Japan to Spend $232.4 Billion on Weapons

Japan to pay a heavy price for hubris

Abe’s “kamikazenomics” sees a massive increase on arms spending

Japan’s cabinet has approved a new national security strategy and increased military [“defense”] spending, directly targeting  China.

“China’s stance toward other countries and military moves, coupled with a lack of transparency regarding its military and national security policies, represent a concern to Japan and the wider international community and require close watch,” said the national security draft.

Abe’s government will budget 23.97 trillion yen [$232.4 billion] over the next five years to buy weapons, up from 23.37 trillion yen during the previous five years.

Many Japanese believe that Mr Abe is using the threat from China as an excuse to pursue his own nationalist aspirations.

The Village Idiot’s Shopping List

• 5 x  Submarines
• 2 x Anti-missile destroyers
• 28 x F-35 fighter planes
• 17 x Boeing  Osprey aircraft (VTO)
• 52 x Amphibious vehicles
• 3 x Surveillance drones
• Sundries

Japan first increased military spending in January 2013, after 10 years of cuts.

Major Beneficiaries

“U.S. contractors would be major beneficiaries of Abe’s increased spending. These include V22 Osprey maker Boeing Co, lead F-35 fighter-jet contractor Lockheed Martin Corp, missile-fabricator Raytheon Corp, and Northrop Grumman Corp, which builds the Global Hawk unarmed drone,” said a report.

Amazing, but True!

How Japan was shafted: Japan’s new defense plan includes cutting the country’s tanks by 400 to 300 over the next 10 years. TANKS? That’s right, tanks! The super-heavy, tracked, armored fighting vehicle that’s designed for front-line combat in conventional warfare.

Japan proudly owns 700 tanks.

Somehow, someone must have convinced the Japanese government that to defend their islands they would need tanks [sic,] and not just any old number, but 700 of them.

Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF)

Currently, JMSDF operates at least 120 large vessels (excluding smaller auxiliary ships) including

• 16 Attack submarines
• Four helicopter-carrier destroyers
• Six large aegis class destroyers
• Two guided missile destroyers (DDG)
• 20 Destroyers (DD)
• 30 Mine countermeasure vessels
• 18 Destroyers (frigates)
• Six destroyer escorts (corvettes)
• Seven patrol vessels
• Three landing ship tanks
• 8 Training vessels
• And a fleet of various auxiliary and support ships

From Disaster Calendar 2011 – December 31

Most Unethical Nations in 2011 [and Probably 2012]

World’s top 20 countries with the highest arms expenditure

Top 20 countries with the highest military expenditure for 2010 shown as a percentage of the world total. Source: SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, War Resisters League and others.

NOTES:
1. The “Tier 1 Coalition Countries,” or the countries that obediently support the United States war efforts to maintain its empire status, which include Japan, Saudi Arabia, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, Australia, Canada, United Arab Emirates, Israel, Spain and the Netherlands account for at least 71% of the world’s total arms procurement.

2. Arms procurement is normally 20-50% of the countries’ military budgets.

3. World’s total arms expenditure for 2010-2011 was estimated at $1,655 billion.

4. The 2012 United States federal budget is a staggering $2,847 billion, of which 48% ($1,372 billion) is allocated to the military. (Source). The figure includes 30% or $869 billion for current military operations, and 18% or $503 billion for past military disasters from Total Outlays of $2,847 billion in 2012 fiscal year. [“The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—not to mention the Pentagon’s voracious appetite for expensive weapons systems—have been a gold mine for the Big Five: Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon, Northrop-Grumman and Boeing.” ~ “From Pentagon, a Buy Rating on Contractors,” Joe Nocera, New York Times, Feb. 11, 2011]

Wildfire Destroys Dozens of Homes in California

Wildfire raging out of control in Big Sur, California

Hundreds of fire crews are trying to control a fast moving wildfire in Big Sur, California that had consumed more than 600 acres by late Monday, local time.

The raging blaze forced scores of other residents to flee the Los Padres National Forest near state Highway 1. One of the homes destroyed by the blaze belonged to Big Sur Fire Chief, reports said.

In 2008, the Basin Complex Fire forced an eight-day evacuation of Big Sur and closure of Highway 1. The fire consumed more than 130,000 acres (530 km²), destroying about 30 homes.

Daily High Temperatures Tied, or Broken in SoCal

Meantime, unseasonably warm weather in southern California, created by high pressure, broke or tied temperature records from Santa Barbara to Riverside counties on Monday, said the National Weather Service (NWS).

• Santa Barbara Airport: 82 degrees, tying the record set in 1980
• Los Angeles International Airport: 85 degrees, tying daily record set in 1980
• San Gabriel: 89 degrees (32ºC), the warmest temperature in the U.S.
• Lake Elsinore:  88 degrees, breaking the record set in 1980 by one degree

[Low Temperature for Monday December 16, 2013: -29 degrees (-34ºC) at Crane Lake, MN — as received by 1 am EST December 17-

Palm Coast Declares State of Emergency after EF1 Tornado

Tornado destroys or damages up to 200 homes

An EF1 tornado destroyed or damaged up to 200 houses in Palm Coast, Flagler County, on the east coast of Florida, Saturday evening, prompting the Mayor to declare a state of local emergency on Monday.

