you ponder all this, keep in mind that Taiwan's media giants have all been infiltrated and taken over by communist China. The Taiwan media is now China's state-run media. Only small, independent websites can be trusted to report the truth.
The Trident missile launch near Los Angeles was a warning shot against China in a last-ditch effort to prevent all-out war
The upshot of all this is that the U.S. and China have been engaged in a covert war for quite some time, and that covert war has escalated month by month, even as the official state-run news organizations of both nations have denied any war is happening at all.
Last night's test launch of the Trident missile over Orange County was staged near a high population area for a tactical reason: To have as many witnesses (and videos) as possible, sending a very visible warning message to China that says, "We can destroy you if you don't back off."
The Trident missile, built by Lockheed Martin, is a thermonuclear missile system (Fleet Ballistic Missile) with a range of at least 4,000 nautical miles. See the Trident missile page on the U.S. Navy website. Just one Trident missile launched from somewhere in the Pacific Ocean could devastate China with a nuclear strike on Beijing.
The U.S. Navy's "showcasing" of the Trident missile near Los Angeles is a $31 million billboard that tells China, "Don't f--k with us."
Nobody in the mainstream media is report this; probably because, with a few exceptions, they are mostly clueless, brain-dead propagandists who know nothing about international geopolitics and the real state of conflict in our world. Also, they are ordered what to write by the U.S. government regime in exactly the same way China's "journalists" are ordered what to write by the Chinese regime.
Right now, the United States and China are in an undeclared state of war. China stands ready to strike the USA with nuclear warheads or high altitude EMP weapons that would destroy the U.S. power grid and cause 90% casualties across the unprepared population. Legendary American journalist Ted Koppel has even written a book about this entitled Lights Out: A Cyberattack, A Nation Unprepared, Surviving the Aftermath.
China and Russia preparing massive first strike against America
Many people believe that China and Russia are working together to prepare for a massive first strike against the United States that would cripple its defenses and economy. Following that first strike, a land invasion would commence using Russian troops.
Supporting this theory, Russian submarines have been spotted near undersea internet cables in an obvious effort to document their whereabouts so that the cables can be instantly severed, unleashing a devastating blow to the U.S. economy, Wall Street and even military communications. "Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of conflict," reports WND.com. " In times of tension or conflict, the ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent."
At the same time a new Russian "drone sub" has been created that can strike U.S. coastal cities and harbors with nuclear weapons. Writing on NationalSecurity.news, Jon Dougherty states, "According to officials, the developmental unmanned underwater vehicle, or UUV, when it is deployed, will be outfitted with megaton-class nuclear warheads that can destroy key ports used by U.S. nuclear-armed and powered submarines like Kings Bay, Georgia, and Puget Sound in Washington state."
The ultimate pre-emptive strike on America: EMP attack, cyber attack, currency wars and bandwidth blackouts
If you put the pieces of the puzzle together, what's really shaping up here is a massive, multi-layered pre-emptive strike against America, an empire seen by the rest of the world as an insane bully that meddles with everything on the international stage. This first strike, combining the forces and expertise of both China and Russia, may consist of:
• High-altitude EMP detonation over North America, destroying regional power grids.
• A devastating currency war initiated by China announcing its own gold-backed currency while dumping U.S. Treasury debt on the open market.
• A Russian-led severing of undersea fiber optic cables.
• Russian-launched nuclear missiles targeting U.S. coastal cities.
• China-led assault on U.S. Navy warships using anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs).
• A cyber warfare attack on key U.S. infrastructure, including water delivery systems, nuclear power plants and the power grid.
As all this is going on, the Obama administration -- a treasonous regime of criminals who have seized control of the U.S. government in an effort to destroy America from within -- has been firing all the top military commanders who know how to survive such an assault. Instead of America's military focusing on how to win wars, troops are now subjected to sensitivity training and the politically correct push for female troops on the front lines.
This is not fiction. Even the U.S. White House is now openly preparing for a massive EMP attack launched by China.
Dave Hodges also reports in this article about World War III:
Congress has now heard testimony that the United States is not ready for World War III while Russia is chomping at the bit to “get it on”. Further Congress has learned that Obama has been once again been badly outmaneuvered by Putin, the master chess player... the Chinese and the Russians are going to kick America’s rear end in the upcoming war.
Very disturbingly, there is a growing awareness, among Congress, that the United States cannot win World War III. There was only discussion, in these congressional meetings, as to whether, or not, the U.S. could prevail in World War III, not win the conflict.
