[Gulf News] A worker received a painful lesson when he sneaked into a secretary's office where he molested her.
The 40-year-old Filipina secretary held off the 22-year-old Pak worker, M.N., when he sneaked behind her desk and groped her in May. "Harrrr! Nice boobies!"
She was said to have targeted a vulnerable part of his body when he attempted to force himself on her. "Aaaiiieee! My vulnerable part! Leggo! Leggo!"
The worker was forced to walk away due to the pain. The correct verb would probably be "stagger."
The Dubai Court of First Instance convicted M.N. of molesting the Filipina and tossed him in the slammer for six months. "Bailiff!Whack his pee-pee!"
"Aaaiiieee! My vulnerable part!"
Records said the accused crept snuck walked quietly into the woman's workplace and suddenly pulled her to the floor and molested her. "Ugh! Female! Nobody around! Hrarrrr!"
"I shouted and cried loudly for help--but nobody heard me. He prob'ly wouldn'ta dunnit if there had been somebody there other than a supposedly available Filipina. You know how passionate them Asian babes are.
He removed my headscarf and then groped me. He punched me and beat me so brutally. He was about to remove my dress, when I inflicted pain on him... he let go of me and stormed out of the office," the secretary told prosecutors. "This ain't Peshawar or Quetta or Lahore, y'know!"
According to the charge sheet, prosecutors accused M.N. of forcing himself on the Filipina, molesting and assaulting her inside the company's premises in Al Quoz. According to the primary ruling, the accused, who entered an innocent plea, "No,no! Certainly not!"
will be deported following the completion of his punishment. "Out! And stay out!"
When asked why he went into her office and molested her, the defendant replied: "I did not touch her. I did not do anything." "Nope.Nope. Wudn't me. I wudn't even there. It wuz somebody else."
The Filipina testified that she told the defendant several times to leave the office. "Beat it, bud! You ain't my type!"
Two pedestrians spotted the Filipina shouting and crying outside the office, said records. The two men chased the defendant and restrained him until the police arrived at the scene of the crime. A policeman said during questioning that the defendant admitted that he walked into the office to ask for directions to a nearby mall.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
A few years ago I think it was in Quatar an Arab videotaped himself toturing and murdering his Afghan employee. Despite the video the judge released tyhe member of the herrensvolk for "lack of evidence". Now I know this is Dubai ie a country where tthey have even allowed building a church but I suspect that her assaulter was Filipino and had he been an Arab she should consider herself lucky if she had only been sentenced to be sent back to Philipines.
[P.WASHINGTONTIMES] MSNBC host Ronan Farrow took to his panel Tuesday to discuss what he perceives as a lack of racial diversity among emoji characters.
Emoji, originating in Japan, describes the ideograms or smiley faces used in electronic messages, such as texting and social media.
"Do you think there's a limitation we're suffering from in terms of the racial diversity of these emojis? Mr. Farrow asked linguist John McWhorter, who is black, Newsbusters reported.
Talk to the Japanese, my dear boy. They're the ones who invented the things.
(Honestly, he really isn't all that bright, for all he's got those artificially bright blue eyes.)
"No, I think that actually what we're going to see more is a gender skew," Mr. McWhorter argued. "Apparently women are more likely to use them and more richly."
Mr. Farrow pointed out an instance where comedian Jordan Peele did an online rendering of "The Shining" in emoji. Mr. Peele was forced to use a character of dark moon to play black character Dick Hallorann.
"And it's not just a black/white issue," the Cronkite award winner continued. "Do we have an image of what you have to go with if you want to render, for instance, someone who is Arab or Middle Eastern?"
Ladies and gentlemen of Rantburg, if you would be so kind as to oblige the gentleman?
