Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Thursday 2 July 2015

The European Union Times



Posted: 01 Jul 2015 03:53 PM PDT


A mock air battle between an F-16 jet and the military’s new and oft-troubled F-35 stealth jet showed that the F-35 is too sluggish to hit an enemy plane or dodge gunfire, according to a report.
The F-35 has cost the US military more than a trillion dollars since work on it began, making it the most expensive weapon in history.
The mock air battle, staged in January over the Pacific Ocean, was to test the F-35’s prowess as a close-range dogfighter at 10,000 to 30,000 feet. The F-35 pilot was to fly his jet hard, turning and maneuvering to “shoot down” the older F-16 jet, whose pilot would be doing his best to evade being hit, and trying to attack the F-35.
The test pilot’s five-page brief said that despite the F-16 being weighed down by two drop tanks, and with the F-35 jet carrying no weapons, the F-35 “remained at a distinct energy disadvantage for every engagement.”
The F-35 was designed to far exceed the fourth generation F-16 jets, first built in the 1970s, with the ability to carry its fuel and weapons internally. Yet aerodynamic problems, such as “insufficient pitch rate” for the jet’s nose while climbing, were reported during the mock battle.
The F-35 test pilot also discovered he couldn’t comfortably move his head inside the jet’s cramped cockpit.
“The helmet was too large for the space inside the canopy to adequately see behind the aircraft,” said the report.
That allowed the F-16 to sneak up on him.
The F-35 pilot tried to target the F-16 with the stealth jet’s 25-millimeter cannon, which the smaller F-16 easily dodged. The pilot said the F-35 performed so dismally that it had no place fighting other aircraft within visual range.
In one maneuver, the F-35 was able to perform decently at rudder reversal at slow speeds, but this used a lot of the aircraft’s energy, leaving the aircraft vulnerable to attack.
The brief release to the War is Boring website was unclassified but still marked “for official use only.” It documented a mock battle taking place on January 14, 2015 over a sea test range in the Pacific Ocean near Edwards Air Force Base, California.
There have been reports of fundamental problems with the F-35, which was designed by Lockheed Martin, as well as complaints about the ballooning cost of the project.
In April, Congress learned the software system for maintaining the fighter jet was giving false-positive readings 80 percent of the time, possibly leading to even more development delays.
The F-35’s Autonomic Logistics Information System (ALIS), a next-generation software system including 5 million lines of code, is supposed to identify any problems with the jet, and provide information on necessary replacement parts. It has been called the F-35’s “brains.”
Turner told Congress that ALIS doesn’t have a spell checker and raised concerns about the software’s ability to catch errors worse than grammatical ones. The current ALIS system is held in place by computer racks and weighs 800-1,000 pounds, making it cumbersome in combat environments. A smaller, two-man portable version is being developed which is due to be ready in July.
Last year, the Government Accountability Office found the ALIS had failed to meet basic requirements like identifying faults and failures.
Earlier news reports stated that a computer glitch had kept the aircraft’s four-barrel rotary cannon from firing, potentially delaying the jet from being fully operational until 2019.
Source
        
Posted: 01 Jul 2015 03:22 PM PDT


The US Department of Education weathered sharp criticism over the weekend for its decision to add a rainbow to its Facebook profile picture.
By noon Friday, the federal education department’s social media team had swapped out their original blue background for the fanatically pro-gay rainbow image, mirroring the Obama administration’s loud support for the recent supreme court decision on gay marriage.
While the image was up for only a brief moment (it’s already been changed back), it was long enough to catch the attention of concerned members of the public who expressed disapproval of the department weighing in and taking sides on such a controversial political issue.
“I would love it if the department of education could teach our children why a handful of men acting like tyrants overturned the rule of law and the voice of the people,” a Facebook commenter wrote. “That would be a great lesson to start with.”
Another user, who claimed she is a teacher, expressed she found the department’s picture completely inappropriate.
“As a teacher that offends me. The department of education has no business in political or religious affairs,” the user wrote.
In fact, most of the highest voted comments on the department’s Facebook image, of which there were over 1,400, were negative.


