The TTP and TTIP Trade Agreements: “A Dystopian Future in which Corporations Rather Than Elected Governments Call the Shots”

By Eric Zuesse

Global Research, May 06, 2015

Region: USA

Theme: Global Economy, Poverty & Social Inequality

The Obama-proposed international-trade deals, if passed into law, will lead to “a dystopian future in which corporations and not democratically elected governments call the shots,” says Alfred De Zayas, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order.

These two mammoth trade-pacts, one (TTIP) for Atlantic nations, and the other (TTP) for Pacific nations excluding China (since Obama is against China), would transfer regulations of corporations to corporations themselves, and away from democratically elected governments. Regulation of working conditions and of the environment, as well as of product-safety including toxic foods and poisonous air and other consumer issues, would be placed into the hands of panels whose members will be appointed by large international corporations. Their decisions will remove the power of democratically elected governments to control these things. “Red tape” that’s imposed by elected national governments would be eliminated — replaced by the international mega-corporate version.

De Zayas was quoted in Britain’s Guardian on May 4th as saying also that, “The bottom line is that these agreements must be revised, modified or terminated,” because they would vastly harm publics everywhere, even though they would enormously benefit the top executives of corporations by giving them control as a sort of corporate-imposed world government, answerable to the people who control those corporations.

Obama is pushing for international cartels to replace important functions of today’s national governments, and De Zayas is saying that, “We don’t want an international order akin to post-democracy or post-law.”

De Zayas told the Guardian that the panels that are proposed to be at the very center of these trade-pacts

“constitute an attempt to escape the jurisdiction of national courts and bypass the obligation of all states to ensure that all legal cases are tried before independent tribunals that are public, transparent, accountable and appealable.”

That is, in fact, the motivation behind these deals. Costs get transferred from corporations onto consumers, workers, and the environment, while profits are increased for the corporation’s investors, and CEO pay will soar. In fact, the EU’s own study of the economic impact of the TTIP with America, calculated

“economic gains as a whole for the EU (€119 billion a year) and US (€95 billion a year). This translates to an extra €545 in disposable income each year for a family of 4 in the EU, on average, and €655 per family in the US. … Income gains are a result of increased trade. EU exports to the US would go up by 28%, equivalent to an additional €187 billion worth of exports of EU goods and services. Overall, total exports would increase 6% in the EU and 8% in the US.”

According to the analysis, no one would lose anything. For example, tariffs would be reduced but income taxes and other taxes that the public pays wouldn’t be increased in order to make up for that loss of income to the state from reduced tariffs. Not at all. Instead: “As much as 80% of the total potential gains come from cutting costs imposed by bureaucracy and regulations, as well as from liberalising trade in services and public procurement.”
In other words: government regulations of product-safety and the environment and workers’ rights are a terrible waste, which would be eliminated and handled more efficiently by letting international corporations themselves handle those things, according to the EU’s study. And “liberalising trade in services and public procurement” would cut “red tape” that has prevented government officials who are the purchasers in “public procurement” from getting high-paid corporate directorships, etc. under the existing regulatory structures in democratic nations where the public, the voters, can hold their own government accountable for such corruption. If these functions become the domain of the international corporations themselves, then existing regulations and the government employees who enforce them can be eliminated. Accountability, in other words, is such a waste, for the inside investors in large corporations. They don’t need it; they fight against it. They are fighting against it. They don’t even want accountability to their own outside investors, who might want them removed from corporate management.
The EU simply doesn’t mention the downsides. And they also don’t mention that, “Obama’s TTIP Trade Deal w. Europe Would Be Disastrous for Europe, Says the First Independent Study.” That study wasn’t paid for by the EU, so they just ignore it. (They even ignore that it found that America’s international corporations would benefit even more from the deal than would Europe’s international corporations, which is the exact opposite result than the EU’s own study calculated. President Obama performs brilliantly for America’s billionaires, even though most of them are Republicans.) The economist who did that study wasn’t paid by anybody to do it. Occasionally, a study like that is performed by an economist. However, paid-for studies get far more publicity, because the findings are then heavily promoted by the sponsoring organization — after all, it’s propaganda.

On 23 January 2015, Britain’s Financial Times bannered, “Davos 2015: Businesses rally support for transatlantic trade deal.” Attendees there would pop the champagne corks if these deals pass.

David Korten at YES! magazine, headlined on 15 April 2015, “A Trade Rule that Makes It Illegal to Favor Local Business? Newest Leak Shows TPP Would Do That And More.” He stated, in common language, a recently-leaked (from wikileaks) chapter of the TPP, the treaty’s Investment chapter. Key provisions of it are:

Favoring local ownership is prohibited. …
Corporations must be paid to stop polluting. [Yes: Obama demands that corporations possess an actual right to pollute! It’s in the contract!! Ignore his mere rhetoric.] …
Three [corporate] lawyers will decide who’s right in secret tribunals. …
Speculative money must remain free [of governmental regulation] …
Corporate interests come before national ones. …

Then, there’s a sixth basic provision: to “prohibit governments from requiring that a foreign investor be under any obligation to serve the host country’s people or national interest.”
And that’s just one chapter of the proposed document. No wonder, then, why the billionaires at Davos are eager for Obama to ram this secret treaty through Congress. (Their people were in on the drafting of this proposed treaty, so Davosians didn’t need Julian Assange’s organization for them to know what the treaty contains. Only we do. And so now we understand why Obama wants to imprison or execute Assange.)

