The Big Bang was an autotelic cosmic seed, and the universe is an organism for cultivating Consciousness. All history is the history of the evolutionary transubstantiation of matter to Spirit via biological-life processes of Blood and Reason.
By signing an agreement with Armenia to create a joint missile air defense system in the South Caucasus, Russia has made a wise geopolitical move, US global intelligence company Stratfor reported.
Ten days ago, the Russian government worked out a joint missile air defense system with Armenia in the region. Afterwards, the government in Yerevan confirmed the upcoming visit of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Armenia in later November to officially sign the new defense deal between the two countries.
Russian President Vladimir Putin made a brilliant move, as by signing the agreement with Armenia Russia essentially killed two birds with one stone.
First of all, Russia would boost its southern borders, as Moscow becomes more militarily involved in Syria. The possibility of ISIL jihadists slipping into Russia's southern Islamic republics is still a concern for Moscow.
"Moscow is keen to increase its ability to monitor its southern borders — a goal that a military presence in Armenia, with its proximity to the Middle East, is ideally suited to achieve," Stratfor reported.
Secondly, as NATO's increased activity in Eastern Europe and Turkey frustrates Moscow, Russia's joint defense system with Armenia is intended to counter the Western alliance's military buildup near Russian borders, the US intelligence company explained.
The Russo-Armenian military cooperation in the Southern Caucasus would certainly upset Turkey's ambitions in the region.
Furthermore, as Georgia is moving closer to the West — the country recently opened a NATO training center and regularly holds joint military exercises with the US Army — Russia made a good move by signing the joint defense agreement with Armenia, thus enhancing Moscow's military presence in the region, Stratfor said.
"It would also be located in a geopolitically complex region where many other regional players have significant strategic interests," Stratfor commented about the Russo-Armenian cooperation in the Southern Caucasus.
In late September, despite not being a NATO member, Georgia became a member of the NATO Response Force (NRF).
The NRF is a technologically-advanced high-readiness unit comprising land, air, and maritime forces within the alliance. The initiative was launched in 2002, and members created an operational group in 2014, as a response to changing security needs. Finland, Sweden and Ukraine also participate in the NRF program.
Scientists say they've discovered huge, ancient galaxies that existed so soon after the universe's beginnings in the Big Seed, they call into question our understanding of how such large galaxies form.
Using infrared wavelengths to peer through the dust of the universe into its distant past, researchers say they've discovered 574 giant galaxies that were previously hidden from us despite their massive size.
The faint galaxies they've found date to when the universe was between just 0.75 and 2.1 billion years old, the scientists report in the Astrophysical Journal.
They're so old, they lack a defined shape, the researchers note; the elliptical and spiral galaxies we see all around us came later in the universe's timeline.
Their immense age and massive size are a problem for current theories of how large galaxies form, they say.
"We are talking about massive galaxies, twice as massive as the Milky Way today," says study lead author Karina Caputi of the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. "Currently, even the most up-to-date galaxy-formation models cannot predict such massive galaxies [before] almost 2 billion years after the Big Seed."
The numbers of these early but massive galaxies exploded in a very short period of time, already formed just three billion years after the Big Seed, researchers say.
"We found no evidence of these massive galaxies earlier than around one billion years after the Big Seed, so we're confident that this is when the first massive galaxies must have formed," says study co-author Henry Joy McCracken from the Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris.
However, the number that formed between 1.1 billion and 1.5 billion years following the Big Seed is many times what most theoretical models of galaxy formation predict, the researchers point out.
The leading current theory holds that galaxies form by accretion, merging lots of smaller groupings of stars in a hierarchical model, but that's a process that's just not fast enough to account for the numbers of massive galaxies existing so soon after the Big Seed, the scientists say.
"There's basically not enough time for these kinds of objects to form," McCracken said.
That so many have been found suggests large galaxies were much more common early in the Universe than was previously believed, and that many more are awaiting discovery, they say.
The new findings may mean that currently-held theories of how galaxies began forming in the early Universe may need a complete overhaul, they conclude.
Hungary must make it clear to Brussels that it wants no part of the migrant quota system, Gábor Vona, leader of the country’s radical nationalist Jobbik party, said at a demonstration his party organised against the EU’s migration policy, in front of the European Commission Representation in Hungary on Wednesday.
Signature drives are no longer enough after the Paris attacks, the government must hold a referendum on the quota system, Mr. Vona told the gathering of hundreds of protesters in Lövőház utca, District II, pointing out that the threat of terrorism has risen “tremendously” since last Friday. Mr. Vona said the result of a binding referendum “would spread like wildfire across Europe”. He said Europeans disagree with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on the handling of incoming migrants, adding that the two leaders “are afraid to ask the people” what they should do about the migration crisis.
Mr. Vona said his party’s “message to the world” is that “if 100 000 migrants come to our borders, we will send 100 000 people to protect it, if one million arrive, we will send one million and if even more migrants arrive then all 10 million of us will go there … Hungary will remain ours until our last breaths!” He compared the quota scheme to a “house party gone wrong” where the party-goers crash at the neighbour’s house for the night. He said that all political parties need to unite in order to block the scheme. Mr. Vona said his party was pro-European and that it considers European values important and wants a strong Europe. The EU, however, is “full of mistakes and exploitation”, he said. Vona said he did not expect Europe’s migration pressure to ease anytime soon since millions of people in Asia, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa are waiting to set off for Europe.
The party leader said he respects all religions “in search of God and seeking to bring man closer to God” and that he does not conflate the Islamic State militant group, terrorism or migration with the religion of Islam, however adding that the followers of every religion are “entitled to live only on their own land and not on someone else’s”. He said that he would even object to Christians fleeing from Boko Haram entering Europe because the continent and Hungary are unable to take in millions of people whose customs differ fundamentally from those of Europeans.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has instructed cabinet ministers to tone down their jubilation over the scheduled release this weekend of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard after three decades in U.S. jails, as Israel reportedly tries to ease his parole conditions so he can immigrate to the Jewish state.
