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Invisible Tanks To Kick Butt In 2012
New technology that can make tanks invisible has been unveiled by the Ministry of Defence.
In secret trials last week, the Army said it had made a vehicle completely disappear and predicted that an invisible tank would be ready for service by 2012.
Also tagged army
In secret trials last week, the Army said it had made a vehicle completely disappear and predicted that an invisible tank would be ready for service by 2012.
The new technology uses cameras and projectors to beam images of the surrounding landscape onto a tank.
The result is that anyone looking in the direction of the vehicle only sees what is beyond it and not the tank itself.
A soldier, who was at the trials, said: “This technology is incredible. If I hadn’t been present I wouldn’t have believed it. I looked across the fields and just saw grass and trees - but in reality I was staring down the barrel of a tank gun.”
How the technology works in a combat situation is very sensitive, but the MoD is believed to be testing a military jacket that works on the same principles.
It is the type of innovation normally associated with James Bond, and the brains behind the latest technology is the MoD’s very own “Q” - Professor Sir John Pendry, of Imperial College London.
He said the only drawback was the reliability of the cameras and projectors.
But he added: “The next stage is to make the tank invisible without them - which is intricate and complicated, but possible.” - Daily Mail
Motive for Iraq War Was Oil, Alan Greenspan
AMERICA’s elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has shaken the White House by declaring that the prime motive for the war in Iraq was oil.
In his long-awaited memoir, to be published tomorrow, Greenspan, a Republican whose 18-year tenure as head of the US Federal Reserve was widely admired, will also deliver a stinging critique of President George W Bush’s economic policies.
However, it is his view on the motive for the 2003 Iraq invasion that is likely to provoke the most controversy. “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil,” he says.
Greenspan, 81, is understood to believe that Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the security of oil supplies in the Middle East.
Britain and America have always insisted the war had nothing to do with oil. Bush said the aim was to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction and end Saddam’s support for terrorism.
TimesOnline.co.uk
Leave The Statue Of The Little Mermaid Alone!
Ninety four years ago on August 23,1913 in Copenhagen was opened one of the ten world’s mostly known monuments – the statue of the Little Mermaid, a heroine of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale.
Since then the Little Mermaid sitting at Langelline Quay by the entrance of the city port is considered a national symbol and the main place of interest of Copenhagen.
Sitting on a granite boulder at the shore edge Andersen’s Little Mermaid is thoughtfully looking afar. This wonderful bronze sculpture is created by Danish sculptor Edward Erickson under the order of the large brewer and patron of art Charles Jacobsen.
The model served for the statue was the sculptor’s wife, the Royal opera and ballet theatre’s dancer Helen Price. In 1913 Charles Jacobsen has presented the sculpture to the city, and since then it is impossible to imagine the Danish capital without the Little Mermaid.
The Little Mermaid has been repeatedly exposed to vandalism acts. In 1961, 1963 and 1976 it was poured with paint, drawn over with panties and bra, and even have been blown up, but each time the statue has been reconstructed by the original breadboard model.
In 1964 unknown persons have decapitated the statue. Fortunately, there was saved the old plaster mould on which a new head was made. Criminals haven’t been found.
To tell the truth, there were such talks that the act of vandalism was committed by the Danish writer and the artist “situationist” Jorgen Nash, who has confessed in 1997 in his memories that it was him who has sawn off the Mermaid’s head and drowned it in one of Copenhagen lakes.
Also tagged denmark, Mermaid
In the summer of 1984 hooligans have cut off the Mermaid’s right hand. These were two young guys, who came to police and admitted, that they committed this barbarous act being drunk. Hooligans were punished only for “the municipal property defacement”, and the Little Mermaid was reconstructed again.
In 1990 someone had almost cut off its head, having cut practically the whole neck.
In 1998 it was decapitated once again, however there was found a fragment, and the sculpture has been repaired.
In 2003 on September, 11 the Little Mermaid has been thrown into the water from the pedestal on which it was established.
On December, 16, 2004 the sculpture was dressed in veil and attached with the tablet ” Turkey in EU? “( in connection with the Turkey intention to enter the European Union).
On March, 2007 vandals in witness of hundreds tourists have dyed the bronze sculpture in pink. It was returned the original form with the help of a special soap solution.
On May, 15, 2007 unknown vandals have painted the head and left hand of the Little Mermaid in red.
On May, 20, 2007 unknown persons have dressed the sculpture in a Muslim dress and hijab.
Iuri Tarabanov writes about interesting travel experiences. His
Travel Deals site is http://www.travelime.comWas Pat Tillman Gunned Down In Cold Blood?
