Friday, June 7, 2013
Deal gives Saudi Arabia ‘unrestricted’ access to U.S. airspace
I don't remember..... how many terrorist of the 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia?
Saudi Arabia’s struggles with terrorism are well known, but that hasn’t stopped the United States from signing an “Open Skies” agreement with the nation.
Soon, the Saudis will have “unrestricted” access to U.S. airspace, according to the U.S. State Department website:
“The United States-Saudi Arabia Open Skies agreement will, following a transition period, permit unrestricted air service by the airlines of both countries between and beyond the other’s territory, eliminating restrictions on how often the carriers fly, the kind of aircraft they use and the prices they charge. This agreement will allow for the strengthening and expansion of our strong trade and tourism links with Saudi Arabia, benefitting U.S. and Saudi Arabian businesses and travelers by expanding opportunities for air services and encouraging vigorous price competition by airlines, while preserving our commitments to aviation safety and security. …”
CNS News notes that “the agreement means Saudi airlines may fly from any point in the kingdom to any point in the United States, and that U.S. airlines may fly from any point here to any airport in Saudi Arabia.”
U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia James B. Smith and Dr. Faisal bin Hamad Al-Sugair, Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Director of the General Authority of Civil Aviation, signed the deal on May 28.
The agreement, which the U.S. has with approximately 100 other nations, is expected to be fully implemented in three years, according to CNS.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jun/5/deal-gives-saudi-arabia-unrestricted-access-us-air/?utm_source=RSS_Feed&utm_medium=RSS#ixzz2VXdpDPGj
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June 5, 2013 marks the 46thanniversary of the Six-Day War
June 5, 2013 marks the 46thanniversary of the Six-Day War. On the morning of June 5, 1967 at 7:45 a.m., Israeli Mirage III, Super Mystère and Vautour fighter-bombers swooped over the Mediterranean toward airbases in Egypt and in less than three hours, destroyed the bulk of the Egyptian air force. A similar fate awaited the air forces of Jordan, Syria and Iraq.
In six glorious and decisive days, the Israel Defense Forces bested the might of the combined Arab nation and sent them scurrying with their tails between their legs. So overwhelming was Israel’s victory that the Arabs, shamed by their own ineptitude and cowardice, attempted to concoct a story claiming that Israel was assisted by U.S. and British offshore aircraft carriers. Israeli intelligence intercepted communications between Egypt’s Nasser and Jordan’s King Hussein whereby the two, almost comically, tried to coordinate their storylines. Naturally, once the Israelis published the scheming exchanges, the full thrust of Arab mendacity came to fore.
The Six-Day War was actually a continuation of the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. Israel decidedly won that war as well where the odds against her – 50 million versus 650,000 – were even more staggering than in 1967. Despite theiroverwhelming superiority in tanks, aircraft and artillery, the Arabs could not “save Palestine,” a phrase commonly employed by Arabs when talking to Western audiences in an effort to couch genocide (against Jews) in more palatable terms.
Yet the Arabs, inspired by a hateful and deviant strain of Islam could not accept the infidel – Jews no less – in their midst. And so despite agreeing to an armistice with the Jewish State, the Arabs kept the proverbial pot simmering, adjusting the flames of hate higher or lower depending on their respective domestic situations. For the Arab governments of Egypt, Syria, Iraq and the rest of the sorry lot, the fictitious and self-perpetuating Palestinian “refugee crisis” proved useful in deflecting attention away from their own corruption and venality. As for the Palestinians, their intransigence surpassed all and their maximalist attitude is best summed up by PLO chief Ahmed Shukairy’s pre-Six-Day War boast, “We shall destroy Israel and its inhabitants and as for the survivors – if there are any – the boats are ready to deport them.”
There is nothing that unites the Arab world more than Jew-baiting. The Arab world with all of its internecine strife and political back-stabbing periodically takes a breather to focus their spent energies on the hated “Zionist entity” AKA, the Jews. This was the case in 1967. Yemen was in the midst of a vicious civil war with Egypt sending troops and military aid to one reactionary side while the Saudis, for some reason or another, supported the side that Egypt wasn’t supporting. The Syrian Baathists were busy trying to overthrow the Hashemites of Jordan, while the Iraqis were engaged in their own brand of usual mischief making.
But suddenly, the Arab world turned its head toward Israel and realized that while the Nasserites, the Baathists, the Hashemites, the Royalists, the revolutionaries and counter-revolutionaries were killing each other off, the Israelis were busying themselves with building, creating and inventing. And so, on May 15, 1967 the Arabs, led by Egypt shifted gears to focus on those pesky Jews who had the temerity to create a thriving country in their ancestral land.
