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NORAD and Russian fighter jets conduct military drills amid tensions surrounding Syria

NORAD and Russian fighter jets conduct military drills amid tensions surrounding SyriaAs US-Russian relations remain tense over Syria, NORAD and the Russian Federation Air Force jointly conducted military training exercises to teach pilots how to find, track and escort a hijacked plane over international borders.

To train pilots how to respond to a terrorist attack, a “hijacked” 757 passenger jet took off from Anchorage, which Canadian jets intercepted and escorted over the international border at the Bering Strait. The hijacked plane was then handed off to Russian fighter jets.

Canadian jets kept a distance while escorting the “hijacked” planes, while Russian jets were near the wings at all time, giving the aircraft little room to escape. Russian jets were so close that observers in the 757 could make out the pilots’ faces, the Associated Press reports.

The exercise, known as Vigilant Eagle, has been conducted five times over the past decade. But some consider the timing of this most recent exercise surprising, given the tense relations between the US and Russia over the crisis in Syria and National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden, who was granted asylum by Moscow this summer.

But officers and generals involved in the exercise claim that the tensions has been left out of conversation during the weeklong exercise, and that the politics will not affect the two countries’ cooperation to prevent any future terrorist attacks. 

“I can only say the issues you raised have never been raised [during the exercise],” Maj. Gen. Dmitry Gomenkov told the Colorado Springs Gazette, noting that military cooperation can accomplish things that diplomats are unable to. “This can fill the gap.”

Col. Patrick Carpentier, the deputy commander of NORAD’s Alaska Region, served as Gomenkov’s American counterpart in the exercise, largely mirroring the views expressed by the Russian general.

"All these other factors really don't play in this," said Carpentier, a member of the Canadian Air Force, according to the Associated Press. "This is a mission that we have to accomplish, so it really is beyond those types of frictions. We cooperate because we have to."

The US Northern Command, which is responsible for preventing US terrorist attacks and defending the country’s airspace, is located together with NORAD at the Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo. 

Russian observers were sent to facilities in Colorado and Alaska, while NORAD observers were sent to Khabarovsk, Russia. Gomenkov said planning for next year’s exercise will begin this November, regardless of what happens between the US and Russia over the Snowden case.

"The cooperation with the Russian Federation Air Force personnel has been ongoing for the past year for this particular serial, and at no time there was any discussion about canceling the event for this year,"Viens said Thursday at the conclusion of the two-day exercise, according to the Associated Press.

'You can't survive on that': Fast-food workers across US strike for better wages

Employees and supporters demonstrate outside of a Wendy's and Burger King fast-food restaurants to demand higher pay and the right to form a union on August 29, 2013 in New York City.(AFP Photo / Spencer Platt)

Fast-food industry workers across the United States staged a one-day nationwide strike demanding better wages and the right to form a union.

The Thursday event is so far the largest of its kind in a 10-month campaign that began in New York last November – starting with just 200 workers – and spread to other major cities by July 2013. The number of cities is now at 60, organizers say. 

McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Taco Bell and Burger King all came under fire for holding their workers hostage to low wages. What the workers have in mind is a raise to $15 from the current minimum of $7.25, AP reports. 

Even celebrities and politicians took part, with New York mayoral candidate Christine Quinn joining a march of several hundred workers who walked toward a McDonald’s by the Empire State Building. Actor Stephen Baldwin was also spotted at an event in Seattle, Washington. 

Martin Rafanan, a community organizer in St. Louis, Missouri, said that if the situation doesn’t improve the corporations who employ low-paid workers will “pull all the blood, sweat, tears and money” out of local communities. 

"If you're paying $7.25 an hour and employing someone for 20, 25 hours a week, which is the average here, they're bringing home about $10,000 a year. You can't survive on that," Reuters reported Rafanan as saying. 