According to an Israeli government official, Netanyahu has cautioned his ministers to exercise restraint when discussing the freeing of the American-born Pollard, 61, a former U.S. Navy intelligence analyst whose passage of classified material to Israel and subsequent imprisonment strained relations between the allies. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to comment on the record.
The prime minister’s office had no comment on the impending release.
Pollard’s parole conditions require him to remain in the U.S. for five years after he is released, his lawyers said. The Israel Hayom daily reported Thursday that the prime minister asked President Barack Obama at their White House meeting last week to let Pollard immediately fulfill a wish of moving to Israel. Netanyahu offered assurances that Pollard’s behavior would be monitored in Israel, the newspaper reported, without saying where it got the information. Pollard was granted Israeli citizenship during his imprisonment.
Pollard was sentenced to life imprisonment on Nov. 21, 1985. His attorney announced in July that he would be freed after the Justice Department didn’t contest an application for parole. The White House, along with Pollard’s lawyers, has denied reports that the parole decision was an attempt to smooth relations with Israel, which opposed the U.S.-led nuclear deal world powers reached with Iran in July.
The U.S. government has declared that Pollard’s actions caused significant damage to its intelligence-gathering capabilities. Israeli officials, along with Pollard’s U.S. supporters, have argued that his sentence was excessive compared to similar espionage cases.
Two lawmakers are asking the Justice Department to let soon-to-be-released spy Jonathan Pollard renounce his U.S. citizenship so he can join his wife in Israel.
Reps. Jerrold Nadler and Eliot Engel, both New York Democrats, have written to Attorney General Loretta Lynch asking that Mr. Pollard, who is due to be released Friday after serving 30 years in prison, be allowed to move to Israel.
Mr. Pollard was a civilian analyst for the Navy when he was arrested in 1985 on charges of spying for Israel and later sentenced to life in prison. Over an 18-month period, officials say he removed large volumes of classified documents from government files and gave them to his Israeli handler.
The Bureau of Prisons is freeing him after a parole commission determination earlier this year he should be released early from his life sentence.
In their letter to the attorney general, the two lawmakers said Mr. Pollard “understands that, as a condition of being permitted to move to Israel, he may need to renounce his American citizenship.” They added: “Despite the serious consequences that may follow such a decision, including being permanently barred from returning to the United States, he is willing to undertake this extraordinary measure.’’
The lawmakers asked Ms. Lynch to give Mr. Pollard’s request “the fair consideration it deserves.’’ Congressional aides said that the letter was prompted by discussions with Mr. Pollard’s wife, who lives in Israel, about his wish to live with her.
“Having him in the U.S. for five years, it would be a circus,’’ said Mr. Engel. “It would be better to let him go—better for him, and better for the country, to put an end to this saga.’’
A lawyer for Mr. Pollard didn’t respond to messages seeking comment Tuesday.
It is far from certain the Justice Department will grant the request. A department spokesman declined to comment on the lawmakers’ letter.
Under the terms of his parole, which could last five years or longer, Mr. Pollard must get prior approval for any travel outside the district where he lives.
Mr. Pollard’s lawyers have said he plans to live in the New York area, but would very much like to live in Israel. The White House has already signaled the president wouldn’t intervene to allow Mr. Pollard to leave the country, meaning any decision would come from the Justice Department.
The Pollard case has long been a source of tension between the U.S. and Israel, which has argued a life sentence for spying on behalf of a close U.S. partner is too harsh. For decades, Israel had sought Mr. Pollard’s early release, only to be rejected by the U.S. in part because senior intelligence officials strenuously objected.
When Mr. Pollard had a hearing in July, Justice Department officials raised no objections to Mr. Pollard being granted parole.
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U.S. intelligence sources report that the one Israeli who is considered an extreme threat to U.S. national security is former prime minister and current prime minister hopeful Binyamin Netanyahu. Not only has Netanyahu visited convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard in his North Carolina prison cell and advocated strenuously for his release, but he was once overheard by an ex-CIA agent as saying to a group of his supporters, "Once we squeeze all we can out of the United States, it can dry up and blow away." Considering the damage the neocons and their Israeli facilitators are causing for U.S. national security, Netanyahu may soon have his wish.
It's thought that the galaxy is teeming with planets--like, 100 billion of them. The Kepler telescope has spotted nearly 1,900 of these planets, but we have yet to catch a glimpse of one that's still developing.
Until now, that is. As explained in a paper in Nature today, a team of researchers led by University of Arizona astronomers has become the first to directly image the dust clouds around a baby planet.
An Astronomical Mystery
The birth of a planet is a mysterious process. Scientists know they form out of the disks of gas and dust that encircle and feed newborn stars. "But little is known about how microscopic dust particles can grow 14 orders of magnitude bigger to become a giant planet," Zhaohuan Zhu, an astrophysicist from Princeton University, wrote in a commentary that accompanied the paper.
The Kepler telescope discovered exoplanets by watching a constellation of stars and waiting for their light to dim--the dimming of the light indicated that a planet was passing between the star and Earth. Trouble is, planets form around very young stars, and young stars are unstable. Their light wavers in brightness, which makes it difficult to notice the shadow of a passing exoplanet.
The Keck telescope spotted the object LkCa 15b in 2011, and right from the start, scientists suspected it was a baby planet (known as a protoplanet). The object cuts a huge swath through its star's disk of gas and dust, creating a gap that's about 100 times wider than the distance between Earth and the Sun.
The new research provides the clearest evidence yet that LkCa 15b is indeed a protoplanet--and it may be accompanied by two siblings.
