Citing administration and NASA officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity, the reports said the White House would call on the space agency to focus on other programs, including the development of commercial services to ferry US astronauts to the International Space Station.
The Constellation program envisioned the return of US astronauts to the Moon by 2020
Florida Today and the Orlando Sentinel, two papers based in the area around the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, said Obama would seek to boost NASA’s budget by six billion dollars over five years, despite a pledge to freeze most discretionary spending.
But the boost will fall far short of the money NASA needs to finance the Constellation program launched in 2004 by then-president George W. Bush after the space shuttle Columbia crash in 2003 effectively brought the shuttle program to a close.
Constellation envisioned the return of US astronauts to the Moon by 2020, with them then using Earth’s nearest neighbor as a base for manned trips to Mars.
But the Bush administration did not set aside a sufficient budget to develop the program, according to the Augustine commission, a group of independent experts who examined the program at Obama’s request.
The commission’s report, released at the end of 2009, proposed a range of alternatives for the future of manned space travel.
The Obama administration’s approach will give priority to development of a way to get US astronauts to the International Space Station after the shuttle program winds down in September 2010. Astronauts will have access to Russia’s Soyuz spacecraft until an alternative is available.
There are five more shuttle flights planned, all of them to the ISS, with the next scheduled for February 7.
The possibility of keeping the program running until 2015 has not been ruled out by the administration, officials said.
Reports said Obama’s cut backs could face tough opposition, with a spokesman for Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson telling Florida Today the proposals could “decimate the space program.”
A spokesman for Boeing, a key NASA subcontractor, said the company had not been advised about the proposals and urged patience.
“This is the first step, Congress will debate it, there will be a lot of hearings… before a final decision is made,” Edmund Memi told AFP.
In order to keep the myth alive that Osama bin Laden is out there and still a threat, the State Department released an updated a 1998 photo of the late CIA asset earlier in the week. “The State Department has updated its 1998 file photo of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, digitally altering it to account for a decade of age and possible changes in his facial hair,” the Associated Press reported. “Bin Laden, 52, is believed to be hiding in the Pakistan frontier bordering Afghanistan, though his exact whereabouts has been unknown since late 2001.”
Kurt Nimmo Infowars.com January 17, 2010
The real (and long deceased) Osama on the left, the FBI composite in the middle, and the aggrieved former communist leader Gaspar Llamazareson on the right.
On December 21, 2001, the Egyptian newspaper al-Wafd reported that Bin Laden “suffered serious complications in the lungs and died a natural and quiet death” and was buried in an unmarked grave in Afghanistan.
Former Pakistan dictator Pervez Musharraf said he believed Osama died in 2001 from kidney failure and CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta said Bin Laden’s appearance in recently early videotapes indicated he was undergoing kidney treatment.
In early 2002, CBS News reported that Osama was in Pakistan on September 10, 2001, “getting medical treatment with the support of the very military that days later pledged its backing for the U.S. war on terror in Afghanistan.” Noted author Ahmed Rashid added that “Pakistan intelligence had helped the Taliban buy dialysis machines and the rumor was that these were for wanted for Osama bin Laden.”
The French newspaper Le Figaro reported on October 11, 2001, that Osama underwent surgery in an American Hospital in Dubai between July 4 and 14th, 2001. “During the hospital stay, the local CIA agent, known to many in Dubai, was seen taking the main elevator of the hospital to go to bin Laden’s hospital room.” The CIA agent later man bragged to a few friends about having visited Bin Laden.
If the U.S. government and the CIA “didn’t have an Osama bin Laden, they would invent one,” former CIA agent Milt Bearden said in an interview with Dan Rather on September 12, 2001.
In fact, this is precisely what the CIA did after Osama passed away in late 2001.
On December 13, 2001, the government released its first bogus videotape. “The pentagon released a tape of Osama bin Laden discussing the successful attacks of September 11. Administration officials said it makes clear that bin Laden was the mastermind behind the operation,” reported Jim Lehrer of PBS.
“Administration officials wouldn’t reveal exactly how or when they got it, except to say it was found in a house in Jalalabad after anti-Taliban forces moved in. The U.S. Government translated the Arabic conversation and provided subtitles. The tape, which has a home video quality, shows bin Laden sitting on the floor in a bare room in a house in Kandahar. With him are several other men, including two aides and an unidentified cleric, or Sheikh. Bin Laden, identified on screen as UBL, made it clear he planned the September 11 attacks,” added reporter Ray Suarez.
The tape features a man that looks nothing like Osama — his skin is considerably darker, his nose wider, and he is about fifty pounds heavier than Osama. Remarkably, the Pentagon was successful in pawning this obviously manufactured tape off as the real McCoy, at least to the gullible.
“Perhaps due to the widespread hilarity evoked by Fatty Bin Laden, the next Ousama-from-beyond-the-grave message had no images: It was an audio tape delivered to al-Jazeera in the fall of 2002. The CIA verified it as ‘authentic,’ but ended up with egg on its face when the world’s leading voice identification experts at IDIAP in Switzerland reported that ‘the message was recorded by an impostor,’” Kevin Barrett wrote in 2006.
A series of bogus tapes followed the fat Osama tape, including one dubbed Osama’s Grecian Formula tape. Anne Giudicelli, a former French diplomat specializing in the Middle East who runs the Paris-based consultancy Terrorisc, said the video shows that “bin Laden is well aware that his reappearance on the world stage” and that is why he dyed his beard “a youthful black” for the 2007 video.
