Category Archives: The Denise Simon Experience

Venezuela Today is Syria 7 Years Ago, Violence/Protests

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Photo published for Venezuelan opposition marches against Maduro; student killed

Related reading from Reuters

‘Mother of All Marches’ Turns Violent in Venezuela

by Geraldine Cols Azócar and Mariana Atencio

Clashes between protesters and security forces erupted in Venezuela during marches taking place Wednesday in at least 12 cities across the country.

Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans took to the streets to protest the government of President Nicolás Maduro as the country marked its 207th anniversary of the revolution that led to its independence from Spain.

A teenager who was shot in the head in Caracas near one of the protests has died in the hospital, according to the Associated Press. Opponents of the government said pro-government militias opened fire on a crowd, but government officials say the boy was assaulted while walking home from a soccer game.

Marches started in the early morning; closer to noon, the Venezuelan National Guard started deploying tear gas on people marching on the west side of Caracas, according to the Associated Press.

Liliana Machuca, a teacher in Caracas told the AP she believes protesting is her only option after all the “abuses” she says have been committed by the government.

“This is like a chess game and each side is moving whatever pieces they can. … we’ll see who tires out first,” she said.

Image: VENEZUELA-OPPOSITION-PROTEST
A demonstrator throws a tear gas canister back at the police during a rally against Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, in Caracas on April 19, 2017. JUAN BARRETO / AFP – Getty Images

The country entered its fourth week of protests following two Supreme Court decisions — to revoke the impunity that protects legislators and to dissolve the opposition-controlled legislature, a move that many including the Organization of American States (AOS) dubbed as an “auto-coup d’etat.”

The Supreme Court reversed the decisions amid mounting international pressure and after the Venezuelan Attorney General, Luisa Ortega Díaz, called the decisions “a rupture of the constitutional order.”

Since then, people have been protesting for the removal of the Supreme Court Justices, the reinstatement of gubernatorial and local elections, the release of the political prisoners and ultimately, Maduro’s resignation.

“I went to the rally because I wanted to get those images of what’s going on, of people protesting. I know it’ll help us get rid of this government,” Hector Trejo told NBC News. Trejo, 47, is a photographer for El Estímulo magazine covering Western Caracas. “But it’s hard because when government supporters see you with a camera they send motorcycles to try and grab it from you,” he added.

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En este momento en La Plaza Bolívar de

At this time in La Plaza Bolívar of

Human rights organizations, several Latin American countries and the United States have accused Venezuelan security forces of using excessive force and violence to quash the protesters. Protesting is a right protected by the Venezuelan constitution. During this last wave, at least five people have died and hundreds have been arrested.

Maduro accused the U.S. State Department of encouraging a military intervention.

The country is in the middle of an economic crisis with an inflation rate that reached 800 percent in January. People are starving and the lack of medication and supplies has led to deaths.

“I came to march because I believe in this country and I want our youth to have a future; Venezuelans want to stay,” said Mercedes Expósito, 53, who told NBC News that people say they want to stay in the marches though they’re “choking from the tear gas; they will wait until the government runs out of its bombs.”

Russian Bombers Near Kodiak, Alaska, Deconfliction Line Busy?

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Again and again…  There was no cockpit-to-cockpit radio communication between the US and Russian pilots. So that ‘deconfliction’ line between the United States and Russia apparently goes to voicemail.

It was just a few days ago that Hawaii formally requested military emergency response operations due to the North Korea threat. Likely, the manner of which Russia maintains aggressive messaging, those two bombers were dispatched to test U.S. response and air defense systems.

FNC: A pair of Russian nuclear-capable bombers flew near Alaska Monday night, two U.S. officials told Fox News, coming as close as 100 miles from Kodiak Island — the first time since President Trump took office that Moscow has sent bombers so close to the U.S.

The two Russian Tu-95 “Bear” bombers flew roughly 280 miles southwest of Elmendorf Air Force Base, within the Air Defense Identification Zone of the United States.

The U.S. Air Force scrambled two F-22 stealth fighter jets and an E-3 airborne early warning plane to intercept the Russian bombers.

The American jets flew alongside the Russian bombers for 12 minutes, before the Russian bombers reversed course and headed back to their base in eastern Russia.

Last week in Moscow, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said U.S.-Russian relations were at a “low point” while sitting next to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

While Tillerson was in Moscow, three Russian bombers flew near the east coast of Japan, forcing the Japanese military to scramble 14 fighter jets at various times to intercept the bombers. A Russian spy plane also flew along Japan’s west coast.

