Karl's Weird News

Obama piles more military pressure on Iran – conspicuously

Before taking off for Asia Saturday, Nov. 6, President Barack Obama ordered the Pentagon not just to beef up American and NATO military pressure on Iran but to do so as conspicuously as possible, debkafile’s Washington and military sources report .

At a special White House security consultation last week, Obama said it was time to plant America’s military option against the Iranian nuclear threat visibly and tangibly under the noses of Iran’s political and military decision-makers.

In the last few days, three aircraft carriers, four nuclear submarines and marine assault units have piled up opposite Iranian shores.

Early Sunday, the influential Senator Lindsey Graham (R. South Carolina), member of the Armed Services and Homeland Defense committees, said: “The US should consider sinking the Iranian navy, destroying its air force and delivering a decisive blow to the Revolutionary Guards.”

In an address to the Halifax International Security forum, he declared “They should neuter the regime, destroy its ability to fight back and hope Iranians will take the chance to take back their government.”

WW II bombs threaten AC/DC concert:

Unexploded Second World War bombs at an Austrian airfield threaten to shut down a May concert by metal rockers AC/DC.

The concert at Wels Airport on May 22nd has already faced another obstacle — complaints by environmentalists that it would disturb colonies of rare birds in the area.

Now, city officials have informed the metal band that the bombs pose a danger to the estimated 80,000 fans who have bought tickets to the sold-out concert.

Hermann Wimmer, the mayor of Wels, told Austrian TV this week that approval for the concert will not go ahead until experts in demining and bomb defusing evaluate the site.

The airport had been the target of heavy Allied bombing during the war.

U.S. tests system to break foreign Web censorship

The U.S. government is covertly testing technology in China and Iran that lets residents break through screens set up by their governments to limit access to news on the Internet.

The “feed over email” (FOE) system delivers news, podcasts and data via technology that evades web-screening protocols of restrictive regimes, said Ken Berman, head of IT at the U.S. government’s Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is testing the system.

The news feeds are sent through email accounts including those operated by Google Inc, Microsoft Corp’s Hotmail and Yahoo Inc.

“We have people testing it in China and Iran,” said Berman, whose agency runs Voice of America. He provided few details on the new system, which is in the early stages of testing. He said some secrecy was important to avoid detection by the two governments.

The Internet has become a powerful tool for citizens in countries where governments regularly censor news media, enabling them to learn about and react to major social and political events.

Moaning German soldiers an ‘embarrassment’ say chiefs

German soldiers are softies who lack discipline, hate responsibility and show an inadequate desire to serve their country, according to the army’s chief inspector.

General Wolfgang Schneiderhahn, the general inspector of the Bundeswehr, told the German parliament that depite their positive contribution in Afghanistan, complaints from troops about their conditions were an “embarrassment”.

“We have given a good account of ourselves in Afghanistan, but we cannot guarantee an all-round feel-good feeling for soldiers,” said the general, before going on to detail the less dignified side of the country’s armed forces.

He cited complaints reaching him about the quality of sleeping bags used in a deployment in the Congo. “Are our soldiers too soft?” asked the best-selling daily German newspaper Bild.

Gen Schneiderhahn told politicians in Berlin on Monday that the descendants of the country’s mighty military machines of the past needed to have “a better feeling for discipline and to show a greater readiness to serve the state”.

Taleban using white phosphorus, some of it made in Britain 

Taleban fighters have been using deadly white phosphorus munitions, some of them manufactured in Britain, to attack Western forces in Afghanistan, according to previously classified United States documents released yesterday.

White phosphorus, which can burn its victims down to the bone, has been found in improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in regions across Afghanistan including in the south, where British troops are based. It has also been used in mortar and rocket attacks on American forces.

Last night the US military in Kabul condemned the use of white phosphorus by the insurgents as “reprehensible”. White phosphorus is banned as an offensive weapon under international rules of armed conflict.

Major Jennifer Willis, a spokeswoman for the US Army at Bagram, near Kabul, said that markings on some of the white phosphorus munitions that had been recovered showed that they had been manufactured in a number of different countries, including Britain, China, Russia and Iran.

U.S. retargets nuclear missiles to 12 Russian economic facilities

The USA is developing a new nuclear doctrine. American experts believe that today’s system of U.S. nuclear forces is out of date. Now they are going to change nuclear targets on the territory of Russian federation. The U.S. is going to retarget their nuclear missiles from large Russian cities to 12 most important Russian economic facilities. According to the U.S. experts destruction of these facilities will paralyze Russia’s economy and Russia will not be able to maintain military resistance.

This information was provided in the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) report calling for fundamental changes to U.S. nuclear war planning, a vital prerequisite if smaller nuclear arsenals are to be achieved.