New Details on Tillman’s Death
Army medical examiners were suspicious about the close proximity of the three bullet holes in Pat Tillman’s forehead and tried without success to get authorities to investigate whether the former NFL player’s death amounted to a crime, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
“The medical evidence did not match up with the, with the scenario as described,” a doctor who examined Tillman’s body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.
The doctors _ whose names were blacked out _ said that the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.
Ultimately, the Pentagon did conduct a criminal investigation, and asked Tillman’s comrades whether he was disliked by his men and whether they had any reason to believe he was deliberately killed. The Pentagon eventually ruled that Tillman’s death at the hands of his comrades was a friendly-fire accident.
The medical examiners’ suspicions were outlined in 2,300 pages of testimony released to the AP this week by the Defense Department in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
Among other information contained in the documents:
_ In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop “sniveling.”
_ Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.
_ The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman’s death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and couldn’t recall details of his actions.
_ No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene _ no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.
The Pentagon and the Bush administration have been criticized in recent months for lying about the circumstances of Tillman’s death. The military initially told the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by enemy fire. Only weeks later did the Pentagon acknowledge he was gunned down by fellow Rangers.
Read more at WaPo - New Details on Tillman’s Death
The Madness of the War Profiteering in Iraq
“Iraq for Sale” director Robert Greenwald explains to Congress that the billions that defense contractors and war profiteers are making out of the Iraq war is a madhouse run amuck.
The following is Robert Greenwald’s testimony to the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Defense about war profiteering.
Imagine someone with the exact same job as you, working next to you, but getting paid three times as much as you! We heard this story over and over again from the soldiers we interviewed. And in the case of US Army SPC David Mann, a radio repair technician who served in Iraq, he was even required to train KBR contractors to replace him. In “Iraq For Sale,” David shared his frustration:
Also tagged Iraq
The following is Robert Greenwald’s testimony to the House Appropriations Committee, Subcommittee on Defense about war profiteering.
Imagine someone with the exact same job as you, working next to you, but getting paid three times as much as you! We heard this story over and over again from the soldiers we interviewed. And in the case of US Army SPC David Mann, a radio repair technician who served in Iraq, he was even required to train KBR contractors to replace him. In “Iraq For Sale,” David shared his frustration:
“When I could be actively becoming a better soldier and becoming more proficient in my job, instead I’m going to sit up on guard duty and wait around while KBR contractors are doing the job that I had to train them to do.”
US Army specialist Anthony Lagouranis also spoke of the effects of the private contractors on the military:
“It certainly affected retention because I don’t know why any military person would re-enlist to do the same job when they could get out of the military and make six times the money — I really don’t understand why they were outsourced. I mean, it seems like this is a military job and the military should be doing it. Especially because the more civilians you have out there, the more military people you need to guard them. So we’re spreading us thin.”
“Iraq For Sale” was seen by hundreds of thousands of people around the country, and I cannot tell you the number of soldiers who saw it and thanked us for exposing the toll that contracting and profiteering are taking on our armed forces and on the war in Iraq.
I was also appalled to learn of the amount of waste by contractors in Iraq.
I remember clearly my interview with Stewart Scott, a former Halliburton employee. With pain and rage in his voice, he said how dare Halliburton put its people up at five-star hotels, while the soldiers, who he was there to help, were sleeping on the ground. I did not believe in him at first, but then he began naming the hotels and the locations. It was all true.
Via AlterNet. Related link: Iraq For Sale: The War Profiteers
Related news
Employees of a U.S. private contractor hired by the U.S. military to protect supplies say the brutality they witnessed against Iraqis led them to quit. NBC’s Lisa Myers reports. 
They worked for an American company named Custer Battles, hired by the Pentagon to conduct dangerous missions guarding supply convoys. They were so upset by what they saw, three quit after only one or two missions.
“What we saw, I know the American population wouldn’t stand for,” says Craun.
On a mission on Nov. 8, escorting ammunition and equipment for the Iraqi army, they claim a Kurd guarding the convoy allegedly shot into a passenger car to clear a traffic jam.
“[He] sighted down his AK-47 and started firing,” says Colling. “It went through the window. As far as I could see, it hit a passenger. And they didn’t even know we were there.”
Later, the convoy came upon two teenagers by the road. One allegedly was gunned down.
“It was chaos and carnage and destruction the whole day,” says Craun.
Two of the men — Craun and Colling — say they quit immediately.
Craun, in an e-mail two days later to a friend at the Pentagon, wrote: “I didn’t want any part of an organization that deliberately murders children and innocent civilians.”
Errante says he also quit after witnessing wild, indiscriminate shootings on two other missions.
“I said I didn’t want to be a witness to any of these, what could be classified as a war crime,” says Errante.
“These aren’t insurgents that we’re brutalizing,” says Craun. “It was local civilians on their way to work. It’s wrong.”
Via MSNBC