However, the organization responsible for the American fast-food industry, the National Restaurant Association, said the problem was an exaggeration, with a spokesman of theirs telling Reuters that"only 5 percent of restaurant employees earn the minimum wage, and those that do are predominantly working part-time and half are teenagers." 

The US labor secretary, Thomas Perez, agreed with the need to raise wages. He told the Associated Press that "the rungs on the ladder of opportunity are feeling further and further apart" for many people in the US. 

An open letter to McDonald’s and several other major names was sent by Fast Food Forward – a New York-based group, who pointed out the huge gap that exists between company profits and the wages they pay to their employees, calling the “poverty” wages “shameful and outrageous.” 

The group also underlined the fact that workers to this day are targeted for organizing and protesting, with tactics by employers ranging from reducing working hours to firing workers. 

Many workers in the crowds had to work two jobs just to make ends meet – often at competing fast-food chains. One such case, a father of three, Terrence Wise, 34, told The Guardian "we don't have a voice" and that the strike is as much a demand for “respect” as it is about better pay.

Striking McDonald's worker Bartolome Perez, 42, (L) protests outside McDonald's on Hollywood Boulevard as part of a nationwide strike by fast-food workers to call for wages of $15 an hour, in Los Angeles, California August 29, 2013.(Reuters / Lucy Nicholson)

President of the Service Employees International Union Mary Kay Henry told The Guardian that "the fast-food workers are fighting for all of us. SEIU members, like all service-sector workers, are worse off when large fast-food and retail companies are able to hold down wages and push down benefit standards for working people." 

There was no shortage of opponents to the strikes as well. The National Retail Federation (NRF) lashed out at the events calling them a “theater” performance staged by big labor and adding that retail and restaurant jobs are enjoyed by millions of Americans who are proud of what they do, and that the planned strike is a carefully planned action that was years in the making. 

McDonald’s shot back as well, saying that, firstly, the minimum wage rate does not stay at that level forever and that workers move up through the ranks and eventually receive higher pay. The company explained that if the wages were raised, it “would potentially have a negative impact on employment and business growth in our restaurants, as well as value for our customers." 

Wendy’s and Yum Brands, who own KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, could not be reached for comment by the AP. 

The protests coincide with US President Barack Obama’s plan to push the federal minimum wage up to $9 an hour, but that is still much less than the figure demanded by the workers. 

RT.com partially banned by Reddit

RT.com has been banned on Reddit’s /r/news section, with moderators accusing it of spamming. Puzzled with absurd allegations, RT views the sanctions as an act of censorship with many redditors expressing the same concern.

The announcement of the ban appeared on Reddit at around 12:30 GMT on Thursday, and was soon followed by another message, saying that “brigading the thread, downvoting, and crying aren't going to change it, sorry.”

When some of the users reacting to the message asked to be provided with a screenshot of the thread(s) where RT.com made the alleged violation, moderator Douglas MacArthur replied: “sorry, no, internal.” 

The ban provoked a heated debate on the website, with one user, datums, writing that it was“unacceptable to ban a major news source without presenting evidence against them.”

“It is particularly worrisome that this particular outlet offers a perspective that lacks the pro-American bias of major US outlets. RT employs many excellent journalists, and their credibility cannot be called into question any more than The New York Times or CNN,” datums said.

Meanwhile, user Alttoon said that the ban had nothing to do with freedom of information, but was instead “pure censorship at best.” 

The users pointed out that if RT.com was really caught spamming, then it would be banned from the whole website site by the Reddit’s admins, but not only from its /r/news section.

Even Reddit users who frequently disagree with RT’s stance on various issues spoke out against the ban, stressing that it was not the moderators but the audience who should decide what news articles to read.   

“Propaganda machine or not, a news organization should not be banned from a news subreddit,” user MisterGrieves wrote. “ESPECIALLY if one of the reasons is that they post a lot of their stories here. That is the purpose of this subreddit. Banning a news source is censorship and the mod behavior is appalling.”

