Cutting-edge OSINT on Terrorism and the Islamic Threat
THIS IS AN ARTIST'S DEPICTION OF THE MOOD
THAT IS GRIPPING THE NATION RIGHT NOW
Thought I'd share a one sentence editorial that appeared in today's Peoria Journal Star....speaks volumes:
"A pen in the hand of this president is far more dangerous than a gun in the hands of 200 million law-abiding citizens."
http://patriotoutdoornews.com/5626/obama-using-fake-twitter-messages-in-fight-over-gun-control
Posted on: February 25th, 2013
A Texas Republican on Monday said President Obama’s gun control campaign is a fraud based on fake messages over Twitter.
Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Texas) accused Obama of trying to make support for his position look stronger than it really is by flooding Twitter with messages from people who don’t exist.
“Obama’s anti-gun campaign is a fraud,” Stockman said. “Obama’s supporters are panicking and willing to do anything to create the appearance of popular support, even if it means trying to defraud Congress,” he added. “I call upon the president to denounce this phony spam campaign.”
Stockman said that in response to Obama’s call for people to tweet their congressman in support of gun control legislation, he received just 16 tweets. But he said all of these messages were identical, and that a closer look at them revealed that only six were from real people.
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Feb. 22, 2013
ARLINGTON, Va. – The Energy Department’s top safety and security official suggested on Thursday that eliminating the semiautonomous National Nuclear Security Administration might be prudent in the wake of last year’s highly publicized break-in at the Y-12 nuclear weapons facility.
Glenn Podonsky, who heads the DOE Health, Safety and Security Office, said he could not speak to any major restructuring of the nation’s nuclear weapons complex the Obama administration might pursue in the wake of the security breach in Tennessee. He also noted that a 12-member congressional panel charged with studying the issue is just beginning to form.
However, Podonsky said he believes the nuclear arms complex operated better while directly under the Energy Department’s defense programs, prior to the nuclear agency’s formation in 2000.
“When NNSA was defense programs, it really wasn’t working badly and it can be improved,” Podonsky, who has been involved with DOE oversight for 29 years, said during an address at an annual nuclear deterrence summit.
“Anything that caused the Hill to decide to create NNSA – any of those issues – I believe, would be addressed by clearly identifying what the roles and responsibilities are in each of the levels of the department.”
Congress created the agency in response to a series of security incidents, including ultimately dropped charges that Los Alamos National Laboratory scientist Wen Ho Lee had passed nuclear arms secrets to China. Various security lapses have continued to occur after its creation, capped by the July 2012 intrusion of an 82-year old nun and two other peace demonstrators into a high-security sector of Y-12 that houses weapon-grade uranium.
Podonsky noted the new congressional panel, mandated by a fiscal 2013 spending law, would likely study a variety of options for how to improve oversight of national laboratories and other components of the U.S. nuclear weapons complex. One anticipated option would be to “take the weapons complex out of the department altogether [and] make it an independent agency rather than one that operates with reduced oversight but is still ultimately answerable to the Energy secretary. Podonsky said he would oppose such a move.
“Not having the weapons complex under a Cabinet position – I think it’s underestimated what that would do,” he said.
Another possibility would be to move the weapons complex to the Defense Department, which the official said he also opposed. “From where I sit, I don’t see the Department of Defense supporting the labs the way the [Energy] Department has over the years and I don’t see the integration of the other 14 science labs being the same,” he said.
“While nobody’s asking my opinion, it’s clear to me that … having lived through it, I think where we were with defense programs at the time is the way to go,” Podonsky said, referring to the pre-NNSA era. He said “the current structure clearly has not worked so you can’t keep it as that.”
Some have argued in recent years that DOE oversight of the weapons complex is too onerous, and there have been efforts to limit the power of Podonsky’s office. Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee backed legislation last year that would have significantly limited the ability of Podonsky and other Energy Department officials to influence safety and security policy across the weapons complex. Democrats and some GOP lawmakers rallied against the move, saying the Y-12 break-in showed that, if anything, more DOE oversight was needed.
Speaking at the summit on Friday, House Armed Services Committee Republican staffer Drew Walter said the panel would likely seek legislative NNSA reforms again this year, but said they might not be “as grand in scope” as those it perused last year. According to Walter, the panel drafted last year’s controversial legislation in the interest of sparking debate on the issue.
Podonsky told Global Security Newswire he believes the Y-12 intrusion has convinced many in government of the importance of his office’s work in ensuring health, safety, environment, physical security and information security at the department. He acknowledged during his summit talk that prior to the incident he spent “most of [his] time in the last four years keeping HHS alive and functioning.”