Most who are acquainted with military history are familiar with the provocative actions taken by the Arab nations in the three weeks leading up to the war – the massive Arab military deployments, the closure of an international waterway to Israeli shipping, Egypt’s expulsion of UN peacekeeping buffer troops from Sinai and the blood-curdling rhetoric that accompanied each successive Arab act of belligerency. The Arabs were hell-bent on going to war and finishing off what Hitler couldn’t and no act of diplomacy, capitulation or appeasement would have reversed their convoluted trajectory.
On June 5, 1967 Israel showed the world how a determined nation with just 2.5 million people could defeat in convincing fashion an aggressor forty-four times its size. For the Arabs, the Six-Day War is a sensitive issue, so sensitive in fact that they refuse to refer to it by that name, preferring instead to call it the June War, as if somehow that obfuscates the fact that they were defeated in a mere six days. However, for the civilized world, the Six-Day War will be remembered as a war where the few overcame the many and where civilization triumphed over those who still live in medieval backwardness.
FrontPage Magazine
Privacy of World Citizens Wiped Out by USA
As of yesterday you are a Citizen of the World with no Privacy—no matter in which country you are located.
The ribbon-cutting ceremony invite, sent to a select group of Utah politicians and dignitaries for the massive Utah Data Centre in Bluffdale, Utah, was as mysterious as the facility itself. Canada Free Press (CFP) could find no pictures, no accounts of the event anywhere onthe Internet today even though an earlier media release said reporterswould be there.
The bigger-than-the-CIA National Security Agency (NSA) had previously stated that the facility would start operations in September, 2013.
Why should this event mean anything to you and yours?
“While the NSA has offered no specifics about the Utah Data Center’s operations, a 2012 Wired magazine article, citing former intelligence and NSA officials, said computers at the data center will collect electronic information—from emails to cellphone records to purchasing receipts—from all over the world—, store it and look for threatening patterns.” (emphasis CFP’s).
With the privacy of every man, woman and child on earth now ‘deleted’, as far as is known not one country has moved to litigate against NSA and the largest spy center known to mankind.
The $2-billion, 1.5-million-square-ft. facility on the outskirts of Salt Lake City in Bluffdale will store 1 trillion terabytes of information, a sort of computer that swallowed the world.
Building started back in 2009 when the Obama administration approached MIDA (Military Installation Development Authority) to help build utilities for the Utah Data Center. MIDA created a project area and had the land annexed into Bluffdale. The NSA paid MIDA for all utility construction. (Salt Lake Tribune).
“The data center is alleged to be able to capture“all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls and Internet searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter”. (Wikipedia).
In other words, all things electronic gifted to mankind by the genius of Nicola Tesla.
“According to the FISA amendments Act of 2008, the federal government is legally prohibited from collecting, storing, analyzing, or disseminating the content of the communications of U.S. persons, whether inside or outside of the United States, unless authorized by an individual warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.”
But what came in with the tide in 2009 wiped out all forms of protecting citizens from government agencies that would abuse their privacy when all things Constitutional were set adrift on the outgoing tide.
The excuse of collecting information, storing it and looking for threatening patternsis a joke with the current administration operating under the bold-faced lie that al Qaeda is no longer a threat because President Barack Obama put them on the run, and that the Dept. of Homeland Security identifies returning vets, Tea Party members, and Christians as terrorists, rather than jihadists who now move freely from state to state and country to country.
Crypto Cracking
In addition to collecting the world’s information every day by satellites, by tapping into undersea cables, by picking up microwave links and tapping of cell phones and data links on your computer, email links, and so forth (James Bamford, Wired magazine), the sole purpose of the Utah Data Center is for code breaking.
For the digital hip, it’s called ‘crypto-cracking’.
And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handleincludes financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications. (Wired magazine, March 15, 2012).
Think of the function of the Center how Bamford describes it as acting, “in essence, like a cloud, a digital cloud, so that agency employees, analysts from around the country at NSA headquarters and their listening posts in different parts of the U.S.—in Georgia, Texas, Hawaii and Colorado—can all access that information held in Bluffdale in that data center. And that’s pretty much a summary of what that data center is all about.”
“The NSA is much different from the CIA. First of all, it’s about three times the size. It costs far more. It’s tremendously more secret than the CIA. And what it does is very different. It’s focused on eavesdropping, on tapping into major communications links, on listening to what people around the world and, to some degree, in the United States say on telephones, email, communications . . . And NSA is really the most powerful intelligence agency, not only in the U.S., but in the world today.”
Bill Binney, a senior official interviewed by Bamford, had been with NSA for 40 years almost, and he left, saying that what they’re doing is unconstitutional.”
Think of it as your worst nightmare come to daylight.
Meanwhile, in addition to the USA coaxing along wars in powder-keg nations under the guise of Arab Spring, the USA has just become the biggest spy country in the entire world.