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[10 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Farrow is hovering between #600 and #800 in the ratings - thats not much better than cspan2
Posted by: lord garth ||
07/31/2014 0:23 Comments ||
Top||
#2
If by 'oblige' you mean "hunt for sport", then we are ready. Locked and loaded.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/31/2014 19:29 Comments ||
Top||
#10
"And it's not just a black/white issue," the Cronkite award winner continued. "Do we have an image of what you have to go with if you want to render, for instance, someone who is Arab or Middle Eastern?"
If they're flying MiGs, driving T-55s or toting AKs, I sure do. It's called a target.
#11
I can see his quandry. Ya got shanty Irish drunk Matthews, token black racists and pasty white ambiguously gay opinion heads...
he obviously has no idea
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/31/2014 19:54 Comments ||
Top||
#12
Badanov: there are arabs in the Israeli army, which has tested using converted T-55's as troop carriers. And which once had a rifle which was a vastly improved AK.
#13
Badanov: there are arabs in the Israeli army, which has tested using converted T-55's as troop carriers. And which once had a rifle which was a vastly improved AK.
The IDF has already deployed those vehicles in their army.
[BREITBART] As July closes out, MSNBC has posted some of its worst ratings in eight years.
The network came in third in total viewers and fourth in the key 25 to 54 age bracket for the month. In prime time, the network came in second in total viewers and third in the key demographic. This was MSNBC's worst showing in prime time in the key demo since 2006.
MSNBC was down 16 percent in total viewers over July of 2013 and was down a whopping 33 percent in the 25 to 54 demographic. It lost 16 percent and 25 percent in prime time over last year.
While the cable network's total viewer numbers were slightly up for July, its percentage of viewers in the key demo was down by double digits. Both All In with Chris Hayes and The Rachel Maddow Show were down 20% in the key age demo, while The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell was down 17% in the age bracket.
Daytime programming for the network also struggled in July.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/31/2014 7:38 Comments ||
Top||
#8
Good news today. Better news, if they fold completely; they are foaming at the mouth liars and truth-benders. Apparently MSNBC is driven by ideology and not the free market (if there still is one).
#9
MSNBC is safe harbored by cable/satellite bundling and that's the way the cable/satellite owners want it. They keep their lil'voice box booming their bigotry and bias and you have to pay for it if you want the other venues (other than open broadcast).
[THECOLLEGEFIX] Northwestern University will offer "gender-open restrooms" to its students this fall.
"We are trying to be responsive to the needs of all of our students and to be inclusive," campus front man Bob Rowley said in an email to The College Fix. "This is becoming a common occurrence on campuses across the U.S." It must be terrible to be young nowadays. Think of the young man dreamily following the Most Beautiful Girl in the World into the lavatory just so he can occupy the stall next to her! If that's not bad enough, think of the bruises to his illusions of perfection when she grunts passing a hard one, or comes down with SPD (Splattering Projectile Diarrhea).
At Northwestern, the two sex-segregated bathrooms to be changed will simply have their front door placards replaced to reflect the transition — no major renovations are planned. The bathrooms are located on the third floor of the university's main building that serves as the campus hub.
Northwestern joins the estimated 150 campuses across the nation that now offer some sort of gender-open restrooms, also called gender-neutral, unisex, or all-gender bathrooms, according to a tally by the LGTBQ group Stonewall at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
But while advocates convey them as mostly "single-stall, lockable restrooms available to people of all genders," it's clear many are also sex-segregated bathrooms converted to open-gender ones, as is the case at Northwestern.
The concern among some female students who now must share restrooms with anatomically male students is apparently not significant enough to put the brakes on these transitions. "Tut tut! Modesty is so 1959!"
"We received overwhelmingly positive information, and so we went with it," Devin Moss, the director of Northwestern's LGBTQ Resource Center, told the Daily Northwestern. "We didn't really get any major concerns."
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[4 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
Yeah, but a guy goes in to pee, turns around, and gets charged as a sex criminal for exposing himself.