As it turns out, the State Department is in hot water over its effort to keep the Bin Laden myth going into a new decade. “A Spanish politician said on Saturday that he was ’stupefied’ by the FBI’s decision to use his photograph to compose its latest image of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and is considering taking legal action,” the CIA’s favorite newspaper, The Washington Post, reports today. “In the last few days I have seen the security services involved in some very strange things, some major failures, but I would never have believed they could have affected me so directly,” said Gaspar Llamazares, a former leader of Spain’s communist party Izquierda Unida.
Special agent Jason Pack told the newspaper a forensic artist had been unable to find suitable features from the FBI’s database of photographs and used a picture from the Internet instead. “The forensic artist was not aware of the identity of the individual depicted in the photograph,” Pack said, adding that the image would be taken off the FBI website.
It was a mistake the FBI used a photo of a noted communist in its Osama composite?
Right. And cave dwelling Muslims with box-cutters made NORAD stand down on September, 11, 2001, too.
It took less than 24 hours for bloggers and internet sleuths to ferret out the truth behind the latest effort to resurrect Osama bin Laden from the grave. Either the FBI is totally incompetent or they take all of us for idiots.
If not for the tireless work of alternative journalists, this latest bit of government fakery would have gone undiscovered and unchallenged by the corporate media. It is not their job to challenge official lies and fabrications, but publish them without critical comment.
The Obama administration is allowing Haitian nationals who were in the United States at the time of Tuesday’s earthquake to over-stay their visa for the next 18 months
Here is a statement from Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano:
As part of the Department’s ongoing efforts to assist Haiti following Tuesday’s devastating earthquake, I am announcing the designation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian nationals who were in the United States as of January 12, 2010. This is a disaster of historic proportions and this designation will allow eligible Haitian nationals in the United States to continue living and working in our country for the next 18 months. Providing a temporary refuge for Haitian nationals who are currently in the United States and whose personal safety would be endangered by returning to Haiti is part of this Administration’s continuing efforts to support Haiti’s recovery.
Napolitano added:
“It is important to note that TPS will apply only to those individuals who were in the United States as of January 12, 2010. Those who attempt to travel to the United States after January 12, 2010 will not be eligible for TPS and will be repatriated.
Poll: Most Americans would trim liberties to be safer
Steven Thomma McClatchy Newspapers Thursday, January 14th, 2010 After a recent attempted terrorist attack set off a debate about full-body X-rays at airports, a new McClatchy-Ipsos poll finds that Americans lean more toward giving up some of their liberty in exchange for more safety.
The survey found 51 percent of Americans agreeing that “it is necessary to give up some civil liberties in order to make the country safe from terrorism.”
At the same time, 36 percent agreed that “some of the government’s proposals will go too far in restricting the public’s civil liberties.”
The rest were undecided or said their opinions would depend on circumstances.
Second year running Obama demands more for illegal wars
Steve Watson & Paul Watson Prisonplanet.com Wednesday, Jan 13, 2010
Nobel Peace Prize winner Barack Obama is to request a record defense budget for 2011 in order to expand the war in Afghanistan and continue the conflict in Iraq, according to military officials.
Obama will ask Congress for an extra $33 billion in addition to a record breaking $708 billion to swell the Defense Department’s coffers next year.
Defense spending will top $700 billion for the first time military sources revealed to the AP, after commanders were briefed on the figures, in addition to projected budgets through 2015, earlier this week at the Pentagon.
The bulk of the war chest will be used to acquire more Predator and Reaper pilotless drones, which have been used in missile attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The additional war dollars will also go towards funding the deployment of close to 40,000 new troops Obama ordered to Afghanistan last year.
The president’s Quadrennial Defense Review will be officially delivered to Congress on February 1st.
It will mark the second year running that the president has significantly increased war spending.
Obama’s election promise to bring “change” to Washington and reverse the juggernaut of rampant militarism, endless wars and occupations has proven to be nothing more than a cruel hoax.
Obama has beefed the U.S. military role in Pakistan beyond that pursued by the Bush administration and expanded the covert war run by the Central Intelligence Agency inside Pakistan, with an increase in missile attacks by drone aircraft.
Despite public pronouncements by Obama that a plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq is in progress, the details of the agreement actually establish a permanent presence of a sizable occupying force in perpetuity.
Obama has also promised that U.S. forces will begin to withdraw from Afghanistan in July 2011, but his defense advisers have set no time limit for the war there.
The combined number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan has now reached a higher level under Obama than existed under the Bush administration at any point between 2003 and 2008.
At the height of the Bush administration’s 2007 “surge” in Iraq, there were 26,000 US troops in Afghanistan and 160,000 in Iraq, a total of 186,000.
According to DoD figures cited by The Washington Post last October, there are now around 189,000 and rising deployed in total. There are now 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, over double the amount deployed there when Bush left office.
As the Post points out, these figures are also misleadingly low because the number of support troops, at least 13,000, has simply not been announced or noted, despite their authorization and deployment by the Pentagon.
The perpetuation of the illegal occupation of Iraq, the expansion of the fallacy based war in Afghanistan, as well as increased faceless attacks in Pakistan, heightened belligerence towards Iran and refusal to address a strategy to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict sum up Obama’s foreign policy during his first year in office.
How in anyone’s mind can such behavior constitute a move towards peace?
