today’s reigning cliché is that the wily fox, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, has once again outmaneuvered the flat-footed Americans, by deploying some troops, planes and tanks to Syria to buttress the regime of President Bashar al-Assad and to fight the Islamic State forces threatening him. If only we had a president who was so daring, so tough, so smart.
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Syria, Obama and Putin - The New York Times - 0 views
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The Sunni Muslims are the vast majority in Syria. They are the dominant sect in the Arab world. Putin and Russia would be seen as going all-in to protect Assad, a pro-Iranian, Alawite/Shiite genocidal war criminal. Putin would alienate the entire Sunni Muslim world, including Russian Muslims.
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The only way Putin can get down from that tree is with our help in forging a political solution in Syria. And that only happens if the Russians and the Iranians force Assad — after a transition — to step down and leave the country, in return for the opposition agreeing to protect the basic safety and interests of Assad’s Alawite community, and both sides welcoming an international force on the ground to guarantee the deal.
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let’s say by some miracle the Russians defeat ISIS. The only way to keep them defeated is by replacing them with moderate Sunnis. Which moderate Sunnis are going to align with Russia
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But to get there we need to size our rhetoric with our interests in Syria as well. Our interests right now are to eliminate or contain the two biggest metastasizing threats: ISIS — whose growth can threaten the islands of decency in the region like Lebanon, the Kurds and Jordan — and the tragedy of Syrian refugees
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If we want something better — multisectarian democracy in Syria soon — we would have to go in and build it ourselves. The notion that it would only take arming more Syrian moderates is insane.
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Why do we have to search for moderates like a man with a dowsing rod looking for water, and then train them, while no one has to train the jihadists, who flock there? It’s because the jihadists are in the grip of ideals, albeit warped ones. There is no critical mass of Syrian moderates in the grip of ideals; they will fight for their own homes and families, but not for an abstract ideal like democracy. We try to make up for that with military “training,” but it never works.
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Everyone wants an immaculate intervention in Syria, one where you look like you’re doing something, but without the political cost of putting troops on the ground or having to make unpleasant compromises with unsavory people. There is no such option.
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BBC News - Syria chemical weapons equipment destroyed, says OPCW - 0 views
www.bbc.co.uk/...world-middle-east-24754460
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shared by julia rhodes on 01 Nov 13
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31 October 2013 Last updated at 19:42 ET Share this page Email Print Share this page2.6KShareFacebookTwitter Syria chemical weapons equipment destroyed, says OPCW Advertisement $render("advert-post-script-load"); Jerry Smith, OPCW: "We have... observed all of the destruction activities" Continue reading the main story Syria conflict Arms destruction Chemical stockpile 'Please let it be over' Assad opponents Syria's declared equipment for producing, mixing and filling chemical weapons has been destroyed, the international watchdog says. This comes a day before the deadline set by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The weapons have been placed under seal, an OPCW spokesman said. Inspectors were sent to Syria following allegations, denied by the government, that its forces had used chemical weapons in civilian areas. Continue reading the main story Analysis Jonathan Marcus BBC diplomatic correspondent The achievement of this crucial initial target is an important moment for the chemical weapons destruction effort in Syria. The inspectors' first task was to move swiftly to prevent the government from producing any more chemical agent and to destroy facilities and equipment used for mixing agents and filling munitions. Production facilities will be closely monitored to ensure that there are no moves to repair them. The next deadline is mid-November, by which time the OPCW and the Syrians must agree a detailed plan to destroy Syria's chemical weapons stockpile. All sorts of questions are raised. Where will this destruction be carried out ? Who will provide the necessary equipment and so on? Western intelligence agencies will be studying Syria's declarations carefully. They will be eager to direct inspectors to additional locations if there are any grounds to believe that Damascus has been less than frank in its disclosures. The inspections were agreed between Russia and the US after Washington threatened to use force in Syria. Syria's Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad
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Syria's declared equipment for producing, mixing and filling chemical weapons has been destroyed, the international watchdog says.
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nspectors were sent to Syria following allegations, denied by the government, that its forces had used chemical weapons in civilian areas.
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"I hope those who have always thought of us negatively will change their minds and understand that Syria was, is, and will be always a constructive partner," Mr Mekdad told our correspondent
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Mr Countryman, the assistant secretary for international security and non-proliferation, told US lawmakers that "our target dates are ambitious but they are achievable".
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In a separate development, a large explosion at a Syrian army base has been reported outside the coastal city of Latakia. A White House official told the BBC Israeli planes carried out the attack, saying he believed the intended target was Russian missiles. Separately, a US security official said Russian-made SA-125 missiles had been targeted, according to the Associated Press news agency.
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Israel is believed to have targeted the same base in July and is concerned that some weapons in Syria are being moved to Hezbollah militants in neighbouring Lebanon.