Posted by: ed in texas ||
07/31/2014 7:48 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Remember the fight over the 'Equal Rights Amendment', the one the judiciary has been implementing in defiance of its failure to be ratified? The critics were lambasted for saying that it would result in uni-sex toilets and that women would be drafted (NB-the Donk Congress removed the prohibition on women in combat in order to promote them to the highest position in the uniform services which eliminates the formal obstruction to the 'draft' for women).
#1
Damn! I was looking forward to an African adventure in the hinterlands. Will cancel my reservation. I was just inquiring about taking my Karelian bear dog along.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/31/2014 16:22 Comments ||
Top||
#2
I hear the fruit bats are delicious
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/31/2014 16:29 Comments ||
Top||
#3
Since we cannot go there, the Champ will no doubt bring the plague to us.
A patient who was infected with the virus in Africa is expected to be treated at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta within several days, the university said in a statement Thursday. The patient, his or her identity undisclosed, will be treated at a special containment unit set up in collaboration with the CDC to treat people exposed to serious infectious diseases. A spokeswoman said she did not know when the patient will arrive or who the patient is. CNN, citing an unnamed source, reported that a plane left Cartersville, Ga., Thursday evening to evacuate two U.S. charity workers in Liberia infected with Ebola.
It would be the first time a patient infected with Ebola has been treated in the United States, according to a CDC spokeswoman.
[ARABNEWS] Protests erupted in Sanaa on Wednesday and were dispersed by the army after the Yemeni government announced a rise in fuel prices, part of a bid to ease the burden of energy subsidies on the impoverished country's state finances.
Witnesses and a medical source said a female protester was killed as the army had gun sex in an attempt to break up a demonstration near the presidential palace. Yemeni officials were not immediately available for verification of the incident.
The government spent about $3 billion on energy subsidies last year, nearly a third of state revenue. Yemen has been trying for over a year to secure a loan of at least $560 million from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but the fund is pressing for subsidies to be slashed.
Yemen's finance minister told Rooters in May that the Fund's board was expected to finalize the deal this month.
However, there's more than one way to stuff a chicken... a similar attempt to raise fuel prices by the government in 2005 led to violent protests in which 20 people were killed and over 300 maimed. The measure was subsequently canceled.
Along with pressure from the IMF, the reform has also become more urgent in recent months because frequent Death Eater attacks on oil pipelines have badly hurt Yemen's export earnings.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
[NEWS.YAHOO] Argentina was locked in 11th-hour talks on Wednesday to seek a deal with "holdout" creditors and stave off a crippling new default -- the second in 13 years -- at day's end.
Buenos Aires had until midnight to resolve its dispute with two US hedge funds whose refusal to accept a write-down on debt it defaulted on in 2001 has pushed Latin America's third-largest economy to the brink of a new crisis.
Argentina is due to make a $539 million payment on its restructured debt by Wednesday, the end of a 30-day grace period.
But a US court has blocked it from doing so unless it also pays the hedge funds, NML Capital and Aurelius Capital Management -- a ruling Buenos Aires says jeopardizes its entire debt restructuring deal.
Argentine Economy Minister Axel Kicillof and his team made no statement as they arrived Wednesday morning at the offices of the US court-appointed mediator tasked with breaking the impasse.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[5 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
"Malvinas!"
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/31/2014 7:39 Comments ||
Top||
#2
Who's fooling who here. They have no intention of paying back on any conditions they money they took. Anyone or any organization that gave them money after the last default are equally fools and have wasted their resources like anyone in Vegas or Atlantic City. Take your game elsewhere. They gambled. They lost. Now go cry and leave the rest of us alone without the drama.
Australia's Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has made a startling revelation -- it seems investigators are facing major obstacles in entering the MH17 crash site because of land mines. She has called this as "utterly despicable".
The team of Australian and Dutch police investigators were compelled to abandon the search for remains for a fourth consecutive day because of fighting between Ukrainian forces and separatist fighters. As per her information, there still were remains of up to 80 bodies on the site and that had made the joint team even more determined and desperate to gain access to the site of the tragedy.