The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office said it “will continue its heavy law enforcement presence in the affected neighborhoods to protect citizens, homes and property, and to keep traffic flow moving in areas where there is still significant debris as residents and contractors are cleaning up and beginning repairs.”

“The National Weather Service on Sunday afternoon confirmed that a tornado touched down in the Indian Trails neighborhood Saturday night.  The 25-75 yard wide tornado was given a preliminary rating of strong EF1, with evidence of winds as high as 110 mph,” officials said.

Google: Tired of Being “Closet Evil”

Your worst nightmares about Google…

Google buys major military robot maker

The US military contractor Boston Dynamics was acquired by Google for an undisclosed sum last week. It’s the 8th robotics company bought by Google this year.

Google has confirmed it would continue the existing military contracts with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA),  an agency of the United States Department of Defense responsible for the development of new technologies for use by the military.

Excerpts from NBC News

Google is on a robot shopping spree, and its recent purchase of a military robot maker has some wondering what exactly the company intends to do with its own zoo of electronic creatures that creep, crawl, and climb.

It may seem odd for the Internet search giant to purchase a Boston Dynamics, a company that makes rugged machines that can run up to 29 mph, traverse rocky terrain and hurl cinder blocks up to 17 feet. The company is the eighth robot maker Google has snatched up. But the deals also indicate that the Internet giant and pioneer of self-driving cars is serious about a robot-filled future.

Note: The above image incorporates the Google logo, which is a trade mark of that evil corporation.

UNSURPRISINGLY, Google’s master plan remains a secret

So far, Google isn’t sharing much about the purchases augmenting it’s newly-launched robotics division. “It is still very early days for this, but I can’t wait to see the progress,” Larry Page wrote in a Google+ post, when the New York Times revealed news of the robotics operation.

Google seems to be piecing the ultimate walking, dexterous robot that can sense its surroundings — Boston Dynamics joins an assortment of newly acquired robot makers with a variety of strengths.

Worcester Polytechnic Institute students received ATLAS, a 330-lb. humanoid robot, that they will use to compete in a DARPA robot competition.  Boston Globe / Boston Globe via Getty Images

“Transformation of our society” [from what to what?]

“I think it will be the transformation of our society — how we work, how we learn, take care of our sick, conduct our commerce, explore, handle disasters, fight wars… everything,” Peter Diamandis, big-thinker and founder of the X-Prize Foundation, wrote in a Google+ post on Friday.

Started by Marc Raibert, a roboticist who taught at MIT and Carnegie Mellon University, and author of “Legged Robots That Balance,” the company channels funding from DARPA and various arms of the military into a steadily expanding family of robots that can tackle almost any terrain.

Boston Dynamics about to switch into stealth mode

With Google at the helm, will Raibert and BigDog be muzzled? So far, Boston Dynamics has been open, even brazen, about showing off the latest in its lineup of awe-inspiring yet fearsome machines via regularly posted YouTube videos. Founder Raibert told a gathering of roboticists at the International Robotics and Intelligent Systems conference in Tokyo in November that he tracked Boston Dynamics’ YouTube view counts, and was proud of how BigDog had become an Internet sensation. Meanwhile, earlier acquisitions Meka and Redwood Robotics, have closed down their websites and retreated into stealth mode.

Full article is posted at NBC News

Google’s Partner in Crime Mass Electronic Surveillance “unconstitutional”

Federal District Judge Richard Leon has ruled that the electronic spy agency’s practice was an “arbitrary invasion,” in his ruling in a Washington DC federal court on Monday.

Judge Leon called the NSA’s surveillance program “indiscriminate” and an “almost Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States. He suggested that James Madison would be “aghast” to learn that the government was encroaching on liberty of  Citizens to such extent.

However, the Judge, appointed to the bench by George W. Bush in 2002, stayed his injunction “in light of the significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues,” allowing the government time to appeal the ruling.

“I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval,” Judge Leon wrote in his 68-page ruling. “Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment,” which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

In Google Caught Spying, Lying, Again!  FIRE-EARTH said:

Google has denied any link to the U.S. electronic mass surveillance [sic,] mainly conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA). But, the NSA data collection has a commercial format; the U.S. government and its officials have no direct use whatever for the data other than to hand it over to the U.S. corporations in return for financial favors including lucrative post-retirement positions in the “private” sector.

Quotes on Google

Google poses an existential threat to humanity! —Fire-Earth

Google has committed “the biggest known data protection violations in history.” —Johannes Caspar, chief of data protection office in Hamburg, Germany.

Google’s Corporate Practices are a Major Threat to Freedom and Democracy!  —MSRB

No single corporation in the U.S. poses as much threat to democracy, individual freedoms and therefore the security of the country as does Google! —EDRO

Related Links

• Google Gagged
• Eric Schmidt you’re a LIAR!
• Google Caught Spying, Lying, Again!
• 10 Worst Corporations

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