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Mr Smith said that verifying the destruction of Syria's weapons production capability had been a "particularly challenging job" because it had to be done in the midst of a conflict, with a tight deadline
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The first step is for the weapons watchdog and the Syrian government to agree a timetable for the destruction of the chemical weapons stockpile - this should be done within the next two weeks
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The US says more than 1,400 people were killed when government forces used a nerve agent to attack Ghouta on the outskirts of Damascus on 21 August. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian allies have said rebel groups were responsible
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Influential Pro-Israel Group Suffers Stinging Political Defeat - The New York Times - 0 views
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The loss has raised difficult questions about the future of Aipac, a group formed in 1951 just a few years after the birth of Israel. Aipac has long drawn its political potency from its reservoirs of loyalty among members of both parties, but that bipartisan veneer all but vanished in recent weeks as the debate over the Iran deal became increasingly bitter.
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one of the lessons they will have to learn is that you really have to be very careful about the fights you pick that take on what amounts to a purely partisan character, because that bears a cost to you as an organization.”
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Aipac now faces a debate within its ranks about how to respond to the defeat, whether by exacting a political price from lawmakers — all of them Democrats — who defied its wishes and supported the Iran deal, or moving swiftly to mend fences with lawmakers and White House officials angered by the group’s efforts to kill the deal.
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Aipac feuded with Jimmy Carter in 1978 over his plan to sell F-15 Eagle fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, and three years later battled with Ronald Reagan over Awacs reconnaissance planes for the Saudis. The group lost both times and suffered a similar defeat when George Bush opposed loan guarantees for Israel in 1991.
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Jeremy Ben-Ami, the executive director of J Street, a pro-Israel group that lobbied intensively in support of the Iran nuclear deal and spent $3.2 million on pro-deal advertising, said the defeat for Aipac had shown that the group no longer had a lock on American Jews, and that lawmakers who might once have feared the political consequences of breaking with the group were no longer intimidated
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“The politics on this issue, I think, have changed in a way that they’re not going back, and there’s a recognition of different voices for the American Jewish community that haven’t been heard before,” Mr. Ben-Ami said.
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“I think you may see donors withholding or not wanting to write a check to people because they feel betrayed, and there’s going to have to be some accountability here,” said Josh Block, the president of The Israel Project, a pro-Israel public relations group. “There’s no question in my mind that people’s votes on the Iran deal are going to be an issue in the next election cycle, and the one after that, and the one after that, and they’ll be held accountable.”
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Syria conflict: Turkish jets intercept Russian plane - BBC News - 0 views
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Turkish F-16 fighter jets were scrambled after a Russian warplane violated Turkey's air space on Saturday, the foreign ministry said.
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Malaysia Airlines flight MH17: Russia reveals key Ukrainian witness Evgeni Agapov - 0 views
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The Russian investigative committee says an aviation armaments mechanic “voluntarily crossed the state border of the Russian Federation and expressed a desire to cooperate with the Russian investigation.”
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“As now there is new evidence of the reliability of the words of the witness, as well as various reports concerning the doubts of certain media outlets about the real existence of this witness, we decided to disclose [the name of the witness],” Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said.
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In his statement, Agapov reveals a Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-25 aircraft left the Ukrainian air base and “set out for a military task”.The aircraft returned without its ammunition on the day of the crash, on July 17, 2014.
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“It was an accident and happened in combat conditions, the pilot just confused the planes.”
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The Ukraine government claims none of its jets were in the air when the flight went down yet the Russian government released radar data proving otherwise. Russia has since been accused of faking the pictures.
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Earlier this week, the Russian maker of the Buk air defence missile system concluded the flight was downed by an older version of the BUK-M1 system, which is no longer in service with the Russian military but is used within Ukrainian arsenals.
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The Butchery of Hitler and Stalin | Hoover Institution - 0 views
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All told, some fourteen million people are estimated to have died as a result of these atrocities; to put this number into context, it is two million more than the total number of German and Soviet soldiers killed in battle and over thirteen million more than American losses in all of its foreign wars combined.
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The Holocaust was a unique historical event, the causes of which were distinctive. But it’s precisely because it occurred alongside other wide-scale horrors that Snyder is right to “test the proposition that deliberate and direct mass murder by these two regimes in the bloodlands is a distinct phenomenon worthy of separate treatment.”
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Both ideologically and practically, Stalinism gave rise to Hitler. This was thanks to Soviet communism’s absolutist and totalitarian nature, which gave Hitler all the evidence he needed that nothing less than the full militarization of society was required to confront the eastern menace. Similarly, Stalin’s paranoid worldview directly contributed to policies which only emboldened Hitler. Stalin instructed German communists to treat their Social Democratic countrymen as “social fascists,” leading to fractures on the German left that ultimately gave way for Hitler’s ascent. This hothouse geopolitical environment created, as Hobsbawm would later put it, an “Age of Extremes.”