She has admitted that there are reports that Ukrainian rebels had been laying land mines on roads through to the crash site of the downed flight in eastern Ukraine.
DONETSK, Ukraine International observers turned back Wednesday after making another attempt to reach the site where Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 went down in eastern Ukraine, and a government official said the area near the zone had been mined by pro-Russian separatists who control it.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe set out Wednesday in two vehicles without frustrated crash investigators from the Netherlands who have been trying to reach the site for four days.
But the OSCE observers turned back to the city of Donetsk after discussions with rebels.
Safety concerns and hindrance from the separatists who control the area have kept the investigation team away. Foreign governments whose citizens died have complained the site is not secured and some human remains have not been recovered.
Government security spokesman Andriy Lysenko added to those concerns Wednesday by saying separatists have mined the approaches to this area. This makes the work of the international experts impossible.
Lysenko was asked at a briefing about concerns that Ukrainian efforts to win back territory were increasing fighting in the area and slowing access. He said that Ukrainian troops werent conducting operations against the separatist near the site, but were trying to cut off their supply lines to force them to leave the area.
Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces took control of the town of Avdeevka, just to the north of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.
Local officials said fighting over the past 24 hours killed 19 people in the regionm
[NEWS.YAHOO] A top rebel chief in east Ukraine has banned fighters from swearing, saying it "spiritually demeans us and will lead our army to defeat", according to a document published on a Twitter account used by insurgents. Blyad'!
Igor Strelkov, the self-declared defence minister of the unrecognised Donetsk People's Republic said swearing in public places by rebel gunmen would be considered "a serious disciplinary infraction".
"Swearwords of non-Russian origin were used by enemies of Rus to defile what we hold sacred," read an official order dated from Monday -- the 1,026th anniversary of the adoption of Christianity by the mediaeval state of Kievan Rus, the ancestor of Ukraine also seen as the cradle of Russia.
"Swearing is a sacrilege that has always been considered a grave sin," read the order published late Tuesday under the Twitter handle @strelkov_info.
The pro-Moscow rebels employ a variety of religious symbols including flying flags with an image of Jesus Christ from their armoured cars and they often refer to themselves as an "Orthodox army".
Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary "protect us in combat", said the order, which also accused the government in Kiev of being "haters of Christians"
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[6 views]
Top|| File under:
[FreeBeacon] Issued orders to demolish more than 100 churches in the southeastern coastal province of Zhejiang.
Chinese authorities are ramping up their persecution of Christian churches in response to what they perceive as an emerging threat to the communist regime, according to reports.
Public security officials in recent days forcibly removed crosses from two churches in the southeastern coastal province of Zhejiang, the New York Times ...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... reported. Authorities have now issued orders to demolish more than 100 churches in the province—most of them state-approved, as opposed to the illegal underground communities suppressed by officials.
Additionally, government officials have disrupted services, confiscated and destroyed church property, and in some cases detained members in the capital in Beijing, the eastern coastal province of Shandong, and the autonomous Xinjiang region in the northwest.
Chinese officials appear to be acting on concerns that the growing Christian movement could soon rival the influence of the 86 million members of the Communist Party. A 2011 Pew Research report estimated that China has 67 million Christians, about 5 percent of its population.
The U.S. State Department raised a number of concerns about China in its annual international religious freedom report, released Monday. The report said that in addition to Christians, Chinese officials persecuted Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners, and Moslem Uighurs.
The Chinese government's campaign against churches comes amid a wider crackdown on dissent by President Jinping. Activists have condemned the Communist Party's detention of dissidents and use of involuntary psychiatric confinement.
[AIM.ORG] Al Jazeera America, which will be celebrating its first anniversary next week, is considering another round of layoffs, as the network's ratings continue to sag.