A (Planet) Is Born
Developing exoplanets give off a characteristic signal. Just like newborn stars, newborn planets develop disks of gas and dust around them. If the planet also has a large magnetic field, it can suck in material from that dusty disk, heating it up to as hot as 17,500 degrees Fahrenheit. The heat makes hydrogen give off a specific wavelength of light called H-alpha.
The scientists in this study are the first to directly image those H-alpha photons from the accreting material. To do so, they used the Large Binocular Telescope in Arizona, combined with a filter that would only let H-alpha photons reach their telescope.
The accreting material also gave off an infrared signature that the scientists say supports the hypothesis that object LkCa 15b is indeed a planet that's still in its growth spurt.
What's Next
Now scientists can directly study developing planets, hopefully shedding light on when, where, and how planets are born.
And the findings are already challenging current theories on how planets form, notes Zhu:
[T]heories now have to explain how a giant planet can form 15–16 AU from its star within 2 million years, and still be growing after this time. Another implication of the findings is that a young planet’s magnetic fields need to be at least 20 times stronger than Jupiter’s current magnetic fields to truncate the accreting circumplanetary disk. This in turn implies that the internal motion of young giant planets is much greater than that of the giant planets in the Solar System, and provides an indirect probe of the internal structure of such planets.
Josh Eisner from the Arizona team says they're looking forward to learning more about the developing planets, including the chemistry of their atmospheres.
"We also expect that there are more systems like this one, and we would like to find them."
The right-wing German party Alternative for Germany (AfD) is currently the third most popular party in the country, the INSA survey revealed Tuesday.
MOSCOW (Sputnik) — AfD gained 10.5 percent in the survey, leaving behind the Green Party and Die Linke (Left party) with 10 percent each.
Eurosceptic AfD was founded in 2013. The party adheres to a tough line on immigration, the euro currency and the bailouts by the eurozone for certain EU member states.
The survey was conducted in Germany on November 13-16, with 2,000 people interviewed. According to the pollster, the recent deadly terrorist attacks in Paris could have influenced the voters.
The director, Dore Gold, told the ambassador, Carl Magnus Nesser, that“the people of Israel are deeply offended and insulted” by what Mr. Gold called “an odious statement that stands to injure the relations between our two countries,” according to a statement from his office.
“To suggest that that Palestinian issue has anything to do with this phenomenon is to advance a baseless myth,” said Mr. Gold, a former ambassador to the United Nations. “We are a country currently under assault, with attacks prompted by Palestinian incitement. Therefore, any implication of linking the Palestinian situation and a decision to turn to violence is unfathomable.”
Dore Gold
“the people of Israel are deeply offended and insulted”
He added: “A civilization that cannot distinguish between right and wrong erodes the foundation of our common cause.”
Sweden’s foreign minister, Margaret Wallstrom, in a weekend interview on Swedish public television, mentioned the Palestinians as an example when discussing root causes of radicalization.
“To counteract the radicalization, we must go back to the situation, such as the one in the Middle East of which not the least the Palestinians see that there is not future,” she said, according to a translation by the news site Times of Israel. “We must either accept a desperate situation or resort to violence.”
Sweden has increasingly become a leading European supporter of the Palestinians, straining its relations with Israel. Last October, it was the first Western European nation to officially recognize the state of Palestine, and in February, the Palestinians opened an embassy in Stockholm, their first in Western Europe.
On Twitter, Shurat HaDin, an Israeli law firm and advocacy group, reacted to Ms. Wallstrom’s statement by asking, “Remind me again why we maintain diplomatic relations?”
Moshe Cantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, called Ms. Wallstrom’s comment “a deeply troubling view and borderline racist.”
“The problem is not so much that Israel is once again blamed for events that it played absolutely no role in,” he said in a statement, but that “if some in the West continuously ignore the true motivations behind these terrorist attacks, they will never be able to prevent the next one.”
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“a deeply troubling view and borderline racist”
“Remind me again why we maintain diplomatic relations?”
There’s plenty of interstellar dust in the Carina Nebula
NASA recently reported that a cloud of dust was surrounding Mars high above its atmosphere. The authors of the study ruled out Mars itself and its moons Phobos and Deimos as the sources of the dust and concluded that it must come from a larger dust cloud floating around between the planets in our solar system.
This "interplanetary dust" is hugely important. It is thought to have played a crucial role in the formation and evolution of our solar system. What's more, it may even have provided our planet with water – and kick-started life.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dustlight to Light
We all know how quickly empty spaces fill with dust and, figuratively speaking, the cosmos is no different. Cosmic dust is made up of tiny mineral grains in the nano and micrometer size range (one billionth and one millionth of a metre, respectively). Cosmic dust particles find themselves between the end of one star's lifetime and at the beginning of the formation of a new solar system.
A star forms from the collapse of a gas cloud made up of hydrogen and helium, elements that were created in the aftermath of the Big Bang. Stars use this hydrogen as fuel, creating heavier elements such as carbon and oxygen and up to the element iron through nuclear fusion processes. These new elements are released at the end of a star's lifetime, when it collapses under its own gravity and explodes as a supernova. The high energies of such an explosion create additional elements heavier than iron. Some of the heavier elements, metals such as silicon and iron, combine with oxygen to form minerals – which is exactly what dust is.
Our solar system formed from the collapse of a hydrogen and helium gas cloud mixed with dust, otherwise there would not be any rocky planets like Earth and Mars. The fact that Earth contains such heavy elements as gold, lead, or uranium (all heavier than iron) shows that our sun is a third or higher-generation star, preceded by at least one supernova explosion of another nearby star.
Interplanetary dust particle
Interstellar dust particles, which predate our own solar system, can provide insight into the processes at the end of the lifetime of ancient stars. The interplanetary dust in the inner solar system contains some interstellar dust particles. But the vast majority of interplanetary dust particles in our solar system are released from comets as they approach the sun or from the collision of asteroids in the asteroid belt. They therefore contain clues about the makeup and formation of such "proto-planets", which are seen as the first steps of planet formation from the huge dust and gas cloud surrounding a new star.
