William Mount claims that the US just tried to take out Russian Generals including Putin. If anyone has anymore information on this, please contact us in the comment section below.
“We have just learned that these Russian Generals were killed and injured by a US Missile…….The Russian’s Are Very, Very Angry - yet we warned them and they did nothing.” Continue reading
My first experience with the Wounded Warriors Project came in 2006, when I made several donations from between $200 and $500 to the organization. I was a stock broker at the time and my income allowed for such idiocy. I guess you could say that I had more money than I had sense, but more importantly, I gave the money because I felt that I needed to do something to take part in the war effort, and what better way than to provide financial assistance to those who were coming back from the wars in the Middle East maimed and wounded. At least that is where I thought the money that I was donating was going. Continue reading
From station to station. Travels with Bowie 1973-1976, Geoff MacCormack. Source:Genesis publications
1) According to producer Tony Visconti, Bowie’s album The Next Day was partly inspired by Russia. In an interview with The Guardian Visconti said that Bowie “has been obsessed with medieval English history, which, believe it or not, makes great material for a rock song. And contemporary Russian history, which makes a great rock song”. Continue reading
“About 200 US nuclear bombs are currently deployed in Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany and Turkey. This nuclear ordnance is also subject to a renewal program,” Shoigu said.
(RT) The US is obstructing international efforts to eradicate biological weapons, seeking to involve other nations covertly in research on weaponized diseases, Moscow charged. America’s record of handling bioweapons is poor.
The accusations of mishandling biological weapons voiced by the Russian Foreign Ministry refer to a recent report that the US military shipped live anthrax by mistake. Last week, the Pentagon admitted sending samples of the highly dangerous disease to at least 51 labs in 17 US states and three foreign countries.
“It would be boring without gossip.” That, it seems, may be the only explanation the world will ever get from the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, about his whereabouts for the past 11 days – an absence that launched a thousand rumoursof ill-health, childbirth or even a palace coup. Continue reading
There’s something going on behind the scenes in the Kremlin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn’t been seen in public since March 5. (Video featuring Putin on March 13 was not live.) Continue reading
Edward Snowden may finally be coming home.
A Russian lawyer for Snowden said on Tuesday the fugitive former U.S. spy agency contractor who leaked details of the government’s mass surveillance programs was working with American and German lawyers to return home.
His biggest demand it seems is that he be given a fair trial when charged for his offenses.
“There will be a war in this country, a civil war to restore, not a revolution, but a civil war to restore our constitutional republican government. Now at the same time that’s going on, communist and marxist underground forces will try to begin a revolution, in order to institute a marxist/socialist/communist government as a result of the civil war.”
Russia and the United States reached a deal on a framework that will see the destruction or removal of Syria’s chemical weapons by mid- 2014. Under the plan, the Assad government has one week to hand over an inventory of its chemical weapons arsenal. Continue reading
Russia, alongside the EU, China and Iran, are on top of the NSA’s spying priority list, according to a document leaked by fugitive Edward Snowden and published by Der Spiegel weekly. Continue reading
An “exhausted” Edward Snowden will have his own choice of accommodation, has no current plans to leave Russia, and still misses his girlfriend, according to his Russian lawyer Anatoly Kucherena. Continue reading
(Intellihub) -Is the nation too distracted by the George Zimmerman trial’s 24/7 news cycle to even know about this developing situation that coincides with escalating tensions between Russia and US-affiliated nations around the world? Continue reading
MOSCOW—The Kremlin criticized the U.S. decision to arm Syrian opposition fighters and said Washington’s evidence that the Syrian regime is using chemical weapons was unconvincing, but said Friday that Moscow is “not yet” discussing its plans to deliver of air-defense missiles to the regime. Continue reading
A Russian death squad killed two members of a CIA-backed Russian Jihad group operating in Dagestan in a raid earlier this morning that Russian intelligence has linked to Boston Bombings suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
The assassinations are just the latest in a trail of blood being used to cover up the tracks implicating CIA involvement in the Boston Bombings.
Russian intelligence reports Shakrudin Askhabov, one of the two men assassinated by the hit squad, was an associate of the CIA-linked Abu Dujan terror cell.
The western corporate media is not reporting anything more than the talking points outlined in well-crafted government issued talking point memos.
But Russian intelligence and news agencies are telling an entirely different story reporting Askhabov was a key facilitator in recruiting and enlisting foreigners to take up against Russia.
The emerging narrative is Tamerlan was recruited into the organization by a William Plotnikov, a Jihadist known as the Canadian, which Tamerlan may have met through boxing circles.
Plotnikov in turn introduced Tamerlan to Shakrudin Askhabov, who is said to recruit Muslims into Jihad using Saudi Arabia’s relgious teaching and the through the CIA’s politcal propoaganda.