According to TV Newser, Al Jazeera America CEO Ehab Al Shihabi told the staff during a meeting last week that there may be further layoffs.
A network front man told TV Newser that "Like any television network we make decisions based on our programming schedule," and that they were always looking at staffing levels.
This is the second round of cuts this year. In April, the network laid off dozens of people in their sports and business units.
Al Jazeera America reportedly spent hundreds of millions of dollars hiring staff to build 12 U.S. bureaus in anticipation of competing with Fox, MSNBC and CNN—after buying Al Gore's Current TV for $500 million—and wound up with a network whose ratings are so bad they're barely measurable.
While the Qatari government has plenty of money to spend on Al Jazeera, it's evident by the layoffs that they are finally starting to realize the folly of their investment.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
#1
A series of bad investments. Al Jazeera in the US. Al Gorilioni laughed all the way to the bank.
Then there is the bankrolling of Hamas. They know how to pick winners losers.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
07/31/2014 19:58 Comments ||
Top||
A German hospital in Hamburg agreed to accept patients following a request from the World Health Organization (WHO), Deutsche Welle reports. Doctors assure that the utmost precautions will be taken to make sure the disease does not spread during treatment. The patients will be kept in an isolation ward behind several airlocks, and doctors and nurses will wear body suits with their own oxygen supplies that will be burned every three hours. But the WHO is busy telling everyone it's not very infectious, not infectious as the flu, can't get it if person doesn't show symptoms - so why the need for isolation and airlocks and oxygen? Because .... Who is now covering their behinds for not recommending travel and trade restrictions for 6 months while the virus spread through 3 countries. Because WHO did not send in a team to mop it up in February when it was just a remote village in Guinea.
German authorities were expecting the arrival of Sheik Umar Khan, an Ebola expert who caught the disease while treating patients in Sierra Leone, but he died before he could be transported.
"We were actually anticipating the patient's arrival over the weekend," Dr. Jonas Schmidt-Chanasit, head of the viral diagnostic unit at Hamburg's Bernhard-Nocht-Institute, told German public broadcaster NDR.
This latest outbreak of Ebola originated in Guinea in February and quickly spread to Liberia, Sierra Leone wrong it didn't spread to Sierra Leone until May. That is not quick.
and Nigeria where the first case was reported last week. The disease has already claimed over 650 lives and has prompted authorities in Europe to take measures to prevent its spread.
Just remember because now the health authorities will lie to keep people calm: it is as infectious as the flue. If someone with Ebola sneezes and a droplet hits your face, you can get ebola. If someone with ebola scratches their sweaty arm and then grabs a metal rail, and you touch the metal rail and then touch your eyes nose or mouth you can get ebola. If you have sex with someone who has ebola but no symptoms you can get ebola. It is highly infectious. The only solution to halt the spread is quarantining people who have been in infected areas within the last 21 days on entry to the US / Canada/ Australia and holding them in isolation until blood tests clear them
#1
I've no doubt bummer will let 30,000 of them into the US for "treatment".
They'll lose track of them in the Grayhound transportation network half way between Newark, NJ and San Diego, CA though.
#4
Look for this to be the trigger Champ has been wet dreaming of to impose martial law and shut down all sorts of travel/free enterprise/maybe even the November elections.....all it will take is one Ebola positive to enter the US and 'disappear'...
#5
exactly mossomo i expect things to go more or less qeiet for nexr 2 weeks
people to get bored and complacent. it is normal human nature - you cant stay on red alert constantly for long time
then bam - somewhere in the developed world, 1st case will pop up
and the panic will start again
but it will be too late then as it will be out.
dont think the islamnutz will use it, its a bit too icky for them. they like blowing themselves up. there is nothing pompous, proud or grand about diarrohea or bleeding from the eyes
But the basics of operating even advanced surface-to-air weapons are relatively easy to learn — they need to be so that operators can use them even in the heat of battle — and instructions are available online. Training manuals featuring intuitive, detailed guidance on using such weapons are on the Web. The manuals include instructions on how to do most tasks, including turning the systems on, activating the radar antenna, understanding radar data and firing the missile.