In the United States, congressional Republicans are almost unanimously in support of Obama’s trade-deals, but most congressional Democrats are opposed to these deals. President Obama doesn’t even enforce the workers’ rights provisions in the existing NAFTA and other existing trade-deals. Murders of labor union officials are prohibited under NAFTA but the Obama Administration ignores them. On April 22nd, Huffington Post bannered, “AFL-CIO’s Trumka: USTR Told Us Murder Isn’t A Violation Under U.S. Trade Deals” and quoted an AFL-CIO official,

“‘The question is whether USTR [Obama’s U.S. Trade Representative, the same man who is negotiating both the TPP and the TTIP] considers murder to be a violation of the labor chapter. That is the question,’ she said. ‘The point is that USTR has informed us that labor-related violence does not constitute an actionable violation of the labor provisions [of NAFTA]’.”

Obama relies almost entirely upon congressional Republicans for support of his proposed trade-deals, and of his existing trade-policies (such as non-enforcement of NAFTA). The only real question is whether congressional Democrats will be able to block his deals. When American voters in 2014 elected Republicans to majorities in both houses, the result was to ease the way for passage of Obama’s proposed international-trade deals. Harry Reid controlled the Senate and blocked them, but he was now replaced by the Republican Mitch McConnell, who is trying to win Senate approval for the TTIP. Reid, now as the Minority Leader, is still doing the best he can to block that; he just doesn’t have the power he did when he was Majority Leader.

Within the general American public, however, there seems to be more support for the TTIP among Democrats than among Republicans. On 9 April 2014, Pew Research Center issued a poll that was sponsored by the pro-deal Bertlelsmann Foundation, headlined “Support in Principle for U.S.-EU Trade Pact,” and the poll’s key question was:

“Q3 As you may know, the U.S. and the EU are negotiating a free trade agreement called the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP. Do you think this trade agreement will be a good thing for our country or a bad thing?”

In the United States, 53% of respondents marked “Good thing,” 20% marked “Bad thing,” and 14% marked “Haven’t heard enough.” (Most of the others marked “Don’t know.”) Whereas 53% of all respondents said “Good thing,” 60% of Democratic respondents did, but only 44% of Republican ones did. That’s a 16% difference — substantial. Thus, apparently, at least as of a year ago, when a member of the public heard “TTIP,” the person mainly thought that it came from Obama (which it does), and that Obama is a Democrat (which he isn’t, except in rhetoric, but members of Congress are different; they know that he’s not, even if the public don’t); and, so, Republican voters were far less supportive of TTIP than were Democratic voters.
The general public judged the deal by the nominal party of the person who initiated and is negotiating it. This is why, whereas in Congress, Republicans almost unanimously want TTIP to pass, and most Democrats want it to fail, the situation among the voting public is in the exact opposite direction: overwhelmingly favorable to the deal among Democrats, but only slightly favorable to the deal among Republicans. On the other hand, all Republican U.S. Presidential candidates support Obama’s trade-deals in principle and they only want him to speed up his getting other nations’ leaders to sign onto to them — as if he even has the power to do that.

If the TTIP and the TPP pass and become law, then historians will almost certainly remember Obama far more for those international trade-deals than for Obamacare or anything else, because of the enormous global political change they will bring. And Obama will then probably be generally regarded as the worst President in U.S. history, because he will then have done more to bring back dictatorship as the global norm and ended democracy, than any other nation’s leader, in all of history, ever did.

The evidence strongly supports Alfred De Zayas’s statement, that these trade-deals would produce “a dystopian future in which corporations and not democratically elected governments call the shots.” His statement was alarming, but not at all alarmist.

De Zayas is the chief UN official responsible for “reporting” on proposed international-trade treaties. As the likelihood of Obama’s proposed treaties passing has increased, he has become increasingly vocal about what their implications would be, for the UN’s founding vision of gradual evolution toward a democratic world-government — something comprehensive like what is now being suddenly rammed through, but democratic instead of fascist, and thus more the opposite of Obama’s vision instead of similar to it. On April 23rd, Reuters headlined, “U.N. expert says secret trade deals threaten human rights,” and De Zayas spoke in far more measured terms, not nearly so direct. He said:

“I am concerned about the secrecy surrounding negotiations for trade treaties, which have excluded key stakeholder groups from the process, including labour unions, environmental protection groups, food-safety movements and health professionals”

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.

Charles Abbott’s Weird Patent and the 1897 Airship Mystery

Charles Abbott’s Weird Patent and the 1897 Airship Mystery                                                                                                                                                ~ folks "somebody" was flying shit around  ?  & this was how fuck~in long ago ??  um ah oh yea ...

• http://mysteriousuniverse.org/2015/05/charles-abbotts-weird-patent-and-the-1897-airship-mystery/
•  May 4, 2015
•  Micah Hanks

Much has been written over the years of “mystery airships”, which were reported throughout parts of the United States in the late 1890s. Newspapers of the day recounted not just the sightings, but often named prominent individuals who had seen the alleged craft, during high-profile cases that include a “wave” of reports over Sacramento and parts of Southern California in the winter of 1896-97.
Less is said of the fact that, in April of 1896, a rather unique patent had been filed which read as follows:

CHARLES ABBOTT SMITH, OF SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA.

AIR-SHIP.

SPECIFICATION forming pm of Letters Patent No. 565,805, dated August 1,1, ieee.

Application filed April 2, 1896. Serial No. 585,893. (No model.)

Smith, in apparent seriousness, wrote in the patent’s description:

To all whom it may concern: Be it known that I, CHARLES ABBOTT SMITH, a citizen of the United States, residing at San Francisco, in the county of San Francisco and State of California, have invented certain new and useful Improvements in Aeronautics; and I do declare the following to be a full, clear, and exact description of the invention, such as will enable others skilled in the art to which it appertains to make and use the same, reference being had to the accompanying drawings, and to the figures of reference marked thereon, which form a part of this specification.