The last time Russian bombers flew near the U.S. was July 4, 2015, when a pair of Russian bombers flew off the coasts of Alaska and California, coming as close as 40 miles to Mendocino, Calif.

Russian President Vladimir Putin called then-President Barack Obama to wish him a happy Independence Day while the bombers cruised the California coastline.

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WaPo: Gen. Paul Selva recently became the first Pentagon official to state publicly that Russia has deployed a land-based cruise missile in direct violation of its treaty obligations to the United States. Selva, who serves as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee: “We believe that the Russians have deliberately deployed it in order to pose a threat to NATO.” He also noted — to the best of his knowledge — that “they do not intend to return to compliance.”

In other words, the Russians have calculated that it costs them more to fulfill their treaty commitments than to break them. The only proper response to this provocation is to increase the costs and change Russia’s calculation.

The agreement in question is the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which the Soviet Union and the United States signed in 1987 to eliminate an entire class of land-based missiles with a range of 500 to 5,500 kilometers. Reasons for the treaty date back to the late 1970s, when the Soviet Union deployed intermediate-range nuclear missiles to Europe, reducing warning times and threatening to divide Europe from North America. NATO responded by deploying U.S. intermediate-range nuclear missiles in 1983. The increased tensions ultimately led to arms-control negotiations and the landmark INF Treaty.

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The Tu-95 is the worlds fastest propeller driven aircraft in the world today. The Tupolev Tu-95 (Russian: Туполев Ту-95; NATO reporting name: “Bear”) is a large, four-engine turboprop-powered strategic bomber and missile platform. First flown in 1952, the Tu-95 entered service with the Soviet Union in 1956 and is expected to serve the Russian Air Force until at least 2040.[1] A development of the bomber for maritime patrol is designated Tu-142, while a passenger airliner derivative was called Tu-114.

The aircraft has four Kuznetsov NK-12 engines, each driving contra-rotating propellers. It is the only propeller-powered strategic bomber still in operational use today. The tips of the propeller-blades move faster than the speed of sound, making it one of the noisiest military aircraft.[2] Its distinctive swept-back wings are at a 35° angle.

Design and development[edit]

A Tu-95MS in 2007.

A Tu-95 showing its swept wing and anti-shock bodies
The design bureau led by Andrei Tupolev designed the Soviet Union’s first intercontinental bomber, the 1949 Tu-85, a scaled up version of the Tu-4, a Boeing B-29 Superfortress copy.[3]

A new requirement was issued to both Tupolev and Myasishchev design bureaus in 1950: the proposed bomber had to have an un-refueled range of 8,000 km (4,970 mi)—far enough to threaten key targets in the United States. Other goals included the ability to carry an 11,000 kg (12.1 ton) load over the target.[citation needed]

The big problem for Tupolev was the engine choice: the Tu-4 showed that piston engines were not powerful enough to fulfill that role, while the fuel-hungry AM-3 jet engines of the proposed T-4 intercontinental jet bomber did not provide adequate range.[4] Turboprops offered more power than the piston engines and better range than jets available for the new bomber’s development at the time, while offering a top speed in between these two alternative choices.

Tupolev’s proposal was selected and Tu-95 development was officially approved by the government on 11 July 1951. It featured four Kuznetsov[5] coupled turboprops, each fitted with two contra-rotating propellers of four blades each, producing a nominal 8,948 kW (12,000 eshp) power rating. The then-advanced engine was designed by a German team of ex-Junkers prisoner-engineers under Ferdinand Brandner. In contrast, the fuselage was conventional: a mid-wing cantilever monoplane with 35 degrees of sweep, an angle which ensured the main wing spar passed through the fuselage in front of the bomb bay. Retractable tricycle landing gear was fitted, with all three gear strut units retracting rearwards, with the main gear units retracting rearwards into extensions of the inner engine nacelles.[citation needed]

The Tu-95/I, with 2TV-2F engines, first flew in November 1952 with test pilot Alexey Perelet at the controls.[6] After six months of test flights this aircraft suffered a propeller gearbox failure and crashed, killing Perelet. The second aircraft, Tu-95/II featured four of the 12,000 ehp Kuznetsov NK-12 turboprops which proved more reliable than the coupled 2TV-2F. After a successful flight testing phase, series production of the Tu-95 started in January 1956.[5]