Abu Dujan, like Al Qaeda and numerous other Jihad groups, preach an extremist fundamentalist interpretation of Saudi Arabia’s Salafism which is propagated throughout the world through the nation’s vast oil wealth.
The Checnyan terrorist cell is uses by the CIA generated anti-Russian political propaganda and a direct result of overseas information operations funded by US foreign aid money to “promote democracy” in the region.
The CIA campaign by radicalize citizens in the region to take up the revolution through various means ranging from workshops encouraging citizens to develop, promote and assert their own independent national identity all the way to repeatedly leveraging Russian crimes committed against the locals decades ago while under communist rule such as the “mass deportation” and “genocide” committed during the World War II.
A quote from Russian President Vladmir Putin is very telling about the United States position on the terror cell:
MOSCOW - Russian President Vladimir Putin said the bombings prove that Boston is a Chechen separatist terrorist group. Two bombers Boston, Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsaranev, indeed citizens of Chechen descent.
So far, Russia asked the United States (U.S.) to enter into the Chechen separatist terrorist group list. But the U.S. rejected it because he considered militant Chechen rebel group as usual.
“I feel insulted when a terrorist group called the West Country as a rebel group in Chechnya,” Putin said
[…]
Tamerlan was obsevered by Russian intelligence in 2012 meeting up with several members of the CIA-backed terror cell to wage Jihad against the Russia.
This clearly explains why Tamerlan was allowed to fly overseas despite warnings from Russian intelligence and being listed in US terror database and to American’s no-fly list.
According to the Russian media, Boston Bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev met with Askhabov during his visit to Russia from January to July of 2012.
The National Post quotes the well-respected Russian media news outlet Novaya Gazeta, which reported Tamerlan was also observed meeting with William Plotnikov, known as “The Canadian” and other Jihadists associated with the CIA-backed terror cell while in Russia.
It is unclear whether Tamerlan Tsarnaev, left, and William Plotnikov, right, met through boxing circles or only communicated online, but their life paths suggest such a meeting was possible.
The Post conjectures that Tamerlan was connected to Plotnikov placed in quarantine by the Jihadists waiting to be cleared to join the insurgency and after the Canadian and Tamerlan’s other contacts were killed he returned to America.
According to the Post, Tamerlan returned to America just two days after The Canadian was killed along with 6 other militants by Russian Security forces last July.
It is much more plausible that Tamerlan had already joined the CIA’s insurgency against the Russian’s and returned to America because his handlers had a much more sinister gunpowder treason plot they needed carried out.
It has also been revealed that Tamerlan’s Uncle was on the Feds payroll and linked to the CIA in his roles an oil company executive involved in a multibillion dollar money laundering scheme involving offshore shell companies and Russian crime bosses.
Apparently America has too many jobs so Obama will be spending taxpayer money to support Russia’s defense industry on behalf of Afghanistan. And he’s doing so over the bipartisan objections of Congress from both the right and left and a ban on buying them written into the NDAA.
The US Department of Defense said Thursday it plans to sidestep a Congressional ban to purchase 30 helicopters from Russian state-owned defense firm Rosoboronexport, despite objections from US lawmakerswho allege that the firm has equipped the Syrian government to commit brutal crimes against civilians.
The 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, approved by Congress last year, includes an amendment that prohibits financial contracts between the United States and Rosoboronexport, except when the Secretary of Defense determines that such arrangements are in the interest of national security.
The contract totals $690 million, most of which would go to the Russian arms maker, he added.
Aside from throwing almost $700 million to a company owned by the Russian government at a time when Obama has taken a chainsaw to the United States military, subsidizing the Russian defense industry helps it develop more weapons that will be sold to America’s enemies.
That money will help fund R&D for the next generation of weapons that an American military dismantled by Obama will be facing on the battlefield.
Rosoboronexport was originally under US sanctions for doing business with Iran until the ban was lifted. Rosoboronexport is still selling advanced weapons to Iran.
And, oh yeah, this was a no bid contract.
The Pentagon didn’t solicit bids from any other company for the helicopters. That “seems just plain stupid,” says Texas Senator John Cornyn, one of nine Republican and eight Democratic senators pressing the U.S. Department of Defense to cancel the deal.
Well why bother when Barack is willing to be so flexible for Vladimir.
A bipartisan Congressional group wrote a letter to Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last week in which they objected to the ongoing business relationship between the Russian arms company and the Pentagon. “What is the national security justification of continuing business with Rosoboronexport?” they asked in the letter. “Russia continues to transfer weapons through Rosoboronexport to the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria,” they continued. “Since the Syrian uprising began, Russia has continued to serve as the Assad regime’s chief supplier of weapons, enabling the mass murder of Syrian citizens at the hands of their own government.”