Smith, it is said, even had a scale model of his invention, which was on display in a storefront window in San Francisco, where it was visible to all who passed by. That, however, is probably the extent to which we can say his “airship” was ever actually realized.

More shall be said of Smith and his patent a bit later… but first, I would like to direct your attention to a rather odd, and seemingly coincidental note that would turn up several decades later, and of all places, in John Keel’s The Mothman Prophecies. Here, the author recounts an interesting — if unlikely — parallel to the mystery of Charles Smith’s apparent airship aspirations: Keel gives mention of an 1897 news story detailing where a purported mystery aircraft had landed in Texas.
Of greater interest was the pilot, who had apparently not only stopped to fetch supplies for his aircraft, but also gave his name to a bystander on this occasion:

On April 22, 1897, an oblong machine with wings and lights “which appeared much brighter than electric lights” dropped out of the sky and landed on the farm near Rock-land, Texas, owned by John M. Barclay. Barclay grabbed his rifle and headed for the machine.

He was met by an ordinary-looking man who handed him a ten-dollar bill and asked him to buy some oil and tools for the aircraft.

“Who are you?” Barclay asked.

“Never mind about my name; call it Smith,” the man answered.

Mr. Smith, I presume?

John Keel mused that such “common names” as Smith were often found in more popular UFO reports that would begin to appear decades later, likening the airship affair to the more recent claims of exotic aircraft and, occasionally, those claiming ownership of them. “In 1897, they often claimed to come from known villages and cities,” Keel wrote, “and were even able to name prominent citizens in those places. But when reporters checked, they could find no record of the visitors and the named citizens disavowed any knowledge of them.”

Whether or not records of a Charles Abbott Smith could easily have been found in Keel’s day is debatable, at least (though not impossible, obviously). Today is a different story, with the digitization of everything from census records and death certificates, to a host of other information available through sites like Ancestry.com. In short, digging up these kinds of records today wouldn’t present the kinds of hurdles it set before researchers like Keel just a few decades ago.

In that line of thought, it should be noted that Keel made similar estimations about another man, who had been a visitor to the home of a Mrs. Ralph Butler of Owatonna, Minnesota. Butler described having an odd meeting with a man who stopped by her home unannounced in May 1967. Keel described that this visit transpired in conjunction with a number of UFO reports in the area, and speculated that the man, identifying himself as “Major Richard French of the U.S. Air Force”, had been no such character:

“Richard French was an imposter. One of the many wandering around the United States in 1967. For years these characters had caused acute paranoia among the flying saucer enthusiasts, convincing them that the air force was investigating them, silencing witnesses and indulging in all kinds of unsavory activities—including murder. When I first began collecting such reports I was naturally suspicious of the people making such reports. It all seemed like a massive put-on. But gradually it became apparent that the same minute details were turning up in widely separated cases, and none of these details had been published anywhere… not even in the little newsletters of the UFO cultists.” 

Keel may have been right about the fact that there were, in likelihood, counterintelligence programs underway that sought to exploit UFO buffs and the “knowledge” they possessed. This might explain the sorts of “minute details” that he kept spotting in places where none should have been, and a few years later, realistic precedent for this idea would emerge in the form one of the most famous UFO hoaxes of the last century: the infamous MJ-12 affair that erupted in 1984, where bad information (some of it obviously faked) was supplied to members of the UFO community.

Keel had been wrong, however, about one thing: that this “Richard French” fellow was not who he said he was. In fact, years later the retired Col. Richard French would indeed turn up again, this time announcing that he had been part of Project Blue Book around the time Keel had written about his encounter with Mrs. Ralph Butler.

French can be seen in the video below, giving a statement about his operations with the USAF during The Citizen Hearing on Disclosure, held at The National Press Club in May of 2013:

As an aside of quasi-significance, it should be noted that French has also made a number of unusual claims himself, such as his alleged observation of a submerged UFO undergoing maintenance off the coast of Canada during his tenure with the USAF Office of Special Investigations (OSI).

Let’s return to that unusual patent belonging to Charles A. Smith that appeared in 1896, and more importantly, the similar name used by the alleged pilot of an “airship” seen in Texas the following year. Here, we might at least speculate that Keel’s line of thought pertaining to “common names” used by the kinds of “frauds” he felt were turning up in relation to these mystery aircraft reports over the years hadn’t been entirely spot on. Richard French was, in fact, precisely who he said he was; but this alone does not support the legitimacy of a “Mr. Smith” dropping down in his airship in a Texas town in 1897, let alone his relationship with a patent filed one year earlier.

The notion that a working airship was in service in 1897 over America is not impossible, however, given the fact that similar working airship designs had been tested, and even reproduced and sold in small quantities as far back as the 1850s in France. The first of these was Henri Giffard’s 1852 airship that, while crude in design, became the first powered and steerable craft of its kind.

Of these early airship test-flights, a word should also be said about the frequent insinuations that the popularity of two Jules Verne novels published at the time, Robur The Conqueror and its sequel Master of the World, were the influence behind popular “airship” reports of the late 1890s. Verne had, in fact, been inspired himself by these early, lesser-known designs, such as that of airship pioneer Arthur Constantine Krebs, whose work is even mentioned briefly in Robur the Conqueror.

