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NASA’s black hole-hunting NuSTAR mission launched today
The black hole-hunting telescope NASA announced last month launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the central Pacific Ocean today. The $165 million NuSTAR mission will spend two years scouring the universe for black holes by scanning X-ray light at higher energies than its predecessors. According to Space.com, NuSTAR will especially target high-energy regions of the universe where “matter is falling onto black holes, as well as the leftovers from dead stars after they’ve exploded in supernovas.” Head on past the break for a video of the launch and click through to the source link for more details and images.
Russia Warns to Counter NATO Missile System in Europe
Wednesday, 23 May 2012 
‘Speaking at a press conference in the Russian capital on Monday, Bordyuzha said NATO’s plan to set up the missile defense system in eastern Europe would escalate tensions and damage the international security and strategic stability in Europe and across the world, IRNA reported on Wednesday.
The Russian official reiterated Moscow’s objection to the deployment of the missile defense facilities near its borders, saying the move would threaten the country’s national security. He also questioned the need for NATO and US-led military build-up in Bulgaria, Romania and the countries surrounding the Baltic Sea.’
Read more: Russia Warns to Counter NATO Missile System in Europe
Wall Street Banks Secretly Build The World’s Largest Private Army
Thursday, 17 May 2012 
‘Wall Street banks have secretly taken over US firearms and ammunition manufacturers and mercenary firms in a stealth build up world’s largest private military force.
A Daily KOs article reveals that Wall Street banks have used private equity firms to acquire and launch a massive stealth takeover of private security firms, US ammo and gun manufacturers, uniforms, silencers and an army of mercenaries to build what amounts to the world’s largest private army.’
Read more: Wall Street Banks Secretly Build The World’s Largest Private Army
The Children of Iraq: Was the Price Worth It?
Friday, 11 May 2012
‘The following is a presentation given in the Dialogue sessions of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal, May 2012.
“…Line up the bodies of the children, the thousands of children — the infants, the toddlers, the schoolkids — whose bodies were torn to pieces, burned alive or riddled with bullets during the American invasion and occupation of Iraq. Line them up in the desert sand, walk past them, mile after mile, all those twisted corpses, those scraps of torn flesh and seeping viscera, those blank faces, those staring eyes fixed forever on nothingness. This is the reality of what happened in Iraq; there is no other reality….”
Chris Floyd, December 17, 2011.’
The US Military Wants To ‘Microchip’ Troops
Monday, 07 May 2012 
‘DARPA is at it again. This time, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has announced plans to create nanochips for monitoring troops health on the battlefield.
Kate Knibbs at Mobiledia reports the sensors are targeted at preventing illness and disease, the two causes of most troops medical evacuations. What seems like a simple way of cutting costs and increasing efficiency has some people concerned that this is the first step in a “computer chips for all” scenario.
Bob Unruh at WND reports one of those opponents, Katherine Albrecht, co-author of Spychips says “It’s never going to happen that the government at gunpoint says, ‘You’re going to have a tracking chip. It’s always in incremental steps. If you can put a microchip in someone that doesn’t track them … everybody looks and says, ‘Come on, it’ll be interesting seeing where we go.’”’
US Military-Industrial Giant KBR in Bidding to Privatize British Police Forces
Friday, 04 May 2012
‘Giant US military-industrial company Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR) is in the running to win a slice of a controversial £1.5 billion (US$2.43 billion) contract to transform the West Midlands and Surrey police forces in Britain, The (London) Times reported.
Hailed as the largest police privatization scheme in the UK, it has been suggested the private companies who win the contract will be tasked to perform several police functions — including patrols, detention and criminal investigation.
KBR, a former subsidiary of the Halliburton group, has attracted its share of criticism over the large contracts it won with the US government during the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The corporation also helped to build the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.’
Read more: US Military-Industrial Giant KBR in Bidding to Privatize British Police Forces
‘Nanofishnet’ Could Be the First Metamaterial to Impossibly Bend Light in the Visible Spectrum
By Clay DillowPosted 04.30.2012 at 2:09 pm
Metamaterials hold the elusive promise of the true invisibility cloak, one that bends light right around objects to make them invisible to viewers. But most metamaterials with any kind of potential can only be fabricated in very small sizes, and even the ones that work well–and there are a few–generally don’t work in the visible spectrum. But researchers from Spain and the UK have reported that they have constructed what may be the first practical metamaterial that works in the visible range.
The material was designed with optical switching in mind–sub-picosecond pulsing of light in fiber optics networks or in highly tuned pulsing lasers–but the researchers themselves are convinced that its layered structure could be scaled up into usable, practically-sized objects. Everyone in the materials science community isn’t so optimistic, but the fact that it works at all in the visible range marks something of a breakthrough in the field.
Visible light has been a particularly tough nut to crack when it comes to metamaterials, which essentially bend light unnaturally to achieve a desired effect. Light waves in the visible spectrum tend to degrade to nothing after passing through materials just a fraction of a wavelength thick, so it’s tough to make a metamaterial that can bend light in a predetermined way without also losing the visible light wave altogether.
The UK/Spanish team (from King’s College London and the Valencia Nanophotonics Technology Center, respectively) overcame this through a novel layered construction of silver and hydrogen silsesquioxane (a type of glass). Using a focused ion beam, they punched tiny holes through the layers to create a structure they refer to as a “nanofishnet.” This combination of materials, layering, and nanofishnet structure allows the material to create the necessary negative magnetic permeability (a necessary ingredient for metamaterials that you can learn more abouthere) in the red and near-infrared parts of the spectrum.
By varying the size of the holes in the nanofishnet the team was able to adjust the materials index of refraction, giving them some degree of freedom when it comes to “programming” the material for different kinds of light. So while the team hasn’t created the wundermaterial that will enable our invisibility-cloaked future, they have created a metamaterial that works in one sliver of the spectrum and that could perhaps be cajoled into working in other slivers as well. Click through toIEEE Spectrum for a much more detailed explanation of this.
The Shame of Nations: A New Record is Set for Spending on War
Wednesday, 25 April 2012 07:06
‘On April 17, 2012, as millions of Americans were filing their income tax returns, the highly-respected Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released its latest study of world military spending. In case Americans were wondering where most of their tax money — and the tax money of other nations — went in the previous year, the answer from SIPRI was clear: to war and preparations for war.
World military spending reached a recworldord $1,738 billion in 2011 — an increase of $138 billion over the previous year. The United States accounted for 41 percent of that, or $711 billion.’
Read more: The Shame of Nations: A New Record is Set for Spending on War
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