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Despite the images of walking skeletons that greeted American liberators at Buchenwald, the full enormity of the Holocaust was not fully appreciated, even in the Western world, until relatively recently, for the simple reason that “the Americans and the British liberated no part of Europe that had a very significant Jewish population before the war, and saw none of the German death facilities.” Those facilities, and the fields in which the Germans exterminated the vast majority of their Jewish victims, lay in the bloodlands, which were conquered by the Soviets.
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But it was in Belarus where the conflagration between Nazis and Soviets, and between collaborationists and partisans, was greatest. By the end of the war, Snyder writes, a full half of the country’s population had either been killed or deported.
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To this day, the populations of the former Soviet Bloc, and some elements of their intelligentsia, have yet to come to terms with their historical complicity in the Holocaust, painting their ancestors as victims, which indeed many of them no doubt were, while ignoring the fact that many were erstwhile collaborators.
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The Nazi plan to eliminate the Jewish race — a plan which it executed often with the gleeful participation of local collaborators who needed no prompting in rounding up and murdering their Jewish neighbors — is today being downplayed so that Soviet crimes loom larger.
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“the vast majority of Jews killed in the Holocaust never saw a concentration camp.” Their murders were personal affairs in that they involved soldiers firing bullets into their bodies; death did not take place within a closed chamber and the murderers saw the faces of their victims. Most of the killing took place in the fields and forests of Eastern Europe.
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The perverse irony of both Stalin’s and Hitler’s desire to conquer the bloodlands was that by expanding their empires they diversified them. Suddenly, they had a whole lot of foreigners living under their domain, who would need to be pacified. And so the solution to this problem would have to be the liquidation of massive numbers of people.
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What has allowed the Soviet Union to escape the same sort of historical reproach as Nazi Germany is that its killing was carried out in the furtherance of various causes — absolute economic equality, the preservation of a dictatorship, the collectivization of agriculture — that are not commonly considered to exist on the same moral plane as a theory of racial superiority. “In Stalinism mass murder could never be anything more than a successful defense of socialism, or an element in a story of progress toward socialism; it was never the political victory itself,” Snyder explains.
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Academics, journalists and political leaders in this region, particularly in the Baltic states, have put forward a “double genocide” approach to understanding this period of European history, which, unlike the more nuanced take of Snyder (who, while placing the Stalinist and Nazi regimes alongside each other as subjects of historical inquiry, does not equate them in terms of moral depravity), is explicitly political.
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Snyder reports that the Nazis deliberately killed upwards of eleven million; for the Soviets during the Stalin period the figure was between six and nine million. On the Soviet side, these numbers are far less than what had originally been believed, due to the opening of Eastern European and Soviet archives in the twenty years since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
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This historical airbrushing amounts to “Holocaust obfuscation,” in the words of the academic Dovid Katz, which, he writes, “tries to reduce all evil to equal evil, in effect to confuse the issue in order to write the inconvenient genocide that is the Holocaust out of history as a distinct category.” Last year, for instance, the Lithuanian government passed a law making it illegal to deny that the actions of the Soviet Union in Lithuania constitute “genocide,” as it is illegal to deny the Holocaust.
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But his acknowledgement that the period of 1933 to 1945 was marked by several genocides, rather than a single one, does not lead him to promote the “double genocide” theory. Snyder has written elsewhere that “The mass murder of the Jews was, indeed, unprecedented in its horror; no other campaign involved such rapid, targeted and deliberate killing, or was so tightly bound to the idea that a whole people ought to be exterminated.” It is morally specious to compare the Jewish Holocaust to the Soviet “genocide” of Balts or Poles or Ukrainians, awful as the experiences of these peoples were, because of the inherently different nature of the methods the Soviet and Nazi regimes used against their subject populations. The Soviet Union had many local collaborators throughout its occupied and satellite territories. And while the Nazis also had collaborators during their occupation of the Baltic States, there was never any room for a Jewish collaborator in the Nazi project.
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Though Stalin’s murder campaigns were, in many cases, predicated on ethnic antagonism, the difference is that the Soviets did not exterminate for extermination’s own sake. Once Stalin’s discrete policies had been achieved (the collectivization of Ukrainian farms, for instance), the mass murder stopped, and the Soviet Union eventually wound down its widescale deportations and mass killings in the mid- 1950s. Had Hitler’s regime, with its animalistic understanding of human nature, lasted beyond 1945, its mass murder and terror would not have decreased. For these tactics were not just means but ends; they were the very lifeblood, the weltanschauung, of nazism itself.
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The crucial factor one must consider in evaluating these two strains of totalitarianism is their competing long-term visions, and the policies that were required to execute them. Classifying Stalin’s various murder campaigns (alongside Nazi policies towards Roma, gays, educated Poles and Soviet citizens in Belarus and Ukraine) as “genocides,” which Snyder does, while also singling out the Holocaust as the worst of them all, is not mutually exclusive.