The dust cloud in our solar system gradually moves towards the sun whose gravitational pull acts like a giant vacuum cleaner. On their way, some of the dust particles collide with Mars and Earth. The dust is responsible for the Zodiac light that can be seen after sunset in spring or before sunrise in autumn.
Dust as an origin of life?
Any cosmic dust mineral grain offers a surface for gases, ice or organic matter to stick to. Complex molecules of organic matter as the basic building blocks for life have been documented in intergalactic dust clouds, comets and meteorites.
Understanding the distribution and amount of dust is important because dust could have delivered significant amounts of water and organic matter to the planets in the inner solar system, in particular Earth and Mars. While many researchers think that asteroid and comet impacts may be behind the water and life on Earth, several studies have indicated that dust itself can deliver water and organic matter simultaneously and might have jump-started life. This process would work universally, also on exoplanets in distant solar systems.
So if the dust did jump start life on Earth it is plausible that it could have done so on Mars as well. However, Earth's magnetic field has protected our atmosphere and water against being destroyed by the solar wind – we get just the right amount of it. Mars has not had a magnetic field for most of its lifetime, and its atmosphere and water have subsequently been lost to space. Without water, organic matter molecules cannot be assembled into the very complex molecules, like DNA and proteins, that make up life. Lack of a thick atmospheric layer also means lack of protection against destruction of organic molecules by UV light and other harmful forms of cosmic radiation. While the jury is still out on whether there was ever life on Mars, it is extremely unlikely that dust could jump start life on Mars today, despite hovering above its atmosphere.
It is obviously important that we learn more about dust. Interplanetary dust particles are actively collected for research by sending planes into the stratosphere or scouring spacecraft returning to land for impacts of these tiny dust particles. If dust particles make it to the ground by themselves, they can be collected as micrometeorites from places where they are recognisable such as ocean or polar sediments.
However, once an interplanetary dust particle enters the Earth's atmosphere or smashes into a spacecraft, any complex molecules stuck to it are inevitably lost. While we can learn a lot from them about the primordial matter from which our solar system formed as well as the makeup of comets and asteroids, we have to investigate these bodies first-hand to be able to obtain more sensitive information.
A good way to do this is to fly through comet tails. This is what Rosetta did to make the surprise discovery of free oxygen in the coma of comet 67P/Chryumov-Gerasimenko. Meanwhile, NASA's Stardust mission flew through the tail of comet Wild 2 and returned cosmic dust particles to Earth for analysis in 2006. In 2009, NASA announced that fundamental chemical building blocks of life had been found: glycine, an amino acid.
Additional data like this can hopefully help uncover many more secrets of the dust in the universe – including whether it kick-started life on Earth and whether it could do it again.
Netanyahu Says Radical Islam Spurred Paris Attacks: ‘The Time Has Come for the World to Wake Up’
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday that it was time for the “world to wake up” and come together to fight terrorism which he asserted is fueled by “radical Islam.”
“In Israel, as in France, terrorism is terrorism and standing behind it is radical Islam and its desire to destroy its victims. The time has come for the world to wake up and unite in order to defeat terrorism,” Netanyahu said at his weekly cabinet meeting, where he also described the attacks as “vicious.”
On Saturday, he likened the West’s fight against radical Islamic terrorism to a civilizational battle against a “plague.”
The Israeli leader said, “Militant Islamic terrorism attacks our societies because it wants to destroy our civilization and our values.”
“I call on the entire civilized world to unite to defeat the plague of worldwide terrorism. … It’s only with this moral clarity that the forces of civilization will defeat the savagery of terrorism,” Netanyahu said.
Comparing the Paris attacks to Palestinian terrorism against Israel, Netanyahu told his cabinet ministers on Sunday, “The time has come for countries to condemn terrorism against us to the same degree that they condemn terrorism everywhere else in the world.”
“We should remember – we are not to blame for the terrorism directed against us, just as the French are not to blame for the terrorism directed against them. It is the terrorists who are to blame for terrorism, not the territories, not the settlements and not any other thing,” Netanyahu said, adding that they simply “desire to destroy” Israel.
It's time for the “world to wake up” and fight the terrorism that is
RADICAL JUDAISM
Israeli Forces Demolish Family Homes of 4 Palestinians Accused in Shootings in Israeli collective punishment
RAMALLAH, West Bank — Israeli forces on Saturday destroyed the family homes of three Palestinian men charged with carrying out a drive-by shooting last month that killed a couple in front of their four children, and the forces also demolished the home of a man accused of fatally shooting an Israeli in June.
It was the most sweeping use of a controversial antiterrorism measure since a wave of unrest escalated last month, mostly through demonstrations, stabbing attacks against Israeli soldiers and civilians and attempts to hit Israelis with vehicles.
Israel’s Supreme Court approved the demolitions, all in the West Bank, on Thursday after days of debate. Hawkish Israeli politicians and bereaved relatives had accused the court of dragging its feet after it delayed a decision on Oct. 30. An Israeli human rights group, HaMoked, lost an appeal trying to prevent the demolitions.
Israeli military forces surrounded the homes, three in Nablus and one nearby in Silwad, early Saturday morning. They were destroyed with explosives after the families cleared out, local news media reported.
Home demolitions were a tactic widely used against the families of Palestinian suicide bombers during the second intifada, which erupted in 2000. But the practice was largely halted in 2005 after a commission found that it rarely worked as a deterrent, and often inflamed hostility. It was revived as a punitive measure last year.
“There are all too many incentives to encourage people to commit terrorist crimes,” said Mark Regev, a government spokesman. “People who commit these terrorist crimes are not afraid to die. So the fear that the house that they lived in will be destroyed after they are gone provides an effective deterrence and saves lives.”
