United States – Page 10

US air command moves back to Cold War bunker

The US military command that scans North America’s skies for enemy missiles and aircraft plans to move its communications gear to a Cold War-era mountain bunker, officers said.

The shift to the Cheyenne Mountain base in Colorado is designed to safeguard the command’s sensitive sensors and servers from a potential electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack, military officers said.

The Pentagon last week announced a $700 million contract with Raytheon Corporation to oversee the work for North American Aerospace Command (NORAD) and US Northern Command.

Admiral William Gortney, head of NORAD and Northern Command, said that “because of the very nature of the way that Cheyenne Mountain’s built, it’s EMP-hardened.”

“And so, there’s a lot of movement to put capability into Cheyenne Mountain and to be able to communicate in there,” Gortney told reporters.

“My primary concern was… are we going to have the space inside the mountain for everybody who wants to move in there, and I’m not at liberty to discuss who’s moving in there,” he said.

The Cheyenne mountain bunker is a half-acre cavern carved into a mountain in the 1960s that was designed to withstand a Soviet nuclear attack. From inside the massive complex, airmen were poised to send warnings that could trigger the launch of nuclear missiles.

But in 2006, officials decided to move the headquarters of NORAD and US Northern Command from Cheyenne to Petersen Air Force base in Colorado Springs. The Cheyenne bunker was designated as an alternative command center if needed.

That move was touted a more efficient use of resources but had followed hundreds of millions of dollars worth of modernization work at Cheyenne carried out after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Now the Pentagon is looking at shifting communications gear to the Cheyenne bunker, officials said.

“A lot of the back office communications is being moved there,” said one defense official.

Officials said the military’s dependence on computer networks and digital communications makes it much more vulnerable to an electromagnetic pulse, which can occur naturally or result from a high-altitude nuclear explosion.

Under the 10-year contract, Raytheon is supposed to deliver “sustainment” services to help the military perform “accurate, timely and unambiguous warning and attack assessment of air, missile and space threats” at the Cheyenne and Petersen bases.

Raytheon’s contract also involves unspecified work at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.

Germanwings crash supports 9/11 speculation

Advances in sensor technology, computing and artificial intelligence have made human pilots less necessary than ever in the cockpit. After the Germanwings crash some seem less worried about being branded a 9/11 conspiracy nut.

Because information collected after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 has raised questions about the alleged ability and motivation of the people accused of piloting four Boeing 757 and 767 planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon building and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, speculation has since lingered regarding the covert use of technology to precisely navigate the four airliners that day without onboard pilot control.

By 1999 already, Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft contained digital flight control systems that can “automatically fly the airplanes on pre-selected routes, headings, speed or altitude maneuvers.”

On October 9, 2001, Cubic Defense Systems, Inc. applied for a U.S. patent that removes control of an aircraft from its pilot and utilizes an aircraft’s auto-pilot system to implement an uninterruptable pre-programmed autopilot flight plan in order to navigate an aircraft to a given destination during an emergency. This would be accomplished through the use of an electronic or mechanical relay or relays, that become activated by pilot operation of an aircraft hijack notification system.

Surprisingly to some, none of the four aircraft destroyed on September 11, 2001 in NY are known to have entered unique transponder hijack notification codes, suggesting either modified function or insufficient activation time.

One optional feature of the Cubic system is termination of an aircraft’s ability to communicate.

In two cases, hijacker communications aimed at passengers on-board American Airlines flight 11 and United Airlines flight 93 on September 11, 2001 were heard instead by air traffic controllers, suggesting modified communication functions.

In 2014, airlines carried 838.4 million passengers on more than 8.5 million flights. Commercial aviation is already heavily automated. Modern aircraft are generally flown by a computer autopilot that tracks its position using motion sensors and dead reckoning, corrected as necessary by GPS. Software systems are also used to land commercial aircraft.

In a recent survey of airline pilots, those operating Boeing 777s reported that they spent just seven minutes manually piloting their planes in a typical flight. Pilots operating Airbus planes spent half that time.

