One-Year Mission to Station Advances NASA's Journey to Mars

TBR-NASA,  NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden


 NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden



Today we launch an American astronaut and Russian cosmonaut to live and work in space for an entire year. It’s the first time an American astronaut will have been in space for that length of time. It’s an important stepping-stone on our journey to Mars and will give us detailed medical data recorded throughout the one-year expedition. President Obama recognized this significant American space exploration milestone in his State of the Union address this year, noting: “[We’re] pushing out into the solar system not just to visit, but to stay…as part of a reenergized space program.”

This mission is part of the critical roadmap we’ve been undertaking with bipartisan support since the President challenged us five years ago to plan for a human mission to an asteroid and later to Mars.
When American astronaut Scott Kelly is in space, he’ll not only carry out the research and technology demonstrations that our astronauts have been helping us develop during the past 14 years of continuous human habitation aboard the International Space Station (ISS), he’ll also participate in a unique experiment.
Scott has an identical twin brother, Mark – also an astronaut – who will be here on Earth. We’ll compare the brothers’ vital signs and learn how space affects the human body on orbit. Throughout Scott’s mission we’ll gain new, detailed insights on ways long-duration spaceflight can affect things like bone density, muscle mass, strength, vision and other aspects of human physiology. We’ll also look at mental changes and challenges astronauts may face when they embark on longer-duration missions.

We will also get an opportunity to see how microgravity affects the human genome. This information might affect every one of us on Earth as we get a unique insight into genomic changes.
Unfortunately, Scott won’t launch on this important mission from the United States on an American spacecraft. However, that’s not for a lack of trying on the part of the Obama Administration.
Five years ago, the President laid out a plan to ensure we had an American system to transport our astronauts to the International Space Station once the Bush Administration’s plan to retire the Space Shuttle went into effect. That plan looked to the ingenuity of U.S. industry to develop private space transportation systems to get crews to the ISS. Regrettably, Congress did not fully fund this plan and delayed its implementation until 2017. It is my hope that the plan is fully funded this year, as full funding this year is critical to ending our sole dependence on the Russians as soon as possible.
Kelly’s launch is one key aspect of NASA’s efforts to meet the President’s goal of a human mission to Mars, but much work is underway throughout the agency to meet this vision. Technology drives exploration and NASA has integrated its work to focus on developing the technologies to reach deeper into space. Our Space Launch System rocket, which will be the most powerful ever built, has moved from being a concept into development. Just this month we’ve tested the booster and the rocket engines for this powerful vehicle. The Orion spacecraft, in which astronauts will travel to farther destinations in deep space, performed flawlessly on its first flight test in December. We have completed the first round of detailed reviews and are now looking even closer at the heat shield through destructive evaluation. This data review will help us improve Orion’s safety and performance as we prepare for a crewed flight.

We’re also working on the advanced technologies for propulsion, landing and radiation shielding, among many others, that humans will need to travel farther than we ever have before. While that work is rapidly advancing, our commercial partners’ innovation will make it possible for the next generation of astronauts to travel once again to space on American systems. We couldn’t be more proud of our astronaut corps, our innovative engineers and scientists and the industrial gumption of our partners. Together, they’re helping to create a whole new segment of the economy that is driving the inspiration and competitiveness of the future.
Scott Kelly’s launch is more than simply one person’s journey to the International Space Station. At the end of his mission, he will become the record holder for longest stay in space by an American. But as he works off the Earth, for the Earth, he stands on the shoulders of the great NASA achievements that made the Space Station possible. He is helping us reach higher and take those next great leaps in exploration. His historic mission is one more sign that our nation’s space program is thriving and continues to lead the world.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized on March 27, 2015 by Administrator Charles Bolden.

