US Sends Tanks To Germany to Protect Against Russian Invasion

If you don’t think Putin’s b*tch has been committing Treason and that the Russians aren’t still our enemies – you might want to take a look at this,

For 1st time since Cold War, U.S. tanks roll into Russia’s backyard

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. has been drawing down its military presence in Europe. But at the main docks in Bremerhaven, in northern Germany, that’s no longer the case. In fact, CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports, quite the reverse is the order of the day.

All the massive hardware of a U.S. combat brigade arrived in Germany over the weekend, and started rolling east toward Poland, where 4,000 American soldiers will be waiting for it.

It is the first build-up of American troops and weapons in Europe in almost 30 years, and as Palmer reports, the impressive display of military might is meant, in large part, to reassure America’s nervous allies in Europe that the U.S. military will be there, standing with them, against any Russian aggression.

Aggression, and land grabs, like the 2014 invasion of Crimea, when Russian troops landed in what had been Ukraine and seized the ground for the Kremlin.

America’s response, manifested with the new deployment, has been to increase both its own force in Europe, and its support of NATO.

However, incoming U.S. President Donald Trump has suggested NATO is obsolete, and said he wants to restore good relations with Russia.

Palmer asked Major General Timothy McGuire how quickly the new president could, as a gesture of good will towards Russia, turn the whole deployment to eastern Europe around and pull them out.

“I’m not going to speculate on what the incoming president may or may not do, but I will tell you this is in the interests of the United States Army, to build readiness,” McGuire replied.

The new commander-in-chief could reverse it all, of course, but Palmer says that would take months, or even years.

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has already indicated that he views the American build-up as pointless.

It’s “stupid and unrealistic,” he said, to think that Russia would attack anyone. But the American military and its NATO allies believe a little extra deterrence won’t hurt.

Once all the troops and equipment of the combat brigade reach their final destinations, at various places in eastern Europe, they will start a series of big multinational exercises with other NATO armies.

The Kremlin said Monday that discussions would begin with Mr. Trump’s administration after his inauguration to determine a time for his first meeting with Putin.

The seat of Russian power also said it was looking forward to putting the current period of tension behind it, suggesting Mr. Trump would usher in “more sober experts.”

 

Drugbo Alert! Lesbian Farmers Invading the Homeland!

Just when you though the deranged right couldn’t get any more insane. Rush (AKA Drugbo) Limbaugh is trying to save his rapidly falling career as “Chief bloviate of the radio right” by claiming knowledge of a secret plan by the Obama Administration to invade the “Red Zone” with (gasp!)…

“Lesbian Farmers”.

Having just moved to such a rural area a few months ago I find this singularly amazing. In my 20 years of owning a home in this area, I certainly have run into, and in several cases befriended Lesbian couples living in the area – one of whom owns a successful seafood store…But to be honest with you, I haven’t noticed a massive uptick in the number of women shopping together in the local Southern States store. Not to mention it’s a bad health move to ask everyone you see in overalls and a baseball cap about their sexual orientation.

Being a straight male, maybe I’m just not plugged into the scene at the local Farmer’s Market.

And what sexual orientation has to do with a desire to live in the country, or farm for that matter utterly escapes me. Although I am sure the local Trumpazoids being replaced by Lesbians…Makes the farm animals sleep better at night.

A note to Rush Limbaugh: Obama is not building an army of lesbian farmers to take over red America

Programs to help rural LGBT people not only help them, but also small American towns

Rush Limbaugh wants his listeners to know that lesbian farmers are coming to get them. Or not them, exactly — most Republicans live in suburban, not rural areas — but the kind of people that his listeners imagine themselves to be. In a recent program, Limbaugh went on a rant about an Obama program that President Barrack Obama supposedly set up to infiltrate rural communities with “lesbian farmers” and destroy them from the inside:

So here comes the Obama Regime with a bunch of federal money and they’re waving it around, and all you gotta do to get it is be a lesbian and want to be a farmer and they’ll set you up. I’m like you; I never before in my life knew that lesbians wanted to be farmers.

I never knew that lesbians wanted to get behind the horse and the plow and start burrowing. I never knew it. But apparently enough money it make it happen, and the objective here is to attack rural states.

The fact that Limbaugh thinks farmers still use a horse and plow speaks volumes about what is going on here. This isn’t about protecting real farmers from anything or even trying to understand how rural Americans actually live. This is about exploiting his suburban audience’s romantic Farmer John fantasies and pretending that this group is somehow under threat from evil lesbian infiltrators.

Other conservative outlets picked up on the same story, which is unsurprising, as this is standard right-wing scare-mongering. Stories about the federal government’s funneling o fmoney through frivolous giveaways to minority groups in an effort to destroy straight, white America is hands down the right-wing media’s favorite form of bullshit since Ronald Reagan popularized the term “welfare queen.”

But as with stories about “Obama phones” and “midnight basketball,” a deeper look shows that these programs are not subversive or frivolous at all but good programs that help revitalize communities.

“We kicked off our #RuralPride campaign really to animate the truism that LGBT people are everywhere,” Kate Kendell, the executive director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, explained over the phone.

While the right-wing press is trying to frame this story as one of Obama’s bribing LGBT people to move to rural areas, the reality is very different. The lesbian-rights organization partnered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the True Colors Fund to enter rural communities to connect with the LGBT people who are already there, whether they work directly in agriculture or are part of the small-town communities that exist to support agricultural economies.

“Contrary to myths that the LGBT community lives exclusively in metropolitan areas, members of our community are proudly living, working, raising children, going to school, and making homes for themselves and their families in rural America,”  the one-sheet explainer sent to me by the national lesbian group explained.

