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Testing of U.S. missile defense program costing $40B fails miserably, so Pentagon lies about its success


Sputnik
Thu, 07 Jul 2016 03:07 UTC
US missile defense test
After spending billions of dollars, the US government is having trouble getting its state-of-the-art homeland missile defense system to function according to plan, and it's driven the Pentagon to lie about the program's success rate.

On January 28, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency conducted the first test flight of new so-called divert thrusters, to be used on anti-missile interceptors. A military statement deemed this a "successful test flight," claiming the thrusters allowed the interceptors to stop a mock warhead.

"On this flight, we validated key design improvements in the divert and attitude control system, demonstrating improved performance, reliability and productibility," said Michael Bright of Aerojet Rocketdyne, maker of the thrusters, in a statement.

"The overall goal of the Missile Defense Agency is to make a more capable and reliable system, and this successful test demonstrated significant progress toward reaching that goal."

According to the Los Angeles Times, however, these claims were falsified. During the test, one of the thrusters failed. This caused the interceptor to lose control and the mock missile to slip through the defense shield.

Comment: Despite the enormous sums spent on the US war machine, the military apparatus is unraveling. Defense contractors are the only winners in this corrupt system.

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Mr. Potato

Village idiot Kerry says U.S. will remain 'firm' on nonsensical anti-Russian sanctions


RFE/RL
Thu, 07 Jul 2016 18:18 UTC
poroshenko kerry
© TASS
And not a brain between the two of them!
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has reassured Ukraine that sanctions against Russia will remain in place unless Moscow fulfills its obligations under the Minsk agreement reached last year, and announced additional humanitarian aid for Kyiv.

Kerry spoke at a joint news conference in Kyiv with Petro Poroshenko on July 7, a day before NATO leaders meet in Warsaw for a crucial summit to which the Ukrainian president has also been invited.

Kerry and Poroshenko discussed progress toward implantation of the Minsk deal, which is aimed to end the conflict between government forces and Russia-backed separatists that has killed more than 9,300 people in eastern Ukraine since April 2014. It began shortly after Russia seized the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.

Poroshenko stressed Ukraine's demands for security.

"There cannot be effective progress without comprehensive and sustainable security," he said. "We insist on decisive implementation."

U.S. officials say Ukraine has completed most of its obligations under the Minsk agreement that relate to providing the east -- where the separatists hold parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, also known as the Donbas -- with greater autonomy.


Comment: Which is a complete and utter lie. Kiev has not fulfilled ANY of their obligations! Have these idiots even read the document they signed?! Or are they just fully confident in the abject ignorance and lack of interest on the part of their citizens? Probably the latter.

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Attention

Canadians and Germans illegally invade Syria - no one cares


Sputnik
Thu, 07 Jul 2016 18:14 UTC
german troops
© AFP 2016/ KAY NIETFELD GERMANY OUT
An unknown number of German and Canadian troops have recently arrived in the northern Syrian town of Tell Abyad in the northern Raqqa province, sources told Sputnik on Thursday.

The military service personnel were deployed to the area in the past few days as part of the US-led international operation to defeat Daesh terrorist group.

Comment: More brazen defiance of international law. These nations are criminal, plain and simple. Is the world so dumbed down and complacent that no one cares? It sure looks like it!

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Bandaid

More of the same: Russia, US agree on 'closer military cooperation' in Syria


RT
Wed, 06 Jul 2016 18:06 UTC
obama putin
© Kevin Lamarque / Reuters
The Kremlin says that both Russia and the US are ready to better coordinate efforts to eliminate radical Islamists in Syria, following a telephone conversation initiated by the Russian leader.

"Both sides have confirmed their readiness to increase military cooperation between Russia and the US in Syria," said a statement from the Kremlin released on Wednesday evening. "It is also important to resurrect the UN-mediated peace talks to arrive at a political solution of the crisis."

According to media reports last week, US officials have put forward a proposal that would see Russian and US air forces conduct joint strikes against Al-Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda branch in Syria. So far, Russia has not commented on the reported initiative, which has supposedly been endorsed by both the Department of State and the Pentagon.


Comment: What's the problem, really? Either the U.S. identifies which specific groups it thinks are moderate and where they are, or they do not. The fact that they continue to refuse to do so speaks volumes. And until they start doing so, they should not be taken seriously by anyone. Which means the U.S. will never be taken seriously: there are no moderates, and any positive identification of these groups would prove it.


