The Pentagon is boosting ground forces to better prepare for “hybrid” enemies combining small-unit, insurgent tactics with high-tech arms, such as Hezbollah fire teams ambushing Israeli tanks with sophisticated, armor-piercing rockets, Danger Room reports. “The Pentagon’s enthusiasm for non-lethal crowd-control weapons appears to have stepped up a gear with its decision to develop a microwave pain-infliction system that can be fired from an aircraft,” New Scientist notes. A Knoxville security company last week tested over the Old City Live Concert its FlySWAT, a 10-foot balloon loaded with $150 worth of helium and even more costly surveillance cameras, WBIR TV-10 tells. A “biometric tunnel” and related software devised by a Brit cyber research center translates a person’s unique walk into a digital record that can be stored on a database and matched to CCTV footage, Homeland Security Newswire spotlights.
“Swine flu is not the only thing we are neurotic wrecks about. Over at the Home Office, ministers warn about the likelihood of an al Qaeda terrorist attack,” says a Daily Mail op-ed on “today’s culture of fear.” As to which, Prison Planet maintains its drum beat of reporting on pandemic-flu-related mass graves being dug and martial law plans being laid here and abroad — while The Pakistan Daily assures readers it’s not the H1N1 virus we should fear but the pending vaccine. Two thirds of New Zealand travelers now view the world as more dangerous than when they first went abroad — with terrorism, crime and disease topping their worries, NZCity has an insurance company survey showing.
Bertrand Delgado and Italo Lombardi analyze economic events in Latin America for the weeks between July 20th and the 31st and their impact on macroeconomic conditions moving forward. They focus on monetary policy, inflation, economic activity, labor dynamics, trade accounts, industrial production, and fiscal data. Please read: Latin America – The Week Ahead July 27– 31.
In Iceland Proves That in a Financial Crisis, Breaking Glass and Trashing Currency is a Good Remedy, Yves Smith looks at Iceland, which has been weathering a dramatic devaluation and is recovering remarkably well.
In Why had Nobody Noticed that the Credit Crunch Was on its Way?, Mark Thoma presents a piece with a simple but interesting understanding of what was behind the financial crisis – “the failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole”.
House Passes Executive Compensation Bill
The House Friday passed legislation to expand regulatory oversight of executive compensation and give shareholders a bigger say over what corporate executives are paid. [Read More]
According to the Catholic Medical Association, all current House and Senate health reform bills will make things worse with respect to ethics, costs, personal control and even the quality of medical care.