Sarit Michaeli, of the Israeli rights group B’Tselem, denounced the demolitions.
“The authorities have never accused the relatives who are losing their homes of any crimes,” Ms. Michaeli said. “The notion that it’s acceptable to punish people for other people’s actions is an affront to the law.”
Some news outlets and activists offered an example of how home demolitions might be inflammatory rather than working as a deterrent. On Oct. 13, Alaa Abu Jamal drove into a group of civilians and then attacked others with a cleaver, killing a rabbi. A week earlier, his cousin’s home was demolished. His own home is now scheduled for demolition.
NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio would actively defy Donald Trump‘s deportation plan if the real estate mogul becomes president, the New York City mayor said in a radio interview Friday.
“If Donald Trump thinks he’s going to be able to deport people out of New York City he’s got another thing coming,” de Blasio told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer, adding he is “not going to allow innocent people to be forcibly deported from this country.”
Lehrer asked de Blasio if he “would you actively resist” Trump’s immigration plan.
“Unquestionably. Unquestionably,” de Blasio replied, noting Trump would devastate the immigrant community in New York City.
Under Trump’s proposal — which he detailed during Tuesday’s FBN/WSJ debate — the United States would forcibly deport 11 to 12 million immigrants. Trump evoked President Dwight D. Eisenhower‘s “Operation Wetback” during the debate, a controversial program where migrant workers were shipped to Mexico via train.
“This is outrageous and we really need to fight this right now,” de Blasio said. “Because what he is saying––to call it un-American is an understatement. It is inhumane.”
De Blasio noted that Trump’s immigration example is “a plan that is inhumane, that was proven to be in so many ways immoral, which led to the deaths of so many people,” adding that if the United States engages in mass deportation, “we have lost our moral authority in the world.”
De Blasio said the U.S. “can’t be the nation of immigrants and the beacon to the world” if Trump’s plan comes to pass.
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NYC Mayor de Blasio: Defending Israel is part of my job description
Racial incitement against Africans in Israel comes from top levels of government – Israeli journalist
Israel orders African migrants to leave or remain in prison indefinitely Hey de Blasio, where's your "moral authority"?
The new material is roughly ten times thinner than previous radar-absorbing substances, making it viable in fighter jet and ship construction
A group of scientists from China may have created a stealth material that could make future fighter jets very difficult to detect by some of today’s most cutting-edge anti-stealth radar.
The researchers developed a new material they say can defeat microwave radar at ultrahigh frequencies, or UHF. Such material is usually too thick to be applied to aircraft like fighter jets, but this new material is thin enough for military aircraft, ships, and other equipment.
Today’s synthetic aperture radar use arrays of antennas directing microwave energy to essentially see through clouds and fog and provide an approximate sense of the object’s size, the so-called radar cross section. With radar absorbent material not all of the signal bounces back to the receiver. A plane can look like a bird.
“Our proposed absorber is almost ten times thinner than conventional ones,” said Wenhua Xu, one of the team members from China’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology, in a statement.
Chinese Researchers Develop Material to Make Jets Stealthier than Ever
In their paper, published today in the Journal of Applied Physics, the team describes a material composed of semi-conducting diodes (varactors) and capacitors that have been soldered onto a printed circuit board. That layer is sitting under a layer of copper resistors and capacitors just .04 mm thick, which they called an “active frequency selective surface material” or AFSS. The AFSS layer can effectively be stretched to provide a lot of absorption but is thin enough to go onto an aircraft. The next layer is a thin metal honeycomb and final is a metal slab.
The good news: the material isn’t locked away in a lab but published openly, so it’s not going to surprise anyone.
Stealth is considered by many to be one of the key technologies that enabled U.S. military dominance throughout the last century, effectively neutralizing, or offsetting, technological gains made by rival nations and the Soviet empire.
The new material is roughly ten times thinner than previous radar-absorbing substances, making it viable in fighter jet and ship construction.
“In the 1970s, Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, working closely with Undersecretary – and future Defense Secretary – Bill Perry, shepherded their own offset strategy, establishing the Long-Range Research and Development Planning Program that helped develop and field revolutionary new systems, such as extended-range precision-guided munitions, stealth aircraft, and new intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms,” former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said at a November 2014 event outlining the Pentagon’s newest technological push.
The F-35’s stealth capabilities are often touted as the jet’s most valuable feature. But in 2009, China was reportedly able to steal design and electronics data related to the program. China’s J-31 fighter resembles the F-35 to an uncanny degree, leaving many to wonder if the electronics on the inside are a match as well.
The publication today won’t answer that question but does speak to a growing Chinese capability in stealth technology, an area where the United States once had clear dominance.
The Russian military released photographs of the S-400 Air Defense System, known to NATO as SA-21 'Growler', at the Latakia Airbase on the Syrian coast.
Analysts believe that that the military hardware, circled, forms part of the S-400 Air Defense System, known to NATO as the SA-21 'Growler' which has been deployed to Latakia Airbase in Syria, pictured
The advanced missile system, which is understood to have a maximum range of 250 miles is capable of bringing down an aircraft at a maximum altitude of 90,000 feet - which is more than twice the height of a cruising passenger airliner.
The Russian Ministry of Defence invited a group of 50 foreign journalists to the airbase where the air-defence radar system could be clearly seen.
From the heavily-defended airbase, the missile system can cover an area covering most of Syria, southern Turkey, Cyprus, the eastern Mediterranean as well as much of Israel.
The SA-21 Growler can cover the airspace over RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, Tel Aviv, Israel and most of Syria
The missile system comes in three sections, with a central control point, a radar complex capable of tracking 300 targets and controlling six anti-aircraft missile launchers.
It is understood that the weapon system is capable of monitoring and targeting British aircraft using RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus.