In the United States, airship test flights date back to 1863, with inventor Solomon Andrews’ line of airships he dubbed the “Aereon.” An experimental design of this craft was demonstrated before representatives of the Smithsonian Institution in 1864, with some talk of possible interest for using the device during the ongoing War Between the States. However, as the conflict was drawing to a close, the idea was swiftly abandoned.

Following the war, Andrews, in his persistence, went on to form an outfit he called the Aerial Navigation Company, with the intent of building his airships for commercial transportation between New York and Philadelphia. However, financing problems that ensued following the Civil War further complicated matters, and left Andrews unable to find a viable market where the idea could be sold.

Andrews’ idea hadn’t died completely, though. Interestingly, more than a century later a new company, adopting the same name as that which Andrews gave to his airship, attempted to redesign Andrews’ airship. According to aviation historian John McPhee, the twentieth century Aereon Corporation’s attempts to rebuild and capitalize on Solomon Andrews’ original airship ideas directly influenced the creation of inventor Daniel Geery’s Hyperblimp, as seen below:

So there had, in fact, been airships that achieved a modicum of success with experimental flight, albeit somewhat haphazardly, decades prior to the “airship wave” that supposedly took place between 1896 and 1897. These early flights cannot prove that any real, working airship was drifting over the U.S. by the turn of the century; however, the technology certainly existed by then, and there were certainly those who had already sought to capitalize on the idea of commercial flight.
In Smith’s case, there would have to have been a certain amount of funding to, in the very literal sense, get his project “off the ground.” While this has remained a major argument against the Smith patent as a possible source of the technology behind airship reports of the 1890s, a news article appearing in the San Francisco Call, Volume 79, Number 91, on February 29th, 1896, described that Smith’s design was to be “filed with the articles of incorporation of the Atlantic and Pacific Navigation Company,” as can be read in the original article here. A relevant excerpt describing the project has been included below:

So maybe somebody did take the commercial airship idea seriously… and within months, newspapers were reporting that a “mystery airship” was seen over the same town where the patent owner, and the company who purportedly were in support of funding his project, had lived.
Whether or not a Charles A. Smith of San Francisco, California, had anything to do with the entire airship affair will remain in the realm of speculation, for now. There is, admittedly, more work that would have to be done to determine the legitimacy of the idea, if there were any to be found at all. For all we know, the idea really didn’t ever get the funding it needed, and it was forgotten, mostly.
One thing we do know, at very least, is that history shows us, even if Smith did build his airship, that he hadn’t been the first to attempt doing it for commercial reasons in America… not by a long shot. This is revealed in the story of his predecessors, the likes of Solomon Andrews, who had done far more than just toy with the idea… and who did so decades earlier than Smith (still) might have taken a crack at building the first fully-functional commercial airship industry in American history.

Helpful graphic from Webster Tarpley’s Synthetic Terror.

Helpful graphic from Webster Tarpley’s Synthetic Terror.

THE NASA WARP DRIVE STORY  ~ as "they" slowly let the cat out~ta the bag dept.  folks "we" should've been do~in this shit yrsssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss ....ago Huh :)r

Posted on May 5, 2015 by Joseph P. Farrell •http://gizadeathstar.com/2015/05/the-nasa-warp-drive-story/

There's been a story percolating around the internet that NASA may have accidentally discovered, or have created, a "space warp" in its tests of the EM engine. This was one of those stories that many of you noticed and sent various articles to me, and it does require paying attention to, both for what is said, and is not said. First, let's look at a couple of the more popular presentations of the story, one of which, incidentally, is from Russia's Sputnik website in its English language version:
NASA May Have Accidentally Created a Warp Field
Did NASA Mistakenly Create a Warp Field?
Now, according to Sputnik, the process was discovered when laser interferometers were fired through the field produced by the so-called EM drive, during which it was observed that the lasers were traveling faster than light, and producing the type of intereference pattern that would be produced by a "warp bubble":

"According to posts on NASASpaceFlight.com, a website devoted to the engineering side of space news, when lasers were fired through the EmDrive’s resonance chamber, some of the beams appeared to travel faster than the speed of light.
"If that’s true, it would mean that the EmDrive is producing a warp field or bubble.

Mysterious Universe pulled the following comment from a space forum after the tests:
“That’s the big surprise. This signature (the interference pattern) on the EmDrive looks just like what a warp bubble looks like. And the math behind the warp bubble apparently matches the interference pattern found in the EmDrive.”

Now note that the Sputnik article references the one from Mysterious Univese, and that Mysterious Universe references the observation is being made by commentators on the story:

"Which brings us to today’s warp field buzz. Posts on NASASpaceFlight.com, a website devoted to the engineering side of space news, say that NASA has a tool to measure variances in the path-time of light. When lasers were fired through the EmDrive’s resonance chamber, it measured significant variances and, more importantly, found that some of the beams appeared to travel faster than the speed of light. If that’s true, it would mean that the EmDrive is producing a warp field or bubble. Here’s a comment from a space forum following the tests.

"'That’s the big surprise. This signature (the interference pattern) on the EmDrive looks just like what a warp bubble looks like. And the math behind the warp bubble apparently matches the interference pattern found in the EmDrive.'" (Emphasis added)

So, the story really boils down to a comment made by someone on a forum, not by NASA itself. Nothing to see here, move along. Right?
Well, true enough, as far as it goes, for the Mysterious Universe article ends with this recommendation, which makes perfect sense:

"To prove that the warp effect was not caused by atmospheric heating, the test will be replicated in a vacuum. If the same results are achieved, it seems to mean that the EmDrive is producing a warp field, which could ultimately lead to the development of a warp drive."

