Xstrata Copper is the fourth largest global copper producer.  Xstrata plc is an international mining company, listed on both the London Stock Exchange (LSE: XTA) and the SWX Swiss Exchange. Its headquarters are in Zug in Switzerland and it is a member of the FTSE 100 Index. Since the turn of the millennium it has developed from a small player into one of the world’s largest diversified mining groups with the help of a series of large acquisitions. It has major operations/projects in eighteen countries (Australia, Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Germany, Jamaica, New Caledonia, Norway, Papua New Guinea, Peru, South Africa, Spain, Tanzania, the United States and the United Kingdom) and it is a major producer of copper, coking coal, thermal coal, nickel, ferrochrome, vanadium and zinc. It has smaller scale involvement in aluminum, gold, lead and silver.

Nov. 3, 2012 Updates: Excerpts: Mark Williams, general manager for external affairs of Sagittarius Mines Inc, Xstrata’s local unit, told reporters Thursday that it expected Aquino to meet a government-imposed deadline for giving the project’s go-ahead.

But presidential spokesman Ricky Carandang said the timetable would likely not be met because the person overseeing the government’s review, Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo, died in a plane crash last month. Sagittarius (local unit) has plowed $350 million on the $5.9 billion Tampakan project, which it describes as one of the world’s largest undeveloped copper-gold deposits. If allowed to proceed, Williams said it would generate $7.2 billion in tax revenues for the Philippine government over 20 years.

Total RFID Surveillance

Imagine a future in which your every belonging is marked with a unique number identifiable with the swipe of a scanner; where your refrigerator keeps track of its contents; where the location of your car is always pinpoint-able; and where signal-emitting microchips storing personal information are implanted beneath your skin or embedded in your inner organs. This is the future of radio frequency identification (RFID), a technology whose application has so far been limited largely to supply-chain management. RFID’s are set to be applied in a whole range of consumer settings.

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In and around Sept 12, 2012 District Judge Katherine Forest ruled to ban the  enforcement of part of a new law that permits indefinite military detention, a measure critics including a prize-winning journalist say is too vague and threatens free speech.

HOWEVER, the Federal government’s wheels turned quickly and in no time judges appointed by Obama overturned her decision.   READ more…

CONGRESSMAN CARL LEVIN, co sponsor of the bill was asked by the Obama administration to remove the language that protected Americans from indefinite detention.

Video of Carl Levin on the Floor of Congress