Puppet MastersS


Question

Whose 'boots on the ground' will protect weapons inspectors in Syria?

Boots on the ground
© Geoffrey Ingersoll via U.S. Marine Corps
When international scientific and technical personnel enter Syria to inspect, remove and destroy the regime's chemical weapons stockpiles, they will need significant security support, raising questions about whether the Obama administration will keep its pledge to have no U.S. military deployed inside Syria.

No one is publicly saying who will provide the protection needed by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) personnel entering a war zone, yet. But the wording of the agreement negotiated between the U.S. and Russia in recent days acknowledges the need for such security - and indicates that the two countries will share a responsibility in arranging it.

"The Russian Federation and the United States will work together closely, including with the OPCW, the U.N. and Syrian parties to arrange for the security of the monitoring and destruction mission, noting the primary responsibility of the Syrian government in this regard," it says.

Extinguisher

Fire breaks out on Russian nuclear submarine under repair

Russian submarine
© APRussia's Kursk submarine, of the same class as the Tomsk, which sank in 2001.
A fire has broken out on a Russian nuclear submarine undergoing repairs, but no injuries or radiation leaks have been reported.

Russian news reports said the fire on the Tomsk submarine at repair yards in the Pacific coast city of Bolshoi Kamen had been extinguished with foam on Monday.

The Tomsk, capable of firing cruise missiles, has been undergoing repairs since 2010.

Reports said all its weaponry had been removed and the reactor was shut down, although it was not clear if any nuclear material remained in the reactor.

The Tomsk is of the same class as the nuclear submarine Kursk, which sank in 2001 in the Barents Sea after an explosion, killing all 118 people on board.

Take 2

NSA director modeled war room after Star Trek's Enterprise

Star trek
© Unknown

Congressional leaders already have a lot of power, but do they secretly want to captain the USS Enterprise? In an in-depth profile of NSA Director Keith B. Alexander, Foreign Policy reveals that one of the ways the general endeared himself to lawmakers and officials was to make them feel like Jean-Luc Picard, captain of the starship Enterprise from the TV series "Star Trek: The Next Generation."
"When he was running the Army's Intelligence and Security Command, Alexander brought many of his future allies down to Fort Belvoir for a tour of his base of operations, a facility known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a 'whoosh' sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather 'captain's chair' in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.

'Everybody wanted to sit in the chair at least once to pretend he was Jean-Luc Picard,' says a retired officer in charge of VIP visits."
UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian has located photos he believes depict the Information Dominance Center on the website of an architectural firm in Virginia. More photos are located on the firm's website. (PDF)

Nuke

Endless Fukushima catastrophe: 2020 Olympics under contamination threat

Fukushima nuclear plant
© AFP Photo / TEPCO
As the escape of radiation at Fukushima seems virtually unstoppable, there are still steps that governments all over the world should take to prevent worst case consequences. One of them would be canceling the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.

Scientific estimates predict that the radioactive plume travelling east across the Pacific will likely hit the shores of Oregon, Washington State and Canada early next year. California will probably be impacted later that year. Because the ongoing flow of water from the reactor site will be virtually impossible to stop, a radioactive plume will continue to migrate across the Pacific affecting Hawaii, North America, South America and eventually Australia for many decades.

We are only talking about ocean currents, however, fish swim thousands of miles and don't necessarily follow the currents. As noted in Part I, big fish concentrate radiation most efficiently, and tuna have already been caught off the coast of California containing cesium from Fukushima. Seaweed also efficiently concentrates radioactive elements.

As I contemplate the future at Fukushima, it seems that the escape of radiation is virtually unstoppable. The levels of radiation in buildings 1, 2 and 3 are now so high that no human can enter or get close to the molten cores. It will therefore be impossible to remove these cores for hundreds of years if ever.

Pirates

Extremists and Al-Qaeda carrying rebel fight in Syria - study

Syrian rebel
© Reuters / Hamid Khatib
Almost half of the rebel forces fighting against the Syrian government are hardline Islamists or jihadists with Al-Qaeda links, according to a new study due to be published this week.

Split into around 1,000 fragmented cells, the Syrian opposition consists of at least 10,000 fighters who are jihadists with strong links to Al-Qaeda, while another 35,000 are hardline Islamists, according to analysis by defense consultancy IHS Jane's.

The difference between jihadist and hardliners, the Telegraph reports is that the latter concentrates only on the Syria, while jihadist groups have a global outreach. A further 30,000 opposition fighters belong to more moderate groups that have an Islamic character. The study, based interviews with militants and on intelligence estimates, concludes that around 100,000 rebel fighters are involved with the opposition forces.

"The insurgency is now dominated by groups which have at least an Islamist viewpoint on the conflict,"
Charles Lister, author of the analysis told the Telegraph. "The idea that it is mostly secular groups leading the opposition is just not borne out."

Al-Nusra Front and the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) are two dominant groups that have Al-Qaeda links and are gaining momentum on the ground.

"Because of the Islamist make up of such a large proportion of the opposition, the fear is that if the West doesn't play its cards right, it will end up pushing these people away from the people we are backing," Lister said. "If the West looks as though it is not interested in removing Assad, moderate Islamists are also likely to be pushed further towards extremists."

Dollar

Saudi prince owns a huge chunk of Twitter

Alwaleed bin Talal
© RichPeopleThings
Four short months ago, the Saudi religious police said "anyone using Twitter "has lost this world and his afterlife" and the wonderfully titled grand mufti, said that Twitter users were "fools".