Canada Free Press
The US missile defense system is no match for the new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that Russia tested
MOSCOW, June 7 (RIA Novosti) – The US missile defense system is no match for the new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that Russia tested this week, a senior Russian official said Friday.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin, who oversees the defense industry, hailed Thursday’s tests as a success and dubbed the new ICBM a “missile defense killer.”
“Neither current nor future American missile defense systems will be able to prevent that missile from hitting a target dead on,” he said, during an event organized by the ruling United Russia party.
The Russian Defense Ministry was more modest in its appraisal of the test, carried out by the Strategic Missile Forces at the Kapustin Yar testing site, between Volgograd and Astrakhan, on Thursday.
“The test launch was a success as the [simulated] warhead hit a designated target within the set time frame,” said a Defense Ministry statement issued Thursday.
The US missile defense system in Europe, which NATO and the US say is aimed at countering threats from North Korea and Iran, has been a particular source of friction in US-Russian relations for a number of years.
Russia and NATO formally agreed to cooperate over the European missile defense system at the 2010 NATO summit in Lisbon, but talks foundered, in part over Russian demands for legal guarantees that the system would not target its strategic nuclear deterrent.
In mid-March, the US announced that it was modifying its planned missile defense deployment to Poland, dropping plans to station SM-3 IIB interceptors in the country by 2022.
Russian officials responded by saying that this did nothing to allay their concerns over US missile defense in Eastern Europe, and reiterated their demand for legally binding agreements guaranteeing that Russia’s strategic nuclear forces would not be targeted.
Although analysts were quick to interpret the US change in plan as a concession to Russia, possibly intended to pave the way for further bilateral talks on nuclear arms reduction, US officials repeatedly refuted this suggestion.
Speaking after a bilateral meeting with the Polish foreign minister on Monday, US Secretary of State John Kerry stressed the United States’ continued commitment to that element of the missile defense system.
“We are on track to deploy a missile defense site in Poland by 2018 as part of NATO’s modernized approach to our security,” Kerry said.
RIA Novosti
What will happen in Turkey?
The tempestuous protests that broke out in Turkey this past week did not appear out of thin air. They are not the expression of a small group of angry citizens who are temporarily upset by a government decision. Rather, they are the sign of an evolving process that has been gaining momentum on the streets of Turkey since Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came into power in 2002.
The turmoil at Taksim Square is not a protest against building a mall where one of Turkey’s last public parks stands. The Turkish people would not be pouring out by the thousands around the country just to protest Erdogan’s decision to build a mall. These violent protests are the result of the Turkish people’s anger, which has been building up over the past decade due to religious radicalization. And the Turkish people are concerned that if this radicalization continues, the country will turn into a Muslim dictatorship.
After 600 years of Ottoman rule, the Republic of Turkey came into being in 1923, with Mustafa Kemal Ataturk as its first president.
Since its onset, there has been a great deal of tension between the secular and Islamist attributes of the nation. Throughout the years, the Supreme Court and the military, which have aimed to defend Turkey’s secularist nature, have made great efforts to reign in the Islamist political parties.
The Turkish Constitution is based on the principle of secularism, and forbids attempts to alter its secular nature. One of the main clauses prohibits the abuse of religion or religious belief to achieve political goals.
In 1998, the Islamist Welfare Party was banned for violating the principle of secularism in the constitution.
The party was indeed disbanded, but was reconfigured as the AKP Party, which was victorious in the 2002 election under Erdogan’s leadership. The rise to power of the Islamists came as a backlash to the oppressive secular regime, as well as to weaken the strength of the secular military.
The AKP was considered a moderate party that would promote the welfare and freedom of citizens.
The military, which throughout Turkey’s history had viewed itself as a protector of secularism, led three short-lived coups, the last of which took place in 1997, when Turkey’s first Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan was pressured to step down.
Subsequently, the military become the tyrannical ruler of the state.
In 2007, another event occurred that sparked unrest and caused tension among the people: the presidential election. Because the ruling party had a vast majority in the Grand National Assembly, it seemed likely that an Islamist candidate would be elected. Erdogan expressed his desire to run for office; however, the people expressed grave concern that as president, he would try to change the secular nature of Turkey. Hundreds of thousands of citizens took to the streets in protest of Erdogan’s intention to become president.
These protests achieved their goal and in the end Erdogan decided not to run for president. Instead, the AKP appointed Abdullah Gül as its candidate. At this point, the opposition appealed to the court, demanding that it annul the vote. As a warning, the military publicized examples of government acts that had been carried out with the intent of turning Turkey into an Islamist dictatorship. Military commanders even hinted at the possibility that the military would intervene and overthrow the government if a candidate from the AKP were elected president.
Since then, a lot of water has flowed through the Bosphorus Strait, and the AKP, under the leadership of Erdogan, has succeeded in carrying out changes in the constitution and in the structure of the government, resulting in the dramatic weakening of the secular military. Granted, Erdogan acted wisely and did not approve bills that were blatantly pro-Islamic.