And commercial planes are becoming smarter all the time. “An Airbus airliner knows enough not to fly into a mountain,” said David Mindell, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology aeronautics and astronautics professor. “It has a warning system that tells a pilot. But it doesn’t take over.”

The Pentagon has just that system and has deployed automated piloting software in F-16 fighter jets. The Auto Collision Ground Avoidance System reportedly saved a plane and pilot in November during a combat mission against Islamic State forces.

The Pentagon has invested heavily in robot aircraft. As of 2013, there were more than 11,000 drones in the military arsenal. But drones are almost always remotely piloted, rather than autonomous. Indeed, more than 150 humans are involved in the average combat mission flown by a drone.

Because the Flight Data Recorders (FDRs) for American Airlines flight 11 and United Airlines flight 175 were not recovered, details regarding the operation of each aircraft on 9/11 are not known. The FDRs for American Airlines flight 77 and United Airlines flight 93 were recovered and indicate pilot control of each aircraft.

However, the FDR readout file for American Airlines flight 77 was completed four hours and fifteen minutes before the said FDR was recovered, suggesting false or altered FDR information.

And the FDRs for American Airlines flight 77 and United Airlines flight 93 are virtually the only ones during the previous 20 years of major National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) U.S. aviation mishap investigations, for which unique inventory control serial numbers were not published.

Such serial numbers are required to facilitate FDR data readouts. In fact the NTSB possesses no records pertaining to the positive identification of the FDRs for American Airlines flight 77 and United Airlines flight 93.

Senator McCain suggests Israel ‘go rogue’ against Iran

As Iran talks appear to be coming to a close with a successful agreement that would both lead to the lifting of international sanctions and restrictions that would prevent the country from obtaining nuclear weapons, most in the international community are relieved.

Yet Republicans have teamed up with their counterparts in the Israeli political system to do everything they can to obstruct a deal – with tactics such as drafting new sanctions legislation and warning the Iranian leadership that the nuclear agreement will not outlast President Obama.

But this past week Senator John McCain (R-AZ) ratcheted up this sabotage to a new level. During a floor speech he gave on March 24th, the senator suggested that Israel “go rogue” and that if they don’t they may not survive the next 22 months of the Obama presidency:

The Israelis will need to chart their own path of resistance. On the Iranian nuclear deal, they may have to go rogue. Let’s hope their warnings have not been mere bluffs. Israel survived its first 19 years without meaningful U.S. patronage. For now, all it has to do is get through the next 22, admittedly long, months.

Recall that McCain is head of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Republican presidential candidate.

His call for a foreign state to openly obstruct U.S. policy and in the process initiate a catastrophic regional war is perhaps unprecedented for someone of his senior position.

Jews unite against Trevor Noah

Jewish comedy fans had the same reaction Monday morning when it was announced that Trevor Noah, a 31-year-old South African standup comedian who is relatively unknown in the United States, will replace Jon Stewart as the next host of “The Daily Show”.

Amid all of the anticipation surrounding Noah’s surprise appointment, Jews are already keenly interested in his views on the hot-button political topic of the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Yesterday, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency was the first media outlet to notice a disturbing tweet from Comedy Central’s new hire Trevor Noah:

South Africans know how to recycle like israel knows how to be peaceful.

— Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) June 2, 2010

Late this evening, author and former Conservative MP Louise Mensch found several more:

Behind every successful Rap Billionaire is a double as rich Jewish man. #BeatsByDreidel

— Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) May 7, 2012

Xbox and Playstation players are like Jews and Muslims. They are so similar but they hate each other so much!

– Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) May 7, 2012

Almost bumped a Jewish kid crossing the road. He didn’t look b4 crossing but I still would hav felt so bad in my german car!

– Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) Sep 18, 2009

JTA found a photograph from Noah’s Facebook page, which appears to show Noah as having been present at an anti-Israel rally in front of the White House.

New Daily Show host also thinks “Untermensch” isn’t a racial slur, says it just means “lower class person”.

David Steinberg says Comedy Central has a PR problem after tweets surface from their “bold” choice.

He says Comedy Central will say they have nothing invested in Noah after they review the “Jewish chicks” tweet, “And of course, other examples are sure to appear in the next few hours.”