A Tu-95MS simulating aerial refueling with an Ilyushin Il-78 during the Victory Day Parade in Moscow on 9 May 2008.
For a long time, the Tu-95 was known to U.S./NATO intelligence as the Tu-20. While this was the original Soviet Air Force designation for the aircraft, by the time it was being supplied to operational units it was already better known under the Tu-95 designation used internally by Tupolev, and the Tu-20 designation quickly fell out of use in the USSR.[citation needed] Since the Tu-20 designation was used on many documents acquired by U.S. intelligence agents, the name continued to be used outside the Soviet Union.[citation needed]

Initially the United States Department of Defense evaluated the Tu-95 as having a maximum speed of 644 km/h (400 mph) with a range of 12,500 km (7,800 mi).[7] These numbers had to be revised upward numerous times.[citation needed]

Like its American counterpart, the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, the Tu-95 has continued to operate in the Russian Air Force while several subsequent iterations of bomber design have come and gone. Part of the reason for this longevity was its suitability, like the B-52, for modification to different missions. Whereas the Tu-95 was originally intended to drop free-falling nuclear weapons, it was subsequently modified to perform a wide range of roles, such as the deployment of cruise missiles, maritime patrol (Tu-142), and even civilian airliner (Tu-114). An AWACS platform (Tu-126) was developed from the Tu-114. An icon of the Cold War, the Tu-95 has served not only as a weapons platform but as a symbol of Soviet and later Russian national prestige. Russia’s air force has received the first examples of a number of modernised strategic bombers Tu-95MSs following upgrade work.

Due to N. Korea, Hawaii Calls for Emergency Response

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CAMP H.M. SMITH, Hawaii — The U.S. Pacific Command (USPACOM) detected and tracked what we assess was a North Korean missile launch at 11:42 a.m. Hawaii-Aleutian Standard Time, April 4. The launch of a single ballistic missile occurred at a land-based facility near Sinpo.

The missile was tracked until it landed in the Sea of Japan at 11:51 a.m.

Initial assessments indicate that the type of missile was a KN-15 medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM).

USPACOM is fully committed to working closely with our Republic of Korea and Japanese allies to maintain security.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) determined that the missile launch from North Korea did not pose a threat to North America.

Specialists Think North Korea Poses Nuclear Threat to Hawaii

Nuclear arms experts think North Korea already has, or soon will have, the ability to target Hawaii with a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile with possibly about the same destructive force as the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Warnings are mounting apace with that growing threat.

“North Korea’s unprecedented level of nuclear testing and ballistic missile development offers a sobering reminder that the United States must remain vigilant against rogue nation-states that are able to threaten the homeland,” Air Force Gen. Lori Robinson, who heads the North American Aerospace Defense Command, told a congressional committee Thursday.

In Hawaii a profusion of four-star military commands — including U.S. Pacific Command, which oversees U.S. military activity over half the globe — makes Oahu a strategic and symbolic target. The threat from an unpredictable North Korea, in turn, is prompting a revisitation of some old Cold War practices that until recently seemed laughable.

Duck and cover? Still there in the form of “shelter in place,” state officials say.

Nuclear fallout shelters? In 1981, Oahu had hundreds of them. The Prince Kuhio Building could hold 14,375 people — not because it has a secret underground bunker, but because its concrete parking structure could be used as shelter.

“Each one of those facilities had to be surveyed for how much concrete density [was present],” said Toby Clairmont, executive officer of the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency, the successor to Civil Defense. “And they had to be equipped, so they put medical kits in them, food, sanitary kits, all that kind of stuff.”

As time went on, funding for those provisions stopped, and the stocks were disposed of because they became too old, Clairmont said. In the majority of cases, existing fallout shelter markings are out of date and no longer applicable.

Alternatively, the U.S. military would try to shoot down an incoming North Korean ICBM with ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California, although the $36 billion system was rated by the Pentagon in December as having low reliability.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, ICBMs in the late 1990s came off Hawaii Emergency Management’s threat list of mostly natural hazards. Terrorism was added, and in 2006 the state practiced for a half-kiloton explosion in Honolulu Harbor that resulted in up to 8,000 casualties with injuries or radiation.

A new threat

President Donald Trump, who met last week with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Florida, has warned that the United States might take unilateral action against North Korea unless China does more to rein in its pugnacious neighbor. He did not mention a pre-emptive first strike per se.