When you’ve got John Cormyn and Rosa DeLauro on the same side, that’s as close to a consensus that you can imagine.
(PolicyMIC) -While aggressive war, drone strikes, and a global network of military bases are the most visible aspects of American hegemonic power, what is often overlooked is the U.S. policy of training, assisting, and subsidizing foreign militaries. Although these actions are largely covert and discreet, they serve the same purpose of hegemonic control, diminish peace and national security, and help contribute to the subjugation of foreign citizens.
The training of foreign militaries to serve the interests of the American state goes all the way back to at least the Cold War. The U.S. used taxpayer money and weapons to subsidize foreign governments and militaries that were “anti-communist” even if the regimes were incredibly brutal and ruthless. All an authoritarian had to do was refer to his political opponents as “communists” and the Americans came rushing in.
In nearly every continent, the U.S. taught extremely fascistic, right-wing governments the art of cracking down on domestic dissent, jailing and torturing political opponents, centralizing power, making deals beneficial to American corporations, and employing death squads. Cheaper and less visible than directly invading and overthrowing governments the U.S. didn’t like, sock puppet dictators were the preferred means of implementing policy.
The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 left very little justification for an American imperial position throughout the globe, yet those same Cold War policies were not only not discarded, but expanded upon. Back in 2010, President Obama and the Pentagon began implementing a strategy with a larger emphasis on “combat operations” and military-to-military coordination. U.S. Special Forces are now operating in (at least) 75 countries, teaching their governments more efficient means of subjugating their populations, creating chaos, and serving the interests of the American empire.
Syria is the most recent example of this policy. While publicly claiming that the U.S. is helping build schools and hospitals in Syria, the Associated Press and New York Times reports document that the U.S. is training and arming Syrian “rebels” opposing the Syrian dictator Bashar Al-Assad. With the help of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, most of the weapons are going to hard-line Islamic jihadists, many of whom belonging to groups that just a few years ago were killing U.S. Marines in Iraq.
President Obama, secretly and without the consent of Congress, sent more than 150 Special Forces to Jordan to train the anti-Assad fighters on the use of sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons.
What is even more disturbing is that the Syrian “rebels” have most likely already used chemical weapons, have a reputation for beheading prisoners, and that U.S. support is prolonging the conflict in the region. The reasons for U.S. intervention are of course complicated and multifaceted, but it most likely has to do with attempts to destabilize Iran’s strongest ally and what the Romans called divide et impera.
Syria may be the most dangerous example of the Obama administration’s enhanced policy of covert military training and assistance, but unfortunately it is nowhere near the only one. In Mali, along with building a brand new drone base, U.S. AFRICOM chief General Carter Ham admitted that while training Mali’s military, they “skipped ethics.” Targeting dissidents based on ethnicity and executing them is a staple of the U.S.-trained Mali government.
In Indonesia, the Obama administration resumed training and assisting an elite Indonesian military unit whose members have been convicted of massive human rights abuses in East Timor. U.S.-trained forces in Guatemala have incredibly close ties to some of the region’s most violent drug cartels and are notorious for their brutal treatment of civilians during the Guatemalan civil war.
A report from the Washington Office on Latin America details a U.S. policy called “the Merida Initiative” designed to “help the region’s militaries take on internal security roles” and use American police to train local police. Although President Obama publicly denounced the 2009 military coup in Honduras, Wikileaks cables later revealed that the Obama administration had members of the State Department meet with the illegitimate new Honduran “president” to help coordinate the implementation of the Merida Initiative.
The policy of militarizing, arming, and subsidizing foreign governments, especially those with well-known and documented human rights abuses and commissions of war crimes, appears to be a staple of the Obama administration’s foreign policy. But these policies help contribute to the spread of dictatorships, humanitarian crises, and instability while making the possibility of resentment and blowback much more likely.
It is becoming more and more clear that the bipartisan consensus policy of military interventionism is a threat to peace and security. Neutrality and non-intervention, as the Founders recommended, is a far more practical alternative and is still the best way to spread the American values our politicians are so fond of endorsing.
(Washington Post) PRESIDENT OBAMA is preparing to reach out once again to Russian ruler Vladimir Putinin the hope of striking a new agreement to reduce nuclear arms. The president mentioned the initiative in his State of the Union address; according to a senior Russian legislator, national security adviser Thomas Donilon will soon travel to Moscow with a letter outlining Mr. Obama’s ideas. The reduction of nuclear stockpiles is a top priority of this president and a worthy one. But what’s striking about Mr. Obama’s strategy is its seeming detachment from the reality of how Mr. Putin has governed Russia since his return to the presidency last year.