 
 

Netanyahu: He Came, He Saw, He Conquered. The Power of Israel over the United States

TBR-Op-Ed, By Prof. James Petras,
"There is only one reason that Netanyahu is received as a Viceroy overseeing and dictating strategic policy to what clearly is a servile colonial legislature," By Prof. James Petras

"There have been times when history has played tricks with man and..has magnified the features of essentially small persons into a parody of greatness". Rabindranath Tagore (on Benito Mussolini)

Introduction

How is it that the ruler (Benjamin Netanyahu) of a puny country (Israel) of 8.2 million (6.2 million Jews) with the 37th biggest economy (GDP in current prices) in the world dictates war policy and secures the willing submission of the legislature of the largest economy and most powerful military empire in the world?
What significance does Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress have, beyond the fact that he uses it as a platform to attack the elected President of the US, to denounce US peace negotiations and to demand that Congress adopt policies designed to precipitate a war with Iran?

Netanyahu’s Dominant Presence in the US
There is only one reason that Netanyahu is received as a Viceroy overseeing and dictating strategic policy to what clearly is a servile colonial legislature: over the past quarter of a century, Israel’s proxy in the US , an entire panoply of Zionist political organizations, government officials, propaganda mills, media moguls, billionaires and millionaires, have deeply penetrated the legislature, executive and administrative centers of decision making. Netanyahu’s arrogance and “brazen” presumption (Financial Times, 3/4/15, p. 6) to dictate policy to the US Congress is rooted in the pre-existing power base created by the proxy Zionist power configuration.
Netanyahu can sneer, with a crooked smile, at the US President, because, after several decades of Zionist permeation of the US state, he knows that he comes not as an outside power but as a leader and spokesperson of an inside power.
His presence was hailed by all the mass media as a major event, as international news, for over a month in advance. With Napoleonic presumption he dared to announce in advance that he would advance a war thesis in the fashion of any head of state. He can act as an unelected dictator because the elected officials have been converted into docile and complicit subjects by his proxy power structure. Netanyahu follows the political precept of his predecessor Ariel Sharon, who faced with Israeli worry- wards criticizing his obstreperous intervention in US politics , once stated “Don’t worry.We lead the US by the nose”.
The crucial theoretical point is that the conditions that enabled Netanyahu to come, to see and to conquer, were not of his doing. His presence in the US Congress and his message is derivied from the power of his supporters, deeply embedded in the structure of political power in the US.
Otherwise, who would take serious his delusional military fantasies, his clinically paranoid vision of peaceful adversaries, conspiring to “nuke Israel” and then the world, without a single nuclear bomb!
Prominent among Netanyahu’s financial backers are a group of prominent Zionist lumpen bourgeoisie,billionaires who lent to millions of borrowers at extortionate rates(between 1400 and 4000% ) and played a leading role in the fraudulent mortgage induced crises of 2009-forward.They include Al Goldstein co-founder of AvantCredit and CashNetUSA;Sasha Orloff and Jacob Rosenberg founders of Lendup;Daniel Gilbert founder of QuickenLoans- a predator subprime lender;Ronald Arnall owner of Ameriquest….. .They used part of their ill-gotten gains to ease their consciences by donating millions to Israeli and US jewish causes.Being generous to Israel provides a sort of perverse “forgiveness” for screwing millions of Americans ..
One does not need much imagination to envision them cheering Netanyahu’s AIPAC and Congressional diatribes. It is not surprising that the lumpen bourgeoisie backs a lumpen prime minister.
The best and the brightest of the Zionist phalanx of pundits, professors, lawyers, economists and financiers have created an aura of gravity and profundity, around this vulgar beerhall brawler.
This raises a basic question: Why do upwardly mobile, prosperous and elite educated Zionist majorities, enthusiastically pledge unconditional loyalty to an authoritarian foreign ruler who humiliates their country of birth?
Why did ten thousand American born Zionist professionals, stand and cheer, as they did the day before his congressional speech, as Netanyahu dictated his rabid bellicose political line to them, at the AIPAC conference?
Is it because they believe he is their Chosen Leader of their Chosen Fatherland?
Netanyahu, with all his vulgarity and mediocrity, strikes a deep and abiding chord in the soul of his Zionist followers. They believe they are the collective geniuses of a superior species, who need not abide by the protocols of non-Zionist states and international laws which hinder his colonial rule over millions of Palestinians.
What else but that identity of superiority allows the educated and prosperous, the humane and the cruel, to bond and welcome Netanyahu, as a modern secular Moses crossing the Potomac, delivering “the Jews” (for the messianic Netanyahu claims to speak for “all Jews”) from the mortal threats (Iran) cultivated by gentile politicians. The great majority of Zionist activists are deaf, dumb and blind to those who criticize and refute his infantile and grotesque lies, the scrofulous screeds about non-existing “existential threats” which infest his speeches.Worse they will terrorize and cow any critic,demand that their employers fire them,as they have done over the past two decades. They believe that the Palestinians, who Israel bombed into the Stone Age, are threats to Israel. They believe that nuclear weaponless Iranians, facing hundreds of Israeli nuclear bombs, are a threat to Israel. They believe there is one “truth”: that all measures, speeches and actions which enhance the power and glory of Israel are virtuous. It is this “truth” that motivates hundreds of thousands of “virtuous” Zionists to donate hundreds of millions of dollars to buy and/or intimidate Presidents and Congresspeople,