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Bloodlands is an incredibly original work. It seeks to redirect our understanding of the Holocaust as primarily an eastern phenomenon, and one which took place among a spate of mass killing policies. When popular interest in the Holocaust and an “international collective memory” of it began to form in the 1970s and 1980s, it focused almost exclusively on the experience of German and West European Jews, the wealthiest and most assimilated on the continent, who died in far smaller numbers than did the Jews of Poland, Belarus, and the Baltic States, who were nearly eradicated. “Deprived of its Jewish distinctiveness in the East, and stripped of its geography in the West, the Holocaust never quite became part of European history,”
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BBC News - Syria crisis: Ships return as chemical removal slips - 0 views
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Norwegian and Danish ships waiting to remove Syria's chemical weapons are returning to port in Cyprus, signalling a key deadline will not be met.
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Bad weather, shifting battle lines and road closures are being blamed for the delay.
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The international mission is waiting for Syria's most dangerous chemicals to be transported to the port in Latak
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The deadline is the first milestone of a deal to rid Syria of its chemical weapons arsenal by the middle of 2014.
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Western powers said only Syrian government forces could have carried out the attack, but President Bashar al-Assad blamed rebel fighters.
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Under the international disarmament plan, US satellites and Chinese surveillance cameras are to track the progress of Russian armoured lorries as they carry the chemical weapons from 12 storage sites in Syria to Latakia, on Syria's Mediterranean coast.
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Danish and Norwegian cargo ships will then transport the chemicals to a port in Italy, where they will be loaded on to the US Maritime Administration vessel MV Cape Ray and taken out into international waters before being destroyed by hydrolysis.
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reports that the European ships are docked in Limassol, Cyprus on the day they are supposed to be escorting Syria's most dangerous chemicals out of the country.
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The vessels left Limassol on Saturday but turned back on Tuesday after the hazardous containers failed to arrive for collection in Latakia. Now the plan is to refuel in Limassol before returning to sea in the coming days.
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Co-operation on the chemical weapons removal programme was seen by many of those involved as a potential catalyst for broader peace negotiations in Syria.
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Failing to meet this ambitious target, our correspondent adds, will demonstrate the difficulties involved in operating in a country with constantly changing frontlines - even with an international mandate and co-operation from President Assad.
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"A number of external factors have impacted upon timelines, not least the continuing volatility in overall security conditions, which have constrained planned movements," a statement said.
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The joint mission also noted that the Syrian government had met the 1 November deadline to destroy critical chemical weapons production equipment, which meant it could no longer weaponise the chemical agents at its storage facilities.
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But deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf also acknowledged that it was a "complicated process", adding: "As long as we see forward progress, that what's most important here."
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activists said a missile fired by government forces hit a bus in Aleppo, killing at least 10 people.
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The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that the dead included two children and that the missile was fired from a plane.
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Officials - Lebanese Forces Fire on Syrian Planes - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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Security officials say Lebanese forces have fired on Syrian aircraft that violated the country's airspace.
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It was the first time since the outbreak of the Syria's conflict three years ago that the Lebanese military took action to prevent Syrian warplanes from violating its airspace.
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Syrian forces have fired toward Lebanon in the past, trying to deter rebels from fleeing to the neighboring country or from sheltering in Lebanese border towns.
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The Lebanese officials say the military opened anti-aircraft fire at two Syrian warplanes on Monday after the aircraft bombed a border area close to the eastern Lebanese town of Arsal.
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There was no immediate comment from the Lebanese military or from the Syrian government.
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Remembering 9/11: A warrior's unexpected gift to America - Global Public Square - CNN.c... - 0 views
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gift america cnn US history crisis
shared by Emilio Ergueta on 26 Oct 14
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s America looked inward in the days, weeks and months after September 11, 2001, others around the world made extraordinary gestures toward the United States. 28We were all so focused on ourselves – understandably so – that many probably missed the fact that Iran’s President Mohammad Khatami condemned the attacks, that Ireland and Israel held full national days of mourning, that the Afghan Taliban told “American children [that] Afghanistan feels your pain”.
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You are even less likely to have heard what could be one of the most touching reactions of all. This is the story of how a destitute Kenyan boy turned Stanford student rallied his Masai tribe to offer its most precious gift to America in its time of need.
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According to Kimeli, his family (or lack thereof) was so destitute that his Masai tribe didn’t even consider them people – they were sub-human. Moreover, nobody that Kimeli knew from his tribe had gone to high school, let alone college or medical school.
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same elders who had once considered Kimeli to be sub-human had done a complete reversal. Kimeli says his people were now were so impressed by what he had achieved that he was not only considered human again, they were invested in helping him achieve his goals. They raised $5,000 for him
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Kimeli enrolled at the University of Oregon in 1996. A few years later, Kimeli heard about Stanford University (after Chelsea Clinton enrolled there) and decided after seeing the school that that was where he belonged
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So, on a trip back home in May of 2002, he asked to meet with the elders of his tribe. 28 28First, Kimeli told them of the horrors he had witnessed in New York. Many of Kimeli’s people had never even heard of 9/11. They couldn’t even fathom buildings that tall and most people in the village had never seen a plane except way high up in the sky.