Mr. Obama’s first nuclear-arms agreement with Mr. Putin, in 2010, came about in the context of a warming of U.S.-Russian relations. The new proposal will hit Moscow in the middle of a Putin-directed campaign against both his domestic political opposition and the United States, which in his mind are linked. In recent months Mr. Putin has expelled the U.S. Agency for International Development, placed new restrictions on local nonprofit organizations receiving foreign funds, bumped U.S.-funded Radio Liberty from domestic airwaves and overseen a propaganda campaign that accuses the United States of orchestrating anti-government demonstrations.
Editorials represent the views of The Washington Post as an institution, as determined through debate among members of the editorial board. News reporters and editors never contribute to editorial board discussions, and editorial board members don’t have any role in news coverage.
What’s strange is that the Obama administration would seek to undertake a major new piece of business with Mr. Putin without regard for this ugly climate. New U.S.-Russian nuclear warhead reductions, while welcome, are hardly urgent: The big challenges of nuclear weapons lie elsewhere in the world. At the same time, the survival of a pro-democracy movement in Russia is an important and pressing U.S. interest, just as Mr. Putin’s growing hostility to the United States threatens U.S. initiatives in the Middle East and elsewhere. Maybe offering Mr. Putin a new nuclear weapons deal is the best way to counter his noxious policies — but it is hard to see how.
(RIA Novosti) – Russia’s armed forces are ready for a major war, Chief of the military’s General Staff Col. Gen. Valery Gerasimov said on Saturday.
“No one rules out the possibility of a major war, and it cannot be said that we are unprepared,” Gerasimov said, speaking at an Academy of Military Sciences meeting.
His address covered key issues the armed forces face today – including outsourcing. Col.Gen Gerasimov conceded that outsourcing was necessary, in order to relieve soldiers of certain functions, but added that “outsourcing is only needed in peacetime and only at permanent bases.” He also stressed that these activities would be carried out by troops during combat or training.
President of the Academy of Military Sciences, Army General Makhmut Gareev said that the Russian Army’s approach to outsourcing needed to be completely reviewed.
“We think that the outsourcing system needs to be given a root-and-branch review: laws should be passed covering combat scenarios, their transfer to a war footing, and their full subordination to unit commanders,” Gareev explained. He also warned that unless this was done, then logistics and technical support systems would collapse.
Turning his attention to the issue of military education, Gareev slammed the current baccalaureate system involving a basic training component delivered in colleges which is supplemented by additional training in the armed forces’ academies, as entirely unsuited to military service.
He said that officers’ training is the most important challenge the high command currently faces. “Only the high command, with its highly qualified specialists, is in a position to ensure that higher educational institutions have the most sophisticated teaching and material resources, curricula and academic literature,” Gareev said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Thursday, “Yesterday I saw a semi-neutral report on CNN that it was not ruled out that this terrorist act had been staged by the government forces themselves.”
“I cannot imagine anything more blasphemous,” he stated during his visit to the Tajik capital city of Dushanbe.
On January 15, over 80 people were killed and scores of others injured in two explosions at Aleppo University in the second largest city of Syria.
The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Wednesday and blamed ‘terrorists’ for the “merciless bloody provocation.”
According to the statement, the explosions were the “terrorists’ revenge for the significant losses sustained in their confrontation with [Syrian] government forces.”
However, Washington accused Damascus of organizing the deadly attack in Aleppo.
Many people, including large numbers of security forces, have been killed in the turmoil that began in Syria nearly two years ago.
The Russian foreign minister also stated on Thursday that Moscow would “focus on the actions aimed at” stopping the violence in Syria.
On January 6, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said that Damascus was always ready to hold talks with the opposition and political parties and that he would call for a “comprehensive national dialog” after the terrorist activities stopped in the country.
The Syrian president also urged “concerned states and parties” to stop funding, arming and harboring militants.
An Al-Watan report Monday says the family and Assad aides are residing on the ship in the Mediterranean Sea and that he travels to Syria by helicopter to attend official meetings and receptions.
Otherwise, he stays on the warship, the sources told the Arabic language newspaper.
When he flies to his embattled country, the president lands at undisclosed locations and is transported to the presidential palace under heavy guard, the sources said.
The Russian-guarded warship provides a safe environment for Assad, who has lost confidence in his own security detail, the report said.
Assad’s presence on the warship suggests he has been granted political asylum by Russia but there has been no official comment from Moscow, the newspaper said.
The circumstances reinforce Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov‘s comment Sunday that Assad’s removal from power is “impossible to implement,” the newspaper said.
Assad’s presence on the ship could be a sign of looming negotiations on the conflict in Syria, the report said.