“The reader will decide if they want to read them or not but removing that option from the reader is wrong,” he added.

Some users also found the timing of the sanctions against RT.com quite suspicious as it coincided with escalation of events around Syria, with the US being on the brink of invading the country.  

“It certainly seems shady, that exactly in the times when the US is pitted in an interests war with Russia, which may indeed turn into a very real war soon enough, they'd decide to act out against spam from RT,”user maraSara said.   

User Let_them_eat_slogans stressed that sanctions against RT, backed by “zero evidence of wrongdoing,”set “a fantastic precedent” and found support among the other redditors.

After two hours of heated discussion, Douglas MacArthur, the moderator, referred to “basic metrics that are used on reddit spammers all the time both by subreddit moderators and reddit staff.”

“One example is plain domain frequency. The rule-of-thumb is 10%. If you submit a lot, and the proportion coming from a certain domain is way higher than that, you're probably a spammer. If there's a lot of users doing that a lot for one domain, you should investigate further to see if it's people working for that domain,” MacArthur said.

He did not elaborate, however, whether any such investigation was carried out before putting the ban into effect.  

The moderator refused to provide proof of alleged violations by RT.com, saying it would disclose the means used by Reddit to detect and tackle spammers and therefore help future perpetrators. 

Some three hours after the initial announcement, as more comments of the kind were posted, the Reddit moderator wrote: "OK, we're going to have a vote on whether or not to ban RT. To vote, please click here." However, clicking on the link led to an empty website, Zombo.com.

But the joke wasn’t welcomed by the users, who blamed the moderator for being “unprofessional.”

“Why offer a vote on the subject just to direct to a dumb 90’s troll website? You're just fanning the flames,”user ActionFilmsFan1995 wrote. 

The sanctions against RT.com and the way the moderator responded to the complaints prompted some readers to quit the /r/news section subreddit.

While the other redditors demanded actions against Douglas MacArthur, like user MikeOracle, who suggested “we need a new moderator, stat.”

RT’s leading web analyst, Aleksey Naumov, denied there were any grounds for the moderator’s spamming accusations. 

“Over the last two years, RT’s traffic has increased by four or five times,” Naumov said. “Quite naturally that during this period the number of submissions of our materials to Reddit.com as well as the number of referrals from Reddit to our website has increased. It’s not difficult to check that it’s not the same, but different people, who submit our stories to Reddit.”

RT asked MacArthur and Reddit’s press service for details regarding the ban imposed on RT.com links.

Reddit’s press office replied that they were not consulted by subreddits about their decisions.

“To clarify, it is the prerogative of each individual subreddit's moderators to allow or ban domains from being submitted to their subreddits,” Victoria Taylor, of Reddit’s press service, said. “As we are not moderators of /r/news, we were not involved or consulted on this decision. You would need to appeal to the moderators of /r/news about their decision and address their concerns individually.”

RT has received no reply from MacArthur.

Reddit works by allowing users to submit links from around the Internet, which other users then vote on.

Ron Paul: Al-Qaeda would benefit most from Syria chemical attack

Former congressman Ron Paul says the United States should avoid escalating its involvement in the Syrian civil war any further because the US will be on the way to aiding Al-Qaeda if it continues to assist opposition fighters.

“We are not really positive who set off the gas,” Paul, a long-time Republican lawmaker for Texas in the US House of Representatives, said during a Fox News interview filmed Wednesday about the reported use of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. 

“The group that is most likely to benefit from that is Al-Qaeda. They ignite some gas, some people die and blame it on Assad,” he said. 

In the conversion with Fox host Neil Cavuto, Paul said Americans should avoid buying into any propaganda about the escalating war in Syria and warned that the repercussions of using military force could be tremendous, especially without enough evidence to justify an attack. 