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He wanted to buy a cow (something this formerly homeless boy had never been able to do) and turn right around and give that cow to America. In Kimeli’s tradition, a cow is the most precious property one can own. And it is believed to bring great comfort to its owner. As one elder told a reporter, a cow is a “handkerchief to wipe away tears”.
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On June 3rd, 2002, U.S. charges d’affairs William Brencick travelled to Enoosaen to formally accept the cows. He says it took him more than half-a-day to get there - a flight and then a long drive over treacherous terrain. But after he heard Kimeli’s story, he wanted to go.
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Four years later, on the 5th anniversary of the September 11th attacks, all was made right. Then-U.S. Ambassador Michael Ranneberger traveled to Enoosaen to cement a deal for Kimeli’s tribe to take care of “America’s” herd in perpetuity. And, as a way of saying thanks, the Ambassador announced the establishment of a scholarship for 14 boys and girls in the village to go to local school
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U.S. taxpayers paid $486 million for Afghan air fleet. DOD sold it for scrap. - The Was... - 0 views
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The Defense Department destroyed nearly half a billion dollars worth of defective Italian aircraft that U.S. taxpayers bought for Afghanistan and then sold the scrap for $32,000, according to an agency watchdog.
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Reminds me of Orwell's 1984, where societies produce war machines to subjugate the population, only to scrap the floating fortresses, etc and repeat the process...
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In a letter last week to James, Sopko expressed concern that defense officials “may not have considered other possible alternatives in order to salvage taxpayer dollars.”
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The Defense Department spent $486 million to buy the fleet of 20 Italian-made G222 military transport planes for the Afghan Air Force, but the agency terminated the program in 2013 because of problems with performance, maintenance and spare parts that kept the aircraft grounded.
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BBC News - Dilma Rousseff re-elected Brazilian president - 0 views
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Left-leaning Dilma Rousseff has been re-elected president of Brazil, after securing 51.45% of votes in a closely-fought election.
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Ms Rousseff, in power since 2010, is popular with poor Brazilians because of her government's welfare polic
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Her re-election for a second term extends the rule of Ms Rousseff's Workers Party (PT), which has been in power for 12 years.
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The election comes after weeks of intensive campaigning by the two candidates and a presidential race that took a tragic turn after Eduardo Campos, a main opposition candidate, was killed in a plane crash in August.
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Yemen crisis: Dozens killed by 'air strike' near refugee camp - 0 views
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An air strike has killed at least 40 people at a refugee camp in northwest Yemen, aid workers have said. State media said Saudi planes were responsible, but the Yemeni foreign minister said "artillery strikes" by Houthi rebels were to blame.
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South China Sea: Beijing 'not frightened to fight a war' after US move | World news | T... - 0 views
www.theguardian.com/...war-south-china-sea-uss-lassen
south china sea beijing fight war world world news
shared by redavistinnell on 28 Oct 15
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South China Sea: Beijing 'not frightened to fight a war' after US move
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Twenty-four hours after Washington challenged Beijing’s territorial claims in the region by deploying a warship to waters around the disputed Spratly archipelago, the notoriously nationalistic Global Times accused the Pentagon of provoking China.
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The People’s Liberation Army Daily, China’s leading military newspaper, used a front-page editorial to accuse the US of sowing chaos in countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Tuesday’s manoeuvre, which saw the guided-missile destroyer USS Lassen sail close to artificial Chinese islands, came after Barack Obama and Chinese president Xi Jinping failed to find common ground over the issue during recent talks at the White House.
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“The United States has been very irresponsible,” defense ministry spokesperson Yang Yujun said, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency.
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Lu Kang, a foreign ministry spokesperson, said China would “resolutely respond” to any deliberate provocations but declined to be drawn on any potential military response.
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China’s military buildup in the South China Sea – including the construction of a 3km runway capable of supporting fighter jets and transport planes – has become a major source of tension between Beijing and Washi
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Washington hoped Tuesday’s mission would encourage Beijing to step back from its controversial island building campaign, which China claims is for civilian purposes but critics believe is an attempt to use military power to cement its grip over the region.
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Townshend said the US mission may have temporarily strengthened Washington’s hand. “[But] there’s an element of you win the battle but you lose the war if actually these freedom of navigation missions make China more determined to militarise these islands,” he added. “These islands are not going away – unless global warming takes them out.”
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Inside the Air War - CBS News - 0 views
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The air war's been going on for 14 months but this is the first time news cameras have been allowed into its nerve center.
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"The weapon of choice here is information because the more information we have both about the enemy and about our friendlies, the better we're able to make decisions."
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From just that one airplane, scheduling-wise, about a three-day process and some of those targets we've looked at for, you know, for days, weeks and sometimes months.
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In the last month and a half, U.S. and allied planes have struck 47 facilities like this one.