“From Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence – A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons” calls to abandon the almost five-decade-long central mission for U.S. nuclear forces, which has been and continues to be “counterforce,” the capability for U.S. forces to destroy an enemy’s military forces, its weapons, its command and control facilities and its key leaders.

Terrorists could use ‘insect-based’ biological weapon 

Jeffrey Lockwood, professor of entomology at Wyoming University and author of Six-legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War, said such Rift Valley Fever or other diseases could be transported into a country by a terrorist with a suitcase.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I think a small terrorist cell could very easily develop an insect-based weapon.”

He said it would “probably be much easier” than developing a nuclear or chemical weapon, arguing: “The raw material is in the back yard.”

He continued: “It would be a relatively easy and simple process. “A few hundred dollars and a plane ticket and you could have a pretty good stab at it.”

Little Blue Pills Among the Ways CIA Wins Friends in Afghanistan

The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

“Take one of these. You’ll love it,” the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes — followed by a request for more pills.

For U.S. intelligence officials, this is how some crucial battles in Afghanistan are fought and won. While the CIA has a long history of buying information with cash, the growing Taliban insurgency has prompted the use of novel incentives and creative bargaining to gain support in some of the country’s roughest neighborhoods, according to officials directly involved in such operations.

 Jihadist Group Trying to ‘Invade’ Facebook Gets Shut Down

A quickly growing jihadist group that used Facebook to spread its radical message has been shut down by the popular Web networking site after FOXNews.com alerted the company to the group’s activities. Facebook blocked the group, Fursan Ghazawat Alnusra — Arabic for “Knights in Support of the Invasion” — Thursday evening after the group swelled to about 120 members in just over one week. The group had been exhorting its members to wage “Jihad to aid the religion of Allah and his Prophet.”

Wars Update: Fighting Goes Out Of Fashion

While the mass media continues to feature wars and terrorism, the overall trend continues away from such unpleasantness. Such stories are anathema to the mass media, because they do not attract eyeballs, and revenue. That’s the way people are, and the result is a distorted view of trends in global violence.

Worldwide, violence continues to decline, as it has for the last few years. Violence has also greatly diminished, or disappeared completely, in places like Iraq, Nepal, Chechnya, Congo, Indonesia and Burundi. Even Afghanistan, touted as the new war zone, is seeing less violence this year than last.

All this continues a trend that began when the Cold War ended, and the Soviet Union no longer subsidized terrorist and rebel groups everywhere. The current wars are basically uprisings against police states or feudal societies, which are seen as out-of-step with the modern world. Many are led by radicals preaching failed dogmas (Islamic conservatism, Maoism), that still resonate among people who don’t know about the dismal track records of these movements.

Attrition: Why Are U.S. Troops So Hard To Kill?

While every combat death is a tragedy, the war in Afghanistan has been notable for how few of them there have been. We’ll use a standard measure of combat losses, the number of troops in a combat division (12-20,000 troops) who are killed each day the division is in combat. Since late 2001, there have been .12 American combat deaths per division day in Afghanistan. During the Vietnam war, the average division lost 3.2 troops a day, which was similar to the losses suffered in Korea (1950-53). In Iraq, the losses have been .44 deaths per division per day. By comparison, during World War II the daily losses per American averaged (over 400-500 combat days) about twenty soldiers per day. On the Russian front, German and Russian divisions lost several times that, and often over a hundred a day for weeks on end.

US jet intercepts ballistic missile for first time: officials

A US F-16 fighter used an air-to-air missile to destroy a sounding rocket in its boost phase for the first time this week in a test of a new missile defense concept, US spokesmen said Tuesday.

The system — named the Net-Centric Airborne Defense Element (NCDE) — breaks new ground in that it would arm fighter aircraft or drones with missiles fast enough to intercept a ballistic missile as it lifts into space.

The aircraft would have to get to within a 100 miles of the launch site to catch the ascending missile in the first two to three minutes after launch.

But it could be very useful in a short range combat situation against short and medium range missiles, said Rick Lehner, a spokesman for the US Missile Defense Agency.

Boeing Laser Avenger – Humvee Hunts IEDs and Bombs in Tests

There is a cottage industry forming to thwart the twin threats of unexploded bombs and intentionally placed IEDs—by convincing the Pentagon to use long-range lasers in the warzone. Boeing, always at the forefront of a lucrative market niche, has mounted a solid-state direct-energy beam that can explode bombs in the clear before they can take out a convoy. And if the proving-ground footage we’ve been checking out is any indication, this zapper is definitely showing potential.

Late last month, Boeing conducted a series of tests at Redstone Arsenal in Alabama with a 1-kw laser mounted on the back of a converted anti-aircraft Humvee. Shooting an invisible beam just a few centimeters in diameter and 20 times hotter than an electric stovetop, the laser burned a hole through the casing of artillery and mortar rounds, detonating them more or less instantly. (As for bystanders, all bets are off.)