Podonsky said Thursday that he was not in favor of federalizing the nuclear complex guard force, which is now managed by contractors. The Government Accountability Office identified more than 40 security violations at NNSA facilities between 2000 and 2007, including one in which an employee at Los Alamos National Laboratory removed more than 1,000 pages of classified documents.
“From our studies that we’ve done over the last four or five years … we found that federalizing the guard force is not going to make the prospect of security any stronger,” Podonsky said. “It still comes down to leadership, comes down to roles and responsibilities, it comes down to the community as a whole accepting the importance of security.”
Among those who have promoted such a shift is retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Donald Alston, a member of the DOE Protective Forces Advisory Panel. Alston said during a panel discussion on Wednesday that he believed weapons complex security would benefit from a more direct chain of command that does not include contractors.
“I certainly support the reality that defending the valley in Tennessee is different than the plains of Amarillo … but there ought to be sufficient central control and oversight … with traceable accountability that can ensure that methodical change is implemented,” Alston said, referring to the Y-12 site and the Pantex Plant in Texas.
Industry officials during a panel discussion on Thursday argued against major NNSA reform as a means of responding to the Y-12 incident.
“I believe it can be done within the current structure,” said Chris Gentile, president of Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies. He suggested it was more important that Congress provide the weapons complex with consistent funding than authorize wholesale reform.
System to vaporize asteroids that threaten Earth
Published 18 February 2013
As an asteroid roughly half as large as a football field — and with energy equal to a large hydrogen bomb – flew by Earth on Friday, two California scientists unveiled their proposal for a system that could eliminate a threat of this size in an hour. The same system could destroy asteroids ten times larger than the one known as 2012 DA14 in about a year, with evaporation starting at a distance as far away as the Sun.
Schematic rendering of the DE-STAR concept // Source: hinews.cn
As an asteroid roughly half as large as a football field — and with energy equal to a large hydrogen bomb – flew by Earth on Friday, two California scientists unveiled their proposal for a system that could eliminate a threat of this size in an hour. The same system could destroy asteroids ten times larger than the one known as 2012 DA14 in about a year, with evaporation starting at a distance as far away as the Sun.
A University of California, Santa Barbara release reports that UC Santa Barbara physicist and professor Philip M. Lubin, and Gary B. Hughes, a researcher and professor from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, conceived DE-STAR, or Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids an exploRation, as a realistic means of mitigating potential threats posed to the Earth by asteroids and comets.
“We have to come to grips with discussing these issues in a logical and rational way,” said Lubin, who began work on DE-STAR a year ago. “We need to be proactive rather than reactive in dealing with threats. Duck and cover is not an option. We can actually do something about it and it’s credible to do something. So let’s begin along this path. Let’s start small and work our way up. There is no need to break the bank to start.”
Described as a “directed energy orbital defense system,” DE-STAR is designed to harness some of the power of the sun and convert it into a massive phased array of laser beams that can destroy, or evaporate, asteroids posing a potential threat to Earth. It is equally capable of changing an asteroid’s orbit — deflecting it away from Earth, or into the Sun — and may also prove to be a valuable tool for assessing an asteroid’s composition, enabling lucrative, rare-element mining. It is entirely based on current essential technology.
“This system is not some far-out idea from Star Trek,” Hughes said. “All the components of this system pretty much exist today. Maybe not quite at the scale that we’d need — scaling up would be the challenge — but the basic elements are all there and ready to go. We just need to put them into a larger system to be effective, and once the system is there, it can do so many things.”
The same system has a number of other uses, including aiding in planetary exploration.
In developing the proposal, Lubin and Hughes calculated the requirements and possibilities for DE-STAR systems of several sizes, ranging from a desktop device to one measuring ten kilometers, or six miles, in diameter. Larger systems were also considered. The larger the system, the greater its capabilities.
For instance, DE-STAR 2 — at 100 meters in diameter, about the size of the International Space Station — “could start nudging comets or asteroids out of their orbits,” Hughes said. DE-STAR 4, however — at ten kilometers in diameter, about 100 times the size of the ISS — could deliver 1.4 megatons of energy per day to its target, said Lubin, obliterating an asteroid 500 meters across in one year.
The speed of interplanetary travel — far beyond what is possible with chemical propellant rockets used today — could be increased with this sized system, according to Lubin. It could also power advanced ion drive systems for deep space travel, he said. Able to engage multiple targets and missions at once, DE-STAR 4 “could simultaneously evaporate an asteroid, determine the composition of another, and propel a spacecraft.”