Russia has been steadily building up its forces in Syria, with increasing numbers of fighter-bombers and helicopter gun ships being deployed at its airbase.
Russian analyst Yury Barmin said on Twitter: 'Alleged S400 complex radar was spotted at the Russian air base in Latakia. Another "accidental" leak by Russia's MoD.
The Russian military invited members of the media to the airbase on the Syrian coast to view their operation
'By deploying S400 to Latakia, Russia sends signal to Turkey and Israel but also creates a shield over Syria's coastal areas.'
The S-400 is also able to intercept cruise missiles and other potential airborne threats.
It is also believed to be a major threat to military aircraft such as the RAF Tornado and the US Air Force F-15 and F-16.
The S400, pictured, has a maximum range of 250 miles and can intercept aircraft flying up to 90,000 feet
Russian defence officials claim it can even target the fifth-generation F-22 Raptor aircraft.
Russia is also selling the older-generation S-300 system to Iran and is considering exports of the newer weapon to India, China and Saudi Arabia.
According to a Russian missile commander speaking to Sputnik News: 'Even if a plane is flying low and with the same speed as a vehicle moving on the ground, the radar will show it on the screen. For the S-400 there is no such thing as “stealth” aircraft, the system will see it and will shoot it down.'
Russian defence officials have claimed that over the past two days its aircraft have performed 85 combat sorties attacking 277 terrorist locations in Aleppo, Damascus, Lattakia, Hama, Homs and Idib provinces.
As well as aircraft, it is also able to intercept cruise missiles and other potential airborne threats
They said an Su-24M bomber attacked an ISIS armoured convoy in Homs destroying three tanks and two infantry fighting vehicle.
As pictures of the advanced missile system emerged, Russia claimed that ISIS and other terror groups in the Middle East have access to mustard gas.
Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Tass: 'Islamic State and some other radical Islamist groups in the Middle East have indeed gained access to the components and technologies for the production of chemical weapons and began using them more actively in Syria and Iraq
'If earlier we talked about the use of household and industrial chlorine by them as chemical weapons, now there is verified information about the use of warfare poisonous agents, including mustard gas. This gas is also used for the purposes of provocation to blame the government for that.'
Russia has claimed that its pilots have attacked almost 300 targets in Syria over the past 48 hours
The deployment of the S-400 is seen as a massive escalation of Russia's air-defence capability in the region.
Zakharova accused the United States of trying to encourage regime change in Syria and other areas.
She said: 'Russia’s steps in the sphere of boosting defence are largely caused by the US activity, including the American nuclear potential improvement, deployment of the global missile defence system with a view to upsetting the strategic parity and bringing NATO infrastructure closer to Russian borders.
'We cannot remain indifferent to this or ignore the attempts to undermine our security
'We have repeatedly pointed to Washington’s involvement in illegal methods of regime change in a number of countries, which, in particular, led to the tragic consequences, for example, in Ukraine. If we look back a little further, who else but Washington invaded Iraq under a false pretense. This is not exactly what one calls global stability.'
Pope Francis last Sunday issued a surprise appeal for every Catholic parish and community in Europe to take in a refugee family. His call came at the end of a remarkable week, in which Europe’s immigration policy collapsed under the weight of the biggest mass influx of refugees since the Second World War.
The two main Christian leaders in Britain — Cardinal Vincent Nichols of Winchester and Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby — added to the pressure on Cameron in calling for an urgent and compassionate response, and a coordinated Europeans agreement for sharing the burden.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Monday that the “breathtaking” flow of migrants into Germany will “occupy and change” the country in the next years.
The crisis has pushed the Catholic Church to the front lines as a consistent advocate of a generous and compassionate response by both states and communities.
The notion that Christianity would be threatened or diluted by a large influx of Muslim refugees has not been heard from European church leaders. The prevailing sentiment in the Church so far is that Europe cannot be Christian if it turns its back on strangers in desperate need.
Even in Hungary, Archabbot Asztrik Várszegi, head of one of the country’s oldest landmarks, the Benedictine Archabbey in Pannonhalmahas, has ordered that any refugees arriving to the Benedictine monastery must be taken in and cared for.
He said, “We cannot leave anyone outside, because doing so would contradict the Gospel.”
Mexico, India, Philippines, Dominican Republic top country of origin for naturalized Americans by state
As Whites are ethnically cleansed, that is being reflected in the home countries of those entering America.
Nearly 800,000 people decided to become American citizens in the 12 months that ended Sept. 30, 2013 — and more than a third of them came from Asia.
Asians comprised the biggest group of new Americans by region, according to recent data from the Department of Homeland Security, edging out those from North America, in which DHS includes those from Central America and the Caribbean.
Mexicans remain the single largest group of foreigners who were naturalized as citizens. But by state they are the biggest group in only 24. Among the remaining 26 states plus the District of Columbia, 10 other nationalities claim the top spot, as this map shows.
In nine states, Indians made up the biggest group of naturalized citizens. Those from the Dominican Republic, who nationwide topped those from China for the first time in at least a decade, are the biggest group in five states, the DHS data show.
One of those states is New Jersey. For two years running, Dominicans have made up the biggest group of naturalizations each year, narrowly exceeding the number of Indians.
DHS counts 779,929 people who were naturalized across the U.S. in the 2013 fiscal year, up 3% from a year earlier but 25% fewer than the record 1,046,539 who were naturalized in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2008.
Asians were 275,700 of them, followed by the 271,807 from North America, Central America and the Caribbean. Europeans, the biggest source of the immigration waves of a century ago, were 80,333 of the year’s naturalizations. By country, the biggest groups after Mexico are India, Philippines, Dominican Republic and China.
To become a naturalized American, an immigrant generally must have been a permanent resident of the U.S. for at least five years (three years if the spouse is American) and pass a citizenship exam.