So Sputnik is simply copying the Mysterious Universe article. Nothing to see here. Move along.
But things begin to get really interesting when one turns to this article, which reviews the whole development much more thoroughly:
Evaluating NASA’s Futuristic EM Drive
Now notice something: when the first tests were made on the EM drive, the tests were not performed in hard vacuum, and hence some physicists and scientists objected that the results being obtained with th EM engine were simply due to thermal heating, and that no thrust in hard vacuum could be possible, since the quantum medium itself is assumed to be "frameless" and hence, one cannot "push agsinst it". The trouble is, the tests of the EM engine have now been performed in a hard vacuum, and the device is still producing thrust:

"The tests reported by Dr. White’s team in July 2014 were not conducted in a vacuum, and none of the tests reported by Prof. Yang in China or Mr. Shawyer in the UK were conducted in a vacuum either.
"The scientific community met these NASA tests with skepticism and a number of physicists proposed that the measured thrust force in the US, UK, and China tests was more likely due to (external to the EM Drive cavity) natural thermal convection currents arising from microwave heating (internal to the EM Drive cavity).
"However, Paul March, an engineer at NASA Eagleworks, recently reported in NASASpaceFlight.com’s forum (on a thread now over 500,000 views) that NASA has successfully tested their EM Drive in a hard vacuum – the first time any organization has reported such a successful test.
"To this end, NASA Eagleworks has now nullified the prevailing hypothesis that thrust measurements were due to thermal convection."

Assuming for the sake of argument that this is true, then an important question is raised:

"After consistent reports of thrust measurements from EM Drive experiments in the US, UK, and China – at thrust levels several thousand times in excess of a photon rocket, and now under hard vacuum conditions – the question of where the thrust is coming from deserves serious inquiry."

With this in hand, consider carefully the end of the article:

"For the last three years, Dr. White’s team has been conducting experiments to find out whether it is possible to measure, with an interferometer, a distortion of spacetime produced by time-varying electromagnetic fields.
"The ultimate goal is to find out whether it is possible for a spacecraft traveling at conventional speeds to achieve effective superluminal speed by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it.  The experimental results so far had been inconclusive.
"During the first two weeks of April of this year,  NASA Eagleworks may have finally obtained conclusive results.  This time they used a short, cylindrical, aluminum resonant cavity excited at a natural frequency of 1.48 GHz with an input power of 30 Watts.
"This is essentially a pill-box shaped EM Drive, with much higher electric-field intensity, aligned in the axial direction.  The interferometer’s laser light goes through small holes in the EM Drive.
"Over 27,000 cycles of data (each 1.5 sec cycle energizing the system for 0.75 sec and de-energizing it for 0.75 sec) were averaged to obtain a power spectrum that revealed a signal frequency of 0.65 Hz with amplitude clearly above system noise.  Four additional tests were successfully conducted that demonstrated repeatability.
"One possible explanation for the optical path length change is that it is due to refraction of the air.  The NASA team examined this possibility and concluded that it is not likely that the measured change is due to transient air heating because the experiment’s visibility threshold is forty times larger than the calculated effect from air considering atmospheric heating.
"Encouraged by these results, NASA Eagleworks plans to next conduct these interferometer tests in a vacuum." (Emphases added)

In other words, using their laser interferometers, NASA has concluded that the path changes of laser light were beyond the margins of change by refraction, and due to the presence of something else, a "space-time" bubble or "warp" perhaps, but the only way to test this theory is to conduct the interferometry experiment in a hard vacuum.
In other words, the story is that NASA may have discovered small "space-time warps" in its tests of the EM drives... maybe, but it is still too early to predict.
So what's my high octane speculation here? It's quite simple, if one really looks at what is being said here, and that implication may be gleaned by asking a simple question: if they are trying to find evidence of a space warp via interferometry in the EM drive(or even just to test the feasibility of the drive for space travel, with or without space warps), and if such effects could only be truly verifiable by tests in a hard vacuum, then why bother with tests that are not in a hard vacuum to begin with? Why not just "cut to the chase" so to speak?  The article implies one answer, namely, that if such effects were observable, then some fundamental conceptions would have to be rethought completely:

"A note of caution is that Dr. White’s simulations do not assume that the Quantum Vacuum is indestructible and immutable.  The mainstream physics community assumes the Quantum Vacuum is indestructible and immutable because of the experimental observation that a fundamental particle like an electron (or a positron) has the same properties (e.g. mass, charge or spin), regardless of when or where the particle was created, whether now or in the early universe, through astrophysical processes or in a laboratory."

But leaving this aside, the fundamental questions remain: why were these tests not performed in a hard vacuum to begin with? My high octane speculation of the day is that they probably were, and that they might have indicated the same results (requiring that fundamental re-think), and that's the real rub, for that rethink would imply that the public consumption physics is fundamentally flawed, and that certain people have known about it for some time.That would also be by implication  a disclosure of a whole black projects world and its hidden projects (and science). Additionally, that "rethink" would have far-reaching implications, not the least of which would be for potential weaponization, and that is the problem. There's another problem, though, represented by this line of thinking, and that is that if such experiments were already conducted in the vacuum, then their results were probably already highly classified. Thus, what we may be looking at is a controlled, slow drip disclosure of information. The real news will be what those experiments in hard vacuum show, and if the genuine results will be disclosed. For the moment, the cat is out of the bag with the EM drive, and will be very hard to put back in. So a real positive result in hard vacuum that is repeatable and confirmed will be a huge news item, if and when it does occur. And if and when it does, than on that day human history will have changed in a far more fundamental way than the discovery of nuclear fission. Making that discovery, if and when it does occur, will of course be a far cry from actual practical application. But by the same token, it's worth recalling that it was a mere seven years (or six years, if you accept the revisionist theory of a Nazi atom bomb test in 1944), from the discovery of nuclear fission to actual functioning a-bombs. And it's worth recalling DARPA's goal of having the USA be warp capable in 100 years. Perhaps they know something we don't, and perhaps what they know is related to this strange story, with experiments strangely performed in such a way - i.e., not in a hard vacuum -  as to be of no value whatsoever in determining the feasibility of EM drive for space travel. the other possibility? Well, that's implied by the speculation itself: suppose such tests were conducted, and proved either positive (or conversely, negative). One way to bury the story would be to simply release nagative results (if those results were genuine, or, if not, cooking the books to make it look that way). So the real focus here will have to be on independent testers, and on their ability to report and duplicate results in hard vacuum.Warp factor two, Mr. Sulu.