“It is necessary to make everybody, including the opposition, which is still categorically denying any dialogue, to sit down at the negotiating table, Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty quoted Lavrov as saying during a visit to the Ukraine.
The agreement, aiming to increase protection for U.S.-adopted Russian children, came as response to the deaths of 19 Russian adoptees in the U.S. since the 1990s and a 2010 incident in which an American woman sent her 7-year-old adopted son back to Russia alone on a one-way flight.
A day before signing the anti-adoption bill, which received final approval from the Parliament on Wednesday, Putin appealed to Russians’ patriotism, by stating that powerful and responsible countries should take care of their people, regardless of the fact that there are countries with better living standards than their own.
The Russian document comes in retaliation to the recently adopted US bill, signed by President Obama this month. The American bill penalizes Russia for corruption and its current human rights violations. While the American law ensures permanent normal trade relations for Russia, it is coupled with the Sergey Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Account, honoring the Russian whistleblower lawyer, who unveiled a $230m fraud and who died under mysterious circumstances in a Moscow jail in 2009. The bill establishes visa bans and asset freezes on Russian officials involved in his death and in other perceived gross human rights violations.
The newly passed Russian act has been called the Dima Yakovlev law, after a Russian toddler who died in Virginia in 2008, because his adoptive father left him in a locked care on a hot July day. The father was acquitted for involuntary manslaughter, angering the Russians. The law will come into force on January 1st, 2013, most immediately blocking the placement of 46 children with American, whose adoption was in process.
Putin’s decision has been met with ample dissent from within his government and ruling circle, the opposition as well as children’s rights activists.
On Thursday, the Ministry of Justice emphasized that the law violated the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, to which Russia is a signatory. Moreover, prominent officials, such as Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Deputy Prime Minister Olga Golodets, have raised concerns over the law on legal grounds.
The opposition has also slammed the bill. The newspaper Novaya Gazeta said 100,000 people had signed an online petition against the bill. The Human Rights Council, appointed by the president, claimed the law is unconstitutional, punishes innocent children and opens up new ground for corruption.
Children’s rights campaigners emphasized that Russia’s orphans should not be used as a political bargaining chip and that they will suffer most as a result of the bill, given that Russian orphanages are extremely overcrowded, that the country is unable to take care of its orphans and that its poorly run child welfare system is failing the wide majority of its children.
Despite these criticisms, Pavel Astakhov, Russia’s child’s rights ombudsman and a supporter of the bill, urged Putin to extend the ban to other countries, claiming that it should not exclusively be directed at the U.S.
There are currently around 740,000 children living in Russian orphanages. Adoptions by Russian families remain modest. In 2011, only 7,400 children were taken in by Russian parents, while 3,400 were adopted by families abroad. Over the past 20 years, U.S. citizens have adopted around 60,000 Russian children, making this the second largest number of inter-country adoptions to the U.S. after China. Around 9 percent of the number of the Russian adoptees had developmental disabilities.
Apart from banning adoptions, the Russian bill includes similar measures against Americans accused of violating the rights of Russian abroad as well as outlaw some U.S.-funded non-governmental groups. The bill is likely to further worsen relations between the U.S. and Russia, which have plummeted since Putin announced his intention to return for a third presidential last year.
(The Age) -Social media users who use tweets and online posts to comment on a military operation could be regarded as legitimate military targets.
Australian army Land Warfare Studies Centre analyst Chloe Diggins on Thursday said a recent social media war between Israel and Hamas raised complex ethical questions about who was a combatant and therefore a legitimate military target.
A key question was whether such comments constituted an act of war.
“If that’s the case, this might mean that those using social media in support of military operations are now legitimate targets,” she wrote in a blog for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
The Geneva Convention defines legitimate military targets as objects “which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction, capture or neutralisation, in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage”.
The convention protects civilians unless they are taking a direct part in hostilities.
“So if social media operators or users engage in the conflict by uploading, downloading, sharing, or otherwise adding to content in any way, they then become actors contributing to hostilities,” Ms Diggins said.
“In doing so, civilian social media users lose their protected status and can become legitimate targets.”
Ms Diggins said if a country could declare war over Twitter - as Israel did when it announced the start of recent hostilities - who’s to say Twitter users could not “fight” in the information space of that war?
“Moreover, who’s to say they shouldn’t reasonably expect to become legitimate targets themselves?” she said.Ms Diggins stressed her views did not reflect those of the Australian Defence Force.
(Arstechnica) -The United States announced on a conference call with reporters on Thursday that it would not be supporting regulations approved at the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) WCIT-12 conference in Dubai. The assembled delegates will meet for the formal signing ceremony to close out the conference on Friday.