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Like how war had changed during WWI (even though it took so long for new effective tactics to be developed), the strategy of war is still changing
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Putin Suspends Russian Flights to Egypt Amid Security Fears - The New York Times - 0 views
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President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday suspended all flights from Russia to Egypt, the most popular tourist destination for Russians
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Mr. Putin also ordered that measures be taken to ensure that the Russian tourists already in Egypt, including the resort city of Sharm el Sheikh, from which the doomed Russian jet departed, could be brought home safely.
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until now played down the possibility of terrorism
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Nearly all of the victims on the plane were Russian citizens.
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On Friday, a growing number of airlines banned passengers from checking their bags on Sharm el Sheikh flights, including the British carriers easyJet
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EasyJet said that eight scheduled flights from Sharm el Sheikh — seven bound for London, and one for Milan — would not be departin
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Nasa seeks new class of astronauts as US nears return to crewed space missions | Scienc... - 0 views
www.theguardian.com/...-new-astronauts-space-missions
nasa space missions the guardian history science astronauts mars mission
shared by katyshannon on 05 Nov 15
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A new class of astronauts is being sought by Nasa, now that a return to crewed missions from American soil is on the horizon.
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The US space agency said it would accept applications for its astronaut corps from 14 December to mid-February 2016 and announce the successful candidates in mid-2017.
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Since the space shuttle was mothballed in 2011, the only way to get into space has been to secure a seat aboard the three-person Russian Soyuz capsule and fly from Baikonur in Kazakhstan. While the Soyuz will continue to ferry people to and from the International Space Station, other vessels are on course to take over some of the trips. Boeing and Elon Musk’s SpaceX are developing the CST-100 Starliner and Crew Dragon spacecraft, respectively. Meanwhile, Nasa is building the Orion deep space exploration vehicle.
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Nasa’s chief administrator, Charles Bolden, said the new class of space-farers would work on missions that will pave the way for putting humans on the surface of Mars. The agency last advertised for astronauts in November 2011.
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“This next group of American space explorers will inspire the Mars generation to reach for new heights, and help us realise the goal of putting boot prints on the Red Planet,” he said.
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Before they can hope to join the 47 active astronauts in the corps, candidates need a bachelor’s degree in maths, engineering, biological or physical sciences, but preferably an advanced degree too. On top of that, to meet the basic requirements, at least three years’ professional experience is needed, or at least 1,000 hours piloting a jet plane.
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Flights on the Boeing and SpaceX vessels are expected to allow a seventh person to live on the International Space Station, meaning the equivalent of one astronaut can work full time on scientific research in space. One priority of space station science is to understand more completely how long duration space travel takes its toll on the human brain and body. Two crew members, Scott Kelly and Mikhail Kornienko, are taking part in the One Year Mission on the station, the results of which could help devise ways of keeping astronauts healthy on the way to and from Mars.
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Nasas new rocket, the space launch system, along with its Orion capsule, are expected to take astronauts into lunar orbit for missions that will act as stepping stones for the far more ambitious, and technologically challenging, trip to Mars.
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Nasa is now hiring astronauts for a manned mission to Mars in the near future.
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News from The Associated Press - 0 views
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news associated press pope francis donald trump christianity isis immigration politics US
shared by katyshannon on 19 Feb 16
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Thrusting himself into the heated American presidential campaign, Pope Francis declared Thursday that Donald Trump is "not Christian" if he wants to address illegal immigration only by building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
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Trump fired back ferociously, saying it was "disgraceful" for a religious leader to question a person's faith.
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underscored the popular pope's willingness to needle U.S. politicians on hot-button issues.
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Francis' comments came hours after he concluded a visit to Mexico, where he prayed at the border for people who died trying to reach the U.S. While speaking to reporters on the papal plane, he was asked what he thought of Trump's campaign pledge to build a wall along the entire length of the border and expel millions of people in the U.S. illegally.
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"A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian," he said. While Francis said he would "give the benefit of the doubt" because he had not heard Trump's border plans independently, he added, "I say only that this man is not a Christian if he has said things like that."
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Immigration is among the most contentious issues in American politics. Republicans have moved toward hardline positions that emphasize law enforcement and border security, blocking comprehensive legislation in 2013 that would have included a path to citizenship for many of the 11 million people in the U.S. illegally.
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Trump also raised the prospect of the Islamic State extremist group attacking the Vatican, saying that if that happened, "the pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president because this would not have happened."
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Francis, the first pope from Latin America, urged Congress during his visit to Washington last year to respond to immigrants "in a way which is always humane, just and fraternal." He irked Republicans on the same trip with his forceful call for international action to address climate change.
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Trump, a Presbyterian and the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, responded within minutes. "For a religious leader to question a person's faith is disgraceful," he said at a campaign stop in South Carolina, which holds a key primary on Saturday. "I am proud to be a Christian, and as president I will not allow Christianity to be consistently attacked and weakened."