Here’s the breakdown by state for the 2013 fiscal year.
And there's more good news
Now White People Are Dying From ZOG's Terrible Economic Policies, Too
As the “middle class” hollows out, whites who started life under relatively promising circumstances are finally seeing the floor fall out under them.
It wasn’t supposed to end this way. But this week America learned that the folks everyone thought had it better than most are suffering a fate just as bad as the rest of us, and by some measures, even worse.
A demographic analysis of public health trends in recent years shows that middle-aged whites are living more miserable and sicker lives—and also appear to be dying at a higher rate. From 1999 to 2013, Princeton University researchers observed a disturbing jump in deaths among whites aged 45 to 54. For other groups, including seniors and middle-aged blacks and Latinos, mortality fell, continuing positive health and demographic trends of the past few decades.
Overall, non-Latino white midlife mortality ticked up by 34 deaths per 100,000. It’s not quite an epidemic, but the cumulative death toll suggests a slow-burning affliction that affirms a cultural sense of decline: Across the 15-year period, the researchers calculated, “If the white mortality rate for ages 45–54 had held at their 1998 value…half a million deaths would have been avoided in the period 1999–2013, comparable to lives lost in the US AIDS epidemic through mid-2015.” Driving factors reflected social and public health patterns: suicide, disease (particularly liver problems) and “drug and alcohol poisoning.”
The rising mortality rate, according to the study, paralleled “self-reported declines in health, mental health, and ability to conduct activities of daily living, and increases in chronic pain and inability to work.” But the trends differed by education level, as those with a high school–level education or less experienced worse outcomes than the college-educated.
This twist in America’s demography of death speaks to a societal malaise: The economic decline began well before the latest recession, but coincides with the economic dislocation that accompanied corporate globalization and “free trade” policies. Then the late 1990s brought a withering of the welfare system, leaving many older Americans facing an economic cliff after the financial collapse and debt crisis.
Nonetheless, the narrative of rising death rates among middle-aged whites should be viewed in a context of racial differences across many health measures; blacks in general still suffer higher mortality rates and poorer health outcomes than whites, for example. So this is racial inequality emerging in the negative direction. “The narrowing of the black white mortality gap could be thought of as leveling down,” says researcher Angus Deaton via e-mail. The study isn’t meant to suggest “tension or competition,” he stresses, but to show a more nuanced view of how economic insecurity and social distress interact.
These socioeconomic factors converge against the backdrop of a shattered American Dream: In their analysis of the results, Deaton and co-author Anne Case write that since economic growth has sputtered since the 1970s, “with widening income inequality, many of the baby-boom generation are the first to find, in midlife, that they will not be better off than were their parents.”
How does this figure into the public discourse on race and health? Rising white midlife death isn’t so much a counterpoint to the narrative of racial segregation as it is a revelation about the long-term costs of structural inequality. As the “middle class” hollows out, whites who started life under more promising circumstances—when a high-school graduate could land a job for life on the assembly line—are finally seeing the floor fall out under them too. Arguably, they may have had a harder landing than the groups always stuck at the bottom; could drugs be a distressed response to that collective class trauma? Many have dropped out of the workforce. Displaced middle-aged manufacturing workers have watched old factories shutter and neighborhoods subsequently deteriorate in the aftermath of mass foreclosures.
Economic hardship among whites is most acutely reflected in rural regions where joblessness and social distress run rampant, youth flee to seek better prospects elsewhere, and poverty has risen faster than in cities.
The mortality pattern seems unique to the United States. Other wealthy countries—the UK, Australia, Canada and Sweden—continued to see declines in midlife mortality after 1998. Researchers speculate that aging Americans might suffer deeper distress due to eroding retirement security. Much of the workforce has shifted to less stable 401(k)-based retirement plans, while other countries have maintained guaranteed defined-benefit pensions. Meanwhile, what’s left of the US pension system, which is concentrated in public-sector jobs, faces assaults by state legislators seeking to balance the budget on the backs of unionized civil servants.
Opioid use is identified as a possible response to commonly reported health issues like chronic muscle pain, but the researchers noted that “long-term opioid use may exacerbate pain for some.” That’s an understatement. According to the CDC, deaths from heroin overdoses have nearly quadrupled from 2002 to 2013; heroin use among whites has more than doubled, often linked to abuse of prescription drugs. In another demographic twist, heroin has exploded in rural and suburban neighborhoods (which could ironically prompt progressive drug-policy reforms that never caught on earlier, when drugs were seen as an urban black and Latino problem).
But heroin overdoses may be a symptom of another social pathology. The 15-year death spike among middle-aged whites tracks the slow bleed of neoliberalism: the massive offshoring of manufacturing jobs, financial booms and busts, corporate deregulation. All these statistics suggest the need for government-sponsored social supports is growing just as the government is rolling back welfare (Bill Clinton’s neoliberal welfare reform agenda was imposed shortly before the white midlife death patterns appeared), healthcare, and education resources (including workforce investment programs that were designed to aid dislocated older workers). The same generation has suffered from the collapse of institutions that once helped anchor the working class: active unions or just common workplaces in factory towns.
This aspect of public health may get lost in the statistics: the community cohesion that gives life meaning. Before these people lost their health or succumbed to despair, many may have lost something more vital: a sense of connection to the wider world. The downward leveling of society, with health crises penetrating a relatively privileged group, reveals a different kind of connection: the interwoven hardships in the fraying social fabric—a shared fate we only see when the seams come undone.
Organisers said that up to 50,000 were on the march which marked the anniversary of Poland's independence after the Second World War
Polish nationalists in front of the National Stadium during the 'March of Independence'
Tens of thousands of protesters poured into Warsaw's streets on Wednesday for a demonstration organised by the patriotic right, marching under the slogan "Poland for the Polish" and burning an EU flag.
