If this UFO is real and not a balloon or something it has a pretty ominous look to it, if it is of terrestrial origin the only thing I can imagine those spikes are for would be some kind of communications / avionics / sensor antenna.
Tags: ufo, Unexplained
On April 25, skin-burning water flowed from the tap in Spencer, Mass., sending 100 people to the hospital and forcing everyone else to avoid their faucets and hoses.
One week after the incident, investigators discovered that two city workers accidentally released an excessive amount of sodium hydroxide, also known as lye, into the water system after they forgot to switch the feed system from manual to automatic.
Thirty-four gallons of sodium hydroxide entered the city’s water supply over a 12.5-hour period, from the night of April 24 to the morning of April 25.
In addition, an alarm system for alerting offsite workers to the situation wasn’t working properly, and no one was in the building to hear onsite alarms.
Though not an agroterrorism incident, the event shows how easy an attack on the water supply could be, said Robert Finch, emergency preparedness coordinator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Farm Service Agency in Kentucky.
“Because you’ve got municipal and public water systems all across the nation, that would demonstrate that it’s pretty easy to cause damage,” he said, “whether it is intentional or accidental.”
Agroterrorism is an intentional criminal act perpetrated on some segment of the agriculture industry or the food system, intended to inflict harm - whether it be a public-health crisis or economic disruption.
“It has an effect, a very heavy effect, on the emotional well-being of people because they take their food as sort of for granted,” said Jerry Gillespie, former director and principal investigator at the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security at the University of California at Davis. “So an attack on either agriculture or the food system has all of those potentialities.”
Because food from a single source tends to be distributed widely, Gillespie added, contamination at one processing plant can have widespread implications.
“We’ve learned that, for example, with the spinach outbreak in Salinas County [Calif.], it affected more than 18 states,” he said. “So in a very quick order, we can have widespread contaminated product.”
Easy Target?
Agriculture in the United States is particularly vulnerable to terrorist activities because it’s a very open system, particularly at the farm level, but also in most processing plants, Gillespie said.
“They vary in their security certainly, but it would not be difficult to find access to a processing plant,” he said. “There’s a huge turnover in a labor force - it’s quite easy for someone who wanted to do this to find a way into a processing plant or any segment of a food system. On the retail end, clearly our open markets, farmers’ markets and the retail outlets are wide open.”
But Brenda Halbrook, director of the Food Safety Unit within the USDA’s Food & Nutrition Service, contended that such attacks are growing more difficult. She said a lot of work has been done to close security gaps.
“We have been working since early 2005 to develop our awareness program, and the spinoff from that has been now we’re developing tabletop exercises,” Halbrook said. “We take a previous scenario and play it out with all of the people who would be the principals if there were to be a real attack. That’s another means of trying to lock down any kinds of gaps we might have in this system so everybody’s very aware, everyone’s practiced, they’ve written their food defense programs and their plans, and then they’ve drilled it.”
Even without exercises and plans in place, Finch said farmers have their own more basic methods of preventing such an act.
“Farmers have a very good nonscientific, or non-Internet, network of knowing what’s going on,” he said. “They know what’s going on in their area. They know if something’s strange or someone is seen around an area who’s not supposed to be there, and are pretty quick to pick up and call whoever’s farm it is.”
Another concern, according to Howard van Dijk, emergency preparedness coordinator of Clemson University’s Cooperative Extension Service, is the spread of contagious diseases that could threaten food safety or cripple agricultural production.
“Foot-and-mouth disease - that’s the big one that really has us worried because that would hit cattle of all sorts, and other kinds of hoofed animals,” he said. “It’s highly contagious, and it would be very difficult to manage, to control, to get on top of.”
Because foot-and-mouth disease is a pandemic in certain parts of the world, van Dijk said, all someone would have to do is bring a sample into the U.S. and release it in farms.
In 2002, Tom McGinn, assistant state veterinarian for North Carolina at the time, showed a computer simulation of what would happen if foot-and-mouth disease were deliberately and simultaneously released in five different sites across the country - within two weeks, the disease would have spread to 44 states and destroyed 48.5 million animals.
Also in 2001, McGinn said the United States collected intelligence data in Afghanistan that al Qaeda operatives explored ways of damaging the U.S. food supply.
“There were plans ongoing within those folks about seeing where agriculture of the U.S. was vulnerable,” van Dijk said. “They had information there that was wide-open material. It would be knowledge that wouldn’t be that hard to acquire.”
Taking Responsibility
Knowing this, van Dijk urged farmers and ranchers to take action.