Former terror suspect well known to the FBI is named as one of two gunmen shot dead by cops after attack on anti-Islam 'draw Muhammad' art contest near Dallas

Posted by George Freund on May 4, 2015

Attack: The bodies of shooting suspects are seen next to their vehicle as it is searched for explosives at an anti-Muslim event in Texas on Sunday. The two men had got out the vehicle and opened fire, wounding a security guard in the leg, before they were shot by police

 OFF TO A ROUSING START!

Two suspects were gunned down after shooting a guard in the leg outside the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland

The FBI has named one of the gunmen as Elton Simpson, who was convicted of lying to federal agents about traveling to Africa five years ago - but a judge ruled it could not be proved that he was going to join a terror group

Simpson's Phoenix, Arizona home has been surrounded and a bomb squad is carrying out a search

Reports suggest the pair were carrying explosives as they approached the building in the Dallas suburb

The American Freedom Defense Initiative event had offered a $10,000 prize for the best caricature of the prophet; local residents had expressed their concerns about the event but organizers said they were exercising free speech

The security guard who was shot, Bruce Joiner, was taken to hospital in stable condition and has been released

ISIS fighter claimed on Twitter that the shooting was carried out by two pro-ISIS individuals

By WILLS ROBINSON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM and TED THORNHILL FOR MAILONLINE
PUBLISHED: 00:39 GMT, 4 May 2015 | UPDATED: 13:08 GMT, 4 May 2015

A former terror suspect has been named as one of the gunmen shot dead by police after two attackers blasted an unarmed security guard in the ankle during an anti-Islam art contest in Texas on Sunday night.

Two heavily-armed men, who are believed to have been carrying explosives, were killed by police after opening fire outside the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland, Dallas, at around 7pm during a controversial event where caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad were being displayed. Followers of Islam deem that any physical depiction of the prophet - even a positive one - is blasphemous.

A senior FBI official has identified one of the men as Elton Simpson, who was previously the subject of a terror investigation, according to ABC News.

Simpson, identified in court papers as an American Muslim, had been convicted of lying to federal agents about his plans to travel to Somalia five years ago, but a judge ultimately ruled it could not be proved that he was heading there to join a terror group. He was placed on probation.

After his identity emerged, FBI agents and a bomb squad swarmed Simpson's apartment in north Phoenix, Arizona and used a robot to carry out the first sweep of his home, the channel reported. The second gunman's identity is not yet known.



Aftermath: An FBI agent looks at debris of a car blown up by police as a precaution, near the Curtis Culwell Center, on Monday morning



Evidence: The car was destroyed after two gunmen drove to the center in the vehicle and then opened fire on a security guard



Controversial: On Sunday, two heavily armed police officers can be seen securing art work following the shooting. The art competition, which was awarding $10,000 to the best caricature of the Prophet Muhammad, had been condemned by critics

Ahead of the attack on Sunday evening, several Twitter messages were sent out, and authorities believe Simpson was behind them. The last one was shared just half an hour before the attack.

Followers of ISIS had been calling for an attack online for more than a week after learning that the competition in Garland would feature a 'draw Muhammad' art contest, with a prize of $10,000 for the best caricature.

After the attack, the SITE Intelligence Group reported that an Islamic State fighter claimed on Twitter that the shooting was carried out by two pro-Isis individuals.

In a series of tweets and links, a jihadist named as Abu Hussain AlBritani, which SITE said was British IS fighter Junaid Hussain, claimed that '2 of our brothers just opened fire' at the Prophet Muhammad exhibition in Texas.

'They Thought They Was Safe In Texas From The Soldiers of The Islamic State,' added the tweet.

Other ISIS supporters claimed on Twitter that one of the gunmen was a man calling himself Shariah Is Light on the social media site, using the now-suspended account name @atawaakul, according to New York Times reporter Rukmini Callimachi.

He had posted a message earlier that said 'the bro with me and myself have given bay'ah [oath] to Amirul Mu'mineen [ISIS leader Al Baghdadi]. May Allah accept us as mujahideen #texasattack'.

Ms Callimachi pointed out that it's not even known at this point if the attackers are Muslim.

The contest was just minutes from finishing when multiple gunshots were heard.

The two suspects had pulled up in a vehicle with with explosives, before getting out and firing at a security officer, 57-year-old Bruce Joiner, who was employed by the independent school district and wearing a 'police-style uniform'. He was later taken to hospital in a stable condition and was released on Sunday evening.

Garland Mayor Douglas Athas toldCNN that the first suspect was shot immediately while the second was wounded when he reached for his back pack, and then shot again.

Randy Potts, a contributor for The Daily Beast, recalled how he was watching the speeches wrap up when a man wearing camouflage shouted: 'Get inside the conference room now!'



