Showing posts with label US military. Show all posts
Showing posts with label US military. Show all posts

Friday, August 21, 2015

America's New Real Action Heroes - Two soldiers become first female Rangers

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Care2.com

Two Soldiers Become First Female Army Rangers

August 20, 2015


In January, the United States Army announced that 60 women were selected to be in a pilot program for the Army Rangers training program. The Rangers are an elite unit called into the height of war via land, sea or air to conduct lethal and complex joint special combat missions. Like all elite combat units, Rangers are only men. The pilot program is part of an ongoing effort by the military to integrate women into positions that have traditionally done so.


The Army wanted to learn if it was even possible to integrate, as the program is notoriously difficult to get through. On average, only 45 percent of Ranger School students graduate. Sixty percent of all failures happen during the first four days, with many failing the physical fitness test the first day. The focus was not about how many of the female soldiers would make it through, but making sure the standards are uniform.


This week the Army announced that not only were they able to maintain the high standards, but two women will graduate this week. Capt. Kristen Griest and 1st Lt. Shaye Haver have become the first women Army Rangers. The West Point graduates’ march into the history books has been a long and arduous journey.


On April 20, 381 men and 19 women (one soldier dropped out before starting) began the training in Fort Benning, Georgia. The Ranger Course is a “62-day course on leadership and small unit tactics, which pushes Ranger students to their mental and physical limits by forcing them to operate on minimal food and sleep. Approximately 34 percent of students who enter Ranger School recycle at least one phase of the course, adding to the student’s physical and mental fatigue.” Soldiers are allowed to recycle when they have done well in other areas but fall short in areas where improvement can be made.


Eight of the women successfully finished the Ranger Assessment Phase (RAP). The RAP phase consists of physical fitness testing, 12-mile foot march in three hours with a heavy load and mock patrols, among other tasks. All of the eight women did a recycle for patrolling. In the end, five women were dropped from the program and three women moved on to the next phase after a second, one day recycle.


The three soldiers joined 158 of their male soldiers in the second Mountain Phase. Soldiers train in military mountaineering, which included a nearly two mile march up a steep mountain and combat patrols. Six men were dropped from the training and one woman joined 60 men in a recycle phase that will begin at the end of this month.


The remaining soldiers entered into the third and final phase. The 17 day Swamp Phase included airborne jumps, four days of waterborne exercises and leading patrols in the swampy waters off the coast of Florida. On Friday, August 22, 96 soldiers will graduate in a ceremony at Fort Benning. 1st Lt. Shaye Haver and Capt. Kristen Griest will be among them.


Griest and Haver’s journey took four months since they and a few of their fellow male soldiers repeated phases. The third woman is repeating the final phase of the training and if successful will graduate in September. Despite their well deserved honor, the twenty-something soldiers will not be joining their fellow soldiers in the Ranger unit.


The Pentagon is still assessing which units in all branches will be opened to women. The Defense Secretary will be making final decisions in January of next year.


Nevertheless, 1st Lt. Haver and Capt. Griest will wear the coveted black and gold Ranger Tab to show that they are among the elite group of leaders ready to defend our nation in the most dangerous situations.
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Friday, March 02, 2012

Obamaville March 2 - Obama Mea Culpa Backfires

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President apologizes - six US soldiers & over 30 Afghans Murdered


In spite of claims to the contrary in which the President said his apology to the Afghan people over the inadvertent burning of a Quran holy book has helped ease the violence against American troops in Afghanistan, the facts speak volumes that he might have been wrong.


The Afghan people became aware on February 21 that US troops had burned a Quran the day before that was used to pass secret messages between terrorists in prison.  Two days later President Obama talked to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and had a letter hand delivered to Karzai the same day apologizing for the action by the American troops.

Before the day was over two American servicemen had been killed by a man in an Afghan army uniform in retaliation for the burning.  Today, nine days later, six American soldiers are dead and over 30 Afghans have been killed in violent riots against American troops.


Critics said Obama's apology was capitulation for actions that were justified and served to give already nervous Afghan people a reason to join the Taliban in trying to get the US out of Afghanistan.

With the President already announcing his intention to pull out of Afghanistan by 2014 the Afghan people feel they are being abandoned by the American president and people.  They believe the Taliban will overrun the country as soon as the Americans depart.


The war in Afghanistan is Obama's war, his signature is all over it.  He tripled the number of American troops fighting in Afghanistan and the US has already spent over $800 billion fighting the ten year war.  During that time 1,908 American soldiers have been killed.  The US has also given over $18 billion in aid to the Afghan government.