Messi gets the ball and the real players try foul him, but Messi doesn’t go down easy, just like jewish chicks. #ElClasico

– Trevor Noah (@Trevornoah) Jan 26, 2012

Ex-Monsanto employee fired from scientific journal

Ex-Monsanto employee Richard Goodman has been removed from the Editorial Board of the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology. Goodman was appointed Associate Editor shortly before the Seralini study was retracted by the journal.

Former Editor-in-Chief, A. Wallace Hayes will be replaced by someone else as well.

It looks like one scientific journal has decided to get real, replacing a pro-GMO editor in a major scientific journal. An ‘unbiased’ Editor-in-Chief will be replacing the completely biotech-biased A. Wallace Hayes, who retracted the controversial paper by the Seralini team which showed the toxicity of GMOs beyond any shadow of doubt.

In response to a 2004 study declaring Monsanto’s NK603 GMO maize safe:

“…a predominantly French team led by Prof Gilles-Eric Séralini undertook a two-year (over 700 days), feeding trial [2], which was otherwise similar. Their work was published in September 2012, also inFCT. The early warnings that had been dismissed in the Monsanto paper developed into serious illnesses, includingdamage to liver, kidneys, pituitary gland and, most notably, early deaths and development of large tumours in females. In addition, the study included trials of minute amounts of Monsanto’s Roundup, the herbicide to which tolerance has been genetically engineered into NK603, in the rats’ drinking water.”

Some time later, the Seralini study was removed from the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology, and this fact has been used in a foolhardy way by biotech shills to promote the ‘fallacy’ of biotech dangers on more blogs and Facebook postings than I’d like to count. It looks like the journal is doing some house cleaning; however, because two Monsanto-supporting, biased editors have been removed from their positions.

After the Seralini study was retracted, hundreds of scientists contacted the journal to ask them why they were doing so, claiming that they were giving in to pressure from the biotech industry. The academic world was outraged, and they voiced that opinion, despite being labeled with childish names by Monsanto, Dow, Syngenta, and others.

Now, the new Editor-in-Chief is Jose Domingo, who has published papers showing that the safety of GM crops is not an established fact.

“Critical changes have this year been made at the journal, Food and Chemical Toxicolgy, from which the Editor-in-Chief A. Wallace Hayes retracted the important paper by the Seralini team. The Editorial Board of the journal [19] now has a new Editor-in-Chief, José L. Domingo, who has published papers showing that safety of GM crops is not an established fact; and the Editorial Board no longer includes Richard Goodman, the ex-Monsanto employee who became Associate Editor for Biotechnology not long before the Seralini paper was retracted.”

The original Seralini study found an audience despite the journal’s retraction, but there are further studies from Prof Gilles-Eric Seralini and his team, including a more recent exploration of how glyphosate ruins the functioning of the heart.

Now that the Journal of Food and Chemical Toxicology has come to their senses, perhaps all the other ‘paid-for’ science will be ousted from reputable journals also.

Two major US newspapers openly advocate bombing

The New York Times continues its slide into becoming little more than a neocon propaganda sheet as it followed the Washington Post in publishing an op-ed advocating the unprovoked bombing of Iran, reports Robert Parry

If two major newspapers in, say, Russia published major articles openly advocating the unprovoked bombing of a country, say, Israel, the U.S. government and news media would be aflame with denunciations about “aggression,” “criminality,” “madness,” and “behavior not fitting the Twenty-first Century.”

But when the newspapers are American – the New York Times and the Washington Post – and the target country is Iran, no one in the U.S. government and media bats an eye. These inflammatory articles – these incitements to murder and violation of international law – are considered just normal discussion in the Land of Exceptionalism.

On Thursday, the New York Times printed an op-ed that urged the bombing of Iran as an alternative to reaching a diplomatic agreement that would sharply curtail Iran’s nuclear program and ensure that it was used only for peaceful purposes. The Post published a similar “we-must-bomb-Iran” op-ed two weeks ago.