ISIS supporters claimed on Twitter that one of the gunmen was a man calling himself Shariah Is Light on the social media site



Police stand guard near the Curtis Culwell Center in Garland after it was attacked by two gunmen armed with automatic rifles on Sunday



Two heavily-armed officers stand guard as police blocked off the street surrounding the scene in Garland, Texas



An officer prevents two people from leaving the building as the area was placed on lockdown after multiple gunshots were heard

'The room was oddly quiet,' he said. 'A hush fell over the crowd of about 150, as if we were listening for something outside. Then a camo-clad security guard with a rifle got up on stage and announced that a cop and two suspects had been shot.'

He described how security surrounding the event was evident even as he drove up to the Curtis Culwell Center. The parking lot was surrounded by yellow tape and his ID was checked twice before he was allowed to enter.

Johnny Roby of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, had also been attending the conference. He said he was outside the building when he heard around 20 shots that appeared to be coming from the direction of a passing car.



Security guard Bruce Joiner was shot in the leg while standing outside the building. His injuries were not life-threatening

Roby said he then heard two single shots before officers yelled that they had the car before he was sent inside the building.

The building, which had about 100 people inside, and surrounding areas were placed on lockdown by SWAT teams.

FBI bomb squad robots were then sent in to check the suspects' vehicle, as the two bodies of the gunmen lay on the road beside it. The bodies were not immediately taken from the scene because they were too close to the car, which police feared had incendiary devices inside.

Shortly before midnight, police alerted media that a strong electronic pulse would be activated near the scene, presumably as part of the bomb squad's work, and a loud boom was heard moments later, though police did not comment further on what was carried out.

The art event had been condemned by critics as an attack on Islam, but the organizers insisted they were exercising free speech.

Some Twitter users began posting about the shooting using a #JeSuisGarland hashtag, mirroring the #JesuisCharlie hashtag that became popular after January's jihadist attacks in France. In that incident, gunmen killed 12 people in the Paris offices of French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in revenge for its cartoons of the prophet.

After the gunfire in Garland, those inside the building started to sing patriotic songs, including the national anthem and God Bless America, and said a prayer for the injured security guard after one woman pulled out an American flag from her bag.

Garland Police officer Joe Harn said on Sunday evening they had been monitoring the build-up to the event and had not received any credible threats.

During a press conference, he described how the shootout lasted only seconds. A large area around the Center remained blocked off late into the night.

He said: 'Because of the situation of what was going on today and the history of what we've been told has happened at other events like this, we are considering their car (is) possibly containing a bomb.'

Texas Governor Greg Abbott described the incident as a 'senseless attack' and praised the 'swift action' of Garland law enforcement.

The attack unfolded shortly after Dutch member of parliament and leader of the far-right Party for Freedom, Geert Wilders, had delivered his keynote speech. There had been calls by members of Congress for him to be stopped at the border so he would not be able to speak.

'We are here in defiance of Islam to stand for our rights and freedom of speech,' he said during his speech shortly before the building was shut down. 'That is our duty... Our message today is very simple: we will never allow barbarism, never allow Islam, to rob us of our freedom of speech.'

His remarks were met with a standing ovation. He then told the audience that most terrorists are Muslims, and 'the less Islam the better'.

In 2009, he sparked controversy for showing a controversial film which linked the Koran to terrorism and has previously said the Netherlands is being taken over by a 'tsunami of Islamisation'.

Pamela Geller, the organizer of the event and the leader of Stop Islamisation of America, wrote on her personal website after the attack: 'This is a war. This is war on free speech. What are we going to do? Are we going to surrender to these monsters?'



Garland Police officer Joe Harn said they had been monitoring the build-up to the event and had not received any credible threats



Update: During a press conference on Saturday evening, he described how the shootout lasted only seconds. He insisted the force are being 'cautious' and would keep the area closed off until it was deemed safe



Keeping calm: A policeman keeps members of the audience inside the auditorium after the shots were fired at the controversial event



At the ready: Members of the Garland Police Department stand guard inside the Curtis Culwell Center in the aftermath of the shooting



Safe: Attendees of the event were led off of a school bus into another building where they were questioned by law enforcement

In a post in late March, she insisted that the event was necessary to fight back against what she described as 'the jihad against freedom'.

It was set up by the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) and had been described by opponents as an attack on Islam. They booked the center a little more than a week after Islamic militants in France killed 12 people at satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo.

The Garland Independent School district, who own the cultural center, allowed the event to go ahead despite criticism from residents and local Muslims that it was a risk to public safety.

The group spent $10,000 on 40 additional security officers, aware of potential threats they may attract, while Garland Police officers were fully prepared to deal with any issues that arose.

Before the event, the New York-based organisation made the headlines for its sponsorship of anti-Islamic adverts which it paid to run on transit systems in Washington, D.C., Philadelphia and San Francisco.

A picture taken from inside the event just before the attack showed Geller giving a check for $12,500 to Bosch Fawtin who won the event.

He told the Dallas Morning News he believed there would be no danger because of the high levels of security surrounding the event.

'I had known it would be secure, but seeing it is a whole new thing,' he said before the shootings.

Locals in Garland said they were upset with the exhibit being held in their town, and tried to convince the city council to intervene.

One resident, Dorothy Brooks, said that the event was like shouting 'fire!' in a theater - an oft-cited example of freedom of speech taken too far.

She continued: 'I understand that participants have a right to express themselves with cartoons, but I regret that this will be happening in our city.'