There is no sign the hatred will subside or the rioting and deaths will end.  Just yesterday Obama's Joint Chiefs of staff indicated support of Israel military action against the Muslim nation Iran, an act that may further aggravate heightened tension with Afghan.


Israel is pressing Obama for an explicit threat of military action against Iran if sanctions fail and Tehran's nuclear program advances beyond specified "red lines".



Diplomats say that Israel is angered by the Obama administration's public disparaging of early military action against Iran, saying that it weakens the prospect of Tehran taking the warnings from Israel seriously.


Just days before the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is scheduled to arrive in Washington to meet with Obama the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Norton Schwartz, said the Joint Chiefs of Staff have prepared military options to strike Iranian nuclear sites in the event of a conflict.


The Middle East Arab Israeli conflict has been fought over thousands of years and the Muslims have never lost sight of the fact that America is Israel's friend and protector.  As such suspicion between Arab nations and the United States continues unabated which was obvious during the recent Arab spring when countries overthrowing dictators and gaining freedom have moved away from the US and Israel.
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Saturday, March 12, 2011

Earthquakes - Nature's Fury or Mankind's Folly? Our Celestial HAARP

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The Military's Pandora's Box - The HAARP Secret Weapon

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) is a project of the United States Navy and Air Force with the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, which built a prototype for a ground based "Star Wars" weapon system located in the remote bush country of Alaska.

It is the HAARP system a super-powerful radiowave-beaming technology that lifts areas of the ionosphere by focusing a beam and heating those areas. Electromagnetic waves then bounce back onto earth and penetrate everything -- living and dead.

It's uses range from those claimed to be academic to far more dangerous secret military purposes including weather control that can cause earthquakes to electro-magnetic interference to shut down electrical grids, and it can alter the earth's atmosphere in a far more destructive way than anything carbon based. It is also the HAARP system that could cause the electrical interference that could disrupt the computer systems that operate cars (Toyota) and have many other devastating effects.



This is not science fiction as there are four HAARP systems currently in operation around the world but none with the capacity of the US facility in Alaska. The HAARP technology evolved from the work of the greatest inventor, mechanical engineer and electrical engineer in the world, Nikola Tesla, whose work on electromagnetism and electromechanical engineering was pioneering along with his contributions to the establishment of robotics, remote control, radar, computer science, ballistics, nuclear physics and theoretical physics.



The following excerpts are reprinted from an article prepared to provide a summary of the contents of a book written in 1995, Angels Don't Play This Harp - Advances in Tesla Technology, by Dr. Nick Begich and Jeane Manning, that describes an entirely new class of weapons.

HAARP Boils the Upper Atmosphere

HAARP will zap the upper atmosphere with a focused and steerable electromagnetic beam. It is an advanced model of an "ionospheric heater." (The ionosphere is the electrically-charged sphere surrounding Earth's upper atmosphere. It ranges between 40 to 60 miles above the surface of the Earth.)

HAARP publicity gives the impression that the High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program is mainly an academic project with the goal of changing the ionosphere to improve communications for our own good. However, other U.S. military documents put it more clearly -- HAARP aims to learn how to "exploit the ionosphere for Department of Defense purposes." Communicating with submarines is only one of those purposes.

Press releases and other information from the military on HAARP continually downplay what it could do. Publicity documents insist that the HAARP project is no different than other ionospheric heaters operating safely throughout the world in places such as Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Tromso, Norway, and the former Soviet Union. However, a 1990government document indicates that the radio-frequency (RF) power zap will drive the ionosphere to unnatural activities.

Looking at the other patents which built on the work of a Texas' physicist named Bernard Eastlund, it becomes clearer how the military intends to use the HAARP transmitter. It also makes governmental denials less believable. The military knows how it intends to use this technology, and has made it clear in their documents. The military has deliberately misled the public, through sophisticated word games, deceit and outright disinformation.



The military says the HAARP system could:

Give the military a tool to replace the electromagnetic pulse effect of atmospheric thermonuclear devices (still considered a viable option by the military through at least 1986).

Replace the huge Extremely Low Frequency (ELF) submarine communication system operating in Michigan and Wisconsin with a new and more compact technology.

Be used to replace the over-the-horizon radar system that was once planned for the current location of HAARP, with a more flexible and accurate system.

Provide a way to wipe out communications over an extremely large area, while keeping the military's own communications systems working.

Provide a wide area earth-penetrating tomography which, if combined with the computing abilities of EMASS and Cray computers, would make it possible to verify many parts of nuclear nonproliferation and peace agreements.

Be a tool for geophysical probing to find oil, gas and mineral deposits over a large area.

Be used to detect incoming low-level planes and cruise missiles, making other technologies obsolete.



