Thursday, April 2, 2009

Barksdale chosen for Global Strike Command

Barksdale chosen for Global Strike Command: "WASHINGTON — Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana has been selected to house the Air Force’s new Global Strike Command."



(Via Air Force Times - News.)

Clinton warns North Korea "Don't launch that missile!"



U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned North Korea yesterday that firing a missile for any purpose would be a "provocative action" that would have consequences.

North Korea is loading a rocket on a launch pad in anticipation of the launch of a communications satellite between April 4 and 8, U.S. counterproliferation and intelligence officials said. North Korea announced its intention to launch the satellite last month but regional powers worry the claim is a cover for the launch of a long-range missile capable of reaching Alaska.

Clinton told reporters during a visit to Mexico City that the U.S. believes the North Korean plan to fire a missile for any purpose would violate a United Nations Security Council resolution barring the country from ballistic activity. She linked a missile launch to the future of talks between the U.S., North Korea and four other nations aimed at ending North Korea's nuclear weapons program.

"We have made it very clear that the North Koreans pursue this pathway at a cost and with consequences to the six-party talks, which we would like to see revived," Clinton said.

"We intend to raise this violation of the Security Council resolution, if it goes forward, in the UN," she said. "This provocative action in violation of the UN mandate will not go unnoticed and there will be consequences.''

National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair said earlier this month that all indications suggest North Korea will, in fact, launch a satellite. However, North Korea faked a satellite launch in 1998 to cloak a missile development test.

In 2006, North Korea launched a Taepodong-2 that blew up less than a minute into flight.

Both the satellite launch rocket and long-range missile use similar technology, and arms control experts fear even a satellite launch would be a test toward eventually launching a long-range missile.

Read the full story HERE.

North Korea Warns Japan - Shoot down our rocket and we'll shoot you.


CNN) -- North Korea says it will attack the Japanese military and "major targets," if Japan shoots down a rocket Pyongyang plans to launch in the coming days, North Korea's state-run news service, KCNA, reported Thursday.


Japan recently deployed its missile defense system in anticipation of North Korea's planned rocket launch.

"If Japan recklessly 'intercepts' [North Korea's] satellite for peaceful purposes, the [Korean People's Army] will mercilessly deal deadly blows not only at the already deployed intercepting means but at major targets," KCNA reported.

Japan recently mobilized its missile defense system in response to the planned North Korean launch, Japanese officials said. The move, noteworthy for a country with a pacifist constitution, is aimed at shooting down any debris from the launch that might fall into Japanese territory.

U.S. Navy ships capable of shooting down ballistic missiles have also been moved to the Sea of Japan, a Navy spokesman said.

The threat of retaliation comes as North Korea has begun fueling its long-range rocket, according to a senior U.S. military official familiar with the latest U.S. intelligence


Read the full story at CNN.

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

N. Korea fueling rocket, U.S. military says

(CNN) -- North Korea has begun fueling its long-range rocket, according to a senior U.S. military official.


A satellite image shows a rocket sitting on its launch pad in the northeast of the country.

The fueling signals that the country could be in the final stages of what North Korea has said will be the launch of a satellite into space as early as this weekend, the senior U.S. military official said Wednesday.

Other U.S. military officials said the top portion of the rocket was put on very recently, but satellite imagery shows a shroud over the stage preventing a direct view of what it looks like.

The officials said the payload appears to have a "bulbous" cover, which could indicate that there is a satellite loaded on it. Such a cover protects a satellite from damage in flight.

Although the sources did not know for sure what the payload is, they said there is no reason to doubt that it is a satellite, as indicated by North Korea.

Pyongyang has said it will launch the rocket between April 4 and April 8. A launch would violate a 2006 United Nations Security Council resolution banning the reclusive state from launching ballistic missiles.

Read the full story at CNN.

(Via CNN.com.)

UFO Hunters sign off on UFO as real deal - but it was a hoax.


Yes, everyone knows its April Fools Day, but the biggest fools this day may be the "experts" from the History Channel TV Show UFO Hunters.





According to an article on the E-Skeptic website ,
people in and around the Morristown, New Jersey area saw unidentified flying objects, with many of them naturally assuming that these UFOs represented extraterrestrial space craft.

SNIP:  As you shall see, there was a rather more terrestrial explanation. In fact, they were helium balloons with flares attached to them, lofted into the sky by Chris Russo and Joe Rudy, in their social experiment on how to create your own media event surrounding UFO sightings. 

SNIP:  The media coverage the incident received over the next few days was extensive. Both local and national news stations were covering the UFO over New Jersey. The local paper had a field day with it, quoting a doctor who said the mysterious lights traveled against the wind, and quoting another man who said the object “didn’t appear to be manmade.” The most sought after witnesses were the Hurley family. Paul Hurley, a pilot, along with his family, made appearances on just about every major news station, describing the strange lights that they saw in the sky. The “Morristown UFO” became the talk of the town.

The icing on the cake came when the popular History Channel show UFO Hunters featured the Morristown UFO as their main story one week. Bill Birnes, the lead investigator of the show and the publisher of UFO Magazine, declared definitively that the Morristown UFO could not have been flares or Chinese lanterns. Surely Birnes, who has written and edited over 25 books and encyclopedias in the fields of human behavior, true crime, current affairs, history, psychology, business, computing, and the paranormal, and the co-author of The Day After Roswell (a New York Times bestseller in 1997 and subsequently a documentary on The History Channel), could not have let himself be fooled by a couple of twenty- somethings with no formal education in psychology. He could.






Hoaxer's video on youtube:



Fox News Coverage:



Newsweek Article

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