Such a first strike presumably would take out the fixed launch sites at Sohae and Tonghae, but North Korea is also believed to have road-mobile launchers that could survive to retaliate — if they actually work.

With North Korea emerging as a new threat, state Emergency Management Administrator Vern Miyagi said it’s time to update the previous plans.

“If you were to ask me what is the status of North Korea, and is [a missile attack] a high probability — no, it’s a low probability,” said Miyagi, a retired Army two-star general who served at the Pacific Command as senior adviser for military support to civil authorities operations and Reserve and National Guard affairs.

“But then, so, we have to keep a lookout for that [threat]. That’s why we’re talking about updating the plan. It’s an awakening. Maybe we should get involved with” fallout shelters again and identify where still-usable shelters are located, he said.

Fallout protection exists to some degree in any building, but it is most effective in heavy concrete buildings and underground structures, he said.

The agency does monthly tests with the Pacific Command using secure communications, Miyagi said. The advice in the event of a missile attack is still to duck and cover and “get into a substantial building,” he said.

“The bottom line in our plan right now is close coordination with Pacific Command, the military side, so that we understand what’s happening, and we can prepare for it with what we have — and what we have right now is very thin,” Miyagi said.

Looking for a solution

During the Cold War, the state envisioned moving hundreds of thousands of Oahu residents to the neighbor islands if things heated up with the Soviet Union. However, a North Korean ICBM could reach Hawaii in under 20 minutes with no warning, experts say.

Robinson, the North American Aerospace Defense commander, said 2016 was “one of North Korea’s most active years in terms of nuclear weapon and missile program development in pursuit of weaponizing a nuclear ballistic missile capable of reaching the United States.”

Riki Ellison, chairman of the nonprofit Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, is among a growing number of voices calling for “operationalizing” the Aegis Ashore facility on Kauai in emergencies to be able to shoot down North Korean missiles. Right now, it’s used for missile defense testing only.

Ellison said the new SM-3 Block IIA missile, which is expected to have ICBM shoot-down capability, is a “critical asset required for the region and Hawaii.”

“For U.S. homeland defense, the emergency operational activation of the Aegis Ashore site, to include the AN/TPY-2 radar at the Pacific Missile Range Facility,” is needed in the short term, Ellison said in a release.

In 2015, Adm. Bill Gortney, then commander of North American Aerospace Defense, said, “Our assessment is that they [North Korea] have the ability to put … a nuclear weapon on a KN-08 [missile] and shoot it at the homeland.”

Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program and founding publisher of Arms Control Wonk.com, said the road-mobile KN-08 hasn’t been flight-tested yet.

“This is a very important caution because an ICBM that has never been tested is very unreliable,” he said in an email. If it works, it can probably hit targets throughout the U.S., he said.

North Korea claimed that its last nuclear test validated a standardized warhead of at least 10 kilotons for its long-range missiles, but it “may be significantly more than that,” Lewis added. Ellison, with the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, maintains North Korea might have a miniaturized warhead around 20 kilotons.

The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945 was 15 kilotons, while a 20-kiloton device was detonated over Nagasaki.

This article is written by William Cole from The Honolulu Star-Advertiser and was legally licensed via the Tribune Content Agency through the NewsCred publisher network.

Slave Labor Markets in Libya and Beyond

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So, the United Nations reports this but so what? Is anyone at the United Nations taking action? Never heard anything out of the Obama White House either, did you? How about out of the Hillary Clinton or John Kerry State Department? Anything? Did WikiLeaks cables include any of this? Nah….

That whole Hillary Libya operation did not work out well at all, the country remains in a tailspin.

Migrant Smuggling – a deadly business

Currently, data is too scattered and incomplete to paint an accurate picture of numbers of people who are smuggled each year and the routes and methods used by those who smuggle them. Still, available evidence reveals the following trends and patterns:

  • Criminals are increasingly providing smuggling services to irregular migrants to evade national border controls, migration regulations and visa requirements. Most irregular migrants resort to the assistance of profit-seeking smugglers. As border controls have improved, migrants are deterred from attempting to illegally cross them themselves and are diverted into the hands of smugglers.
  • Migrant smuggling is a highly profitable business in which criminals enjoy low risk of detection and punishment. As a result, the crime is becoming increasingly attractive to criminals. Migrant smugglers are becoming more and more organized, establishing professional networks that transcend borders and regions.
  • The modus operandi of migrant smugglers is diverse. Highly sophisticated and expensive services rely on document fraud or ‘visa-smuggling’. Contrasted with these are low cost methods which often pose high risks for migrants, and have lead to a dramatic increase in loss of life in recent years.
  • Migrant smugglers constantly change routes and modus operandi in response to changed circumstances often at the expense of the safety of the smuggled migrants.
  • Thousands of people have lost their lives as a result of the indifferent or even deliberate actions of migrant smugglers.