Another, Lena Griffin, asked at a city council meeting: 'Do we want to be involved with this type of rhetoric?' It is not an issue of free speech but clearly one of public safety.'



Winner: Artist Bosh Fawstin (left) is presented with a check for $12,500 by Dutch politician Geert Wilders (center) and Pamela Geller (right) during a ceremony at the Curtis Culwell Center just before the shootings occurred



Proud: Wilders, leader of the anti-Islam Freedom Party, center, poses for a photograph with officers who responded to the shooting



Pamela Geller, co-founder and President of Stop Islamization of America, also spoke just before the two gunmen opened fire



Wilders, who has sparked controversy for linking the Koran with terrorism, speaks at the Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest

The event had already been the subject of disapproval from further afield, according to ForeignPolicy.com.

The site obtained a letter from congressmen Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota) and André Carson (D-Indiana) sent to John Kerry and Homeland Security asking them to bar a speaker for the event from entering the United States.

Caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed have triggered violent protests in the past, including when the Danish daily Jyllands-Posten published 12 satirical cartoons in 2005, triggering deadly protests in some Muslim countries.

In January, just weeks after the Paris attacks, an event called Stand with the Prophet was held in the same center. Muslim leaders from across the world gathered to try and combat 'Islamophobes in America' who had turned Muhammad into an 'object of hate'.

Geller spearheaded about 1,000 picketers at the event. One chanted: 'Go back to your own countries! We don't want you here!' Others held signs with messages such as, 'Insult those who behead others,' an apparent reference to recent beheadings by the militant group Islamic State.

Mr Abbott said state officials are investigating, and Dallas FBI spokeswoman Katherine Chaumont said that the agency is providing investigative and bomb technician assistance.

The Charlie Hebdo attack was followed by another a month later in Europe. A masked gunman sprayed bullets into a Copenhagen meeting in February attended by a Swedish artist who had been threatened with death for his cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad.

A civilian was killed and three police officers were injured in the attack, aimed at artist Lars Vilks, who stirred controversy in 2007 with published drawings depicting the Prophet Mohammad as a dog.

Denmark itself became a target 10 years ago after the publication of cartoons lampooning the Prophet Mohammad. The images led to sometimes fatal protests in the Muslim world.

CONTROVERSIAL CARICATURES: WHY DEPICTING THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD IS BANNED BY MUSLIMS

It's not mentioned in Islam's holy book, the Quran, but the religion's ban on depicting the Prophet Muhammad — even favorably — has run firm through the centuries.

Religious traditions built over the years have prohibited such depictions out of respect for Muhammad and to discourage idolatry, according to Muslim scholars and clerics. The ban is further rooted in a wider prohibition against images or statues of human beings.

There have been exceptions. A rich tradition of depicting Muhammad emerged in miniatures and illustrations for manuscripts from around 1200 to 1700. The art is mainly from Turkey and Iran, where pictorial traditions were stronger than in the Arab world. The paintings often show traditional stories from Muhammad's life, such as his journey to heaven, though in some the prophet's face is obscured by a veil or a plume of flame.

Shiites also differ from Sunnis by depicting Muhammad's son-in-law Ali, revered by Shiites who see him as the prophet's rightful successor. His image — and those of his sons Hassan and Hussein — are plentiful among Shiites, adorning posters, banners, jewelry and even keychains. For Sunnis, the ban on depictions extends beyond the prophet to his close companions and wives.

'The Prophet Muhammad enjoys sublime and supreme status among Muslims and it is impossible to let a normal person depict or act the role of the prophet,' said Iraqi Shiite cleric Fadhil al-Saadi. 'There is no confirmed information about the shape or the features of the Prophet ... So nobody should come up with a painting or an image of him. That would represent an insult to the status of the prophet.'

With no explicit text against depictions — or against images of humans in general — the prohibition comes from deduction by Muslim scholars and interpreters over the centuries from the collections of Hadeeth, or sayings and actions of Muhammad.

The prohibition against depicting humans and other living beings, which emerged from scholars as early as the 9th century, came from reported sayings of Muhammad, in some of which he refused to enter a room with such depictions or challenged their creators to breathe life into them. The presumption was that such art would suggest man can emulate God's powers of creation — and there were worries that statues in particular could encourage idolatry.

Islamic tradition is full of written descriptions of Muhammad and his qualities — describing him as the ideal human being. But clerics have generally agreed that trying to depict that ideal is forbidden. That puts satirical — and obscene — depictions like those in the French magazing Charlie Hebdo far beyond the pale.

While no one knows Muhammad's true appearance, followers of the relatively modern, ultraconservative Salafi movement in Islam seek to emulate him as closely as possible — including in what they believe to be his physical features and dress. Hardcore Salafis wear a beard without a moustache, let their hair grow long, line their eyes with kohl or wear robes stopping around mid-shin, contending that was the prophet's manner.

The ban also extends to his wives, daughters, sons-in-law, the first caliphs who succeeded him and his closest companions. In fact, Egypt's al-Azhar mosque, the Sunni world's foremost seat of religious learning, has complained when 'Mohammed, Messenger of God,' an epic 1970s Hollywood production, depicted the prophet's camel.

There is a thriving production of religious TV series in the Arab world depicting the times of the prophet. But Muhammad and his companions are never themselves shown. At times, a white light stands in for Muhammad in the films or in movie posters — and when they are meant to be addressing Muhammad, the actors usually speak into the camera.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3066779/Police-officer-suspect-said-injured-shooting-outside-art-anti-Muslim-exhibition-art-depicting-prophet-Muhammad.html#ixzz3ZBC6GNUe