“Install gates to your facility, put up those signs, restricting gates, know who’s visiting your farm, be observant, see if there are people you don’t know or strange folks coming by asking questions that don’t really apply to day-to-day activities,” van Dijk said. “Try to upgrade security for everybody - that goes for the whole process, up and down the whole food chain from the producer to the grocery store. The whole system needs to have tightened security everywhere.”
Government agencies also must do their part to safeguard food production, Gillespie said.
“Certainly industry has to have a major role because they control [more than] 90 percent of the resources that go into our food systems,” he added, “but they can’t really do that without support from local, state and federal government agencies. Most certainly that’s true as we begin to have a more global food supply. Now it’s imperative that our federal, state and local agencies step up and try to improve security for the imported foods and food products.”
Finch said he believes it’s ultimately agriculture’s responsibility to work closely with the state commissioners of agriculture or their counterparts across the nation.
But Jason Moats, program coordinator for the Fire Protection Training Division at Texas A&M’s Extension Service, disagreed. Moats, who wrote Agroterrorism: A Guide for First Responders, said an agroterrorism event almost immediately becomes a national-level event.
“It’s not accurate to say that it’s a farmer or rancher issue. It’s going to involve everyone in the community, from the local elected official, to the state veterinarian, to the animal, plant and health inspection service to deal with this,” he said. “It’s a national-level emergency. That’s on the grandest scale.”
If, for example, foot-and-mouth disease were introduced into the agriculture system, the disease would affect cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and other animals. International markets would quickly stop receiving food products from the entire U.S., said Moats, because blocking shipments on a regional basis would be difficult.
“The problem is, we have such a highly mobile animal population here in the U.S. that that may not be reasonable,” he said. “So the minimum that the markets are going to shut down is going to be several months, if not several years.
“We’re talking a long-term event that may be longer, truthfully, than the recovery is or the immediate recovery was, for the World Trade Center,” Moats added.
Practicing Prevention
Unfortunately vulnerabilities in the agriculture system typically are detected only when people fall ill, Gillespie said.
“There are some new technologies beginning to emerge that may help, but the economy of them is pretty difficult - whether producers and even consumers are willing to pay this extra cost is the question,” he added. “Probably the most effective way for us to have early detection of mischief or something going wrong is in fact the employees who work very directly with the food system. Again, that’s a challenge because there’s such a turnover in that particular sector of our economy.”
In South Carolina, Clemson University’s Cooperative Extension Service helps educate farm producers and the public about potential agroterrorism activities.
“We’re trying to help coordinate and organize County Agricultural Response Teams (CARTs),” van Dijk said. “In this case, CARTs are committees of people in the industry, producers, agency people, county emergency manager, law enforcement, fire rescue folks, animal control people. We help organize these committees who then can, on a local level, identify issues that might be for their county, their location.”
The county CART falls under the county emergency manager’s authority, he said, and considers where the issues are in the county, and helps to educate and manage if an incident takes place. CARTs, van Dijk added, aid in actual response, along with police, fire and emergency management services.
“We have the local knowledge of agriculture, have contact with local producers and know what livestock industries are in the local area, so we know what’s involved,” he said. “Then we also become members of the county response team to help contain whatever incident might happen.”
One thing to keep in mind, van Dijk said, is to look at agroterrorism under the all-hazards umbrella.
“At the same time we’re considering agroterrorism, being able to respond also helps in being able to respond to a hurricane disaster, flood - you name it,” he said. “Being aware, knowledgeable, educated, and able to respond helps all of those things.”
Mukasey for Continuation of Protect America Act of 2007
U.S. Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey
Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey spoke yesterday at the American Bar Association’s National Security Law Breakfast, saying it’s necessary in make permanent “the national security tools that we use for the war on terror — and in particular, about the need to modernize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA.”
FISA, said Mukasey, was enacted in 1978 and it has fallen behind modern communication technologies. In addition, he said, obtaining court orders can lead to significant delays. Then, last August, he explained, Congress passed the Protect America Act of 2007.
“In simplified terms,” said Mukasey, ” this Act allows our intelligence professionals to surveil foreign intelligence targets located abroad without prior court approval. Also … that legislation gave the FISA Court a significant role in those collections, authorizing the Court to review the procedures in place for deciding whether targets of surveillance under the authority are in fact overseas.” However, he said, “The Protect America Act contains a ’sunset’ provision and will expire on February 1, 2008 unless Congress acts.”
