90 Miles From Tyranny

Tuesday, July 2, 2013

Syrian Rebel Sympathizer Living In Washington DC Builds A Smartphone Early Warning System For Incoming Syrian Missiles

The below article takes a point of view which I do not agree with. It takes a definitively pro rebel (al quada) viewpoint. I am no fan of Assad, but he is the devil that we know.

On February 25, 2013, a 26-year-old Syrian "hacktivist" who had fled Damascus was sitting up late in his apartment in a Washington suburb watching the Syrian civil war unfold on Twitter.

A man living near an air base southwest of Damascus tweeted that a SCUD missile had been fired and its fiery tail could be seen streaking north. Syria is believed to have at least 700 such SCUDs, which are slow and heavy 1960s-vintage short-range tactical ballistic missiles that the Soviet Union exported to various client states around the world. Having done his compulsory military service in a Syrian artillery unit, Dlshad Othman knew that this SCUD was likely headed for the northern Syrian city of Aleppo. He also knew the missile would be landing in roughly six minutes.

But who would see the Tweet in time?

As he waited helplessly for the SCUD to land, Othman hatched an idea: Set up an early warning system that could take citizen reports of a ballistic missile launch, calculate the likely target, and send alerts in real time to civilians inside the strike zone.

SCUD missiles can be clearly seen when they are launched; in clear weather they can sometimes be spotted for great distances and their trajectory is evident to the naked eye. Syrians have posted many images of SCUD launches on YouTube.

But death by SCUD is sudden. The whoosh of an incoming missile is followed almost instantaneously by the explosion.

Syria has fired dozens of SCUDs and other missiles at targets in northeastern Syria. According to the Syrian Missile Launch Database, maintained by the Washington Institute of Near East Policy, between December 2012 and March 2013 the Assad regime fired dozens of surface-to-surface missiles against opposition-held areas, including major cities and towns such as Aleppo, Al Raqqah, and Der Ez Zor. Human Rights Watch reported that four SCUDS fired on Aleppo in February killed 141 civilians, including 71 children.

Othman's SCUD early warning system began operating on Wednesday. It is called Aymta, which means "when" in Arabic. Users can opt to receive alerts by phone, text message, SMS, e-mail or RSS feed, or, if the regime cuts off internet access, as it often does, via a broadcast on satellite television or radio frequencies outside of regime control. Within the first 24 hours, 16,000 people viewed his website and 87 had registered to receive his alerts - although up to 40 percent of Syria was reportedly experiencing power outages at the time. Two satellite television stations also signed up for alerts. Some Syrians have already registered from abroad to track impending attacks on their hometowns and alert their families.

Reactions posted on Othman's social media pages range from joy to disbelief.

"Thank God," typed one fan over and over.

"The idea is great but this is a luxury," wrote another from Aleppo. "Most people here in Syria do not have communications or sometimes power and will never get these warnings."

Othman believes that forces loyal to President Bashir al-Assad have not fired a SCUD at civilians since a June 20 SCUD-D was fired at Aleppo at 11:45 p.m. from al Qalamon in the Damascus countryside. But when the next SCUD goes up, Othman is confident that his text messages will reach some people before the missile.

Syrians by the thousand are already risking their lives to document the war, material that may eventually provide rich evidence for war crimes prosecutions. Never have so many atrocities been chronicled so thoroughly for the networked world to view online. Yet this unprecedented crowd-sourced documentation effort has not had the desired effect of deterring atrocities.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/07/meet-the-hacktivist-who-wants-to-warn-syrians-about-incoming-missiles/277461/

The first Wal-Mart

...anything is possible...

Freedom Of Speech No Longer Exists in France

For French parliament lawmaker, Marine le Pen, speaking the truth is a criminal offense. France's hate speech laws restrict and criminalize legitimate criticism of important issues and empowers government bureaucrats to ban and criminalize certain ideas and imprison those who express them.

In a speech in 2010 le Pen denounced the holding of Muslim prayers in the streets of France saying: "For those who like to talk about World War II, to talk about occupation, we could talk about, for once, the occupation of our territory."

"There are no armoured vehicles, no soldiers, but it is an occupation all the same and it weighs on people."

Prosecutors in Lyon, where the speech took place, opened an investigation into the remarks for "inciting racial hatred".

Europe is being occupied by a culture of hate and intolerance called Islam and speaking out against the hate and intolerance is considered hate speech.

Europe is on the road to self destruction and no one is manning the brakes.

More about Islam:

WARNING - Graphic Video Of Beheading Of Catholic Priest By Obama Backed Syrians

Liberals...

Perverse Irony...

Illustrated Art: Women With Weapons

NASA to flip ion engine's 'OFF' switch after brilliant 5.5 year burn

NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster (NEXT), an ion-propulsion engine that has been firing continuously for five and one-half years, is due to be shut down at the end of this month.

The world's record holder for ion-propulsion longevity: NASA's NEXT (click to enlarge)

"We will voluntarily terminate this test at the end of this month, with the thruster fully operational," said NEXT's principal investigator Michael Patterson in a statement. "Life and performance have exceeded the requirements for any anticipated science mission."

Considering that the NEXT thruster has run steadily for over 48,000 hours, we would say that Patterson and his team have contributed mightily to NASA's reputation of building devices with life spans that exceed expectations. The Martian mini-rover Opportunity, for one excellent example, was originally designed for a 90-day mission, but celebrated its ninth anniversary this January and set a new NASA distance record in May.

For over 2,000 days, the ion propulsion NEXT engine has been humming along in a high vacuum test chamber at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, bombarding inert, colorless, odorless, tasteless (not in the Kardashian sense) xenon gas with electrons and ionizing it.

That ionized plasma is created in an area of the engine with a highly positive charge, and the ions are thus attracted to the highly negative charge of the engine's "accelerator grid," which spits them out into space – or, in NEXT's case, the test chamber – at speeds of up to 90,000 mph.

Positively charged ions being sucked through NEXT's negatively charged accelerator grid (click to enlarge)

Despite that speedy ejection, the thrust produced by the engine is quite low when compared to the sturm und drang of conventional chemical rocketry – so low, in fact, that it wouldn't be enough to even move the engine itself, let alone any payload, here on Earth. In the vacuum of space, however, the constant acceleration provided by the NEXT engine – or its descendants – could eventually propel a spacecraft at speeds over 200,000 mph, NASA says.

Perhaps more importantly, ion-propulsion engines are both highly efficient, fuel-wise, and can be operated continuously for a long, long time – even longer than the five and a half years of NEXT's operations. During its entire test run, NEXT used a mere 870 kilograms of xenon to produce a total amount of thrust that would require, NASA says, the equivalent of 10,000 kilograms of conventional propellant.

It's not difficult to see the advantages of ion propulsion once a craft has slipped the surly bonds of earth. In fact, "advantages" might be too weak a word. If mankind ever wants to explore deep, deep space, ion propulsion and other solar-electric thrusters might better be described as a necessity – which is why work on ion propulsion has been underway at the Glenn Research Center since the 1950s.

But that work will now go on without NEXT. As principal investigator Patterson said, NEXT will be shut down at the end of this month. So long, indefatigable ion-spitter, and thanks for all the thrust.