Governors and Mayors, University Presidents and faculty, police informers and academic thugs. It is this Zionist power configuration which allows a political low-life like Netanyahu to enter and dominate the legislative chamber and tell US citizens where and when their next war should take place. It is for this power configuration that Congress “performs”; applauding and doing jumping jacks on cue for each and every one of Netanyahu’s emotional ejaculations.
Broad sectors of the Israeli public was immensely impressed by Netanyahu’s capacity to humiliate the President; by his willingness to dictate policy to the US: by the hyperkinetic docility and submissiveness of US Congress people. But this is not surprising. After all Israelis are used to dominating Palestinians and torturing them into submission and colonizing a whole people. Why shouldn’t they gloat, or be proud, if Netanyahu speaks and acts as a viceroy to the US? After all their leader is dominating a so-called ‘world power’!
No doubt the Israeli empire loyalists will overwhelmingly vote for Netanyahu, even if the “opposition” claims they also denounce the US-Iranian peace negotiations. Opposition leaders Isaac Herzog and Tzipi Livni don’t have Netanyahu’s gangster look, that crooked smile that says to the US leaders, “we lead you by the nose and you love it”.What the rest of the world thinks of a braying burro led by the nose is not hard to imagine:world leadership certainly is not foremost in their minds…
There is much idle chatter from liberals, leftists and progressives, claiming that Netanyahu’s ‘brazen intervention’ would backfire; that it would damage relations with the US; that it would weaken, undermine US-Iranian relations and allow Iran to secure nuclear weapons. Liberal zionists claim that Netanyahu’s speech would weaken support for Israel among Democratic congress people; that it would undermine US-Iranian relations and allow Iran to secure nuclear weapons. Liberal Zionists claim that Netanyahu’s speech would weaken US support for Israel (God forbid!).
These lamentations have no substance; they are mendacious concoctions of minds which lack any capacity to understand power especially the permanent power of the Zionist power configuration.
Even a cursory reading of the political facts which preceded accompanied and followed Netanyahu’s Congressional dictates, demonstrates the exact opposite.
Immediately after Netanyahu’s intervention, Congressional leaders moved ahead to fast track legislation to heighten Iranian sanctions, to veto any Executive agreement. The Republication majority and over half of the Democrats chose to back the “foreign Viceroy” on policies of war and peace.
Far from “prejudicing” relations with the Obama regime, the Administration in the person of Secretary of State John Kerry vetoed a measure passed by the UN Human Right Commission condemning Israel’s savage war crimes against Palestinians… Obama’s United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power did the usual belly crawl for Israel at the AIPAC conference following Netanyahu’s rousing diatribe. US-Iranian “negotiations” in Switzerland increasingly turned on exactly the issues Netanyahu demanded.. US Secretary of State Kerry insisted on on-going intrusive inspections of Iran’s entire nuclear and military installations; retaining most sanctions for a decade; eliminating most enriched uranium …In a word disarming Iran, increasing its military vulnerability to an Israeli nuclear attack, without any deterrence or retaliatory capacity! Iran is formally negotiating with Kerry on behalf of the 5 plus 1, but the agenda and demands are set by the raucous over-voice of Netanyahu, who is the most influential invisible presence.
In other words there is ample evidence that Netanyahu’s intervention far from ‘damaging’ US-Israeli relations, further reinforced Israel’s power over the US. By securing the Administration’s declarations of unconditional loyalty while humiliating the President and seizing executive prerogatives, Israel demonstrates to the world that it can and will dictate US strategic policy and denounce its President with total impunity.
Netanyahu is far from being ostracized. He has a global platform from which to spew his rabid chauvinist diatribes against peace and negotiations. His speech, its content and style, received front page and extended prime time coverage. His war-mongering resonated with the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and US News and World Report.
Netanyahu’s political line inspired AIPAC’s ten thousand ultra-Zionists, who stormed Capital Hall and demanded Congress people and Congressional staff to act on His message. Not a single dissenting voice emanated from the Presidents of the 52 Major American (sic) Jewish organizations whose first loyalty continued to be toward Israeli interests as defined by their Prime Minister.
The voices of dissent among the few dozen Jews on Capitol Hill, and outside the AIPAC conference hall, did not register in Congress or among the vast majority of Jewish community leaders or in the mass media.
Contrary to the lamentations and claims that Netanyahu has “weakened” Israel, the facts on the ground demonstrate that he has strengthened his “leadership” among the billionaires who buy US Congressional leaders. He has demonstrated that US officials, even ones who he insults and attacks, will continue to support Israeli war crimes in international forums; regale Israel with $3 billion a year in military aid to enhance its military supremacy in the Middle East; and incorporate its demands in any strategic negotiations with ‘Islamic’ countries like Iran, even if it undermines the bases of any negotiated agreement.