According to the Economic Times, it has come as a surprise to many involved in the Twitter IPO that Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal happens to be a key investor in Twitter and will have a sizeable share in the coming IPO.

The Prince said that he has invested $300 million in Twitter and he will not be selling his stake at all.

He thinks that with 300 million customers, half a billion tweets a day, the growth potential of the social notworking site is tremendous.

Of course the official hatred for the site in Saudi Arabia means nothing to Alwaleed. He is against anybody who tries to control or censor Twitter or any other social media, even if it is governments.

Alwaleed said that Twitter accelerated the process of disseminating news. It has to remain an open forum for everyone.

He admits that it is a losing war. This might be a little strange given that the imam of the Grand Mosque's public TV appearance warning the Saudi people that "Twitter was a threat to national unity".

The prince is a nephew of Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah and owner of international investment firm Kingdom Holding.

Alwaleed is a closely watched figure in international markets because of successful investments through Kingdom Holding in companies such as Citigroup and Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Attention

An aspiring scientist's frustration with modern-day academia: A Resignation

Research
© Crypto Junod Info
Here is a mind-blowing text that was sent to all EPFL researchers (presumably) by a doctoral student during the week-end. It expresses feelings that are worth to think about.

Just to be crystal-clear:
  • I am not the author of this text.
  • I don't publish the name of his/her author, since I have no proof that his/her e-mail address was not spoofed.
  • I don't think that the exposed facts are a problematic unique to EPFL, nor to any other Swiss university: to the contrary, this is probably a worldwide phenomenon.
  • Finally, I would like to make very clear that I did not experience the same feelings at all during my (very happy) PhD times at EPFL. So, don't try to make any parallel with my own experience.
  • Like the author, I don't have any good idea how to change the system towards a better one.
Still, if you are or have been in the academic world, I think it is worth to invest 10 minutes to read this text.

Black Magic

'Spies taped Diana's crash and bugged her phone'

British spies would have recorded the last moments of ­Princess Diana and her boyfriend Dodi Fayed by bugging their mobile phones, it is claimed.

Image
© express.co.ukDiana using her mobile phone while in Sardinia in August 1997, the month she died
A key UK security industry source who served in the military told the Sunday Express that GCHQ remotely switched on recorder modes right up to the moment the couple took their fatal Paris car trip.

If made public, the phone recordings could help throw light on sensational claims by former SAS serviceman ­Soldier N that Diana was murdered by an SAS assassination squad.

The bugging claim came as a separate Sunday Express investigation revealed that film footage of Diana's last hours was "kept secret". An exhaustive inquiry in the French cap­ital has confirmed the existence of CCTV records of the night Diana died in August 1997.

Many belong to private companies who used France's strict privacy laws to avoid having to hand them over to the police.

Just as crucially, a key traffic camera overlooking the scene of the crash in the Alma Tunnel was said to be switched off or malfunctioning.

However, one operator contacted 16 years on said: "Images would have been available if people wanted them to be. The truth is that every excuse poss­ible was made to make sure that live film could be kept secret.

"This suited lots of powerful people, especially those who wanted to dismiss the crash as a simple traffic accident."

The operator, who asked not to be identified because he "fears for my safety", said he was convinced that all available film was "rounded up and hidden or destroyed".

Military sources have claimed Diana's driver, Henri Paul, was blinded with an intense flash of light forcing him to lose control of their Mercedes on an underpass after leaving the Ritz hotel.

Nuke

Israel has 80 nukes, can about triple inventory - report

Dimona
© ReutersView of the Israeli nuclear facility in the Negev Dest outside Dimona.
Israel has never confirmed or denied possession of nuclear weapons, but according to new report by US experts it has at least 80 operative warheads and has enough material to produce up to 190 more.

In a report published in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, nuclear weapon proliferation experts Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen assess that Israel stopped producing nuclear warheads back in 2004 once it reached around 80 munitions.

However, the country can easily double its arsenal since it has enough fissile material to build at least another 115 bombs, experts say.

"There are rumors that Israel is equipping some of its submarines with nuclear-capable cruise missiles," the report says, echoing the 2013 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute yearbook on armament and international security which also suggested Israel could have nuclear-capable submarine-launched cruise missiles and reported the same assessment of nuke stockpiles.

The suspicions were fueled by the fact that Germany supplied Israel with five Dolphin-class submarines, allegedly capable of launching nuclear missiles, and signed a contract to build a sixth.

Newspaper

'Monsanto Protection Act' quietly extended by US Congress

Image
The recently dubbed "Monsanto Protection Act" also known as the Agricultural Appropriations Bill received some revisions last Tuesday which extended the budget provision for three months in an approved US House of Representatives spending bill on Tuesday evening.

The 'Monsanto Protection Act' made a lot of noise approximately 6 months ago when we became aware of Barack Obama signing the bill into law, you can read more about that here. The bill was written by the billion-dollar corporation itself, and allows Monsanto to override United States federal courts on the issue of planting experimental genetically modified crops all across the U.S, regardless of any health concerns. They are indeed 'above the law.'

After Obama signed the H.R 933, the provision was final, therefore there could be no litigations against these corporations no matter what. There are numerous studies available to the public that clearly indicate that GMOs can potentially be hazardous to human health. You can start off by examining these ones sourced at the bottom of that page, where scientists recently discovered that Bt toxins found in Monsanto crops damage red blood cells. It is no mystery why the majority of countries around the world have banned Monsanto and GMO crops from even entering their country. For more studies like this one, please browse through our website as we have covered GMOs and Monsanto multiple times.