The Times’ article by John Bolton, a neocon scholar from the American Enterprise Institute, was entitled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.” It followed the Post’s op-ed by Joshua Muravchik, formerly at AEI and now a fellow at the neocon-dominated School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins.

Both articles called on the United States to mount a sustained bombing campaign against Iran to destroy its nuclear facilities and to promote “regime change” in Tehran. Ironically, these “scholars” rationalized their calls for unprovoked aggression against Iran under the theory that Iran is an aggressive state, although Iran has not invaded another country for centuries.

Bolton, who served as President George W. Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, based his call for war on the possibility that if Iran did develop a nuclear bomb – which Iran denies seeking and which the U.S. intelligence community agrees Iran is not building – such a hypothetical event could touch off an arms race in the Middle East.

Curiously, Bolton acknowledged that Israel already has developed an undeclared nuclear weapons arsenal outside international controls, but he didn’t call for bombing Israel. He wrote blithely that “Ironically perhaps, Israel’s nuclear weapons have not triggered an arms race. Other states in the region understood — even if they couldn’t admit it publicly — that Israel’s nukes were intended as a deterrent, not as an offensive measure.”

How Bolton manages to read the minds of Israel’s neighbors who have been at the receiving end of Israeli invasions and other cross-border attacks is not explained. Nor does he address the possibility that Israel’s possession of some 200 nuclear bombs might be at the back of the minds of Iran’s leaders if they do press ahead for a nuclear weapon.

Nor does Bolton explain his assumption that if Iran were to build one or two bombs that it would use them aggressively, rather than hold them as a deterrent. He simply asserts: “Iran is a different story. Extensive progress in uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing reveal its ambitions.”

Pulling Back on Refinement

But is that correct? In its refinement of uranium, Iran has not progressed toward the level required for a nuclear weapon since its 2013 interim agreement with the global powers known as “the p-5 plus one” – for the permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany. Instead, Iran has dialed back the level of refinement to below 5 percent (what’s needed for generating electricity) from its earlier level of 20 percent (needed for medical research) — compared with the 90-plus percent purity to build a nuclear weapon.

In other words, rather than challenging the “red line” of uranium refinement that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew during a United Nations speech in 2012, the Iranians have gone in the opposite direction – and they have agreed to continue those constraints if a permanent agreement is reached with the p-5-plus-1.

However, instead of supporting such an agreement, American neocons – echoing Israeli hardliners – are demanding war, followed by U.S. subversion of Iran’s government through the financing of an internal opposition for a coup or a “colored revolution.”

Bolton wrote: “An attack need not destroy all of Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but by breaking key links in the nuclear-fuel cycle, it could set back its program by three to five years. The United States could do a thorough job of destruction, but Israel alone can do what’s necessary. Such action should be combined with vigorous American support for Iran’s opposition, aimed at regime change in Tehran.”

But one should remember that neocon schemes – drawn up at their think tanks and laid out on op-ed pages – don’t always unfold as planned. Since the 1990s, the neocons have maintained a list of countries considered troublesome for Israel and thus targeted for “regime change,” including Iraq, Syria and Iran. In 2003, the neocons got their chance to invade Iraq, but the easy victory that they predicted didn’t exactly pan out.

Still, the neocons never revise their hit list. They just keep coming up with more plans that, in total, have thrown much of the Middle East, northern Africa and now Ukraine into bloodshed and chaos. In effect, the neocons have joined Israel in its de facto alliance with Saudi Arabia for a Sunni sectarian conflict against the Shiites and their allies. Much like the Saudis, Israeli officials rant against the so-called “Shiite crescent” from Tehran through Baghdad and Damascus to Beirut.

Since Iran is considered the most powerful Shiite nation and is allied with Syria, which is governed by Alawites, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, both countries have remained in the neocons’ crosshairs. But the neocons don’t actually pull the trigger themselves. Their main role is to provide the emotional and political arguments to get the American people to hand over their tax money and their children to fight these wars.

The neocons are so confident in their skills at manipulating the U.S. decision-making process that some have gone so far as to suggest Americans should side with al-Qaeda’s Nusra Front in Syria or the even more brutal Islamic State, because those groups love killing Shiites and thus are considered the most effective fighters against Iran’s allies.

