How a potential Chinese-built airport in Greenland could be risky for a vital US Air Force base

Snow blows near the U.S. Air Force’s Thule Air Base on March 25, 2017, in Pituffik, Greenland. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)

 

WASHINGTON — With less than 60,000 people spread across more than 830,000 square miles, Greenland relies heavily on air transport to move supplies and people up and down its coast.

So when the local government issued a solicitation to build three new airports, the move made sense from a business perspective. The project would be expensive, but would improve commerce and make life on the island easier for its residents.

Then a Chinese company — owned by the government in Beijing, and once blacklisted by the World Bank — put forth a bid, and a simple request for proposals transformed into a project with international diplomatic ramifications.

Official warns Iran will withdraw from nuclear deal if ‘no economic benefit’

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi / YJC

 

Iran has threatened to withdraw from the landmark 2015 nuclear deal with world powers if there is no economic benefit from it and major banks continue to fail to do business with Tehran.

Turkey Opens Its Largest Overseas Military Base in Somalia

Turkish Chief of Staff General Hulusi Akar, second left, and Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khayre, second right, receive a salute from a Somali soldier at combined Turkey-Somali training center during his visit to Mogadishu, Somalia, Sept. 30, 2017. Farah Abdi Warsame/AP

 

The military base in Somalia is also a reminder that despite Turkey’s growing regional and national problems, Africa remains central to its global expansion strategy.

Turkey has opened its largest overseas military base in Somalia, cementing its relationship with the war-torn nation and strengthening its strategic place in the African continent.

The $50 million base was opened on Saturday (Sept. 30) and will train more than 10,000 soldiers. The move is part of an effort to institutionalize and restructure the police and military services, battle the terrorist group al-Shabaab, and help expand the government’s authority into more towns and regions. The new base also takes on an urgent significance as the 2020 withdrawal deadline for the 22,000 African Union multinational force gets closer.

Cyber-Attack on Nuclear Facilities Could Cause Radiation Leaks

Nuclear power plants across the globe are at increasing risk of cyber-attacks, which could ultimately lead to radiation leaks, according to a new report by the U.K.-based international affairs think tank, Chatham House.

South Korea Suffered 114,000 Cyberattacks in Five Years

For a very informative perspective on how often and to which magnitude cyberattacks are happening worldwide, and especially against the United States, see the following live map linked from another post:

America: In the Cybercrosshairs

 

South Korea has announced that its government institutions have suffered more than 114,000 cyber attacks since 2011.

The figures were published on Friday in a report by the country’s National Assembly’s Public Administration & Security Committee, technology news site CNET reported. The committee found that 114,035 cyber attacks, ranging from attempts to access classified information to leaking sensitive data, had been recorded between 2011 and June 2015. Less than one percent of the total attacks originated from IP addresses in North Korea.

The West MUST face up to Putin – or Nato and the EU could collapse, warn experts

THE West is risking the collapse of Nato and the EU by not facing up to Russian president Vladimir Putin, experts have warned.

Foreign affairs think-tank Chatham House warned that the conflict in Ukraine would be a “defining factor” for the future security of Europe – and suggested Moscow could use tactical nuclear weapons on Europe in future.

“Just because something is unimaginable for Western planners does not mean it is not considered a viable option by Russia,” it said.

Mysterious Russian satellite, Object 2014-28E, raises fears we may be on the edge of a space arms race

Putting it on a ‘watchlist’ will not make the problem go away, nor defend anything. As mentioned in a post just yeseterday, they’re likely camouflaging themselves in space junk and now that seems to be the case. The Chinese have already launched satellites with robotic arms. The United States is seemingly at its highest point of vulnerability in its entire history.

 

A STRANGE new Russian satellite has the US and NATO nervous: It’s not doing what satellites normally do, sparking fears it is really a secret “star wars” killer.

When originally launched back in May, Western observers thought the strange signal in orbit was simply some wayward debris from a normally scheduled Russian military rocket launch.

Perhaps they were supposed to.

But now, it’s shifting orbits. It’s under power, and its purpose remains unknown.

Russia in secret plot against fracking, Nato chief says

Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Russia was mounting a sophisticated “disinformation campaign” aimed at undermining attempts to exploit alternative energy sources such as shale gas

Russia is secretly working with environmental groups campaigning against fracking in an attempt to maintain Europe’s dependence on energy imports from Moscow, the secretary-general of Nato has said.

Speaking at the Chatham House foreign affairs think-tank in London, Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Russia was mounting a sophisticated disinformation campaign aimed at undermining attempts to exploit alternative energy sources such as shale gas.

He said: “I have met allies who can report that Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with so-called non-governmental organisations – environmental organisations working against shale gas – to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas. That is my interpretation.”

By 2015, Russia Wants To Establish A Eurasian Union To Rival The EU

Is Moscow’s proposed Eurasian Union an initiative to revitalize stagnant economies, or an attempt to re-establish a Soviet Union “lite?”

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the world suddenly had 15 more nation states, some of whom had not been sovereign territories since the 19th century.

Nevertheless, calls for a re-integration of the Eurasian region were soon heard, often led by Russia, according to (pdf) a Chatham House paper.

In 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin called the fall of the USSR “a major geopolitical disaster of the century.”

There’s been a smattering of different attempts at unification, including the Commonwealth of Independent States security union, but a lack of commitment to creating the institutions have stalled efforts, Chatham House writes.

Terrorists ‘acquire nuclear container to smuggle uranium’

The United States has been forewarned for years about an American Hiroshima. The current administration turns a blind eye to unabated smuggling networks across the Mexican and Canadian borders so as to be politically correct. God only knows what else they are, and have been smuggling. Obama has yet to even call the Benghazi attack an act of terrorism. If anyone should doubt the reality of such an event happening, they should keep in mind what JFK had to say during his presidency 50 years ago:

“If things get too bad and war is inevitable,” he said, “they will set it off and that’s the end of the White House and the rest of the city.”

That’s right, you guessed it. The Soviets likely had a nuke in Washington DC.

This is not to ‘fear monger’ as superficial critics would say, but to be a watchman, warn and wake people up. God forbid this actually happens, and such an act (or any act of terrorism) will never be condoned here, but the threat is real. If they could do it then, the terrorists could do it now — especially with today’s technology at their disposal.

The United States today couldn’t be any more vulnerable than throughout its entire history, in a time of unprecedented danger throughout such a fractured world ready to fall into the abyss with even the slightest push. Stop trying to keep up with the Kardashians, disassociate yourself from the mindless shopping mall regime that America has become today, read your Bibles and wake up. We are living in extraordinary times.

Terrorist groups have acquired a “container” to smuggle uranium undetected past the global network of sensors to prevent a dirty bomb, the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog has warned.

Speaking in London, Yukiya Amano of the International Atomic Energy Agency, said groups’ efforts to build a dirty bomb were becoming “more professional”.

It was particularly worrying, he said, that smuggling networks had hold of technology to evade sophisticated monitoring equipment designed to prevent proliferation of radioactive material.