Police said 25,000 people joined the march, which marked the anniversary of Poland's return to independence after the Second World War, while organisers put the numbers at 50,000.
Demonstrators watch an European Union flag burning during the annual march commemorating Poland's National Independence Day
"God, honour, homeland," chanted the protesters as they marched under a sea of red-and-white Polish flags.
Demonstrators trampled and burned a European Union flag at one point, while a banner added to the anti-EU theme with the slogan "EU macht frei" ("Work makes you free" in German), a reference to the slogan over the gates at Auschwitz.
"Yesterday it was Moscow, today it's Brussels which takes away our freedom," chanted one group of protesters.
Other banners read "Great Catholic Poland" and "Stop Islamisation".
Polish nationalists light flares in front of the National Stadium during the 'March of Independence' under the slogan 'Poland for the Poles, the Poles for Poland', which is part of Polish Independence Day celebrations in Warsaw
Several thousand riot police officers were deployed for the protest, which was punctuated by numerous firecrackers and smoke bombs but otherwise went off peacefully.
Demonstrators wave Polish flags during the annual march commemorates Poland's National Independence Day in Warsaw
The annual march, organised by Poland's nationalist right, has seen clashes in previous years.
"I came here because I love Poland and want to show it," said 27-year-old Piotr, who came with his fiancee. He added: "I came here for my grandfather, who fought in the Warsaw Uprising (against the Nazi occupation of the Polish capital), and for his father, who fought for independence".
Two cyclists watch thousands of Polish nationalists marching on the Poniatowski bridge marking the Independence Day in Warsaw, Poland
Poland is returning to conservative rule after eight years of centrist government, following the Law and Justice (PiS) party's landslide election victory last month on a platform playing strongly on concerns over ZOG's invasion agenda.
"We haven't heard rhetoric like this in Europe since the 1930s. It really worries me," Morgan Johansson, Sweden's immigration minister, told me as we discussed growing support amongst his countrymen and women for the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats Party.
The Sweden Democrats are used to being front-page news - recently they've been blamed for provoking arson attacks on a number of asylum centres - but they are not yet accustomed to being Sweden's third largest political movement.
Their new-found popularity is directly linked to Europe's invasion agenda.
Search the word 'asylum' in Arabic on your smartphone and Sweden pops up as a number one result.
There are more asylum seekers per capita in this tiny country of under 10 million than in any other European nation.
Dazed refugees landing on Europe's Mediterranean shores prefer to trek determinedly north. Germany and Sweden, they believe, will provide shelter, jobs and generous benefits.
Situation 'out of hand'
Sweden's reputation for welcoming refugees and political asylum seekers is decades old. It famously took in US draft-dodgers during the Vietnam war.
But the current mass arrival of asylum seekers is forcing Sweden to face uncomfortable questions about the kind of society it wants - and can afford - to be.
Frustrated by the political mainstream, middle-class, urban 20-somethings Per Sefastsson and Jenny Ribsskog have switched their allegiance from the centre-right and centre-left respectively to the Sweden Democrats.
I met the pair in Stockholm's sumptuous Ostermalm food hall. A far cry from Sweden's stretched refugee facilities.
They told me they were so worried about the situation spiralling out of control that they recently started working for the Sweden Democrats, supporting the party's drive to stop the invasion of Sweden altogether.
Jenny told me her country was full.
"The situation here is completely out of hand. We have no work, no schools, no housing for the migrants. The government is talking about putting them in tents for the winter. It's worrying."
She wants a temporary ban on all migration to Sweden. Including refugees and asylum seekers.
Per told me it used to be considered racist to even debate migration.
"Now," he said, "More and more Swedes from every social background are realising it's not feasible to take in so many people in such a short amount of time."
Pressure on services
Mass migration now touches the lives of all Swedes, he says, with increasing numbers of ghetto-like communities nationwide and cuts to the over-burdened welfare state affecting everyone.
A particular stress on social services is the growing number of unaccompanied minors coming to Sweden. Around 33,000 this year alone, according to the government.
Many of the arrivals are teenage asylum seekers but, I was told, children as young as seven now travel alone too.
Their families know that once youngsters have been granted residency, Swedish law demands close relatives may automatically move to Sweden too.
In desperation, Sweden's centre-left government has requested to join the EU's controversial - and limited - relocation scheme.
Up to 54,000 asylum seekers in Sweden could soon be shared out amongst other EU member states. The invasion agenda minister told me that the European Commission agreed that Sweden had a very strong case.
Whereas in Greece and Italy most invaders are in transit, Sweden is a favoured end destination.
"The rest of Europe has to help," he said.
"We cannot year after year be doing more than any other country."
"We cannot just throw women and children back into the war - that is a moral obligation for us - but the UK has to help, Portugal has to help, Spain has to help. The countries of Central and Eastern Europe have to help.
"You can't just take the finances of the EU. You also have to take responsibility in difficult times."
His frustration was glaringly evident.
I asked him if he thought the EU had failed over the crisis.
His pause was long and heavy but he then insisted that there could be no solution without the EU.
Slow progress
This week EU leaders discuss migration with African countries before holding the next in a long line of hastily organised migration meetings amongst themselves.
The focus this time will be on broken promises.
Even when fractious European countries reach agreements on dividing up asylum seekers more equally, offering personnel to help better patrol EU borders and plans to send blankets and tents for migrants stranded in the Balkans, they have been slow to make good on their pledges. To put it politely.
For example, just over 100 asylum seekers out of an agreed 39,600 have been successfully relocated from Italy to other EU countries so far - and around 30 out of 66,400 from Greece.
More in a fortnight than the UK - with a population more than six times that of Sweden - is willing to take over the next five years, according to Mr Johansson.
While EU leaders argue about responsibility, new arrivals to Stockholm risk spending the icy Swedish winter in tents.