Conclusion
Clearly Netanyahu alienated a minority of US Congressional Democrat but mostly on procedural issues of protocol rather than on the more substantive issues of mongering for war and sanctions against Iran. Netanyahu’s messianic claim to speak for “all Jews” did arouse over 2,000 American Jews and non-Jews to sign a paid advertisement denying his status as the Second Coming of Moses.
But as the rousing welcome and conclusion to his speech by the Congressional majority and the unanimity of AIPAC’s thousands demonstrate, Israel’s formidable Zionist power configuration still dominates US policy in the Middle East.
The ‘debate’ over Netanyahu’s episodic presence in the US Congress and humiliation of the US President, is misplaced.What really needs to be debated is the more fundamental question of the permanent presence, power and prerogatives of the Zionist power configuration in the making of US Middle East policy.
No other visiting Prime Minister or President can be recieved with so much media attention and political fanfare, as Netanyahu because none possess the formidable, organized, well financed and disciplined political apparatus which Israel possess. An apparatus which defends and promotes US wars on behalf of Israel, Israel’s war crimes, land seizures and torture of Palestinians. That they support Netanyahu’s gross humiliation of Obama is not surprising – it merely confirms the “Law of the Return”: that for American Zionists there is only one true state of the Jews –and that is Israel; and that their only “true” leaders, are Israelis… As it happens today he is called Benjamin Netanyahu. And that any US policy, negotiations or agreements in the Middle East have to be in accord with their leader.
Congress knows that.
The “52” know that.
Only the majority of the American electorate, who still believe they live in a free and independent country are not privy to that. Even as Netanyahu’s intervention tells them otherwise.
But then we live in a peculiar sui generis ‘meritocracy in which the opinions of 2% of the chosen people counts more than that of 98% of our citizens.
The critics, Jews and non-Jews ,must realize that their problem with Netanyahu requires them to delve deeper; and that their opposition needs to become more systematic and more directly confrontational with the Zionist power configuration. Otherwise there is no basis for believing that the US can end national humiliations and regain its status as a free and democratic republic.
James Petras is the author of four volume study of US – Israeli relations. The most recent is The Politics of Empire: The US, Israel and the Middle East (Atlanta: Clarity Press 2014). Contributor-Alain/UFAA          