Larger still, DE-STAR 6 could enable interstellar travel by functioning as a massive, orbiting power source and propulsion system for spacecraft. It could propel a 10-ton spacecraft at near the speed of light, allowing interstellar exploration to become a reality without waiting for science fiction technology such as “warp drive” to come along, Lubin said.
“Our proposal assumes a combination of baseline technology — where we are today — and where we almost certainly will be in the future, without asking for any miracles,” he explained. “We’ve really tried to temper this with a realistic view of what we can do, and we approached it from that point of view. It does require very careful attention to a number of details, and it does require a will to do so, but it does not require a miracle.”
Recent and rapid developments in highly efficient conversion of electrical power to light allow such a scenario now, Lubin said, when just twenty years ago it would not have been realistic to consider.
“These are not just back-of-the-envelope numbers,” Hughes concurred. “They are actually based on detailed analysis, through solid calculations, justifying what is possible. And it’s all available under current theory and current technology.
“There are large asteroids and comets that cross the Earth’s orbit, and some very dangerous ones going to hit the Earth eventually,” he added. “Many have hit in the past and many will hit in the future. We should feel compelled to do something about the risk. Realistic solutions need to be considered, and this is definitely one of those.”
The release notes that three UCSB undergraduate students are assisting Lubin and Hughes with the DE-STAR project: Johanna Bible and Jesse Bublitz, both from the College of Creative Studies, and chemistry major Joshua Arriola.
Robert Gibbs admitted that he was told by members of Barack Obama's administration "not to admit" that a drone warfare program exists. Gibbs shocked MSNBC's panel guests by the admission that Obama was already focused on hiding the drone program from the press even before he took office in 2009.Former White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Sunday that he was told not to "acknowledge" or "discuss" the secret drone program when becoming the government's top spokesman.Chris Hayes, host of MSNBC's "Up," played a video clip of Gibbs and current press secretary Jay Carney dodging questions about drones in the White House briefing room before asking if the Obama administration has been sufficiently forthcoming about the controversial targeted killing program. Gibbs, who recently became an MSNBC contributor, recalled the instructions he was given upon taking the job."When I went through the process of becoming press secretary," Gibbs said, "one of the things, one of the first things they told me was, 'You're not even to acknowledge the drone program. You're not even to discuss that it exists.'"The national media was slow covering the secret drone war in Pakistan and Yemen during Obama's first term, which has been difficult to track given both the government's secrecy and that strikes often take place in remote areas. But the drone media debate has gained steam early in Obama's second term, alongside questions for top counter-terror official John Brennan upon his nomination to become CIA director.Gibbs said that once he figured out a reporter's question was about the drone program, "I realized I'm not supposed to talk about it.""Here's what's inherently crazy about that proposition," Gibbs said. "You're being asked a question based on reporting of a program that exists. So you're the official government spokesperson acting as if the entire program -- pay not attention to the man behind the curtain."While Gibbs referenced the "Wizard of Oz" on Sunday, a federal judge last month described the "Alice-in-Wonderland nature" of the Obama administration's secrecy over drones in a decision against The New York Times' request for legal memos outlining the rationale for targeting a U.S. citizen suspected of terrorist ties. The White House has not publicly released the legal memos, but Carney made several references to the legal rationale in a 16-page Department of Justice white paper -- but only after it was leaked to NBC News.Gibbs said he hasn't talked to Obama recently about transparency and the drone program, but said he thinks the president has seen that the White House's denial of the program "when it's obviously happening, undermines people's confidence overall in the decisions that their government makes."
Well, in 1941 it worked well to suck the public into a war they did not want to enter. At that time there was not to be any more than two war ships in the Harbor at the same time. Now, it could set up a scenario to drastically weaken the Navy. I know, Obama would NEVER do anything like that. :-(......Dale
This is absurd! Your community organizer at work!
What is wrong with this picture?
The picture is of the five nuclear carriors.
Just like Battleship Row, Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
This picture was taken the other day in Norfolk. The Obama Administration ordered 5 nuclear carriers into harbor for "routine" (?) inspections. Heads of the Navy were flabbergasted by the directive.
NORFOLK, VA. (February 8, 2013). The first time since WWII ...that five nuclear powered aircraft carriers were docked together.
USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69), USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), USS Enterprise (CVN 65), USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), and USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72) are all in port at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., the world’s largest naval station. Sources stated that this breached a long standing military protocol in the Navy meant to avoid massive enemy strike on major US forces. (U.S. Navy photo by Chief Mass Communication Specialist Ryan J. Courtade/Released)
Our 2nd amendment in action, for “We The People”!! We will not lose this assault on OUR 2nd amendment rights. This is a part of what manufactures of guns, AND ammo Companies are doing the same, to help in this fight!!!