“The United States has announced today that it cannot sign the ITU regulations in their current form,” Ambassador Terry Kramer said (Kramer leads the American delegation at the conference).
He spoke just after an Internet resolution as part of the final draft had been approved by a majority of attending nations, some of whom seemed confused about whether they were actually voting on the draft proposal.
“The US delegation was apparently angered by developments in the early hours of Wednesday morning, when Russia and its allies succeeded in winning, by a mere show of hands, approval of a resolution that mentions the Internet,” The New York Times wrote. “The show of hands followed an attempt by [Mohamed Nasser al-Ghanim, director general of the Telecommunication Regulation Authority of the United Arab Emirates] to gauge, as he put it, ‘the temperature of the room.’”
The ambassador also said that so far, a number of other nations would either not be signing or have “significant reservations” and are consulting their governments overnight in Dubai. Those countries include the United Kingdom, Costa Rica, Denmark, Egypt, Sweden, the Netherlands, Kenya, the Czech Republic, Canada, New Zealand, and Poland—but the group may turn out to be larger.
“The United States has consistently believed and continues to believe that the ITR should be a high-level document and that the scope of the treaty does not extend to Internet governance or content,” Kramer added. “Other administrations have made it clear that they believe the treaty should be extended to include those issues, and so we cannot be part of that consensus.”
The final text of the International Telecommunications Regulations treaty that was approved has not yet been made public. It’s obvious there is a staunch divide between Washington and a number of its allies, vis-à-vis other countries who are in favor of more national control of the Internet (most notably Russia, China, and their allies).
“It is clear that the world community is at a crossroad in its collective view of the Internet and of the most optimal environment flourishing of the Internet in this century,” he added. “No single organization or government can or should attempt to control the Internet or dictate its future development.”
On the conference call, Ars was able to ask why such international affirmation was even needed, when China, Iran, Syria and others routinely unilaterally impose restrictions on their domestic Internet.
“Countries have national sovereignty rights—they can do what they want,” Kramer said. “What we don’t want over time is a set of global agreements that people can point to and say: ‘Listen, you know, this treaty gave us the right to impose these terms on global operators of some sort.’ We don’t think that this will happen per se, it’s not legally binding, but you don’t want something to happen where people can think it is a binding term in a global environment.”
(Wired) -The Pentagon is facing its worst cash crunch in more than a decade, with potential cuts of up to a half-trillion dollars over the next decade if Congress doesn’t act soon. Yet the U.S. military still somehow found the money on Tuesday to put a down payment on a $10 billion upgrade of its nuclear weapons in Europe — y’know, just in case there’s another Cold War.
The $178 million, three-year contract with Boeing is for a prototype “tail kit” for the B61 nuclear weapon. The fins and control systems will be similar to the ones on today’s conventional, GPS-guided bombs, potentially making this enhanced version of the B61 the most accurate weapon of mass destruction ever. It’s one part of a bigger package of improvements to the B61 that the Pentagon insists it needs in order to keep this slice of its nuclear arsenal ready for war, if needed. Everything from the spin rocket motors to the electronic neutron generators will be refreshed. Total cost: an estimated $10 billion.
Just about the only thing that won’t change is the weapon’s nuclear “pit,” and who the U.S. military plans on dropping the thing on. “Who’s the target? The Red Army. The Red Army that’s sitting in East Germany, ready to plunge into Europe,” explains. Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear weapons expert at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “No, I’m serious.”
The U.S. has other, bunker-busting nuclear weapons that might be employed if, God forbid, there was ever an atomic showdown with North Korea or Iran. These so-called “B61 mod 12s” are meant to replace the 180 or so earlier models that are currently deployed in Western Europe. And those weapons are meant to assure our allies that if Russia is ever in the mood to invade, America will be there with a capital-B Bomb. “Continued funding support is essential to the long-term safety, security, and effectiveness of our nation’s nuclear deterrent force,” Gen. Robert Kehler, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, told Congress last year.
The B61 was first fielded in 1968. Unless critical components of the weapons are replaced — especially the radioactive tritium gas that makes the nuclear blast more efficient — the B61s might have to be withdrawn from the Continent by the end of the decade. “Old parts mean less-safe nukes. 60 years without an accidental detonation. We have a keen interest in keeping that record going,” says John Noonan, a former U.S. Air Force nuclear missile officer and a spokesman for the House Armed Services Committee.
A 2008 Secretary of Defense task force report (.pdf) cautions against underestimating the “political value our friends and allies place on these weapons, the political costs of withdrawal, and the psychological impact of their visible presence.” But the same report notes that U.S. European Command — the Pentagon’s top generals in the region – ”believ[e] there is no military downside to the unilateral withdrawal of nuclear weapons from Europe.” After all, America has thousands of additional warheads that could be delivered by intercontinental ballistic missiles, long-range bombers, and submarines.
