War Matrix: New System Enables Drones and Robots to Work Together
by Nicholas West
Activist Post
Sept 29, 2014
The U.S. military continues to seek ways to integrate combat systems into one seamless matrix of full spectrum dominance.
In September 2011, Activist Post reported on a project called MUSIC – a fusion of aerial and ground robotics with other manned systems that could extend across the different branches of the military – Army, Air Force, Marines, and Navy.
Most troubling is that MUSIC was intended to be directed either by a single operator, or the final goal of being fully autonomous. It is part and parcel of the concept that originally embodied Future Combat Systems.
For a perfect look as what full-spectrum dominance really means, here are their words:
The FCS is envisioned to be an ensemble of manned and potentially unmanned combat systems, designed to ensure that the Future Force is strategically responsive and dominant at every point on the spectrum of operations from non-lethal to full scale conflict. FCS will provide a rapidly (C-130) deployable capability for mounted tactical operations by conducting direct combat, delivering both line-of-sight (LOS) and beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) precision munitions, providing variable lethal effect (non-lethal to lethal), performing reconnaissance, and transporting troops. Significant capability enhancements will be achieved by developing multi-functional, multi-mission and modular features for system and component commonality that will allow for multiple state-of-the-art technology options for mission tailoring and performance enhancements. The FCS force will incorporate and exploit information dominance to develop a common, relevant operating picture and achieve battlespace situational understanding.
This program was canceled, due in part to energy challenges for keeping the aerial components of the system aloft for long periods of time, but has since morphed into other programs for theoretical continuance. Newer research aims to explore ideas such as using laser energy and solar drones.
MADA: Over 80% of Palestinian Journalists Self-Censor
nsnbc international
Oct 17, 2014
IMEMC : The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) released a report, on Thursday, estimating that over 80 percent of Palestinian journalists were engaged in self-censorship.
The group released a report of its findings following two studies, along with a meeting on self-censorship and its impact on freedom of expression and media in Palestine, according to Ma’an News Agency.
Mousa Rimawi, general director of MADA, said that self-censorship is the most “serious and dangerous kind of censorship” journalists face, noting that the practice began during the Israeli occupation prior to the establishment of the Palestinian Authority.
Mr. Rimawi said that direct censorship by Israeli authorities during the First Intifada, in the late eighties, led to self-censorship among Palestinian journalists as media outlets used different methods of skirting Israeli restrictions on media output.
Self-censorship continued after the creation of the PA, Rimawi said, and has escalated “concretely and dangerously” since the 2007 split between Hamas and Fateh.
Ma’an further reports that, during a meeting entitled “Self-censorship: Is there a way to get rid of it?”, dozens of journalists and media students were presented with the results of two studies by MADA which revealed that some 80 percent of journalists surveyed practiced self-censorship on some or all of the material which they had written or produced.
Over 68 percent of journalists claim that their work, or their colleagues’ work, had been banned from being published, at one time or another, by their employer.
They also explained that the practice of self-censorship was related not only to official institutions, but also to fears that society and publishers are not willing to discuss taboo subjects.
MADA released a statement, in December of 2013, which documented “worrying violations” against media freedoms in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
The report noted several arbitrary arrests of journalists by PA forces in the West Bank, as well as Hamas security forces in Gaza.
ISIS Downs Two US Warplanes, Who’s Responsible?
by Gordon Duff
New Eastern Outlook
Oct 17, 2014
There is emerging evidence that ISIS/ISIL is coordinating military activities tied to upcoming US elections. Terrorist threats, downing of US planes and attempts to kidnap military personnel is being coordinated with political groups in the United States allied with pro-Israeli elements. There is further evidence ISIS/ISIL shot down at least one American fighter bomber over Syria and damaged an American combat transport plane, an Osprey, that later crashed.
Recent events, shocking to Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, statements made against Turkey by Vice President Biden and broad criticism of Israel by President Obama, have made crushing the Obama administration vital to those groups behind ISIS/ISIL, traitors within the United States, America’s questionable “ally,” Israel, and those cited by Vice President Biden last week, particularly Turkey and Saudi Arabia
Background
Two US aircraft were hit by US built Patriot PAC 2 missiles and destroyed. The US secretly suspended attacks on ISIS targets as a result. Only drone attacks are proceeding.