More difficult, though, is committing these steps to memory and learning tactics for how to best deploy a system on the battlefield. The U.S. Army requires 10 weeks of continuous training, for example, for operators deployed with the Patriot anti-surface-to-air missile — one of the Pentagon’s most advanced such weapons. Soldiers have to learn how to calculate targeting data by both hand and electronic means. Training also includes learning complex tasks, including how to identify targets.
[ARABNEWS] The Turkish people are deeply divided over Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ... Turkey's version of Mohammed Morsi only they haven't dumped him yet... 's leadership even though he is the hot favorite to win next month's presidential elections, a new poll found Wednesday.
Turkey will for the first time vote directly for its next president on Aug. 10, with Erdogan looking set to continue more than a decade of domination over the country straddling Europe and Asia.
But amid political tensions and allegations of corruption surrounding Erdogan's government, a Pew Research Center poll of 1,001 people carried out between April 11 and May 14 found opinions on his leadership record are sharply divided.
Overall some 44 percent of those surveyed said they believed the former Istanbul mayor and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) had been steering Turkey in the right direction.
But some 51 percent were dissatisfied with the path the nation was taking. "Half say the economy is doing well, while 46 percent think it is in bad shape. Forty-eight percent say Erdogan is having a good influence on the country; the same percentage believes he is having a negative impact," the poll by the US-based center noted.
After 11 years in office, during which his government has tamed the influence of the once-powerful military, Erdogan has faced the worst crisis of his rule over allegations that he and his allies engaged in corruption which ranged from bribery to gold smuggling and illicit trade with Iran.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[8 views]
Top|| File under:
[FOXNEWS] Women in Turkey have taken to social media to protest against comments by the country's deputy prime minister that "women should not laugh aloud in public."
Women were sharing photos on Twitter of themselves laughing Wednesday after Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc's comments that not laughing out loud in public is among requirements of being an honorable woman.
Arinc said Monday both men and women should be moral, and that women should be aware of what is appropriate behavior.
Canan Arin, a prominent women rights' activist, said it was a pity Turkish women have to respond to such "silly comments" when they have more serious problems to deal with, including frequent male violence against women.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/31/2014 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
[3 views]
Top|| File under:
In an acknowledgment that the military may be pricing itself out of business, the Air Force on Wednesday called for a shift away from big-ticket weapon systems that take decades to develop and a move toward high-technology armaments that can be quickly adapted to meet a range of emerging threats. You mean like US policy before WWII?
An Air Force strategic forecast, looking 20 years into the future and spurred in part by looming budget constraints, also calls for a faster pace, with lower price tags, in developing both airmen and the technology they use, warning that the current way of acquiring warplanes and weapons is too plodding.
The report, described as a "call to action" by Secretary Deborah Lee James of the Air Force, limits itself to how the country's most tech-heavy military service can adapt to looming threats and budget constraints. But it is also a warning to and an admission from the entire Defense Department that with military compensation and retirement costs rising sharply, the country may soon be unable to afford the military it has without making significant changes to the way it does business.
"To boil this down, we have to buy things very differently and develop and employ our people differently," said Maj. Gen. David W. Allvin, one of the authors of the report. "We have to behave more like an innovative 21st-century company."
From 1998 to 2014, annual compensation costs per active-duty service member increased by 76 percent, to $123,000, while the overall defense budget increased by 42 percent -- yet, since 2010, the base Defense Department budget, not including spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, has been declining, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. So far, the military has dealt with the sharp increase in personnel costs by cutting the number of service members, and has managed to keep expensive weapons acquisition and technology at the same percentage of the overall budget -- around 30 percent -- as personnel and maintenance and training.