At least one astute commenter saw the image as emblematic of the department’s overarching agenda.
“I find this very inappropriate for the department of Education to share… If there is an agenda here to teach young children about homosexuality, I feel that is a matter that should be left up to the parents…” she wrote.
Various other federal branches, such as the US Department of Treasury, the US Department of Agriculture and theUS Department of Health and Human Services, did not alter their profile images, though the latter showed support by sharing a tweet from President Obama.
Source
        
Posted: 01 Jul 2015 02:58 PM PDT


Russia’s gas giant, Gazprom, has announced that it is halting natural gas supply to the war-stricken Ukraine after pricing talks between two neighbors failed.
“Ukraine did not pay for July gas supplies,” Gazprom chief, Alexei Miller, said in a statement on Wednesday, adding, “Gazprom has halted gas supplies to Ukraine from 10 a.m. (0700 GMT) July 1.”
The Russian official emphasized that Russia will not supply gas to Ukraine, unless the country accepts to pay for it no matter what the future price will be. Miller added that the gas pricing formula for Ukraine will remain unchanged until late 2019.
Officials in the Kremlin have so far declined to comment on the issue.
The announcement by the Russian company came after Ukraine declared on Tuesday that it had plans to halt all gas purchases from Russia after EU-mediated negotiations between Moscow and Kiev in Austrian capital, Vienna, hit a deadlock. The talks aimed to help the two countries reach an agreement to keep gas supply going on.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s state energy company, Naftogaz, issued a statement saying that the new development will have no effect on gas supplies to Europe, adding that it will continue transporting Russian gas to other European clients.
Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission’s vice-president for energy union, also confirmed that gas supplies to Ukraine and the EU will not be affected by the latest spat between Moscow and Kiev over gas price, saying, “Both gas deliveries to Ukraine and transit to the EU are not endangered.”
Gas disputes have been going on between the two countries over the past years. The disputes worsened after Russia remarkably increased the price of gas it supplies Ukraine following the country’s former president, Viktor Yanukovych, was ousted in a pro-Western unrest in February 2014. His ouster was followed by heavy clashes in the eastern parts of Ukraine between government forces and pro-Russia fighters.
In February, Russia’s state-owned gas giant, Gazprom, threatened to cut off its supplies to Ukraine and divert them to the country’s eastern regions, which are controlled by pro-Russia forces.
Russia supplies around a third of Europe’s natural gas, half of which flows through Ukraine.
Kiev is currently purchasing most of its needed gas from countries in Central Europe and Norway.
Source
        
Posted: 01 Jul 2015 02:44 PM PDT


Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is ready to accept almost all the conditions proposed by the country’s international creditors at the weekend, marking the latest attempt to keep Greece in the eurozone.
The prime minister said he would accept all of the terms proposed with just minor exceptions. He agreed to the changes in the country’s value added tax system but asked to keep a special 30 percent discount for the Greek islands untouched.
Tsipras requested the move to change the retirement age to 67 in 2022 start in October, while the creditors want it implemented immediately. He also asked for the phasing out of the special ‘solidarity grant’ for poor pensioners to be done by 2019, more slowly than creditors have requested, the Financial Times said.
A two-page letter was sent to the European Commission, the ECB and the IMF late on Tuesday and obtained by a number of media outlets including the FT and Bloomberg on Wednesday.
The news comes ahead of a teleconference of EU ministers scheduled for 15:30 GMT Wednesday.
European stock markets rallied on Wednesday after the reports the Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is ready to accept the creditors’ bailout terms. The Stoxx 50 index of leading European shares was up 2.48 percent by 10:20 GMT, while Germany’s DAX jumped 2.10 percent. The euro rose to $1.1122 from an intraday low of $1.1095.
On June 30 Greece failed to repay its €1.6 billion June debt to the IMF, becoming the first developed country to default on its international obligations.
Hours before the deadline expired on June 30 the Greek government asked for a new bailout program from the European Stability Mechanism (ESM); enough to cover the country’s financial needs for the next two years. The Eurogroup, however, has so far refused to provide a new lifeline for Athens.
Source
        