Obama Wants To Be Next Pope
WASHINGTON, DC - Sources close to the White House have learned that Barack
Obama is planning to run for the office of Pope when the College of
Cardinals convenes to elect a successor to ailing Benedict XVI at the end of
this month.
Calling on the promise of Equality for All, Obama is said to firmly believe
that the time has come for a non-Catholic to occupy the Vatican's highest
office.
Foreseeing a looming citizenship issue, he states that he has discovered an
Italian birth certificate that proves he was born in Rome before he was born
in Kenya. "That Hawaiian birth certificate never has been worth what I paid
for it anyway," he noted.
Continuing, he concluded, "And there's no way that a handful of cardinals
could be more expensive to buy than 10 million voters in Michigan."
Further questions should be directed to Obama's Papal Campaign Manager,
Abdul Azeem Khan.
Michael Spooneybarger/Reuters
An inspection found a crack in a turbine blade in the engine of one of the planes.
The Pentagon said on Friday that it had grounded all of its stealthy new F-35 fighter jets after an inspection found a crack in a turbine blade in the engine of one of the planes.
The suspension of flights comes at an awkward time for the military, which is facing automatic budget cuts that could slow its purchases of the planes. The Pentagon grounded all three versions of the jets — for the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines — on Thursday while it investigated the problem.
Lockheed Martin, which makes the high-tech plane, said 64 of the jets would be affected. The Pentagon estimates that it could spend as much as $396 billion to buy 2,456 of the jets by the late 2030s. But the program, the most expensive in military history, has been plagued by cost overruns and delays, and it could easily become a target for budget cutters.
The Marines also had to suspend operation of their version from Jan. 18 through Feb. 13 because of a problem with a crimped hose in the fuel system.
The Pentagon office that runs the program said the crack in the turbine blade was discovered on Tuesday in a routine inspection. The crack occurred on a test plane at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The blade is being shipped to a plant in Connecticut, where the engine manufacturer, Pratt & Whitney, will inspect it and look for the problem’s cause.
Matthew C. Bates, a spokesman for Pratt & Whitney, said none of the other F-35s had suffered any cracks. The F-35 program office in the Pentagon said in a statement that it had suspended the flights as a precaution until the investigation was completed and the cause of the cracking was fully understood.
The turbine problem, first reported by Politico Pro, arose as the Pentagon has sought to persuade Congress to cancel the automatic cuts, which could force the military to reduce its budgets by about $500 billion over the next 10 years. The first installment of the cuts is scheduled to start on Friday, and it may force the Pentagon to delay buying three of the approximately 30 F-35 planes it had planned to order this year.
“We don’t know the severity of the problem with the turbine blade,” said Richard L. Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at the Teal Group in Fairfax, Va. “It could be a one-off or it could be something that needs more attention. But either way, given the political scrutiny and the concerns about the plane’s cost and performance, this is a very bad time to have a problem.”
The F-35 was conceived as the Pentagon’s silver bullet in the sky — a state-of-the art aircraft with advances that would easily overcome the defenses of most foes. The radar-evading jets would dodge sophisticated antiaircraft missiles and give pilots a better picture of enemy threats while enabling allies, who want the planes, too, to fight more closely with American forces.
But the ambitious aircraft instead illustrates how the Pentagon can let huge and complex programs veer out of control. The program has run into other technical problems and nearly doubled in cost as Lockheed and the military’s own bureaucracy failed to deliver on the most basic promise of a three-in-one jet that would save taxpayers money and be delivered speedily.
Behind the scenes, the Pentagon and Lockheed Martin had also engaged in a conflict of their own over the costs, though both sides now say that the relationship has improved and that the program is making progress. The number of test flights had picked up, and the Marines said before the grounding this week that they were about to shift from simply testing the planes to starting to fly them operationally.
The Pentagon had also reached new contracts recently with Lockheed and Pratt & Whitney that lowered the cost of each aircraft body and engine.
Mr. Bates, the Pratt & Whitney spokesman, said a similar turbine blade in an engine built for testing purposes also cracked in 2007. But he said the blade was redesigned after that, and this week’s failure did not appear to be related.
With all the delays — full production is not expected until 2019 — the military has spent billions to extend the lives of older fighters and buy more of them to fill the gap. At the same time, the cost to build each F-35 has risen to an average of $137 million from $69 million in 2001.