The New York Times’ star neocon columnist Thomas L. Friedman ventured to the edge of madness as he floated the idea of the U.S. arming the head-chopping Islamic State, writing this month: “Now I despise ISIS as much as anyone, but let me just toss out a different question: Should we be arming ISIS?”

I realize the New York Times and Washington Post are protected by the First Amendment and can theoretically publish whatever they want. But the truth is that the newspapers are extremely restrictive in what they print. Their op-ed pages are not just free-for-alls for all sorts of opinions.

For instance, neither newspaper would publish a story that urged the United States to launch a bombing campaign to destroy Israel’s actual nuclear arsenal as a step toward creating a nuclear-free Middle East. That would be considered outside responsible thought and reasonable debate.

However, when it comes to advocating a bombing campaign against Iran’s peaceful nuclear program, the two newspapers are quite happy to publish such advocacy. The Times doesn’t even blush when one of its most celebrated columnists mulls over the idea of sending weapons to the terrorists in ISIS – all presumably because Israel has identified “the Shiite crescent” as its current chief enemy and the Islamic State is on the other side.

But beyond the hypocrisy and, arguably, the criminality of these propaganda pieces, there is also the neocon record of miscalculation. Remember how the invasion of Iraq was supposed to end with Iraqis tossing rose petals at the American soldiers instead of planting “improvised explosive devices” – and how the new Iraq was to become a model pluralistic democracy?

Well, why does one assume that the same geniuses who were so wrong about Iraq will end up being right about Iran? What if the bombing and the subversion don’t lead to nirvana in Iran? Isn’t it just as likely, if not more so, that Iran would react to this aggression by deciding that it needed nuclear bombs to deter further aggression and to protect its sovereignty and its people?

In other words, might the scheming by Bolton and Muravchik — as published by the New York Times and the Washington Post — produce exactly the result that they say they want to prevent? But don’t worry. If the neocons’ new schemes don’t pan out, they’ll just come up with more.

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative.

Source: Consortium News

The Clintons received millions from Ukranian oligarch

During Hilary Clinton’s tenure as US Secretary [of State] up to 2013, grants to the tune of tens of millions of dollars flowed from Viktor Pinchuk, one of the richest Ukrainian oligarchs, to the Clinton Global Initiative. The goal of the fundraising was to make the Ukraine a “successful, free and modern country on the basis of European values”. Shortly thereafter, the country broke apart.

Viktor Pinchuk has excellent contacts. Not only is the Ukrainian steel magnate number 54 on the Forbes list of the richest people in the world, the Pinchuks’ family connections are also in evidence. Thus in 2002 the multi-billionaire married Elena Kuchma, daughter of the second Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, who held office from 1994 to 2005. Among the areas of responsibility of Kuchma included the privatisation of Kryvorizhstals, the largest steel plant in Ukraine. The buyer of the company was the Interpipe Group, which in turn is part owned by Kuchma’s son-in-law Pinchuk. The purchase price was about one-sixth of the company’s actual value.

Various other start-ups and the acquisition of four Ukrainian TV channels characterised Pinchuk’s business activity over the following years. The empire was ultimately rounded off with the establishment of the “Pinchuk Foundation”, which claims to be the largest “philanthropic foundation” of Ukraine. No charitable activities on the part of the Foundation, however, have ever been documented.

The Pinchuk Foundation made up for it by being more active in the international arena. Already in 2007 the first payments of around 5 million dollars flowed to Hillary and Bill Clinton’s Global Initiative, which picturesquely describes their foundation’s purpose as “gathering global leaders to devise and implement innovative solutions to the most pressing challenges facing the world”. De facto, however, the Foundation can be considered in terms of an international support network for the political career of Hillary Clinton.

From 2008, Pinchuk committed to a further 29 million US dollar donation to the Clinton Global Initiative, split over five years. In this way, funds from the Ukrainian steel magnate flowed directly across the Atlantic to the accounts of the Clintons during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as US Secretary of State during the Obama Administration of 2009-2013, as a report in the Wall Street Journal has recently lain bare.