Posted: 01 Jul 2015 05:39 AM PDT


An “emergency” national security report prepared by the Ministry of Defense (MoD) circulating in the Kremlin today is warning that the “sea-creature” discovered on Sakhalin Island in the Far East this past week by local residents has now been identified as a “chimera” deliberately created in/by the United States for purposes as yet unknown and, therefore, now poses a “heightened” security risk to the Federation.
According to this report, on 28 June, a security guard stationed at Shakhtersk Airport on Sakhalin Island, while on a regularly scheduled perimeter patrol accompanied by his “female friend”, observed the carcass of a “sea-creature”that had washed ashore approximately 300 meters (984 feet) from the runway.
Upon this security guard observing this “sea-creature”, this report continues, he and his “female friend” exited their vehicle for a closer examination and to obtain photographs of what they described as an approximately 5.5 meter (18 feet) long fish-like animal having fur instead of scales and possessing a nearly 1.5 meter (5 feet) bird-like beak.




Upon the discovery of this “sea-creature”, this report says, scientists from the Sakhalin Research Institute of Fisheries and Oceanography (SRIFO) were immediately dispatched to the scene to conduct an examination of the carcass and gather DNA samples in order to indentify its origins and species.
Once the initial DNA results of this “sea-creature” by SRIFO scientists showed “alarming irregularities” though, this report continues, they contacted the MoD’s System of Forward-looking Military Research and Development (SFLMRD) for additional “expertise and guidance”.
As the SFLMRD is tasked with monitoring and analysis of all threats to the national security of the Federation posed by international science, this report explains, the DNA results of this “sea-creature” showing it contained “genetic elements” of sea ottersArctic lamprey (eel) and “gynandromorphy-celled” poultry (chicken) [Note: every cell in a chicken has its own male or female identity] clearly marks this discovery as an “unknown element” requiring this level of scrutiny.
SFLMRD scientists contributing to this MoD report further state that this otter-lamprey-poultry “sea-creature” is not a natural species of any kind thus making it a “chimera”…a single organism composed of genetically distinct cells.
As to who would “construct” such a chimera as this “sea-creature”, this report notes, both the United States andUnited Kingdom have for years been conducting bizarre genetic experiments involving animal-to-animal, animal-to-plant and animal-to-human hybrids thus making them both liable to have contributed to its creation.
But to this exact “sea-creature” discovered on Sakhalin Island, these scientists note, by its containing the DNA of both the sea otter and lamprey native to the eastern Pacific Ocean regions of Alaska make it “more likely than not” that the United States was behind its making.
And, perhaps, most interesting (or bizarre) in this report are SFLMRD scientists description of this chimera “sea-creature” as being “genetically created” to be a combined salt-freshwater sea mammal able to adapt to the cold northern coastal regions of the Pacific Ocean thus making it suitable for “aquaculture proposes” due to its high protein content.
In coming to this conclusion about this chimera “sea-creature”, these scientists explain, if one were to genetically create an “oceanic equivalent” of a herd of cows, or flock of poultry, to feed a population whose main land food sources were all but depleted, this is exactly the animal you would create.
With the sea otter having an innate social structure within their DNA conducive to their staying in large groups, the lamprey as being a human food source, and poultry, likewise, being one of the largest food sources for humans, SFLMRD scientists in this report further explain, the creation of herds/flocks of these “sea-creatures” for aquaculture purposes would, in fact, significantly minimize the amount of feed grains having to now be grown to feed their land-based equivalents.


And as to how this particular “sea-creature” ended up on the shores of Sakhalin Island, this MoD report states, was most likely due to a severe Arctic storm that pounded the Aleutian Island regions of Alaska earlier last month, and where a number of vast lamprey aquaculture sea-farms are located which it could have escaped from. So powerful, in fact, was this Arctic storm that a few days later the citizens of Fairbanks, Alaska, reported numerous lamprey’s falling out of the sky.
Once escaped from its Aleutian Island aquaculture facility, this report speculates, this “sea-creature” was then, most likely, caught in the Oyashio Current causing it to eventually end up on Sakhalin Island.


With the world’s best experts predicting that our planet will run out of enough food to feed itself in 35 years, this report concludes, aquaculture of genetically modified chimera species such as this “sea-creature” could very well be our future…but without firm international oversight of the governments (like the United States) and corporations who are developing these chimera’s we could, instead, destroy our entire ecosystem instead.

Source