The action, the use of “Iron Dome” missiles, or at least missiles identical to those the US had given Israel, is part of an attempt to capture any American servicemen or women in order to stage a public beheading. You see, ISIS seems to be working very closely with groups in Israel and the United States and has been “tasked” with embarrassing the Obama administration prior to upcoming elections.
A recent upsurge in the American economy has left extremist groups threatened, fearful that their plan to push forward a war against Iran after the upcoming 2016 presidential election may be sidelined. ISIS is a partner in this process.
Planes Shot Down
The planes, an F 16 shot down over Syria and a US Marine Corps Osprey, hit over Iraq and crashing into the sea attempting to return to a US aircraft carrier are listed as having been destroyed by a typhoon at Kadena Air Force Base, in Japan. This cover story, one carried in the press, is outrageously false.
Both pilots are listed by unofficial sources as recovered. Attacks are said to be part of an ISIS program to capture one or more US pilots prior to the upcoming American elections. Intelligence sources indicate that it would have been impossible to track the planes without “package” information similar to that Senator John McCain gave the North Vietnamese when he was captured after being shot down in 1967.
Air defense systems, in this case advanced American long range Patriot systems, range 160 km, had to be placed with advanced knowledge of the highly classified routes the planes were to travel.
Panetta reveals US nuke strike plans on N. Korea, spurs controversy
via Friends of Syria
Oct 16, 2014
Former U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta (Reuters / Jonathan Erns)
US war plans against North Korea recently included the option of a nuclear strike, former CIA Director and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta revealed in his memoirs, triggering major controversy.
READ MORE: The Kim is Back: North Korean leader makes first public appearance in a month
Panetta described a 2010 briefing in Seoul by General Walter L. ‘Skip’ Sharp, the commander of US forces in South Korea, where it was made clear that the nuclear option was on the table if North Korean forces crossed into the demilitarized zone (DMZ) between the North and the South.
“If North Korea moved across the border, our war plans called for the senior American general on the peninsula to take command of all US and South Korea forces and defend South Korea— including by the use of nuclear weapons, if necessary,” Panetta wrote in ‘Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace’.
Panetta added that he left the briefing with “the powerful sense that war in that region was neither hypothetical nor remote.”
Panetta’s revelations sparked various responses, ranging from surprise to indignation.
Ukraine: Nazis in Plain Sight
October 7, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci – NEO) – The Western press recently reported the destruction of a Soviet-era statue of Vladimir Lenin in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. The Washington Post would claim in its report, “Ukrainians just pulled down a massive Lenin statue. What does that signal for Russia?,” that:
Anti-Russian protesters in Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, pulled down a massive statue of Vladimir Lenin late Sunday, a sign of hardening anger toward the Kremlin in an eastern Ukrainian area where sympathies are split between Kiev and Moscow.
The pro-European protests that swept Ukraine in the winter were accompanied by a wave of Lenin statues being pulled down, eliminating symbolic vestiges of the Soviet Union that had endured after its 1991 breakup. But few such statues were toppled in eastern Ukraine, which has long been a bastion of pro-Russian sentiment and where separatists have embarked on an insurgency that has cost thousands of lives.
As usual with reports from the Western press, the deception can manifest itself just as much from what is omitted as from what is actually said. The Washington Post maintains that those who destroyed the statue were merely “anti-Russian protesters.” In reality, it was a mob led by literal Neo-Nazis of the notorious Azov Battalion – fielded and directed by Kiev’s Interior Ministry itself.
While the Washington Post attempts to claim the statue’s destruction was a manifestation of the people’s will in eastern Ukraine, it was in reality a stunt pulled by some of Kiev’s most vicious, ultra-right, and illegitimate supporters – supporters the West works continuously to obfuscate from public view.
VIDEO/PODCAST — Venezuelans Using Bitcoin to Bypass Currency Controls – #NewWorldNextWeek
New World Next Week
Oct 12, 2014
Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed
PN 