The US has launched a military satellite into orbit using an Atlas 5 rocket with a Russian-made engine. Following warnings that non-civilian launches may force Russia to ban delivery, the US Senate approved $100mn in funding to create a US equivalent.
Five minutes into the successful flight, the command center at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station stopped its video feed to disguise the classified payload for the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO).
Powering the 10th Atlas 5 with a cargo from the NRO, for the first four minutes of journey, was a Russian RD-180 liquid-fueled engine.
The two-thrust chamber liquid oxygen/kerosene design was created by NPO Energomash located in Khimky, Russia. US aerospace manufacturer Pratt & Whitney financed the venture to develop RD-180 for the Atlas program.
The engine is capable of producing almost one million pounds of thrust and is "throttled up and down to ease the stresses the rocket experiences throughout the launch," Space.com says.
"All across the government we thought it was an excellent idea for a variety of reasons to bring in Russian engines, not least because we wanted to understand the technology of a clearly superior engine, and learn how to build it ourselves, and one of the absolute constraints on approval of the deal that the policy-levels of government is that we would learn how to coproduce the engine," Mike Griffin, the former NASA administrator who participated in US Defense Department study on replacing the RD-180 told Space.com
Puppet Masters
© Unknown
Many experts are referring to the move as symbolic. The banking deal is very small in the scheme of things, however it is a signal of intent. Both China and Russia are looking to a future where the U.S. dollar is no longer the world reserve currency, and they aren't content to wait for that future to arrive. They are working to help it along.
Puppets on the Grand Chessboard
"Comrade Wolf knows who to eat, and he eats without listening to anyone."The Ukraine crisis has its roots in a policy that dates back nearly 20 years. The origins of the policy can be traced to a 1997 article in Foreign Policy magazine by Zbigniew Brzezinski, titled "A Geostrategy for Eurasia." The article makes the case that the United States needs to forcefully establish itself in Central Asia in order to maintain its position as the world's only superpower. While many readers may be familiar with Brzezinski's thinking on these matters, they might not know what he has to say about Russia, which is particularly illuminating given that the recent uptick in violence has less to do with Ukraine than it does with Washington's proxy-war on Russia. Here's what Brzezinski says:
- Russian President Vladimir Putin referring to the United States
Hillary Clinton leaves New York Presbyterian Hospital with husband, Bill (TOP), and daughter, Chelsea (RIGHT) on January 2, 2013. The secretary of state was under treatment for a blood clot that stemmed from a concussion she suffered in mid-December.
- Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton suffered a concussion and blood clot in December 2012, for which she was hospitalized for three days
- Karl Rove suggested last week that Hillary Clinton is hiding something about her health
- On Tuesday Bill Clinton spoke out about his wife's health and said 'there's nothing to' the Republican's claims
- Hillary's concussion 'required six months of very serious work to get over,' Bill said. 'It's something she never low-balled with the American people, never tried to pretend it didn't happen.'
- But the State Department said less
Her long recovery is 'something she never low-balled,' Bill said.
But Bill's timeline contradicts the State Department's claims just after the conclusion of Hillary's treatment in January 2013 that 'she seems to be fully recovered.'
© Unknown
So far all the sources point to the same sequence of events. Here is what I pieced together:
A Ukrainian national guard unit (according to one source, the 51st motorized brigade which had been hastily made up with middle-aged reservists) brought in from the city of Vinnitsa. For three days they were were told to man a checkpoint, but today they were given the order to attack civilians in a nearby village. The unit refused and the commander announced that he would withdraw because "there were no terrorists here, only civilians". At around 5AM a black sedan, two jeeps and several vehicles (vans and armored) of the company Privat Bank (belonging to the Jewish oligarch Kolomoiski) carrying members of the "Donbass" and "Azov" death-squads drove to the checkpoint and opened fire with everything they had. The soldiers fired back as best they could. The attack lasted 15mins, after which the attackers put on some Saint George ribbons and beat up the surviving and wounded soldiers while telling them that they were from the Donbass Resistance forces. Not a single solider believed them.
© Mohammad Hannon/AP
Pro-fascist military forces to participate in Eager Lion military exercise in Amman, Jordan, Sunday, May 27.
Pro-fascist military forces to participate in Eager Lion military exercise in Amman, Jordan, Sunday, May 27.
Accusations of the electorate voting "at the barrel of a gun" were thrown at regions where almost 90 per cent in Donetsk and 96.2 per cent in Luhansk voted in favour of self-rule, on a near 90 per cent turnout.
Many did indeed vote at the barrels of guns. The guns of the junta in Kiev which, following a successful coup overthrowing an elected government, is now backed by the US, Britain, the EU and Nato.
The army was sent east to stop people voting. Its actions resulted in several deaths.