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Hispanics, an increasingly large voting bloc in U.S. presidential elections, have flocked to Democrats in recent years. President Barack Obama won more than 70 percent in the 2012 election, leading some Republican leaders to conclude the party must increase its appeal to them.
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However, the current GOP presidential primary has been dominated by increasingly tough rhetoric. Trump has insisted that Mexico will pay for his proposed border wall and has said some Mexicans entering the U.S. illegally are murderers and rapists.
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While Trump's words have been among the most inflammatory, some of his rivals have staked out similar enforcement positions. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson are among those who have explicitly called for construction of a wall.
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Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, one of the few GOP candidates proposing a path to legal status for people already in the U.S. illegally, said Thursday he supports "walls and fencing where it's appropriate." Bush said that while he gets his guidance "as a Catholic" from the pope, he doesn't take his cues from Francis on "economic or environmental policy."
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Marco Rubio, another Catholic seeking the GOP nomination, said that Vatican City has a right to control its borders and so does the United States. Rubio said he has "tremendous respect and admiration" for the pope, but he added, "There's no nation on Earth that's more compassionate on immigration than we are."
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Cruz said he was steering clear of the dispute. "That's between Donald and the pope," he said. "I'm not going to get in the middle of them." Ohio Gov. John Kasich, on the other hand, said he was staunchly "pro-Pope."
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The long-distance exchange between the pope and Trump came two days before the voting in South Carolina, a state where 78 percent of adults identify as Christian, according to the Pew Research Center's 2014 U.S. Religious Landscape Study. Of that group, 35 percent identify as evangelical and 10 percent as Catholic, the survey found.
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It's unclear what impact, if any, the pope's rhetoric will have, here or in other states. An October poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that most Americans had no strong opinion on the pope's approach to immigration issues, though he was overall viewed favorably.
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U.S. Strikes in Somalia Kill 150 Shabab Fighters - The New York Times - 0 views
www.nytimes.com/...us-airstrikes-somalia.html
u s strikes somalia new york times shahab terrorism crisis obama policy
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American aircraft on Saturday struck a training camp in Somalia belonging to the Islamist militant group the Shabab, the Pentagon said, killing about 150 fighters who were assembled for what American officials believe was a graduation ceremony and prelude to an imminent attack against American troops and their allies in East Africa.
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Defense officials said the strike was carried out by drones and American aircraft, which dropped a number of precision-guided bombs and missiles on the field where the fighters were gathered.
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Pentagon officials said they did not believe there were any civilian casualties, but there was no independent way to verify the claim. They said they delayed announcing the strike until they could assess the outcome
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It was the deadliest attack on the Shabab in the more than decade-long American campaign against the group, an affiliate of Al Qaeda, and a sharp deviation from previous American strikes, which have concentrated on the group’s leaders, not on its foot soldiers. Continue reading the main story #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap { max-width:180px; } .g-artboard { margin:0 auto; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180{ position:relative; overflow:hidden; width:180px; } .g-aiAbs{ position:absolute; } .g-aiImg{ display:block; width:100% !important; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 p{ font-family:nyt-franklin,arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size:13px; line-height:18px; margin:0; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle0 { font-size:11px; line-height:13px; font-weight:500; font-style:italic; color:#628cb2; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle1 { font-size:12px; line-height:14px; font-weight:500; letter-spacing:0.00833333333333em; color:#000000; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle2 { font-size:12px; line-height:14px; font-weight:500; text-align:right; letter-spacing:0.00833333333333em; color:#000000; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle3 { font-size:12px; line-height:13px; font-weight:700; letter-spacing:0.00833333333333em; color:#000000; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle4 { font-size:11px; line-height:13px; font-weight:500; letter-spacing:0.00833333333333em; color:#000000; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle5 { font-size:11px; line-height:13px; font-weight:500; font-style:italic; text-align:center; color:#628cb2; } #g-0308-for-web-ATTACKmap-180 .g-aiPstyle6 { font-size:9px; line-height:8px; font-weight:500; text-transform:uppercase; text-align:center; color:#000000; } Gulf of Aden ETHIOPIA SOMALIA Camp Raso Mogadishu KENYA Indian Ocean 300 miles MARCH 7, 2016 By The New York Times
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It comes in response to new concerns that the group, which was responsible for one of the deadliest terrorist attacks on African soil when it struck a popular mall in Nairobi in 2013, is in the midst of a resurgence after losing much of the territory it once held and many of its fighters in the last several years.
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The planned attack on American and African Union troops in Somalia, American officials say, may have been an attempt by the Shabab to carry out the same kind of high-impact act of terrorism as the one in Nairobi.
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Pentagon officials would not say how they knew that the Shabab fighters killed on Saturday were training for an attack on United States and African Union forces, but the militant group is believed to be under heavy American surveillance.