While the Clintion Foundation officially accepts no funds from foreign governments, during the period in which Hillary Clinton led the US State Department, the doors to financial benefits were on the rebound, as in the Pinchuks case, obviously always wide open. This also raises the question of direct influence over the US government through interest groups from Ukrainian big capital circles in the immediate vicinity of the EU.

The stated aim of the donation in the order of tens of millions of dollars may have been, as the Pinchuk Foundation claims, to “establish a successful, free and modern country, based on European values.” It’s a choice of words that may carry a pleasant connotation; however, a seasoned observer of transatlantic geopolitics is unlikely to expect any good to come of it.

In November 2013, Ukraine entered a phase of domestic instability, which eventually led to the overthrow of the Ukrainian President Yanukovych following his refusal to sign the EU Association Agreement. As a result, the country was plunged into civil war.

Viktor Pinchuk continues to run successful businesses in Ukraine and Hillary Clinton is on course to run for the highest office in the 2016 US Presidential elections. She can be assured of the strong financial support of the Pinchuk Group.

Meanwhile there’s no going back to email from Hillary’s Secretary of State days beyond the 30,490 messages on the record, or roughly half of what the server held during the period. In short, she has effectively wiped her dealings with the likes of Pinchuk clean. Officials now have to take it on faith that Clinton followed the letter of the law and delivered all the messages related to her political life.

Translated from German RT

One dead after SUV rams into NSA HQ

An SUV truck drove into the gates of the National Security Agency headquarters on Monday morning. One of the two alleged attackers was shot dead at the scene by security.

Police sources say two more are being treated for injuries as a result of the attack. Emergency workers were seen carrying a person in uniform to one of the ambulances.

NBC has cited inside sources claiming that the two men were disguised as women at the time of the attack. It further alleges that a gun and a quantity of illegal drugs were found in their Ford Escape.

Chopper footage at ABC7 shows a significant police presence. The footage shows two damaged vehicles outside the gates.

FBI is investigating the incident, with police refusing to provide detailed comment, saying that the incident took place on NSA property. Fort Meade houses 11,000 military staff and 29,000 civilian employees.

Daughter of gay parents slams gay marriage

A woman raised by two lesbians has provoked controversy after publicly announcing that she is against gay marriage because she says she missed out on having her father in her life when growing up.

Heather Barwick, a 31-year-old mother-of-four from South Carolina, says her mother left her father when she was 2 or 3 so that she could move in with the woman she loved.

‘Gay community, I am your daughter. My mom raised me with her same-sex partner back in the ’80s and ’90s,’ writes Barwick for the conservative publication The Federalist.

‘I’m writing to you because I’m letting myself out of the closet: I don’t support gay marriage. But it might not be for the reasons that you think. It’s not because you’re gay. I love you, so much. It’s because of the nature of the same-sex relationship itself.’

Barwick recalls growing up in a very liberal and open-minded suburb surrounded by a ‘tight-knit community of gay and lesbian friends’ and says her mother’s partner ‘treated me as if I was her own daughter’.
She also admits that her biological father ‘wasn’t a great guy,’ and ‘didn’t bother coming around anymore.’

Despite being an advocate for gay marriage in her 20s, Barwick now says she’s had a change of heart.

‘Same-sex marriage and parenting withholds either a mother or father from a child while telling him or her that it doesn’t matter. That it’s all the same. But it’s not,’ she writes.

‘A lot of us, a lot of your kids, are hurting. My father’s absence created a huge hole in me, and I ached every day.

Speaking to Christian publication World, Barwick said she only found healing for her ‘father wound’ after she began attending church with her future husband.

Barwick said there had been long-term consequences to going up with two mothers.

‘I’m not gay, but the relationship that was modeled before me was a woman loving a woman. So I’ve struggled as an adult figuring out how to be in a relationship with my husband.’

Barwick is also one of six people raised by gay parents who signed a public letter of support this week for designers Dolce & Gabbana following their controversial statements about gay parents.

Source: Daily Mail

Missing nuke now part of US presidential debate

Potential 2016 presidential candidate Rick Santorum was questioned on missing nuclear warheads at a national security summit in South Carolina this week reports media outlet Bloomberg.