Comment: On the U.S. proposal, which the Russians won't comment on:
  • New U.S. offer to 'cooperate' with Russia in Syria: Deception and obfuscation
And on the background to the talk about Ukraine
  • Putin calls Obama & cancels regional visits amidst signs of full-fledged war in Donbass

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Bomb

Propaganda: German newspaper says Iran is "trying by all means" to build nuclear weapons


Sputnik
Thu, 07 Jul 2016 17:19 UTC
iran
© AP Photo/ ISNA, Hamid Foroutan, File
German newspaper Tagesspiegel has recently accused Iran of attempting to built a nuclear bomb, referring to the Federal Office for the Protection of the German Constitution that allegedly has "incontrovertible evidence that Iran is trying by all means to get the materials needed to build nuclear warheads and launchers."

In an interview with Sputnik, Hassan Beheshtipour, expert in the field of nuclear energy and Press TV's political observer, commented on the issue, saying that the statements made by the newspaper have nothing to do with reality.

"First I want to draw the attention of the listeners to the fact that such false statements have been made by a German media source not for the first time. The explanation is simple. Such publications comply with the spirit of the information policy of the German press, which is pro-Israel. These groundless and false statements are based on some indirect prepositions, but not the facts," the expert said.

Comment: If anything, the recent Chilcot report on the UK's involvement in the invasion and destruction of Iraq should remind us of something: Western media, intelligence agencies, and governments lie. If some other nation annoys them in any way, they will not hesitate to simply fabricate claims that said nation either has WMDs or plans to build them. As meme-land says, "pics or it didn't happen". In other words, don't believe anything coming from these warmongers without explicit, verified, public evidence. It's really that simple.

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Propaganda

US defense industry: Putin is responsible for Brexit

Brian MacDonald
RT
Wed, 06 Jul 2016 16:27 UTC
Putin's ear
© www.cbc.ca
"Am I hearing this right?"
It's time to ask a serious question here. Do NATO and US defense industry lobbyists seriously believe the Kremlin "weaponized" over 17 million British voters to leave the European Union?

Presuming the answer is no, which is surely the only logical reply here, it exposes the decrepitude of contemporary US foreign policy thinking, as demonstrated by the latest round of post UK referendum op-eds in the most influential American media outlets. It also exposes how beholden the Washington international 'expert' community it is to the defense contractors who usually fund them these days. Because trying to pin 'Brexit' on Vladimir Putin's nefarious meddling is completely off-the-wall.


Especially when the average British voter, primarily exposed to Britain's corporate press and state-run BBC, is fed a constant diet of negative messaging about Russia. According to research, the typical Brexit 'leaver' is a Sun or Daily Mail reader and both newspapers are notoriously anti-Russian.

Comment: If Russia had anything to do with Brexit becoming a reality, then 55+M Brits are more ineffectual than we think! Propaganda is about obfuscation and re-contouring information and events to askew belief systems and affect subsequent actions in order to achieve a specific outcome. Propaganda, the mechanism to make a lie a reality.

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Mail

The future of GMO regulation: The troubling trend of financial conflicts at the National Academy Advisory Panel

Jonathan Latham
Truthout
Sun, 03 Jul 2016 15:10 UTC
GMO lovers
© Maxwell MacKenzie / National Academy of Science
National Academy of Sciences building, located in Washington, DC.
The National Academy of Sciences needs to urgently address its one-sided work on GMOs, say public-interest groups, farmer organizations, and academics. In a letter sent to the Academy's president this week, dozens of stakeholders drew attention to what they called a "troubling trend" at the prestigious scientific institution and its work on agricultural biotechnology.

The letter cites a lack of balance, perspective and independence among experts chosen to carry out a taxpayer-funded National Academy study. These experts will advise the federal government on how to overhaul regulations concerning GMOs - including novel biotechnology products developed using synthetic biology and other techniques, such as DNA "editing". The new study is being conducted by the National Research Council's (NRC) Committee on Future Biotechnology Products and Opportunities to Enhance Capabilities of the Biotechnology Regulatory System.

Comment: The big GMO lie dies on the vine

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Chess

Putin calls Obama & cancels regional visits amidst signs of full-fledged war in Donbass

Eduard Popov; Translated by J. Arnoldski
Fort Russ
Thu, 07 Jul 2016 13:30 UTC
putin obama
© AP
On July 6th, two alarming events took place which leave one worrying about the fate of Donbass.

The first event was a meeting held between the State Secretary and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, Grigory Kasarin, and the German ambassador Rüdiger von Fritsch and French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert in which Russia's concern over Ukraine's actions was expressed. The official report of the Foreign Ministry published after the meeting noted the activation of Ukrainian armed forces and so-called volunteer battalions in Donbass. Such military activity was also recorded by observers from the OSCE mission. The conclusion drawn by Russian diplomats: "We are faced with the symptoms of a military operation being prepared by the Ukrainian military."