 

Instead of concentrating on the role of al-Assad and his reported use of chemical weapons on civilians, Paul said the US should investigate other factions in the Middle East. Of particular concern, he insisted, are the Al-Qaeda extremists who have aligned with rebel fighters to take on the Assad regime.

“The implication is that Assad committed 100,000 killings,” Paul told Fox News host Neil Cavuto during an interview filmed Wednesday. “There are a lot of factions out there, why don’t we ask about the Al-Qaeda? Why are we on the side of the Al-Qaeda right now? So I think they want the weapons. The rebels want the weapons. There’s a bunch of people in there and Al-Qaeda is part of it and this is the test for us to drop a couple of bombs and then send in weapons.”

“Assad, I don’t think, is an idiot,” Paul continued. “I don’t think he would do this on purpose in order for the whole world to come down on him.”

Paul said he opposed plans to strike Syria to reprimand Assad if intelligence proves he gassed innocent civilians, and that aligning the US military with anyone involved in the civil war was a big risk that could escalate quickly in terms of seriousness.

“What if there is an accident and 100 Russians get killed by our bombs? Who knows? Some type of unintended consequences. Wars always expand because of unintended consequences. They always provide short term war. Just think of all the promises over in Iraq: Short term; not much money; it’s over; we’ll get that oil. And don’t believe it,” he said.

“We should look at what’s best for America. And not trying to pick sides in an impossible war like this won’t be on the side of the American people. And the American people, by a very large majority, are opposed to this war. The Constitution can’t support this war and morally we can’t support this war, getting involved in a civil war and a strife that’s been going on in that region for thousands of years,” he said.

The congressman, a medical doctor who previously ran unsuccessfully for the office of US president, added that he thought the information about Assad being response for the chemical weapons is a “false flag.”

The US Department of State is expected to announce later on Friday the results of an intelligence report which may link Assad to a gassing outside of Damascus, Syria last week that killed hundreds of civilians. If the government can prove Assad responsible for the attack, the White House said a military strike was not out of the question. Meanwhile, the US has mobilized no fewer than five warships to the Mediterranean and is considering a number of military options that the White House said won’t involve putting any American boots on the ground.

Russia prepares budget for oil drop

Russia prepares budget for oil dropWith increasingly oil markets volatile, Russia’s Ministry of Finance has come out with a game plan. The Ministry sees oil,the backbone of Russia’s economy, falling to $80/bbl from 2016 to 2030, down from two–year peak of $115/bbl.

The overall strategy is based on the assumption oil prices will fall, and the budget will not return to pre-crisis levels, but will meet all state needs, Vedomosti reported after receiving the document pre-publication. 

Russia’s economy hasn’t expanded since the fourth quarter of 2011, and the Kremlin, which has tried its best to deny a forthcoming recession, has amended its budget to get ready for slowed economic activity. 

Russia recently lowered its 2013 economic-growth forecast from 2.4 percent down to 1.8 percent, the second amendment this year. In Q2, the economy expanded 1.2 percent. 

The most optimistic trajectory assumes a short – term drop in oil to $60 per barrel from 2016, with quick price recovery to follow. 

Less favorably, oil will steadily plateau at $80 per barrel.

All of the three scenarios, however, involve a cut in budget spending, as well as lower revenues. If the oil price falls sharply, Russia plans to dip into its Reserve Fund – mainly to finance infrastructure developments. 

Russia’s Reserve Fund is one part of its Sovereign Wealth Fund, with the National Welfare Fund being the other.  Established in 2004, after oil plummeted below $30 a barrel, it now serves as a safety buffer for falls in crude prices. The Reserve Fund is now estimated at about $85 billion, and the Welfare Fund, which invests internationally, at  $86 billion. 

Russia's budget revenues are expected to go down 18 percent - from 37 percent of GDP to a 30 percent share, according to calculations by the Ministry of Finance. The oil and gas revenues are expected to fall to 3.3 percent of GDP from a 8.8 percent share.

