MORNING PLANET SHOW: Set your alarm for dawn. Venus, Jupiter and Mars are gathering for a three-way close encounter in the early morning sky. Yesterday, Kouji Ohnishi woke up early and photographed the convergence from Iiyama, Nagano, Japan. He calls this composition Reverie in Autumn:
“I could see the planets even through deep fog,” says Ohnishi. “It was a wonderful morning.”
The next five mornings will be equally wonderful. From Oct. 25th to Oct. 29th Venus, Jupiter and Mars will fit together inside a circle only 5 degrees wide. Super-bright Venus and Jupiter are visible even after the black pre-dawn sky turns cobalt blue. Once you find them, you will have little trouble locating the dimmer red planet Mars. Enjoy the show!
Migrants are escorted by German police to a registration centre, after crossing the Austrian-German border in Wegscheid near Passau, Germany, October 20, 2015.(REUTERS/Michael Dalder)
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Russian arms manufacturer Almaz-Antey is presenting the results of its probe into the alleged missile launch that may have downed the MH17 Malaysian Airlines plane over eastern Ukraine, July 17, 2014. (from 11:17)
These tests clearly refuted the ‘Russian supplied BUK missile’ hypothesis for the shoot-down, showing that if that type of missile (BUK-M1) hit at the angles observed in the wreckage of MH17, the damage should have been greater (1:03) and many distinctive ‘butterfly’ holes would have been present. Such holes were not observed. The presenters believed that only an older type of BUK missile, not used by Russia, may have been used.
It is more likely, considering the lack of penetrative power of fragments in the MH17 debris, that another type of smaller missile was the candidate for the incident – perhaps an air-to-air weapon since military jets were seen by witnesses at the time of the attack.
The Dutch Safety Board presentation regarding this same incident (30 min video below) was extremely light on forensics (although they concur with the Russians on the location of the missile). They did feature butterfly fragments allegedly taken out of some victims, but the question is, where are the butterfly patterns on the skin of the aircraft? The distinctive patterning seen in the Russian test was nowhere to be found.
Also, this Dutch presentation says there were no other aircraft on radar at the time of the incident, to rule out an air-to-air missile, whereas the Russians showed there were fighter sized targets on their scopes -backing up the witness reports that appeared in the BBC Russia news story (see the above video). And the Russians requested the US release their satellite images of the crime scene and Washington refused. The US satellite was right overhead at the time.
We must remember that the Ukrainians, suspects in this crime, were party to the investigation. And regardless of whether or not you think Governments could lie about such things, we do have the problem of the forensic evidence. It doesn’t matter what you assume – we have a fundamental issue with the raw data when it comes to the western account of what happened.
A weapon collector who bought two old guns from the Israeli Army was surprised to find, inscribed on each of the guns, a personal dedication from the overthrown Iraqi President to his cousin, “Chemical Ali.”
…Sh. K., a weapon collector, bought several hundred old guns from the Israel Defense Forces—booty taken in wars and battles. When opening one of the fancy cases, he was surprised to find two Iraqi-made Tariq handguns inscribed with a personal dedication from overthrown Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid,…
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At dawn each day, jihadists take drugs, including large doses of captagon and other widely available drugs. There also are some particularly potent drugs, known locally as “baltcon,” “afoun,” and ”zolm,” as well as opium, heroin, cocaine, and hashish.
The main drug routes into the Syrian battle zones, I was advised, run from Pakistan, Afghanistan and Lebanon, with lesser amounts coming via Turkey, Iraq and Jordan. Lebanon’s Bekaa valley apparently produces large amounts of captagon pills for shipment to the Gulf, and now to Syria.
Jihadists high on drugs apparently feel invincible, and hostile, and do not fear death. Many are indeed ferocious and fearless fighters during the day, as many media sources have reported. But by nightfall, when the drug wears off, the fighters become exhausted and sometimes are found asleep on the very scene of battle they were fighting from.
“Many of the ‘Gulfies’ are in fact heavily addicted to strong heroin-like drugs. They crave them, and sometimes they even fight with their fellow militiamen to get their ‘fixes.’ We are told by some we capture that sometimes, when one of their comrades is killed, the fallen fighter’s ‘friends’ will descend on his body, not particularly to pray over it, but to rummage his pockets for his drugs.”
In point of fact, in 2011 alone, Lebanese authorities confiscated three amphetamine production labs, in addition to two Captagon-producing labs, which they claim were responsible for sending hundreds of thousands of the pills to the Gulf. The seizure of trucks with captagon in their chassis in Lebanon, and at Beirut airport, shows a growing demand for these products in the Syrian militia market. The UN recently reported that the Middle and Near East are experiencing the majority of drug busts globally.
RT @NiemandsKnegt: Leden van de Compagnies Républicaines de Sécurité (CRS) (speciale politie eenheid) zetten in Pau demonstratief hun helme… 2 years ago
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