To stay up to speed on all these events and how you might survive them, I strongly urge you to pay attention to the following websites:
TalkNetwork.com - the new talk radio network where I will be discussing this Trident missile launch during tomorrow's show. It airs at 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern.
NationalSecurity.newsBugout.newsAlternativeNews.comSpace.newsCyberwar.newsCollapse.newsTreason.newsFETCH.newsstevequayle.comallnewspipeline.comthecommonsenseshow.com
Listen to my 4-part broadcast series on this entire story:
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Australia vessels to join Chinese navy in exercises
Thu Oct 29, 2015 7:30AM
Australia’s Defense Minister Marise Payne
Two
Australian warships will join the Chinese Navy in the South China Sea
to hold naval exercises in disputed waters there, Australia’s Defense
Minister Marise Payne says.
Anzac-class HMAS Stuart and
HMAS Arunta frigates of the Royal Australian Navy will soon arrive at
China’s main base of Zhanjiang in a port call ahead of the drills
scheduled for early next week, Payne said on Thursday.
“The Royal
Australian Navy has a long history of engagement with regional navies
and regularly conducts port visits and exercises – including in China,”
she said.
The development comes just days after a US Navy
guided-missile destroyer entered waters close to islands where China is
said to be doing construction work in the sea.
Payne dismissed any
changes or delays to the schedule of the drills “since the United
States activity” in the South China Sea. She, however, stopped short of
providing any information about the exact location of the exercises.
This file photo shows the Anzac-class HMAS Stuart frigate of the Royal Australian Navy.
On
October 27, the USS Lassen sailed near what is referred to in the West
as the Spratly Islands archipelago, a disputed group of hundreds of
reefs, islets, atolls and islands in the South China.
In
this April 8, 2008, file photo, guided missile destroyer USS Lassen
arrives at the Shanghai International Passenger Quay in Shanghai, China,
for a scheduled port visit. Just two days after the USS Lassen sailed
past one of China's artificial islands in the South China Sea in a
challenge to Chinese sovereignty claims, Defense Ministry spokesman Col.
Yang Yujun said Thursday that China will take "all necessary" measures
in response to any future U.S. Navy incursions into what it considers
its territorial waters around the islands.
BEIJING (AP) — China's military will take "all necessary" measures in response to any future U.S. Navy incursions into what it considers its territorial waters around islands in the South China Sea, a Defense Ministry spokesman said Thursday.
The statement by Col. Yang Yujun
followed the sailing of a U.S. guided missile destroyer within the
12-nautical mile (22-kilometer) territorial limit of one of the islands
newly created by China in the strategically vital region. The U.S.
refuses to recognize the man-made islets as deserving of sovereign
territory status.
The Chinese side took no forceful action during
the USS Lassen's sail-by on Tuesday, but strenuously protested the
maneuver. China's reaction fits the pattern in similar such incidents in
recent years. Yang offered no details on how Beijing might respond
differently in the future.
"We would urge the U.S. not to continue
down the wrong path. But if the U.S. side does continue, we will take
all necessary measures according to the need," Yang said. China's
resolve to safeguard its national sovereignty and security interests is
"rock-solid," he added.
China claims virtually the entire South
China Sea and its islands, reefs and atolls as its sovereign territory,
an assertion challenged by five other regional governments.
USS
Lassen (DDG 82), (R) transits in formation with ROKS Sokcho (PCC 778)
during exercise Foal Eagle 2015, in waters east of the Korean Peninsula,
in this March 12, 2015, handout photo provided by the U.S. Navy.
REUTERS/U.S. Navy/Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Martin
Wright/Handout via Reuters
TOKYO/WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - The U.S. Navy sent a guided-missile destroyer within 12
nautical miles of artificial islands built by China in the South China
Sea on Tuesday, a U.S. defense official said, in a challenge to China's
territorial claims in the area.
The
official said the USS Lassen was sailing near Subi and Mischief reefs
in the Spratly archipelago, features that were submerged at high tide
before China began a massive dredging project to turn them into islands
in 2014.
"The operation has begun ... It will be complete within a few hours," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The
mission would be the start of a series of challenges to China's
territorial claims in one of the world's busiest sea lanes, another U.S.
defense official said.
China's Man-Made Military Island Outposts, The Dramatic Before And After Photos
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 09/22/2015 20:28 -0400
There’s
been no shortage of coverage both in these pages and elsewhere of
China’s unprecedented land reclamation efforts in the Spratlys.