But with the Army, the largest branch in the military, now headed to its lowest personnel numbers since before the World War II buildup, Defense Department officials, particularly in the Army, warn that more cuts could bring increased risks to deployed service members. While the Air Force and Navy, with historic reliance on technology, are widely viewed as more willing to make personnel cuts than their Marine and Army counterparts, even officials in those services say there is a limit to how much more they are willing to reduce personnel.
But a potential gap between good intentions and spending reality remains, and it is unclear how serious the Air Force is about its call to move away from its focus on big, expensive weaponry, in particular advanced fighters and bombers. After all, the report is a long-range forecast that looks to change the culture of weapons development two decades or more down the road, so expensive weapons already in the pipeline remain relatively safe.
Over past decades, similar talk of streamlining the military has crashed into opposition from members of Congress, defense contractors and the military itself, which often work to protect bases, weapons systems and other budget pets. And calls for saving money by adopting new technologies are not new; Donald H. Rumsfeld, a former defense secretary, announced a goal of imposing "transformation" on the military to create a smaller, lighter, more agile -- and cheaper -- force, but his ideas were forced aside by the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
For example, nowhere in the report is there mention of scaling back on the trouble-plagued F-35 jet fighter -- in development for 14 years so far -- which was temporarily grounded last month after another in a series of problems. Nor is there talk of getting rid the next generation long-range bomber, which the Air Force is working on for around $550 million per plane and which is expected to debut somewhere around the mid-2020s.
"They're still going to buy the Joint Strike Fighter," said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, referring to the F-35 warplane. "They're getting squeezed, but they're still going to buy the next generation bomber and the KC-46 tanker" for aerial refueling.
In fact, introducing the report on Wednesday, both Secretary James and Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, the service's chief of staff, made a point of saying that the F-35, the next-generation long-range bomber and the KC-46 refueling tanker are all high-priority items for purchase. General Welsh offered a vigorous defense of the F-35, the world's most expensive weapons project, and called the recent failure of an F-35 engine at a Florida air base a fixable problem.
"The F-35 is the answer, the only answer, that ensures that future fights won't be fair fights," he said. "I'm confident that the program will remain on track."
Officials said Air Force weapons systems that could be targeted in the new shift -- the Air Force is calling it "strategic agility" -- is the next-generation replacement for the Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System, or J-Stars, a surveillance airplane that provides information on ground forces to commanders in the air and on the ground, as well as the replacement training aircraft -- called TX -- used to train pilots.
Space and information programs could also see their spending cut in this new approach, military analysts said, with a view to building them in a more piecemeal way that would allow for quick adaptation as new technology emerges.
"The notion is, we can't afford the big bang programs anymore, so what if we approached it differently, looking at adding capability in smaller chunks?" said Beth McGrath, a director at Deloitte Consulting and former deputy chief management officer for the Defense Department. "We say, 'This is the big thing we want,' and then we go buy the big thing. But there's a better way to do this."
Air Force officials said they also believed they could incorporate this new system into some existing programs -- the service has been retrofitting its aging B-52 bomber fleet for decades to meet changing needs. A senior Air Force official said Wednesday that engineers were looking into whether they could integrate some of the newest advances in aircraft engines, including the latest in propulsion technology for fuel savings, and put them into existing systems, instead of simply starting from scratch all over again with new planes.
General Allvin, who worked on the report, said in an interview that the service also must look for how to make airmen more adaptable to new technology, and seek ways to harness advances underway at American tech giants like Google. He suggested that the Air Force might restructure pension and retirement programs so airmen could still qualify for military retirement benefits even if they spend their careers switching back and forth between the service and high-tech firms in the private sector.
"What if you entered the Air Force knowing you could serve for a few years, then go to work for an innovative tech company, and then return to the Air Force?" he said. "We could enter into partnerships with cutting-edge companies and allow our work force the opportunity of a more flexible retirement system that allows you to do two different jobs and still get to a 20-year retirement. It might take 35 years, but you would get here."