As the barrels of guns go, they don't get much bigger than those focused on the voters of Ukraine when the new regime holds its national elections on May 25.
The US warship Vella Gulf is expected to arrive in the Black Sea "on the eve of presidential elections," with US diplomats stressing that "the United States wanted to support the actions of the new Ukrainian authorities through the presence of US warships in the Black Sea."
In "support" of the elections the Vella Gulf is "armed with Tomahawk cruise missiles and anti-submarine and anti-aircraft Standard-2 and Standard-3 missiles. The ship carries a total of 122 missiles on board. The vessel also has two multi-purpose helicopters."
Comment: What can we expect during this 'military drill'? The psychopaths in Washington have become completely unhinged and it wouldn't be surprising to see yet another attempt to overthrow the Syrian government.
Georgian sniper during South Ossetia war.
It has also ignored Ashton's response: "Well, yeah, that's really terrible". So what is the EU going to do about it? How come the EU wants to interfere in everything else in Ukraine, but give nothing more than a throwaway remark to this institutional murder committed simply to inflame the conflict further?
Sources agree
I have Jewish-Ukrainian friend who has family in Ukraine, whose father and grandmother survived a concentration camp after being turned in to the Germans by their Ukrainian neighbours for being Jewish. Somehow they escaped from a ghetto work camp in East Ukraine before it was closed and its inmates sent to death camps in Poland.
This woman has family members working in the Security Services. Two days after the first deaths in Maidan Square she told me that, according to these family members, the snipers were killing members of both sides equally. The intercepted phone call has since confirmed this information.
© Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
This week's three-two decision by the FCC to consider proposed rules regarding net neutrality isn't the final nail in the coffin of the open internet. Rather, the five-person panel agreed Thursday morning to open up for comments a proposal drafted by Chairman Thomas Wheeler that would set rules in place meant to address a federal appeals court's decision earlier this year that paved the way for the possibility of paid prioritization with regards to how Internet Service Providers, or ISPs, deliver web content to customers.
As the panel weighs Wheeler's plan, the public now has 120 days to offer their own critique before another vote is held. In the meantime, though, Pres. Obama is likely to draw fire from critics on his own in light of previous statements he made pledging to preserve and protect the open internet.
© Str/AFP/Getty Images
Firefighters and rescuers extinguish a fire following a bomb blast in central Jos, Nigeria.
Firefighters and rescuers extinguish a fire following a bomb blast in central Jos, Nigeria.
The western powers might have had to twist the meaning of the UN resolution about protecting civilians, the city of Sirte might have been reduced to rubble, large-scale ethnic cleansing taken place and thousands of civilians killed. But it was all in a noble cause and achieved without Nato casualties.
This wasn't Bush and Blair, after all, but Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy. The people were free, the dictator was dead, a mooted massacre had been averted - and all this without any obvious boots on the ground. Even last year the prime minister was still claiming it had all been worthwhile, promising to stand with Libyans "every step of the way".
But three years after Nato declared victory, Libya is lurching once again towards civil war. Over the past few days, the CIA-linked General Hiftar launched his second coup attempt in three months, supposedly to save the country from "terrorists" and Islamists. On Sunday, his forces stormed the national parliament in Tripoli, after 80 people were killed in fighting in Benghazi two days earlier.
Now Libya's chief of staff has called on Islamist militias to defend the government in advance of new elections. Since the country is overrun with militias far more powerful than its official forces, riven with multiple divisions and prey to constant external interference, the chances of avoiding full-blown conflict are shrinking fast.
Comment: If Hiftar was concerned about terrorists he'd be right to look at NATO as the source. But of course he is just an instrument of the same.
Also see: The Truthseeker: NATO false flags in Ukraine
Marcellus Shale contains enough natural gas to supply all US gas needs for 14 years. But as gas drilling takes place, using a process called hydraulic fracturing or "fracking," toxic chemicals and methane gas seep into drinking water. Now experts fear that unacceptable levels of radioactive Radium 226 in gas development waste.
Fracking chemicals are linked to bone, liver and breast cancers, gastrointestinal, circulatory, respiratory, developmental as well as brain and nervous system disorders. Such chemicals are present in frack waste and may find their way into drinking water and air.
Comment: It's not so much Washington's plan to conquer the world as it is that Washington already believes itself to have already conquered the world, and someone is standing up to say, 'No, the facts on the ground state otherwise.'
This, from the horse's mouth, neatly sums up America's official position on the EU: In other words, it's our colony on the 'World-Island' landmass!
As for this being a 20-year-long conflict, arguably it's part of a pattern that is HUNDREDS of years old! Before Brzezinski there was Halford Mackinder and before the U.S. obsession with making Russia out to be evil there was Britain's obsession with making Russia out to be evil.