“It appeared to be the first time that it occurred to these anti-gay voices that LGBT people already live in rural communities,” Kendell, who was openly amused at the conservative ignorance and hysteria, told me.

The right-wing media would like to promote the idea that these are training camps for queer sleeper cells, but the programming that Kendell described was straightforward and pleasantly mundane: panels of attorneys, activists and federal officials providing education about resources to help improve their lives, find economic stability and escape the isolation that LGBT people can often feel in small communities. Some summits also have anti-bullying programs to help rural LGBT youth.

 

 

A Tea Bagger “Hoodie”

I’m sure many of you remember the Trayvon Martin case, where a black teenager was identified by his murderer as a “suspicious criminal” for walking home in a hoodie, with the hood up in the rain.

Well…They have finally come up with a Hoodie for malcontent white folks…I guess it beats the Wayne Pierre “solution” of everyone carrying a concealed Anti-Aircraft Missile…

The anti-drone hoodie that helps you beat Big Brother’s spy in the sky

The newest fashion statement for the far right and domestic terrorist set

I am wearing a silver hoodie that stops just below the nipples. Or, if you prefer, a baggy crop-top with a hood. The piece – this is fashion, so it has to be a “piece” – is one of a kind, a prototype. It has wide square shoulders and an overzealous zip that does up right to the tip of my nose.

It does not, it’s fair to say, make its wearer look especially cool. But that’s not really what this hoodie is about. It has been designed to hide me from the thermal imaging systems of unmanned aerial surveillance vehicles –drones. And, as far as I can tell, it’s working well.

“It’s what I call anti-drone,” explains designer Adam Harvey. “That’s the sentiment. The material in the anti-drone clothing is made of silver, which is reflective to heat and makes the wearer invisible to thermal imaging.”

The “anti-drone hoodie” was the central attraction of Harvey’s Stealth Wear exhibition, which opened in central London in January, billed as a showcase for “counter-surveillance fashions”. It is a field Harvey has been pioneering for three years now, making headlines in the tech community along the way.

It began in 2010 with Camoflash, an anti-paparazzi handbag that responds to the unwanted camera flashes with a counter-flash of its own, replacing the photograph’s intended subject with a fuzzy orb of bright white light.

Ewwwwe…Wait a minute! Do you think I can get that camera flashie thingie mounted on my car tight above the license plate? Now THAT’s a million dollar idea!

Back to the Wing-Dizzies…

There is, I point out, no obvious target audience for anti-drone fashion. He’s unfazed. “The kind of person who would wear it really depends on what drones end up being used for. You can imagine everything, from general domestic spying by a government, or more commercial reconnaissance of individuals.” I suggest perhaps political protesters. “Yeah, sure. Maybe that’s the actual market.”

Harvey is well aware his work can seem a little before its time. “I wouldn’t say many people have a problem being imaged by drones yet,” he deadpans. “But it imagines that this is a problem and then presents a functional solution.”

Reality, to be fair, is not so far behind. Over the next 15 years the US Federal Aviation Administration anticipates more than 20,000 new drones will appear in American skies, owned not just by law enforcement agencies and the military, but also public health bodies and private companies.

 

Attack of the Arachnids – Indian Village Overrun By Poisonous Spiders

Wow – this one is like something out of a 80’s horror movie. For reasons unknown, villages in part of India have been swarmed by a previously unknown type of Tarantula…

Mysterious Poisonous Spiders Invade Indian Town

Swarms of never-before-seen spiders descended upon a cultural festival in the northeastern Indian town of Sadiya last month, biting several people and leaving two dead. The arachnid “invasion,” as the Times of India called it, caused a panic among festival-goers who reportedly jostled one another and tripped over benches in an effort to escape the venomous spiders.

A spider suspected to be a new species of tarantula in Tinsukia, Assam state, India, is shown, May 30, 2012. The hairy spiders were first noticed about a month ago across Tinsukia district’s grassy plains and dense jungle forests north of the Brahmaputra River.

Scientists from Dibrugarh University and Gauhati University have not been able to identify the spiders, which resemble tarantulas but may be a new species altogether. Ratul Rajkhowa, a professor of zoology at Cotton College in the city of Guwahati, told the Times that the spiders could be black wishbones, a species native to Southern Australia. If that’s the case, the spiders’ venom would not be deadly but could, in some individuals, cause severe allergic reactions that may result in death. The individuals who died after being bitten by the mysterious spiders were reportedly cremated before autopsies could be performed, and scientists have yet to test the toxicity of the spiders’ venom.

The sudden infestation nevertheless remains a concern for both scientists and Sadiya residents, as venomous spiders are not native to India’s Assam region, where the attacks occurred.

British naturalist Vejay K. Singh told the Times that, while swarms of spiders are rare, ”a certain anomaly in conditions may provoke an unusual surge in breeding populations…usually after flooding when the spiders search for dry and higher ground.” Post-flood spider swarms in Australia last March left farmlands blanketed in spiderwebs, while in Pakistan millions of spiders enveloped trees  following last year’s devastating floods.

Specimens of the Sadiya spiders have been sent to the Indian Society of Arachnology in the state of Maharashtra for identification.

 

Kenya Sends Troops into Somalia to Hunt Down Al Shabaab Terrorists

Tourism is a major contributor to the economy of Kenya, contributing about 60% to the GDP. So when you start kidnapping, abductingforeign aid workers,  and murdering tourists in Kenya – killing their tourist business…

The normally pacifist Kenya has to do something.