ANCHORAGE, Alaska: Russian warplane exercises around Alaska have become routine in the past few months, U.S. military officials said Monday, as the former Cold War superpower steps up flights from its Arctic bases.
Over the summer, Russian bombers have staged at least seven exercises in a buffer zone outside U.S. air space, each time alerting the U.S. through reports by Russian news agencies, said Maj. Allen Herritage, a spokesman for the Alaska region of the North American Aerospace Defense Command.
U.S. and Canadian fighter jets, including F-15s, were dispatched each time to escort the Russian planes in the exercises, which ranged from two to six aircraft, Herritage said.
The latest exercise came Sept. 19 and involved two planes flying somewhere off the coast of Canada, Herritage said. They were met by Canadian planes from NORAD, which is jointly operated by the U.S. and Canadian militaries.
At least five exercises by the Russian Tu-95 Bear heavy bombers have taken place off Alaska's Aleutian Islands and other historic Cold War outposts, such as Cape Lisburne and St. Lawrence Island, according to NORAD records. All occurred beyond the 12-mile boundary that constitutes U.S. airspace.
"They used to have them from time to time, ...   more »

By Wayne Madsen
Sept. 24, 2007
Author's website: http://www.waynemadsenreport.com
WMR has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence sources that the B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined for the Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
However, elements of the Air Force, supported by U.S. intelligence agency personnel, successfully revealed the ultimate destination of the nuclear weapons and the mission was aborted due to internal opposition within the Air Force and U.S. Intelligence Community.
Yesterday, the Washington Post attempted to explain away the fact that America's nuclear command and control system broke down in an unprecedented manner by reporting that it was the result of "security failures at multiple levels." It is now apparent that the command and control breakdown, reported as a BENT SPEAR incident to the Secretary of Defense and White House, was not the result of a command and control chain-of-command "failures" but the result of a revolt and push back by various echelons within the Air Force and intelligence agencies against a planned U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional
weapons.
The Washington Post story on BENT SPEAR may have ...   more »

JPost.com Staff , THE JERUSALEM POST  Oct. 1, 2007
Iran threatened Monday to attack some 170 American targets in the Middle East and around the world if it is attacked by Israel or the US, Israel Radio reported.
A high-ranking officer from the country's Revolutionary Guards told the force's official journal, The Guards, that Teheran succeeded, after extended and comprehensive work, to identify hundreds of strategic American targets in the Middle East and around the world.
The Revolutionary Guards' Ground Forces Command is able to easily kill American nationals staying in the Middle East. "Several years ago they [Americans] were far away from us by thousands of kilometers. Now they are so close we can touch them," the Iranian general said.
On Sunday former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton told Tory delegates in Britain that efforts by the UK and the EU to negotiate with Iran had failed and that he saw no alternative to a pre-emptive strike on suspected nuclear facilities in the country.
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ARI SYRQUIN
Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) methods, particularly mediation and arbitration, have proven to be essential tools in the prevention and settlement of dispute without the formalities, delay, expense and vexation of ordinary litigation. In the next two weeks, two conferences regarding the matter will take place. The first, in Rome (this weekend) by MEDA ADR, a European Union-sponsored program. The second will take place here, in Jerusalem, by the World Mediation Forum. I have the privilege of being involved in both.
MEDA ADR (Rome)
In 2005, the European Commission sponsored a three-year project dedicated to facilitating foreign investment and international trade across the northern and southern shores of the Mediterranean through the promotion of Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) in the 10 MEDA countries (Israel, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and West Bank & Gaza). As the concluding event of this project, a final conference will convene in Rome, Italy, this weekend (September 28 and 29). Representatives from the 27 EU member states will participate alongside representatives from the 10 MEDA countries. Israel will be represented by District Judge (Tel Aviv) Michal Rubinstein and Tel Aviv lawyer Shai Porat.
The project was designed particularly to assist small- ...   more »