 

A Note From Sheila Bair, Americans for Financial Reform

TBR-Washington D.C., contributor Sheila Bair, Americans For Financial Reform Lisa Donner
In 2008, we learned the hard way what happens when banks take on too much risk. There has been some progress since then in limiting risk in the system, but there is still much more to do. Sheila Bair – who served as Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and witnessed the financial crisis up close – is fighting with Americans for Financial Reform to decrease risk-taking on Wall Street by making sure big banks are subject to stronger capital rules. As she explains below, she has written a petition calling on the regulators to limit excessive risk-taking by the biggest Wall Street banks.

Please join Sheila Bair and other AFR members and supporters in signing this important appeal.
Thank you,
Lisa Donner
Americans for Financial Reform

A Note from Sheila Bair
As Chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from 2006 to 2011, I have front line experience with the problems and havoc that can ensue when large, interconnected financial institutions take excessive risks.  I am committed to protecting American taxpayers from any future bailout of these so-called “too big to fail” institutions.  The best way to do that is to ensure these institutions have adequate private investment to absorb the losses when they fail. That allows markets to work as they should – with private investors accepting the risks and taking the losses, rather than the "heads I win, tails the public loses" practices we saw during the financial crisis where some large banks and other “systemic” institutions were allowed to reap the profits of their risk taking, but turn to taxpayers for help when those risks turned sour.   

Big financial institutions profit by relying primarily on borrowed money – instead of shareholder equity – to fund their loans and investments. Because the market views them as implicitly backed by the government, it is cheaper for them to fund themselves with debt instead of equity. Through high levels of leverage, executives are able to increase their returns on equity - and their bonuses which are frequently tied to shareholder returns. Prior to the financial crisis, some of our biggest Wall Street banks were borrowing an incredible $30 to $40 for every dollar of hard cash they had from shareholders.

Big financial organizations have strong financial incentives to increase leverage. This is why it is essential for global and U.S. regulators to take a firm line on the amount of borrowing they are allowed to do.  U.S. banking regulators have already moved to limit big bank borrowing to less than $20 for each dollar of shareholder capital, and just last month proposed further borrowing limits for the largest U.S. banks that exceed the minimums set by international regulators. But behind the scenes, they’re facing intense resistance from many Wall Street banks, who are lobbying them to roll back and weaken their rules.

In the long run, better capitalized banks are in the interests of shareholders, creditors, and the public at large.  Though tougher capital rules may impact returns on equity in the short-term, in the long-term, thick cushions of capital protect investors against unforeseen risks and position the bank to continue lending during downturns. Numerous studies have shown that well capitalized banks do a better job of lending through cycles. This helps guarantee sustainable profits for shareholders, and reduces the risk of default for creditors. Most importantly, well-capitalized banks are in a stronger position to lend during times of economic distress when the economy needs them the most.
Can you join Americans for Financial Reform and me in calling on the Federal Reserve and other banking regulators to boost capital requirements for large, “systemic” financial institutions? Let’s show that the public wants and deserves a stable financial system that meets the needs of the real economy.

Sincerely,
Sheila Bair

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Sent by Americans for Financial Reform
1629 K Street NW, 10th Floor, Washington, DC 20006 - (202) 466-1885

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