All of which would make the push for the mod 12 upgrades tough to fathom under almost any conditions. But it’s particularly odd now, when the Pentagon is under more fiscal pressure than it’s felt since the 1990s. Just Tuesday, for example, the Chief of Staff of the Army announced plans to pare back the ground force’s spending by likely cutting the number of troops to their lowest levels since before World War II. On January 3, 2013, the Defense Department will automatically lose another 9.4 percent of its budget — more than $500 billion over 10 years — unless Congress reverses the automatic, across-the-board cuts it previously put in place.
In other words: every billion counts. But while the rest of the Defense Department is looking to save money, the costs for the mod 12 program keep going up. In May, the project — which entails upgrading an estimated 400 weapons — had a price tag of $6 billion. By July, that number had grown to $10 billion. That’s not only the equivalent of two-thirds of what the federal government plans to spend on all nuclear weapon enhancements over the next twenty years. “It would be less expensive to build solid-gold replicas of each of the 700-pound B61s, even at near-record gold prices,” as Lewis recently noted in Foreign Policy.
One reason why: the mod 12 project — even though it’s billed as a “life extension program” — isn’t just about replacing the components of the weapons that are decaying or corroding. (Independent experts say that would take a mere billion or two.) When you swap out the B61′s parachute for satellite-guided tail fin assembly, it introduces a new complication, Lewis adds. “An atomic bomb dropped without a parachute will explode before the airplane is safely away. That means [the federal government] must also redesign much of the packaging and components to survive ‘laydown’ — i.e., thudding into the ground and then exploding a few moments later.” An internal Pentagon audit showed 15 of the 29 planned changes for mod 12 are still technologically immature.
But if the improvements aren’t made soon, advocates say, they’ll only get more expensive. “Modernization is expensive because we keep delaying it. Now we’re at a point where, instead of making pragmatic annual investments in lab, stockpile, and delivery modernization — we have to do it all at once,” says Noonan, the former missileer.
Pretty soon, there will be a choice: upgrade these nuclear weapons, or put them out to pasture. What would you do, if you were a cash-strapped Pentagon chief?
(Independent) -US Military chiefs, keen to intimidate Russia during the Cold War, plotted to blow up the moon with a nuclear bomb, according to project documents kept secret for for nearly 45 years.
The army chiefs allegedly developed a top-secret project called, ‘A Study of Lunar Research Flights’ – or ‘Project A119’, in the hope that their Soviet rivals would be intimidated by a display of America’s Cold War muscle.
According to The Sun newspaper the military bosses developed a classified plan to launch a nuclear weapon 238,000 miles to the moon where it would be detonated upon impact.
The planners reportedly opted for an atom bomb, rather than a hydrogen bomb, because the latter would be too heavy for the missile.
Physicist Leonard Reiffel, who says he was involved in the project, claims the hope was that the flash from the bomb would intimidate the Russians following their successful launching of the Sputnik satellite in October 1957.
The planning of the explosion reportedly included calculations by astronomer Carl Sagan, who was then a young graduate.
Documents reportedly show the plan was abandoned because of fears it would have an adverse effect on Earth should the explosion fail.
The scientists were also, reportedly, concerned about about contaminating the moon with radioactive material, Mr Reiffel said.
The US government has never formally confirmed its involvement in the study.
Russia fears an escalation of the conflict between Israel and radical Palestinians. To save compatriots from Gaza can warships were sent to the area.
(Welt.de)Russia fears an escalation of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians and has sent potential rescue of fellow warships to the eastern Mediterranean. The missile cruiser “Moskva” and several patrol boats and landing should hold themselves in readiness off the coast of the Gaza Strip, a spokesman of the Navy with the agency Ria Novosti According.
“In an escalation of the conflict, the Russians living there be brought to safety,” said Navy spokesman. Russia calls for a political solution in the Middle East. According to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is currently holding about 100 Russian tourists and entrepreneurs on the Gaza Strip.
Between Israel and Hamas, although currently there is officially a ceasefire. According to information from Gaza City Israeli soldiers at the border fence in the Gaza Strip, however, shot a man. Another 24 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli fire on Friday, said the spokesman for the Ministry of Health of the Mediterranean enclave, Ashraf al-Kedra with.
The IDF confirmed that warning shots had been fired at protesters on the border fence. The Gaza ruling radical Islamic Hamas accused Israel of a violation of applicable since Wednesday evening (20 clock CET) ceasefire. They will ask Egypt as guarantors of the truce, to intervene with Israel.