After two costly and exhausting land wars and the fiscal reality of government austerity, the Air Force report could signal similar shifts by the entire military. Two words of advice:
1) Only buy domestic.
2) Don't put any plans on the internet.
#3
Some of that is government contracting costs. Every time someone signs and Executive Order directing political kickback some social issue be addressed, it adds $$$ on the process, bottomline be damned.
#5
#3 the KC-46 tanker" for aerial refueling
ICBMs don't need refueling. Just sayin'.
Standoff drones with appropriate weaponry don't need 'em either. USAF, however, will never (defined as "the rest of my life") allow large asset commitment without real, live pilots.
#1
Fast Left Wing Conspiracy unveiled. Remember, accusations, ie "Vast Right Wing Conspiracy", as such are largely Freudian projection by the Left, based upon the belief that 'they' must be doing what 'we' do.
#4
Thank God the Founders created a third branch of government, the Judicial Branch. It took too long for Americans to get them involved via the lawsuit but when the did the Judicial Branch has been cleaning Obama's clock.
This "self portrait" was taken by the Mars rover Opportunity in March, 2014 (false color added). It combines multiple frames and shows the cleaning effect of wind that blew off dust. (NASA)
The Mars rover Opportunity, already astounding for its longevity, has another claim to fame.
On July 27, Opportunity's odometer rolled over to 25.01 miles, a record for any vehicle in space, NASA said in a news release.
The previous record holder was the Soviet Union's Lunokhod 2 rover, which landed on the moon on Jan. 15, 1973, and drove about 24.2 miles in less than five months, according to NASA.
John Callas, NASA's California-based project manager for the Mars rovers, said Opportunity's record is remarkable, considering that it wasn't designed for distance and was intended to drive only about one kilometer.
"But what is really important is not how many miles the rover has racked up, but how much exploration and discovery we have accomplished over that distance," Callas said in a statement.
Not to mention the photos.
Over the years, Opportunity and other rovers have beamed thousands of photos to Earth, which NASA has made available online. The images have captivated not only scientists but also those who believe the photos provide proof of life beyond Earth.
Just this week, YouTube user "TRUTHSEEKER" psoted a video claiming to show two dinosaurs spotted in rover images show on Mars (see the slideshow above and judge for yourself).
Last month, a blogger pointed out the shape of a cat in photos taken by the rover Curiosity. A few days earlier, someone saw a toy boat.
The blog UFO Sightings Daily, maintained by Scott C. Waring, claimed in November to have spotted an iguana in images sent back by Curiosity. In earlier posts, Waring posited the existence of other animals on Mars, including a rat or lizard and squirrel.
A "mystery rock" that showed up in photos in January had even NASA baffled at first. Analysis later showed that the rover probably moved the rock when it turned in place.
Opportunity has been working on Mars since January 2004, far surpassing expectations for it. Its primary mission was complete in April 2004,
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Gulf News] A worker received a painful lesson when he sneaked into a secretary's office where he molested her.
[P.WASHINGTONTIMES] MSNBC host Ronan Farrow took to his panel Tuesday to discuss what he perceives as a lack of racial diversity among emoji characters.
While rural white farmers and defenseless pensioners appear to be struggling with it, racial diversity is thriving in some countries. 
[THECOLLEGEFIX] Northwestern University will offer "gender-open restrooms" to its students this fall.
DONETSK, Ukraine International observers turned back Wednesday after making another attempt to reach the site where Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 went down in eastern Ukraine, and a government official said the area near the zone had been mined by pro-Russian separatists who control it.
[FOXNEWS] Women in Turkey have taken to social media to protest against comments by the country's deputy prime minister that "women should not laugh aloud in public."
In an acknowledgment that the military may be pricing itself out of business, the Air Force on Wednesday called for a shift away from big-ticket weapon systems that take decades to develop and a move toward high-technology armaments that can be quickly adapted to meet a range of emerging threats.