While
China isn’t the first country to create new territory in the disputed
waters of the South China Sea, the scope of Beijing’s development (some
3,000 acres) sets it apart and the construction of air strips and ports
(not to mention the alleged stationing of artillery) has some of
Washington’s regional allies especially concerned.
China 'Concerned' at Call for U.S. Navy Patrol of Disputed Islands
byReuters
Chinese
dredging vessels are purportedly seen in the waters around Mischief
Reef in the disputed Spratly Islands in this still image from video
taken by a P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft provided by the United
States Navy May 21, 2015. REUTERS/U.S. Navy/Handout via Reuters Reuters
China
said Friday it was "extremely concerned" about a suggestion from a top
U.S. commander that U.S. ships and aircraft should challenge China's
claims in the South China Sea by patrolling close to artificial islands
it has built.
China's increasingly assertive action to back up its
sovereignty claims in the South China Sea have included land
reclamation and the construction of ports and air facilities on several
reefs in the Spratly Islands.
The work has rattled China's neighbors, in particular U.S. ally the Philippines, and raised concern in the United States.
China says it has irrefutable sovereignty over the Spratly Islands and no hostile intent.
Admiral
Harry Harris, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, told a
Senate hearing Thursday that China's building of three airfields on
small islands and their further militarization was of "great concern
militarily" and posed a threat to all countries in the region.
U.S.
Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush pauses during an interview
with Reuters at Nonie's Restaurant in Peterborough, New Hampshire
October 13, 2015.
Reuters/Brian Snyder
Republican
Jeb Bush vowed on Tuesday to take a more aggressive approach to
countering Russia if he is elected president next year, calling Vladimir
Putin an "agile adversary" who is exploiting a vacuum of U.S.
leadership in Syria and elsewhere.
In an interview with Reuters,
Bush said that if elected in 2016 he would seek to build a coalition of
European and Arab partners to work for the ouster of Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad, which he said is key to resolving the festering
conflict and a worsening refugee crisis.
Calling Putin a "bully",
Bush said the United States and Europe should also extend sanctions
against Moscow over its military aggression in Ukraine that are set to
expire at year's end.
"How to deal with him is to confront him on
his terms, not to create a more bellicose environment but to simply say
that there is going to be a consequence," Bush said in the interview, in
which he also called for a tougher stance against China and to counter
growing Iranian and Russian influence in Iraq.
More pictures of the debris can be found here.
The various munition experts on Twitter agree that this is debris of an Aerovironment Switchblade (Datasheet-pdf) loitering munition "for use against beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) targets":
This
miniature intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and
lethal platform can be operated manually or autonomously. Switchblade
provides the operator with real-time video and GPS coordinates for
information gathering, targeting or feature/object recognition.
The
switchblade has the size of a remote piloted hobby plane but features a
visual and infrared camera and an explosive charge. It can be
"suicided" on a target. According to the datasheet the battery powered
killer drone has a "10 km radius of operation".
Izraa, where the debris was found, lies
(map) at the crossing of the M5 highway from Amman in Jordan north to
Damascus and road 109 which runs west to east through south Syria. Izraa
is about 40 km north of the Syrian Jordan border and 40 km east of the
Golan demarcation line. Anyone who used this armed drone must have been
on Syrian ground.
Smoke rises in the Syrian town of Kobani after a US airstrikes targets ISIL terrorists there. (File photo)
The
United States and its so-called coalition partners have conducted at
least three airstrikes in Syria and 11 in Iraq, the Pentagon says.
According
to US military officials, the attacks targeted Daesh (ISIL) terrorists
and were carried out on Monday, a day after Washington air-dropped tons
of weapons to militants fighting inside Syria.
Four airstrikes
near the Iraqi city of Ramadi pulverized six ISIL buildings, two command
and control nodes and five fighting positions, the officials claimed.
Other strikes hit targets near the cities of Mosul, Baiji, Sinjar and
Tal Afar.
In Syria, fighter jets targeted crude oil collection
points near the cities of Abu Kamal and Deir ez-Zor, they said. The
third attack, near the town of Al-Hawl, destroyed two ISIL vehicles.
"Coalition
forces conducted an airdrop Sunday in northern Syria to resupply local
counter-ISIL ground forces as they conduct operations against ISIL," US
Central Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder said in a statement on
Monday, using an acronym for the Daesh terrorist group.