The first incident since the truce both sides stated differently represents witnesses in Gaza said that the morning had an initial five farmers east of Khan Younis in their fields near the border fence was shot by Israeli soldiers. Then there was a spontaneous demonstration by residents of two villages nearby. One of the protesters had been running up with a Palestinian flag in hand on the fence and then shot.An additional 19 participants in the protest march were injured by Israeli bullets.
The Israeli military announced on request, have been since the day before there had been riots near the heavily guarded fence.Palestinians are the 300 meter wide zone spear penetrated west of the fence as far as the barrier itself. At least one had come over and climbed quickly to Israeli territory. Some holes were cut into the barrier.The army had no information on whether there had been deaths or injuries in the riots on the Gaza side of the fence.
It was the first incident since the ceasefire. Up to five rockets in the first hour of the ceasefire that Israel was not subsequently attacked from the Gaza Strip, a military spokesman confirmed.
Hamas members stuck to Israeli sources also behind the bombing of a bus in Tel Aviv on Wednesday. Security forces took claims to determine the perpetrators and several accomplices who belonged to Hamas and Islamic Jihad, told army spokeswoman Avital Leibovich.
The alleged perpetrator is according to these data, an Israeli Palestinians from the city Taibe in Israel. He had confessed to the crime, it said. The attack was on Wednesday shortly before the ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, 17 people were injured.
The current clock since Wednesday 20 ceasefire had completed eight active bitter fighting between Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip. In the fighting 164 Palestinians and 6 Israelis were killed.On the Palestinian side to these figures in 1225 were injured, more than 100 in Israel Overall, more than 1,500 rockets were fired at Israel, Israel Air Force attacked about 1,500 targets in the Gaza Strip, destroying weapons and important institutions of Hamas.
(RT) -The United States has blocked a Moroccan-brokered UN Security Council call for a ceasefire in the Israeli-Gaza conflict, labeling it “unbalanced.”
“The draft press statement failed to address the root cause of the current escalation – the continuing barrage of rocket attacks from Gaza against Israel,” the spokeswoman for the US Mission to the UN, Erin Pelton, said in a statement.
He added that the “counter-productive” statement failed to support “the ongoing diplomacy toward de-escalation of violence and a durable outcome that ends the rocket attacks on Israeli cities and towns and restores a broader calm.”
Morocco proposed the statement last Thursday, and it would have been adopted automatically if no UN Security Council member spoke against it before 14:00 GMT. Security Council press statements require unanimous approval.
Russia said it is ready to propose the full resolution to halt the violence between Israel and Gaza.
Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said that document will focus on putting an end to the violence by a negotiated a ceasefire, support for international and regional efforts to settle the crisis peacefully and a call for the resumption of talks between Palestinians and Israelis on a wider range of problems.
Churkin sharply criticized the way the Moroccan statement was handled by the Council, accusing Western governments of “filibustering” it. He argued that three days was ample time to provide written comments, while Council members only commented orally.
Some say the Russian resolution has little chance of being adopted as it also does not claim that Hamas rocket attacks are the cause of the current conflict.
TEHRAN (FNA)- Russian Prime Minister Dmitriy Medvedev once again reiterated Iran’s right to access to peaceful nuclear energy, and criticized the United Nations and the US for imposing unilateral sanctions on Iran.
“Russia believes that every country, including Iran is entitled to peaceful nuclear energy,” Medvedev said, addressing the Asia-Europe summit currently underway in Laotian capital, Vientiane.
The Russian prime minister also lashed out at the UN and the US for their unilateral sanctions on Iran on the false pretext that Iran is trying to produce nuclear weapon.
“The UN and the US have considered unilateral sanctions on Iran and they call for a halt in Iran’s peaceful nuclear program,” Medvedev said.
The 9th Asia-Europe summit opened in Laos, Vientiane on November 5.
Washington and its Western allies accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian nuclear program, while they have never presented any corroborative evidence to substantiate their allegations. Iran denies the charges and insists that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
Tehran stresses that the country has always pursued a civilian path to provide power to the growing number of Iranian population, whose fossil fuel would eventually run dry.
Despite the rules enshrined in the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) entitling every member state, including Iran, to the right of uranium enrichment, Tehran is now under four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions for turning down West’s calls to give up its right of uranium enrichment.
Tehran has dismissed West’s demands as politically tainted and illogical, stressing that sanctions and pressures merely consolidate Iranians’ national resolve to continue the path.
Tehran has repeatedly said that it considers its nuclear case closed as it has come clean of IAEA’s questions and suspicions about its past nuclear activities.
A 2008 report of the IAEA by the then Director-General, Mohamed ElBaradei, thanked Iran’s honest cooperation in removing ambiguities about its past activities and confirmed that Iran has answered all the six outstanding questions of the world body about the nuclear material and activities that it had in the past.