However, the Turkish people began noticing the numerous small changes in the religious nature of the country.
The police and the defense establishment were given greater authority, numerous arrests were made, journalists and public officials who expressed their opposition to the government lost their jobs and women were granted the right to wear veils in public. At the same time, the government began strengthening its ties with extremist Muslim regimes in the region, and making provocative proclamations against Israel and the West. The Mavi Marmara flotilla, which was organized by Turkey, was the result of the increased radicalization of the Islamic regime.
Recently, Erdogan even hinted about the possibility that he would shut down Facebook and YouTube, as every self-respecting dictatorship has done.
These incidents have not gone unnoticed by the public, for whom secularism has been a guiding light. Turkish citizens, who were not willing to forgo these democratic principles, have been waiting for the spark that would light their torch. This happened to come in the form of a unilateral decision taken by Erdogan to build a shopping center.
The calls on the streets of Istanbul and Ankara for a cessation to the Islamization of Turkey have not been in vain. The citizens of Turkey are not willing to sit by quietly while Erdogan and the AKP’s religious extremism take over their country. But it is not at all certain that the people’s struggle will succeed. Without a strong military and a court system willing to back it up, the social protest will have great difficulty getting off the ground. If Erdogan and the AKP succeed in calming the situation, they will gain the critical time necessary to get organized.
The seeds of evil have already been sown. The question now is what form will the internal struggle in Turkey take?
Jerusalem Post
Hungary Danube set for record high
Hungarians have been warned to prepare for their country's worst floods ever as the Danube is set to reach record levels this weekend.
"We are facing the worst floods of all time," said PM Viktor Orban.
Europe's second longest river is set to hit unprecedented levels in the capital Budapest in the next few days.
A state of emergency has been declared, and thousands of volunteers worked overnight to reinforce the banks of the swelling river.
Water levels are set to reach reach 8.85m (29ft), some 25cm (10in) higher than the Danube's previous record high in 2006.
Emergency workers have set up camps along the river as residents packed sandbags around their homes amid an atmosphere of concerned expectation, says the BBC's Nick Thorpe in Budapest.
Kristalina Georgieva, the EU Commissioner for International Cooperation, Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Response, tweeted: "Hungary well prepared for highest ever measured water levels on Danube. We are monitoring & ready to assist."Mass evacuations
Mr Orban, who spent the night at a military barracks in the flooded western city of Gyor, said recent dry weather in Austria and Germany, as well as a hot forecast for Hungary over the weekend, gave reason to hope that Europe's worst river floods for more than a decade could soon be over.
The Danube peaked on Thursday in the Slovak capital Bratislava, where the main flood defences held firm.
In northern Germany, workers piled sandbags along the banks of the River Elbe as waters rose, after widespread flooding further south.
As flood waters receded to the south and east, defence work continued apace near Lueneburg in Lower Saxony.
Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from at-risk areas in Germany, where the flooding is worse than that recorded in 2002.
On Thursday the Elbe flooded parts of Dresden as it peaked nearly 7m (22 feet) above its normal level, but the city's historic centre remained unscathed.
Upstream along the Elbe in the Czech Republic, emergency workers used boats to shuttle supplies to stranded people as large areas remained under water.
Widespread flooding in central Europe has inundated swathes of Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic, killing at least 15 people.
BBC
Russia Tests New Ballistic Missile
MOSCOW, June 7 (RIA Novosti) – The Russian Strategic Missile Forces have tested a prototype of a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the Defense Ministry said.
The test launch was carried out at 09.45 pm Moscow time (17:45 GMT) on Thursday from the Kapustin Yar testing site in the Astrakhan region. The missile was fired from a mobile launcher, the ministry said in a statement.
“The test launch was a success as the [simulated] warhead hit a designated target within the set time frame,” the statement said.
“This test launch was intended to confirm technical characteristics of the missile, as well as to check the safety of the launch procedures and equipment,” the document said.
Russia announced the development of a new solid-fuel ICBM, which will eventually replace the existing Topol-M and Yars missiles, in 2012.
At least three test launches have been carried out previously in line with the testing program, and the new missile could be put into service by the end of this year, the SMF earlier said.
According to open sources, the SMF currently operates at least 58 silo-based SS-18 Satan ballistic missiles, 160 road-mobile Topol (SS-25 Sickle) missile systems, 50 silo-based and 18 road-mobile Topol-M (SS-27 Sickle B) systems, and 18 RS-24 Yars systems.
Two missile divisions have been fully rearmed with Topol-M and Yars systems, while the rearmament of three more divisions will start later this year, according to SMF.
The SMF will also deploy in the near future a new automated battle management system (ASBU), which will allow rapid retargeting of ICBMs.
RIA Novosti
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