The above abilities seem like a good idea to all who believe in sound national defense, and to those concerned about cost-cutting. However, the possible uses which the HAARP records do not explain, and which can only be found in Air Force, Army, Navy and other federal agency records, are alarming. Moreover, effects from the reckless use of these power levels in our natural shield -- the ionosphere -- could be cataclysmic according to some scientists.



HAARP History

The patents described below were the package of ideas which were originally controlled by ARCO Power Technologies Incorporated (APTI), a subsidiary of Atlantic Richfield Company, one of the biggest oil companies in the world. APTI was the contractor that built the HAARP facility. ARCO sold this subsidiary, the patents and the second phase construction contract to E-Systems in June 1994.

E-Systems is one of the biggest intelligence contractors in the world -- doing work for the CIA, defense intelligence organizations and others. $1.8 billion of their annual sales are to these organizations, with $800 million for black projects -- projects so secret that even the United States Congress isn't told how the money is being spent.

E-Systems was bought out by Raytheon, which is one of the largest defense contractors in the world. In 1994 Raytheon was listed as number forty-two on the Fortune 500 list of companies. Raytheon has thousands of patents, some of which will be valuable in the HAARP project. The twelve patents below are the backbone of the HAARP project, and are now buried among the thousands of others held in the name of Raytheon. Bernard J. Eastlund's U.S. Patent # 4,686,605, "Method and Apparatus for Altering a Region in the Earth's Atmosphere, Ionosphere; and/or Magnetosphere," was sealed for a year under a government Secrecy Order.



The Eastlund ionospheric heater was different; the radio frequency (RF) radiation was concentrated and focused to a point in the ionosphere. This difference throws an unprecedented amount of energy into the ionosphere. The Eastlund device would allow a concentration of one watt per cubic centimeter, compared to others only able to deliver about one millionth of one watt.

This huge difference could lift and change the ionosphere in the ways necessary to create futuristic effects described in the patent. According to the patent, the work of Nikola Tesla in the early 1900's formed the basis of the research.

For a time, HAARP researchers could not prove that this was one of the intended uses for HAARP. In April, 1995, however, Begich found other patents, connected with a "key personnel" list for APTI. Some of these new APTI patents were indeed a wireless system for sending electrical power. Eastlund's patent said the technology can confuse or completely disrupt airplanes' and missiles' sophisticated guidance systems. Further, this ability to spray large areas of Earth with electromagnetic waves of varying frequencies, and to control changes in those waves, makes it possible to knock out communications on land or sea as well as in the air.



The patent said:

"Thus, this invention provides the ability to put unprecedented amounts of power in the Earth's atmosphere at strategic locations and to maintain the power injection level particularly if random pulsing is employed, in a manner far more precise and better controlled than heretofore accomplished by the prior art, particularly by detonation of nuclear devices of various yields at various altitudes... "

"...it is possible not only to interfere with third party communications but to take advantage of one or more such beams to carry out a communications network even though the rest of the world's communications are disrupted. Put another way, what is used to disrupt another's communications can be employed by one knowledgeable of this invention as a communication network at the same time."

"... large regions of the atmosphere could be lifted to an unexpectedly high altitude so that missiles encounter unexpected and unplanned drag forces with resultant destruction."



"Weather modification is possible by, for example, altering upper atmosphere wind patterns by constructing one or more plumes of atmospheric particles which will act as a lens or focusing device.

... molecular modifications of the atmosphere can take place so that positive environmental effects can be achieved. Besides actually changing the molecular composition of an atmospheric region, a particular molecule or molecules can be chosen for increased presence. For example, ozone, nitrogen, etc., concentrations in the atmosphere could be artificially increased."

Begich found eleven other APTI Patents. They told how to make "Nuclear-sized Explosions without Radiation," Power-beaming systems, over-the-horizon radar, detection systems for missiles carrying nuclear warheads, electromagnetic pulses previously produced by thermonuclear weapons and other Star-Wars tricks. This cluster of patents underlay the HAARP weapon system.

Related research by Begich and Manning uncovered bizarre schemes. For example, Air Force documents revealed that a system had been developed for manipulating and disturbing human mental processes through pulsed radio-frequency radiation (the stuff of HAARP) over large geographical areas. The most telling material about this technology came from writings of Zbigniew Brzezinski (former National Security Advisory to U.S. President Carter) and J.F. MacDonald (science advisor to U.S. President Johnson and a professor of Geophysics at UCLA), as they wrote about use of power-beaming transmitters for geophysical and environmental warfare. The documents showed how these effects might be caused, and the negative effects on human heath and thinking.