Oily budget

Presently, an adequately funded budget is dependent on oil prices above $100.

The country's reliance on oil prices in world markets makes it vulnerable to any price fluctuation, as the 2008 bust/boom dramatic rise and fall demonstrated. 

Crude oil prices in the summer of 2008 hit a record high of $147 per barrel, and then by December 2008, the bubble had burst and Brent was trading near $40 a barrel. 

Russia receives about half of its budget revenue from oil and natural-gas sales, but the increase of shale gas technology and the rise of the LNG market threatens Russia’s dominance in the energy market. 

Gazprom, the state-owned gas producer, currently supplies Europe with 25 percent of its gas needs, but this could shift as Poland, England, and other EU countries develop shale extraction at home. Supply from North America also poses a direct threat to Russia’s oil monopoly, and subsequently, its budget. 

A face in a billion: Facebook to include profile pix in facial recognition database

Facebook says it will expand its facial recognition database to include over 1 billion extra faces as it incorporates users’ profile pictures into its database, thereby increasing the scope of its existing, highly controversial technology.

The world’s largest social network made the announcement Thursday in an update to its data use policy. Facebook’s “Tag Suggest” feature already automatically recognizes “friend” faces in photo uploads to speed up the process of tagging friends, but the new adaptation will also use the facial recognition technology to identify its own users’ profile pictures.

“Our goal is to facilitate tagging so that people know when there are photos of them on our service,” Erin Egan, Facebook’s chief privacy officer, told Reuters, adding that the change would give users better control over their information.

Facebook’s existing technology identifies faces automatically by comparing them to previous tagged photographs.

Egan added that there would be an “opt out” feature, meaning that somebody’s photograph could be excluded from the facial recognition database.

The practice has already raised regulatory concerns in Europe, meaning Facebook users there will not be affected by the change – it is only for US users. Facebook was persuaded to disable its facial recognition technology across Europe earlier this year, after an investigation by privacy authorities in Germany and Ireland.

“Can I say that we will never use facial recognition technology for any other purposes? Absolutely not,”Egan said. “If we decided to use it in different ways we will continue to provide people [with] transparency about that and we will continue to provide control.”

Critics said that there has also been little attempt in the new update to provide greater clarity as to policies. “The company is also deliberately deleting information about specific privacy controls,” noted the New York Times, pointing out that a direct path to the possibility of opting out of endorsing adverts on friends’ pages  would no longer be on the privacy page.

The old privacy policy informed users:  “You can use your privacy settings to limit how your name and profile picture may be associated with commercial, sponsored, or related content (such as a brand you like) served or enhanced by us.” However, the changed wording assumes permission for name, profile picture and content to be used in connection with commercial content. 

"We are proposing this update as part of a settlement in a court case relating to advertising," Egan said in a statement in regards to changes in commercial use. 

While not specifying which court case, it was revealed on Wednesday that Facebook will pay out $20 million in compensation to users who had their personal information shared on the website. Details of users appeared in the “sponsored stories” advertisements without their permission. 

Facebook and Google (Google Plus uses similar technology) both insist that they are not participants in any program that allows the US government direct access to their computer servers, and only supply personal information upon specific request and following a review.

The update to Facebook’s technology comes as public scrutiny grows of corporate use of private data, and its sharing with governments, following NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass US electronic surveillance in June. For seven years, the National Security Agency has been using a warrantless web surveillance system, PRISM, with a near-limitless ability to spy on anyone’s phone calls, e-mails, video chats, search history and more.

According to the documents leaked by Snowden, Internet giants such as Google, Apple and Facebook have been complicit in the scheme, providing the NSA with access to users' data. 

US intelligence report stops short of confirming Assad is responsible for chemical attack

United States Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that the US intelligence community has concluded that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is responsible for killing more than 1,000 people with chemical gas last week near Damascus.