The American Dream Is Becoming A Nightmare And Life As We Know It Is About To Change
The Trans-Pacific Partnership: Permanently Locking In The Obama Agenda For 40 Percent Of The Global Economy
By Michael Snyder, on October 5th, 2015
We
have just witnessed one of the most significant steps toward a one
world economic system that we have ever seen. Negotiations for the
Trans-Pacific Partnership have been completed, and if approved it will
create the largest trading bloc on the planet. But this is not just a
trade agreement. In this treaty, Barack Obama has thrown in all sorts
of things that he never would have been able to get through Congress
otherwise. And once this treaty is approved, it will be exceedingly
difficult to ever make changes to it. So essentially what is happening
is that the Obama agenda is being permanently locked in for 40 percent
of the global economy.
The United States, Canada, Japan, Mexico,
Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and
Vietnam all intend to sign on to this insidious plan. Collectively,
these nations have a total population of about 800 million people and a
combined GDP of approximately 28 trillion dollars.
In
hailing the agreement, Obama said, “Congress and the American people
will have months to read every word” before he signs the deal that he
described as a win for all sides.
“If we can get this agreement to
my desk, then we can help our businesses sell more Made in America
goods and services around the world, and we can help more American
workers compete and win,” Obama said.
Sadly, just
like with every other “free trade” agreement that the U.S. has entered
into since World War II, the exact opposite is what will actually
happen. Our trade deficit will get even larger, and we will see even
more jobs and even more businesses go overseas.
Trans-Pacific Partnership Deal Struck As "Corporate Secrecy" Wins Again
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 10/05/2015 17:46 -0400
Once again the corporatocracy wins as the so-called "Trojan horse" Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade agreement has been finalized. As WSJ reports,
the U.S., Japan and 10 countries around the Pacific reached a historic
accord Monday to lower trade barriers to goods and services and set commercial rules of the road for two-fifths of the global economy, officials said.
For the U.S., the TPP (reportedly)
opens agricultural markets in Japan and Canada, tightens intellectual
property rules to benefit drug and technology companies, and establishes
a tightknit economic bloc to challenge China’s influence in the region (likely forcing their hand into separate trade agreements).
However, Obama is likely to face a tough fight to get the deal through Congress(especially in light of presidential candidates' opposition).
The
US, Japan and 10 other Pacific Rim economies have reached agreement to
strike the largest trade pact seen anywhere in two decades, in what is a huge strategic and political win for US President Barack Obama and Japan’s Shinzo Abe.
It
is amazing how the elite media can be dragged along by their noses into
accepting that the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) can have a big
impact on trade and growth. If I had a dollar for every time the deal
was described as “massive,” or that we were told what share of world trade
will be covered by the TPP, I would be richer than Bill Gates. The
reality is that the vast majority of the trade between the countries in
the TPP is already covered by trade agreements, as can be seen:
We continue to hear superlatives even as the evidence suggests the trade impact will be trivial. For example, the New York Timesreported that US tariffs on Japanese cars will be phased out over 30 years. Wow! The most optimistic growth estimates show a cumulative gain by 2027 of less than 0.4 percent, roughly two months of normal GDP growth.
This doesn’t mean that the TPP can’t have an impact. It will lock in a regulatory structure,
the exact parameters of which are yet to be seen. We do know that the
folks at the table came from places like General Electric and Monsanto,
not the AFL-CIO and the Sierra Club. We also know that it will mean
paying more for drugs and other patent and copyright-protected material
(forms of protection, whose negative impact is never included in growth projections), but we don’t yet know how much.
We also know that the Obama administration gave up an opportunity to include currency rules.
This means that trade deficit is likely to persist long into the
future. This deficit has been a persistent source of gap in demand,
leading to millions of lost jobs. We filled this demand in the 1990s
with the stock bubble and in the last decade in the housing bubble. It
seems the latest plan from the Fed is that we simply won’t fill the gap
in this decade.
Economist Dean Baker is co-director of the
Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC. A version of
this post originally appeared on CEPR’s blog Beat the Press (10/6/15).
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
![Reuters]({"default":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/AA1QA0a.img?h=34&w=34&m=6&q=60&u=t&o=t&l=f&f=png","dpi":1.4}){kind=small}
![Subi reef, located in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, is shown in this handout Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative satellite image taken August 8, 2012, and released to Reuters October 27, 2015.]({"default":{"load":"default","w":"27","h":"20","src":"//img-s-msn-com.akamaized.net/tenant/amp/entityid/BBmVZXt.img?h=281&w=378&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f&x=456&y=100"},"dpi":1.4})
By Michael Snyder, on October 5th, 2015