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The Shabab fighters were standing in formation at a facility the Pentagon called Camp Raso, 120 miles north of Mogadishu, when the American warplanes struck on Saturday, officials said, acting on information gleaned from intelligence sources in the area and from American spy planes
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One intelligence agency assessed that the toll might have been higher had the strike happened earlier in the ceremony. Apparently, some fighters were filtering away from the event when the bombing began.
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The strike was another escalation in what has become the latest battleground in the Obama administration’s war against terror: Africa.
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The United States and its allies are focused on combating the spread of the Islamic State in Libya, and American officials estimate that with an influx of men from Iraq, Syria and Tunisia, the Islamic State’s forces in Libya have swelled to as many as 6,500 fighters, allowing the group to capture a 150-mile stretch of coastline over the past year.
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The arrival of the Islamic State in Libya has sparked fears that the group’s reach could spread to other North African countries, and the United States is increasingly trying to prevent that
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American forces are now helping to combat Al Qaeda in Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso; Boko Haram in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad; and the Shabab in Somalia and Kenya, in what has become a multifront war against militant Islam in Africa.
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The United States has a small number of trainers and advisers with African Union — primarily Kenyan — troops in Somalia. Defense officials said that the African Union’s military mission to Somalia was believed to have been the target of the planned attack.
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Saturday’s strike was the most significant American attack on the Shabab since September 2014, when an American drone strike killed the leader of the group, Ahmed Abdi Godane, at the time one of the most wanted men in Africa. That strike was followed by one last March, when Adan Garar, a senior member of the group, was killed in a drone strike on his vehicle.
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If the killings of Mr. Godane and Mr. Garar initially crippled the group, that no longer appears to be the case. In the past two months, Shabab militants have claimed responsibility for attacks that have killed more than 150 people, including Kenyan soldiers stationed at a remote desert outpost and beachcombers in Mogadishu.
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In addition, the group has said it was responsible for a bomb on a Somali jetliner that tore a hole through the fuselage and for an attack last month on a popular hotel and a public garden in Mogadishu that killed 10 people and injured more than 25. On Monday, the Shabab claimed responsibility for a bomb planted in a laptop computer that went off at an airport security checkpoint in the town of Beletwein in central Somalia, wounding at least six people, including two police officers. The police said that one other bomb was defused.
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At the same time, Shabab assassination teams have fanned out across Mogadishu and other major towns, stealthily eliminating government officials and others they consider apostates.
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The Shabab have also retaken several towns after African Union forces pulled out. The African Union peacekeeping force, paid for mostly by Western governments, features troops from Uganda, Burundi, Kenya, Djibouti and other African nations.
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The Shabab were once strong, then greatly weakened and now seem to be somewhere in between, while analysts say the group competes with the Islamic State for recruits and tries to show — in the deadliest way — that it is still relevant. Its dream is to turn Somalia into a pure Islamic state.
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In Rise of ISIS, No Single Missed Key but Many Strands of Blame - The New York Times - 0 views
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Having declared itself a caliphate — the successor to past Islamic empires, ending with the Ottomans — the Islamic State has made Syria and Iraq the central arena for global conflict.
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Having declared itself a caliphate — the successor to past Islamic empires, ending with the Ottomans — the Islamic State has made Syria and Iraq the central arena for global conflict.
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Having declared itself a caliphate — the successor to past Islamic empires, ending with the Ottomans — the Islamic State has made Syria and Iraq the central arena for global conflict.
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It has overcome its former partner and eventual rival, Al Qaeda, first in battle, then as the world’s pre-eminent jihadist group in reach and recruitment.
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“declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.”
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Having declared itself a caliphate — the successor to past Islamic empires, ending with the Ottomans — the Islamic State has made Syria and Iraq the central arena for global conflict.
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In an echo of the Cold War, Russia has committed its own planes and missiles, a challenge to the West’s perceived indecision and inaction.
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struggles in the Middle East, between Iran and Saudi Arabia, between Shiite and Sunni, are also playing out.
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The climax of the Islamic State’s rise came in June 2014, when it routed the Iraqi military police and captured Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, erasing the century-old border between Iraq and Syria established after World War I.
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An American airstrike finally killed Mr. Zarqawi in June 2006. Four months later, his successors declared the founding of the Islamic State of Iraq.
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in March 2008 an American lieutenant colonel, recalls vividly finding the Islamic State’s black, gold-fringed banner some 50 miles north of Baghdad.
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They were not the only ones — Mr. Obama likened the group to the “J.V. team.”
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Each was shaped by the larger forces of the Islamic world, in particular religious zeal, Al Qaeda and America’s war with Iraq. Each rejected the secular culture of the West, which many say was the target of the attacks in Paris.
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“They rushed to announce the caliphate and appoint a leader,” he said. “This is a duty incumbent on Muslims, which had been absent for centuries and lost from the face of the earth.”
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The question for the Islamic State, after years of expansion and success on its terms, even evidence of using mustard agent, is whether Paris proved one move too far — a brutality the world will not tolerate.
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: Aerial attacks have in fact damaged its moneymaking oil infrastructure.