The mental-disruption possibilities for HAARP are the most disturbing. More than 40 pages of the book, with dozens of footnotes, chronicle the work of Harvard professors, military planners and scientists as they plan and test this use of the electromagnetic technology. For example, one of the papers describing this use was from the International Red Cross in Geneva. It even gave the frequency ranges where these effects could occur -- the same ranges which HAARP is capable of broadcasting.



The following statement was made more than twenty-five years ago in a book by Brzezinski which he wrote while a professor at Columbia University:

"Political strategists are tempted to exploit research on the brain and human behavior. Geophysicist Gordon J.F. MacDonald, a specialist in problems of warfare, says accurately-timed, artificially-excited electronic strokes could lead to a pattern of oscillations that produce relatively high power levels over certain regions of the earth ... in this way one could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of very large populations in selected regions over an extended period."

" ... no matter how deeply disturbing the thought of using the environment to manipulate behavior for national advantages, to some, the technology permitting such use will very probably develop within the next few decades."



In another document prepared by the government, the U.S. Air Force claims: "The potential applications of artificial electromagnetic fields are wide-ranging and can be used in many military or quasi-military situations... Some of these potential uses include dealing with terrorist groups, crowd control, controlling breaches of security at military installations, and antipersonnel techniques in tactical warfare. In all of these cases the EM (electromagnetic) systems would be used to produce mild to severe physiological disruption or perceptual distortion or disorientation. In addition, the ability of individuals to function could be degraded to such a point that they would be combat ineffective. Another advantage of electromagnetic systems is that they can provide coverage over large areas with a single system. They are silent and countermeasures to them may be difficult to develop... One last area where electromagnetic radiation may prove of some value is in enhancing abilities of individuals for anomalous phenomena."

Do these comments point to uses already somewhat developed? The author of the government report refers to an earlier Air Force document about the uses of radio frequency radiation in combat situations. (Here Begich and Manning note that HAARP is the most versatile and the largest radio-frequency-radiation transmitter in the world.)

The United States Congressional record deals with the use of HAARP for penetrating the earth with signals bounced off of the ionosphere. These signals are used to look inside the planet to a depth of many kilometers in order to locate underground munitions, minerals and tunnels. The U.S. Senate set aside $15 million dollars in 1996 to develop this ability alone -- earth-penetrating-tomography. The problem is that the frequency needed for earth-penetrating radiation is within the frequency range most cited for disruption of human mental functions. It may also have profound effects on migration patterns of fish and wild animals which rely on an undisturbed energy field to find their routes.

As if electromagnetic pulses in the sky and mental disruption were not enough, T. Eastlund bragged that the super-powerful ionospheric heater could control weather.



Weather Control

Avalanches of energy dislodged by such radio waves could hit us hard. Their work suggests that technicians could control global weather by sending relatively small 'signals' into the Van Allen belts (radiation belts around Earth). Thus Tesla's resonance effects can control enormous energies by tiny triggering signals.

The Begich/ Manning book asks whether that knowledge will be used by war-oriented or biosphere-oriented scientists.

The military has had about twenty years to work on weather warfare methods, which it euphemistically calls weather modification. For example, rainmaking technology was taken for a few test rides in Vietnam. The U.S. Department of Defense sampled lightning and hurricane manipulation studies in Project Skyfire and Project Stormfury. And they looked at some complicated technologies that would give big effects. Angels Don't Play This HAARP cites an expert who says the military studied both lasers and chemicals which they figured could damage the ozone layer over an enemy.

Looking at ways to cause earthquakes, as well as to detect them, was part of the project named Prime Argus, decades ago. The money for that came from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA, now under the acronym ARPA.) In 1994 the Air Force revealed its Spacecast 2020 master plan which includes weather control. Scientists have experimented with weather control since the 1940's.
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Tuesday, June 01, 2010

Scenes from Arlington Cemetery Section 60 - The Saddest Acre in America

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Arlington National Cemetery, one of our nation’s most important shrines, contains the remains of more than 260,000 brave men and women who have given their lives for their country. They include Presidents and Supreme Court Justices, astronauts and noted historical figures, Medal of Honor recipients and Five Star Officers, along with more than 4,700 unidentified soldiers represented by the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Today Arlington is also the resting place for approximately ten percent of the more than 4,000 soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan and who are eligible and selected to be buried there.



Section 60, known as the saddest acre in all of America, is where the soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan who are eligible and choose to be buried at Arlington are laid to rest. Some soldiers request an Arlington burial in their wills; in other cases, the families of the deceased make the request on their loved one's behalf. It’s an active area, filled with photos, letters and personal mementos, but not seen by most of Arlington’s millions of tourists.














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