Winslow T. Wheeler, a former Senate staff member who is one of the plane’s biggest critics, said Friday that the program was still only about 30 percent through its testing. While the crack in the turbine blade may just be a minor flaw, he said, it is unlikely to pose a significant problem to continuing the program. “The Pentagon’s current management is hooked on the airplane and refuses to admit it is a failure,” he said.
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Many Americans would like to believe, barring an unlikely repeal of the 22nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution Barack Obama would never be able to run on a Presidential ticket again. However, given the Democrat Party’s addiction to stretching and twisting U.S. laws to steal victories when failure is imminent, Americans cannot ignore the very real possibility of a Clinton/Obama ticket in 2016.
Be advised, lack of legal clarity has always been Obama and the Democrat Party’s greatest ally in their war on American traditions. Obama is a shameless specialist in murky law and questionable executive orders designed to trample on the U.S. constitution. After having read a variety of opinions from differing schools of legal thought, I have come to a troubling conclusion that a history making 2016 Hillary/Barack Democrat ticket could be in the works. Let me attempt to explain.
The 22nd amendment to the U.S. Constitution provides for the prohibition or the disqualification, for “election” only, to a third presidential term, for anyone who has held the Office of President for 2 terms or 8 years. It does not define a candidates “eligibility” to hold that office. The 12th amendment to the Constitution defines Presidential and Vice-Presidential “eligibility.”
The U.S. Constitution’s 12th amendment bars, from both the Presidency and Vice-presidency, those persons who are “ineligible to the office” of President. Presidential eligibility requirements as defined by law are a person being a natural born citizen (I know, I know), who is over the age of 35 with 14 years of prior documented U.S. residency. Therefore, it can be argued that Obama, although prohibited or disqualified from being “elected” to the Office of President for a third term, is not disqualified from being nominated to, winning, and holding the Office Of Vice President because he meets (I know, I know) the eligibility requirements to be President.
Read More: http://lastresistance.com
Oh! You didn't know he had a military career
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WASHINGTON — An Islamist Facebook page uploaded a cartoon explaining how to stone adulterers on Wednesday that is getting a decent reaction on the Web so far, garnering over 120 "likes" and 500 Facebook shares as well as 500 comments.
The cartoon provides step-by-step instructions on how to properly execute someone guilty of adultery, according to Eric Trager, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The Facebook page it's posted on is dedicated to opposing "secularists and liberals" in Egypt, Trager said.
Updated 5:18 p.m.: Ross Neumann points out that the cartoon originates in a National Post article from 2010 which delves into a stoning incident in Iran.
Frankly, he sounds like the perfect SecDef for Obama.
Elections have consequences.
--S.
Yet another of former Senator Chuck Hagel’s (R–NE) speeches has now come back to bite him, and it could be the straw that topples his nomination for Secretary of Defense.
This time, it is a speech given on November 8, 2007, at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), on whose “Commission on Smart Power” Hagel served that year. In it, Hagel actually argued in favor of downgrading the importance of U.S. military power and cast outrageous aspersions on the Bush Administration at a time when the country was at war inIraq.
The CSIS’s “Smart Power Report” soon became a mantra of the Obama Administration after taking office in 2009, a blueprint for State Department and USAID reform. “Smart power,” however, is not particularly about being smart but about the evisceration of theU.S.military, which in fact Hagel would be presiding over if confirmed.
The most controversial quote of Hagel’s speech comes toward the end, in which Hagel makes yet another case for engagement withIran, though he offers no specifics. All he says is that it has to be “smart”—as opposed to being characterized by “the lowest common denominator” and “cowboy talk”:
None of us in public office today—the Administration, Congress, our Presidential candidates—are fulfilling the requirements of leadership at a crossroads time in history…nor are we absorbing the enormity of the time in which we are living. Neither Republican nor Democratic candidates are speaking to the great challenges of our time…in particular Iran…with depth, strategic thinking and wise words. We are captive to the lowest common denominator of “who can talk the toughest” and who is the “meanest cowboy on the block.” That kind of rhetoric…political as it may be…will only drive the world further away fromAmericaand deepen a world crisis…that we may not be able to recover from. At times, the debate is astoundingly uninformed.
Then comes the zinger, which will surely come back to haunt Hagel, an indictment of theUnited Statesas a global “schoolyard bully”:
Rather than acting like a nation riddled with the insecurities of a schoolyard bully, we ought to carry ourselves with the confidence that should come from the dignity of our heritage…from the experience of our history…and from the strength of our humanity…not from the power of our military.
Really? Our fine heritage, history, and humanity are not likely to make an impression onIran—or al-Qaeda, for that matter.
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Three Men Remembered
Every man wants to leave a legacy, something he will be remembered for.
These three certainly left their mark.
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