Africa

[Lizzy]

The Empire has plans for Africa.  The CIA is propping up a Ugandan Army to invade Sudan and find this Kony guy.  Of course he's probably one out of a thousand or so gang warlords but Invisible Children, CIA front doesn't seem to care or think at all. And of course they happen to be headquartered in.....wait for it .. .. sunny San Diego, CA.  

http://news.yahoo.com/group-sudan-army-supporting-fugitive-warlord-...

[Jonathan Barlow Gee]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-29/pentagon-using-china-satel...

A U.S. lawmaker is questioning the Pentagon’s decision to use a Chinese commercial satellite to provide communications for its Africa Command.

Use of China’s Apstar-7 satellite was leased because it provided “unique bandwidth and geographic requirements” for “wider geographic coverage” requested in May 2012 by the U.S. Africa Command, according to Lieutenant Colonel Monica Matoush, a Pentagon spokeswoman.

Apstar-7 is operated by APT Satellite Holdings Ltd. (1045) The state-owned China Aerospace Science & Technology Corp. holds 61 percent of Hong Kong-based APT, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The Pentagon contract was disclosed without details at an April 25 House Armed Services Committee hearing during questioning from Representative Mike Rogers of Alabama, chairman of the panel that oversees space programs.

The contract “exposes our military to the risk that China may seek to turn off our ’eyes and ears’ at the time of their choosing,” Rogers, a Republican, said yesterday in an e-mailed statement. “It sends a terrible message to our industrial base at a time when it is under extreme stress” from the automatic budget cuts known as sequestration.

The Defense Information Systems Agency and the Africa Command “made an informed risk assessment of operational security considerations and implemented appropriate transmission and communications security and information assurance measures,” Matoush, of the Pentagon, said in an e-mailed statement. She said the security of “all signals to and through the Apstar-7 satellite are fully protected with additional transmission security.”

U.S. Company

The satellite’s services were leased under a one-year, $10.6 million contract through a U.S. company, Artel LLC, Matoush said. Reston, Virginia-based Artel is one of 18 companies under an established contract the Defense Information Systems Agency uses for specialized commercial satellite services.

While the Apstar-7 lease expires May 14, the agency has the option to extend it for as long as three more years.

Rogers said he was “deeply concerned a low-level DoD agency was able to enter into a contract with a Chinese company to use a Chinese satellite launched by a Chinese missile, seemingly with no input from the political appointees in DoD.”

Representative John Garamendi, a California Democrat, said the Chinese satellite lease confirms his suspicion that there’s a lack of coordination among the Pentagon offices that oversee intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance systems, his spokesman, Matthew Kravitz, said yesterday in an e-mailed statement.

Urgent Need

Douglas Loverro, the Pentagon’s top space policy official, told the House panel last week that the Apstar-7 lease was the only one available to support an urgent “operational need, but we also recognize that we need to have a good process in place to assure this” type of decision “is vetted across the department.”

“We recognize that there is concern across the community on the usage of Chinese satellites to support our warfighter, and yet” officials recognize commanders “need support and sometimes we must go” to “the only place that we can get” the service, he said.

Steve Hildreth, a military space policy expert with the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, said in an e-mail that U.S. officials have told him “a very high percentage of U.S. military communications use commercial satellites on a regular and sustained basis.”

“The U.S. military does not have major concerns with this arrangement,” he said.

Commercial Market

Frank Slazer, vice president for space of the Aerospace Industries Association, said the Pentagon uses commercial satellite providers for the bulk of its non-classified telecommunications requirements, “especially in areas where we do not have a big military presence like Africa.”

The lease “underscores the limitations” of not investing enough U.S. money in non-classified military satellite programs and “depending only on the commercial market for national security telecom requirements,” said Slazer, whose Arlington, Virginia-based trade group lobbies for the defense industry.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission said in its 2012 annual report said China is “the most threatening actor in cyberspace” as its intelligence agencies and hackers use increasingly sophisticated techniques to gain access to U.S. military computers and defense contractors.

Chinese hackers are moving into “increasingly advanced types of operations or operations against specialized targets,” such as sensors and apertures on deployed U.S. military platforms, according to the report.