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we should recall, is a very conservative agency which does not draw hasty conclusions. The concentration of manpower and equipment in the ATO zone and numerous bombardments of the republics' cities by the UAF (several hundred artillery rounds every day) have long since been recorded by observers of the DPR and LPR. But only now has the foreign policy department of Russia stated that the situation could escalate to a qualitatively different state. In other words, Ukraine could transition from the tactic of provocations and destroying infrastructure and the civilian population to a fully-fledged military aggression. Karasin's statement and the official foreign ministry report are a very worrying sign.

Comment: Signs of further escalation in Donbass are worrying indeed. As Putin said while lecturing idiotic Western journalists, the world is being pulled in an 'irreversible direction':
We know year by year what's going to happen, and they know that we know. It's only you that they tell tall tales to, and you buy it, and spread it to the citizens of your countries. You people in turn do not feel a sense of the impending danger - this is what worries me. How do you not understand that the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? While they pretend that nothing is going on. I don't know how to get through to you anymore.
Further reading: Ukraine's neo-Nazi parliament speaker Parubiy admits Ukraine won't follow Minsk agreements, exposes absurdity of sanctions policy

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Quenelle

Jeremy Corbyn responds to Chilcot: "The Iraq war was an act of military aggression launched on a false pretext"

Jeremy Corbyn
Counterpunch
Wed, 06 Jul 2016 00:00 UTC
Corbyn on Chilcot

Jeremy Corbyn speaks to the House of Commons on the Chilcot report and the decision to go to war in the future.

[The following is a transcript of Jeremy Corbyn's remarks today in the House of Commons.]

Before addressing the issues raised in the Iraq Inquiry report, I would like to remember and honour the 179 British servicemen and women killed and the thousands maimed and injured during the Iraq war, and their families as well as the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who have died as a result of the invasion and occupation of Iraq launched by the US and British governments 13 years ago.

Yesterday I had a private meeting with some of the families of the British dead as I have continued to do over the past dozen years.

It is always a humbling experience to witness the resolve and resilience of these families and their unwavering commitment to seek truth and justice for those that they lost in Iraq.

They have waited seven years for Sir John Chilcot's report.

It was right that the inquiry heard evidence from such a wide range of people and that the origins, conduct and aftermath of the war should have been examined in such detail.

But the extraordinary length of time it has taken to see the light of day is clearly a matter for regret.

Comment: Bravo Mr. Corbyn for standing strong in the face of political coups set against you and for standing up to the entire war establishment of Britain and the U.S.

Further reading:

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Handcuffs

"James Comey had no problem keeping me in prison without any charges" - Martin Armstrong

Martin Armstrong
Armstrong Economics
Tue, 05 Jul 2016 20:38 UTC
Martin Armstrong jail contempt
© Rick Maiman/Bloomberg News
Martin A. Armstrong, pictured in jail in February 2000, served more jail time for civil contempt than he would have if he had been sentenced for fraud.
To indict someone, the criteria is supposed to be "intent." Comey has used that to pretend there is no evidence that Hillary "intentionally" erased anything. Comey also stated that Hillary's lawyers erased her emails using a keyword search program and they did not "read" the emails. He added that he would not recommend charges against Hillary or her aides.
"Although we did not find clear evidence that Secretary Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws governing the handling of classified information, there is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information," Comey declared.
It was Comey who indicted Frank Quattrone for claiming he instructed his people to erase emails in his technology-industry banking group at Credit Suisse Group's Credit Suisse First Boston, based upon a single email that read "clean up those files" in December 2000. That was more than enough for his "intent" requirement to obstruct justice. This further illustrates the double standard of justice for them vs. us.

Comey has said that he could not find anyone else who had been prosecuted for such a thing, but then added after clearing Hillary that this is not to say everyone in the government can do this or that they would not prosecute someone else for the same thing. Comey said,"[O]ur judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case."

Comey presented a scathing rebuke of Hillary's conduct that anyone else would have certainly been indicted for. For Obama to have announced in advance he would campaign for Hillary, it was clear that this was a cover-up and he knew the results before today. For Comey to say, "Although we did not find clear evidence [of any intentional misconduct] there is evidence that they were extremely careless of very sensitive, highly classified information." It is the jury's role to determine if there is any evidence and the case should have been presented for a Grand Jury to decide if she should have been indicted. That, of course, is off limits as well.

Comment: Mr. Armstrong has a chequered history in the financial world. However his points of comparison between how his and Mr. Quattrone's cases have been handled and the kid-glove approach to Killary is telling.

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