In a statement released in tandem with Kerry’s remarks from the State Department headquarters in Washington, DC Friday afternoon, the US government says they assess “with high confidence” that the government of Pres. Assad carried out a chemical weapons attack in the Damascus suburbs on August 21, 2013.

According to the remarks made by Sec. Kerry, the assault last week caused the deaths of at least 1,429 Syrians, including no fewer than 426 children.

But despite days of research and an international investigation, the US says they cannot declare with 100 percent certainty at this time that Assad’s regime was responsible.

“Our high confidence assessment is the strongest position that the US Intelligence Community can take short of confirmation,” the report reads in part. “We will continue to seek additional information to close gaps in our understanding of what took place.”

Nevertheless, Kerry all but confirmed on Friday that Assad ordered the use of nerve gas against civilians last week. 

“[W]e know that the Syrian regime’s elements were told to prepare for the attack by putting on gas masks and taking precautions associated with chemical weapons. We know that these were specific instructions. We know where the rockets were launched from and at what time. We know where they landed and when. We know rockets came only from regime-controlled areas and went only to opposition controlled or contested neighborhoods,” he said.

“We have a body of information, including past Syrian practice, that leads us to conclude that regime officials were witting of and directed the attack on August 21,” the accompanying document claims.

“To conclude, there is a substantial body of information that implicates the Syrian government’s responsibility in the chemical weapons attack that took place on August 21.As indicated, there is additional intelligence that remains classified because of sources and methods concerns that is being provided to Congress and international partners,” it says.

During the Friday press conference, Kerry urged Americans and those in the international community to read the declassified report that has been published by the US government. One day earlier, he said US President Barack Obama went over the intelligence with his national security team, who then met with leaders of Congress and the lawmakers on the congressional national security committees.

“Its findings are as clear as they are compelling,” he said of the report. “I'm not asking you to take my word for it. Read for yourself, everyone, those listening, all of you, read for yourselves the evidence from thousands of sources, evidence that is already publicly available.”

Among that evidence, Kerry said, is proof collected from thousands of sources suggesting the Syrian government launched a gas attack last week.

“With our own eyes we have seen the thousands of reports from 11 separate sites in the Damascus suburbs. All of them show and report victims with breathing difficulties, people twitching with spasms, coughing, rapid heartbeats, foaming at the mouth, unconsciousness and death. And we know it was ordinary Syrian citizens who reported all of these horrors,” Kerry said.

“And just as important,” he added, “we know what the doctors and the nurses who treated them didn't report -- not a scratch, not a shrapnel wound, not a cut, not a gunshot sound. We saw rows of dead lined up in burial shrouds, the white linen unstained by a single drop of blood.

“Instead of being tucked safely in their beds at home, we saw rows of children lying side by side, sprawled on a hospital floor, all of them dead from Assad's gas and surrounded by parents and grandparents who had suffered the same fate,” the secretary continued

In addition to social media posts, videos taken after the attacks and first-hand reports, Kerry said the US relied on signals intelligence and geospatial intelligence to conclude Assad’s regime ordered the attack.

Intelligence offering a glimpse into Assad’s army, said Kerry, proved that chemical weapons officials in charge of the nation’s arsenal of warheads were making preparations days ahead of the attack.

According to the report, US intelligence sources could not detect any indication in the days before the assault that opposition affiliates, as reported by some, were planning to use chemical weapons.

Some signals intelligence intercepted, the report added, showed a senior Assad regime official “intimately familiar with the offensive” confirming the army used chemical weapons on Aug. 21, “and was concerned with the UN inspectors obtaining evidence.”

According to the report, the Syrian chemical weapons personnel were directed to cease operations on the 21 and begin shelling the surrounding area for five days,

The document also rejects the allegation that video footage showing the Aug. 21 assault was fabricated, and concludes that the Syrian opposition lacks the capability to fake the assault, or the effects of nerve gas.

Michael Jackson Is Still Alive!!!(VIDEO)

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