According to the report, a woman in the crowd brought the issue up to Santorum in a fiery rant against President Obama and his national security policy.

“Obama tried to blow up a nuke in Charleston a few months ago, and the three admirals and generals — he’s totally destroyed our military, he’s fired all the generals and all the admirals who said they wouldn’t fire on the American people,” the woman said.

Santorum “pivoted quickly” to instead comment on President Obama’s executive amnesty.

In late 2013, Infowars was contacted by a high level source at the Dyess Air Force base in Texas and informed of an unauthorized nuclear warhead transfer to South Carolina.

“Dyess is beginning to move out nuclear war heads today. I got a tap from DERMO earlier. He said it was the first time they have been even acknowledged since being put there in the 80′s. No signature was required for transfer…

There was no directive,” the source wrote.

The story became even more dire when it was discovered that Senator Lindsey Graham had publicly warned that same day that South Carolina would likely be hit with nuclear weapons if the United States failed to engage Syria militarily.

Source: EU Times

Clash of Civilizations

The White House found itself in a thorny situation recently when its chief florist, Laura Dowling, quit and was reportedly escorted from the residence on the eve of Valentine’s Day.

That’s according to a Monday night account by The Washington Post outlining the famed florist’s mysterious departure from the White House, CNN reported.

First Lady Michelle Obama’s office confirmed the florist’s departure, and, in contrast to the Post’s report, offered glowing praise of Dowling’s skills.

“As chief florist, Laura Dowling and her team treated guests of the White House to their beautiful floral arrangements. Ms. Dowling’s creations were always lively and colorful, reflecting not only the season but the unique and historic rooms which they graced. No two arrangements were ever the same and each one left guests with a lasting impression of the elegance and history of the People’s House,” the statement said.

“We are grateful for her contribution over the years and wish her well,” it said.

Dowling, a French-trained artisan who owns her own flower shop in Alexandria, Virginia, had been in the coveted position since 2009. She succeeded Nancy Clarke, who held the job for three decades. She didn’t respond to a CNN request for comment, but in a statement issued through law firm Sidley Austin to The Washington Post, Dowling said she resigned “to pursue exciting new opportunities and explore my passion for floral artistry and design.”

Dowling has not yet been replaced.

It appears that Michelle has “modern” tastes and found Dowling’s style too fussy.

Modern art is now front and center in an old White House room.

First Lady Michelle Obama has revealed her bold new look for the Old Family Dining Room in the White House, with abstract paintings by Robert Rauschenberg, Josef Albers and Alma Thomas, the first work by an African-American artist to be displayed at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The black artist Thomas’s work, called “Resurrection” provides a bull’s-eye punch of color at the price of $290,000. “It’s kind of unbelievable that we haven’t done this before,” Obama said.

Renovating the Old Family Dining Room, which is located off the Executive Mansion’s State Dining Room, was the First Lady’s first major decorating project.

A piece of New York City history makes an appearance — a silver tea set from the 1939 World’s Fair is displayed on the sideboard.

Here is the Old Family Dining Room as it was before the “diversity” onslaught.

Laura Bush posing in the Old Family Dining Room as it was before

Heroin addict Angelina Jolie’s latest bizarre op

Angelina Jolie, an alleged a heroin addict, said she has had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed to avoid the risk of ovarian cancer.

Her latest bizarre announcement in a New York Times column printed on Tuesday came nearly two years after the rights campaigner and mother-of-six had a double mastectomy after learning she had also inherited a risk of breast cancer.

Jolie’s earlier announcement of undergoing the double mastectomy (surgically removing both breasts) even though she had no breast cancer might not have been the innocent, spontaneous, “heroic choice” that has been portrayed in the mainstream media.

Some even claim she never had the actual operation, but is promoting androgyny by pretending to have had her breasts removed.

According to Natural News the latest operation is all part of well-timed PR campaign that has been planned for months and just happens to coincide with the upcoming US Supreme Court decision on the viability of the BRCA1 patent.