These factors highlight the need for responses to combat the crime of migrant smuggling to be coordinated across and between regions, and adaptable to new methods. In this regard, UNODC seeks to assist countries in implementing the  Smuggling of Migrants Protocol while promoting  a comprehesensive response to the issue of migrant smuggling.

  More here. Has anyone heard from the African American community on this issue at all?

Image result for slave labor markets  PBS

Back in 2013, the UN essentially reported the same conditions in North Korea.

North Korea’s hidden labor camps exposed: A new UN panel is vowing to hold North Korea’s Kim regime to ‘full accountability’ for decades of mass crime and murder. Will Pyongyang face ICC indictment?  More here from CS Monitor.

The Global Slavery Index also provides insight into the estimated absolute numbers of people in modern slavery, in 162 countries. When the estimated number of enslaved people is considered in absolute terms as a single factor, the country ranking shifts considerably.

The countries with the highest numbers of enslaved people are India, China, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Russia, Thailand, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar and Bangladesh. Taken together, these countries account for 76% of the total estimate of 29.8 million in modern slavery.

The country with the largest estimated number of people in modern slavery is India, which is estimated to have between 13,300,000 and 14,700,000 people enslaved. The India country study suggests that while this involves the exploitation of some foreign nationals, by far the largest proportion of this problem is the exploitation of Indians citizens within India itself, particularly through debt bondage and bonded labour.

The country with the second highest absolute numbers of enslaved is China, with an estimated 2,800,000 to 3,100,000 in modern slavery. The China country study5 suggests that this includes the forced labour of men, women and children in many parts of the economy, including domestic servitude and forced begging, the sexual exploitation of women and children, and forced marriage.

The country with the third highest absolute number in modern slavery is Pakistan, with an estimated 2,000,000 to 2,200,000 people in modern slavery. Read the 2013 report here.

 

 

Pro-Globalist College Radicals a Product of IB?

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This is how CBS reported the protests over the weekend at Berkeley.

So, these protestors cover their faces, they are in fact recruited and the pool of students highly agree on issues like being anti-American. pro-globalism and anti-war. It was taught to them in public education beginning as early as Kindergarten. (by the way, ‘kindergarten’ is a German word).

Image result for international baccalaureate  IBO

So, what is the point here?  Read this summary as a primer.

Students enrolled in the International Baccalaureate program are taught they are elitists and exceptional over other student programs such at Advanced Placement.

High schoolers who have embraced IB’s global educational philosophy can elect to earn an IB diploma, which is recognized by colleges around the world.

IB is primarily an international program – there are nearly 4,000 IB schools in close to 150 countries, according to the program’s website.  

Notable alumni (per Wikipedia)

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Related reading: International Baccalaureate Undermines U.S. Founding Principles

It’s time to re-affirm our founding and end the use of taxpayer funds for the IB program.

In the United States, criticism of the IBDP has centered on the vague claim that it is anti-American, according to parents anonymously quoted in The New York Times, who objected to the program’s funding from UNESCO in its early years. The base cost is considered to be higher than other programs.[81] In 2012, the school board in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, voted to eliminate all IB programmes in the district because of low participation and high costs.[83]

UNESCO, a United Nations division is in charge of your child’s education and is that okay with you?

Its declared purpose is to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through educational, scientific, and cultural reforms in order to increase universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and human rights along with fundamental freedom proclaimed in the United Nations Charter.

Although controversial, UNESCO’s aim is “to contribute to the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information”. Other priorities of the organization include attaining quality Education For All and lifelong learning, addressing emerging social and ethical challenges, fostering cultural diversity, a culture of peace and building inclusive knowledge societies through information and communication.

So, read deeper on this as a summary white paper gives you great help on the topic and further explains just what is happening in education and the genesis of the willing demonstrators we see across college campuses today. Thanks to the ‘Truth about IB’ for all the years of hard work, research and truth.