Chinese officials have denied responsibility for cyberattacks and said their country is often the victim of such intrusions.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington [e-mail]

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Mark Silva at [e-mail]

[Jonathan Barlow Gee]

coming at the same time as this: http://rt.com/news/rockets-russian-plane-syria-575/

Two missiles were reportedly fired at a Russian plane with at least 159 passengers on board that was flying over Syrian territory. Russian officials admit the jet faced danger, but are not talking of a targeted attack.

The news broke in on Monday as Interfax, citing “an informed source in Moscow,” reported that a Russian passenger plane was attacked.

“Syrian [officials] informed us that on Monday morning, unidentified forces launched two ground-to-air missiles which exploded in the air very close to a civilian aircraft belonging to a Russian airline,” the source told the Russian agency.

The pilots reportedly managed to maneuver the plane in time however, “saving the lives of passengers.”

It is believed the aircraft was intentionally targeted, “but it remains unclear whether the attackers knew it was Russian or not,” the source added.

However, Russian officials, though admitting the plane might have been endangered, are not yet talking of a targeted attack.

The Russian Foreign Ministry’s said on its website the plane’s crew at 4.55 PM Moscow time (12.55 GMT) “detected battle action on the ground that, according to the crew, could constitute a threat to the 159 passengers on board the plane.”

The Russian Foreign Ministry is now “taking emergency measures to clarify all the circumstances of this situation, including making contact with the Syrian authorities,” the ministry’s spokesperson Aleksandr Lukashevich said.

The plane that was allegedly targeted belonged to Nordwind Airlines – a Russian charter air carrier – and was identified as an Airbus A320. On April 29 it was en route to the city of Kazan, in Russia’s republic of Tatarstan, from Egypt's resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh.

So far, there are no grounds to claim that the aircraft became a target of a missile attack, experts say.

It was flying over a mountainous area in Syria when one of the pilots noticed “flashes on the ground.” After that, to keep safe, it was decided to increase the height of the flight, Irina Tyurina, a spokeswoman for Russian Union of Tourist Industry told RIA Novosti.

“No one was injured, and the plane was not damaged. The aircraft landed in Kazan as had been planned,” the Russian Federal Agency for Tourism told news agencies. There were 159 passengers and eight crew members on-board the aircraft.

Meanwhile, Syrian aviation authorities received no indication of the alleged attack on the Russian plane, says the director of Syrian Airlines, Ghaida Abdullatif:

“We contacted the service that monitors traffic within Syrian airspace. None of the air traffic control services or other ground services at the airports in Damascus and Latakia have confirmed the information of a Russian plane being fired at".

Russian experts have already voiced their doubts that a passenger plane can actually perform the kind of maneuvers that would allow it to avoid a missile attack.

“Planes are usually attacked either from the side or from above. A pilot could not have seen the missiles,” Vladimir Gerasimov, a Russian pilot and an expert on flight security told RT. “

A passenger plane crew simply couldn’t see what’s behind. And if something is approaching the plane from the opposite direction – the speed doubles, so there is no time to do anything, ” he added.

Danny Makki of the Syrian Youth Movement in the UK believes that the incident is no doubt a rebel attack, which could have been carried out with weapons supplied by neighboring governments or taken off the Syrian army. He thinks that the attack is an intentional one and should receive widespread condemnation, just as the attacks carried out by government forces do.

“The most likely thing that could have happened was rebel fire from missiles that could have been given by regional countries or government forces… no rebel forces would fire a missile at civilian aircraft without it being done intentionally. So it is essentially another reprehensible act that would have been committed by rebel forces, and should gain condemnation from all the states after it is clearer who actually committed it”, Makki said,

“But it does show that these are not the liberal forces which the West wanted to arm in the first place”, he added.

The civil war in Syria between the government of President Bashar Assad and opposition forces has been raging for over two years, claiming the lives of more than 70,000 people according to UN estimates. Assad says he is fighting an insurgency that has been sponsored from abroad.

[Lizzy]

On the China thing.  I see a self inflicted cyber attack being blamed on China in the future.  In Syria we attack Russia by proxy.  And everybody wants their hands on Africa.  Gold, diamonds, minerals and fertile land.  A few things pop into my mind about that. What's that old cliche, putting all your irons in the fire, or something.  Well, the Illuminati have a ridiculousness insane amount of irons in the fire, it has become a transparent mess.  If anything could be called ungodly, that would be it.  The most insane desperate plan fucking ever.  It's like throwing every apocalyptic scenario from the beginning of time on the wall and hoping they all stick. Wow Jon. There is so much going on in the world.  Overwhelming.