It caused women to rush out and seek BRCA1 gene testing procedures. Because of this patent, BRCA1 tests can cost $3,000 – $4,000 each. The testing alone is a multi-billion-dollar market, but only if the patent is upheld in an upcoming Supreme Court decision.

It caused the stock price of Myriad Genetics (MYGN) to skyrocket to a 52-week high. “Myriad’s stock closed up 3% Tuesday, following the publication of the New York Times op-ed,” wrote marketwatch.com.

It drove public opinion to influence the US Supreme Court decision to rule in favor of corporate ownership of human genes, an even bigger nightmare than the corporate ownership of genetically modified fruits and vegetables.

Jolie, 39, said she had gone public with her decision to tell other women about the options available to them. But by promoting DNA tests, Jolie is aiding Big Brother to map more DNA, and to pay for the “privilege”.

Promoting the removal of healthy ovaries also seems like an easy way to control population growth.

Despite being a drug addict, she is Goodwill Ambassador to the UN and member of CFR, and using her profile as mother to a malnourished multicultural brood, to promote NATO’s genocidal ‘humanitarian intervention’ war doctrine.

Jolie’s directorial debut, In the land of Blood and Honey, justified NATO’s butchery in Bosnia during the 1990s, and Jolie even specifically refered to Syria in her Al Jazeera interview. She put forth a string of utterly hollow gripes about the inactivity of the ‘international community’ as civilians suffer and die but with her selective morality she did not once mention Libya.

“I feel feminine, and grounded in the choices I am making for myself and my family. I know my children will never have to say, ‘Mom died of ovarian cancer,'” the fashionably anorexic junky wrote, who likes to carry the blood of people on necklaces around her neck.

The procedure had triggered menopause, she added. “I will not be able to have any more children, and I expect some physical changes. But I feel at ease with whatever will come, not because I am strong but because this is a part of life. It is nothing to be feared.”

Programmer develops bot to troll Twitter

Preaching the climate change gospel can be tough work, especially on Twitter. Software developer Nigel Leck got tired rehashing the same 140-character arguments against climate change deniers, so he programmed a bot that does the work for him. With citations!

Leck’s bot, @AI_AGW, doesn’t just respond to arguments directed at Leck himself, it goes out and picks fights. Every five minutes it trawls Twitter for terms and phrases that commonly crop up in Tweets that refute human-caused climate change. It then searches its database of hundreds to find a counter-argument best suited for that tweet—usually a quick statement and a link to a scientific source.

As can be the case with these sorts of things, many of the deniers don’t know they’ve been targeted by a robot and engage AI_AGW in debate. The bot will continue to fire back canned responses that best fit the interlocutor’s line of debate—Leck says this goes on for days, in some cases—and the bot’s been outfitted with a number of responses on the topic of religion, where the arguments unsurprisingly often end up.

AI_AGW has been prone to mess up, shooting messages to people who sarcastically mention how climate change is a myth. In these cases, Leck always follows up with a human apology.

Source: Technology Review

Starbucks’ race crusade goes cold

The water got too hot for Starbucks’ ill-defined race crusade.

The java giant is pulling the plug on its controversial “Race Together” campaign, according to a company memo from CEO Howard Schultz.

Baristas were no longer to write “Race Together” on customers’ cups starting Sunday, concluding the most visible part of the company’s diversity and racial equality campaign.

The unorthodox marketing move was supposed to turn the coffee corporation’s stores into impromptu forums for racial dialogues, but even Starbucks staffers seemed confused by it.

Many said they barely had enough time to fill out orders and were never briefed about the campaign before it was launched, the Daily News reported last week.

“While there has been criticism of the initiative — and I know this hasn’t been easy for any of you — let me assure you that we didn’t expect universal praise,” Schultz said Sunday.

Starbucks has no plans to stop other parts of the initiative, including forums and the hiring of 10,000 employees from diverse backgrounds to man new coffee shops in disadvantaged urban areas.

The race crusade was largely panned by employees after it was launched Monday. Schultz maintained the campaign was designed to make sure that “the promise of the American Dream should be available to every person in this country, not just a select few.”

Source: nydailynews.com