Mukasey also said telecom companies who lawfully assisted intelligence agencies are the target of legal action and they should be given retroactive immunity from such litigation.
“In an age where we need to use every possible advantage to understand an enemy that may seek to exploit and hide within the vast expanses of the Internet, we simply cannot afford to discourage the private sector from helping us to detect and prevent the next terrorist attack.
“We had our Pearl Harbor on September 11th, 2001,” concluded Mukasey. “We will need the level of cooperation from American industry that was seen in World War II, and we will need to tap into the technological ingenuity of the private sector if we are going to prevail. Our military, our intelligence agencies, and our law enforcement agencies are forces to be reckoned with, as they should be. But we cannot fight this fight alone. We have to be able to enlist and draw upon the lawful cooperation of the private sector.”
The Sacramento, Calif., Police Department announced its Urban Unmanned Aerial (UAV) Vehicle Program and showed off its unique homegrown version of the Unmanned Aerial Vehicle at the Versadex Conference in downtown Sacramento.
The mini airplane on display was one of two aircraft in the development stage designed to enhance the department’s existing airborne technology program. The current program consists of two helicopters with video downlink communications that stream video to mobile data terminals in police patrol cars and to mobile command vehicles.
The UAV will give the department an affordable - not to mention quieter — alternative to the hovering helicopter during incidents, said Police Chief Albert Najera, who said the department gets many complaints about the noise of the helicopters. “The noise factor is huge. This is almost silent, you can’t hear it,” he said. “Not many police departments can afford a helicopter, but most will be able to afford this.”
Najera said the UAVs will give the department an option during floods when the helicopters are used to shine infrared light on the levees to detect leaks. The UAVs will be able to do the same thing, freeing up the helicopters to handle critical calls.
“I wish I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard over the radio ‘Is an air unit available?’” said the developer of the aircraft, Mark Bateson, senior solution architect of public safety IT for the department.
The 5-foot-long aircraft weighs about 12 pounds and can carry multiple video cameras. It is hand-launched and can circle autonomously for 45 minutes at about 30 mph.
It has “stare capability,” which means it can train the video on a subject for its entire flight. “With a right click, I can give it latitude and a longitude and point the camera,” Bateson said.
The aircraft is battery operated, flies autonomously for the most part and even calculates the direction and speed of the wind while in flight. Bateson said the next step is to pursue Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) certification and authorization. “It is our intention to work in a cooperative teaming arrangement with the FAA to make this work and follow the book, so to speak, to make this a success.”
In 2003, then Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld signed a document called the
Information Operation Roadmap which outlined, among other things, the Pentagon’s desire to dominate the entire electromagnetic spectrum.
If you are unfamiliar with this document, more detail can be found in this article here.
Dominate
From the Information Operation Roadmap:
“We Must Improve Network and Electro-Magnetic Attack Capability. To prevail in an information-centric fight, it is increasingly important that our forces dominate the electromagnetic spectrum with attack capabilities.”
“Cover the full range of EW [Electronic Warfare] missions and capabilities, including navigation warfare, offensive counterspace, control of adversary radio frequency systems that provide location and identification of friend and foe, etc.”
“Provide a future EW capability sufficient to provide maximum control of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, denying, degrading, disrupting, or destroying the full spectrum of globally emerging communication systems, sensors, and weapons systems dependant on the electromagnetic spectrum.”
“DPG [Defense Planning Guidance] 04 tasked USD(AT&L) [Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics], in coordination with the CJCS [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff] and Services, to develop recommendations to transform and extend EW capabilities, … to detect, locate and attack the full spectrum of globally emerging telecommunications equipment, situation awareness sensors and weapons engagement technologies operating within the electromagnetic spectrum.”
Stealthy Platforms Above Your Home
“Develop a coherent and comprehensive EW [Electronic Warfare] investment strategy for the architecture that… Pay particular attention to:
- (U) Projecting electronic attack into denied areas by means of stealthy platforms… As a matter of priority, accelerates joint development of modular EW payloads for the Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle.”
It is interesting to see the mention of stealthy platforms like unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) because they are now patrolling both the Canadian and Mexican borders of the United States and will soon be patrolling the arctic. With funding supplied by Homeland Security, US police departments are also using UAVs to spy on the citizens below. A couple of examples are Sacramento, California and…
“one North Carolina county is using a UAV equipped with low-light and infrared cameras to keep watch on its citizens. The aircraft has been dispatched to monitor gatherings of motorcycle riders at the Gaston County fairgrounds from just a few hundred feet in the air–close enough to identify faces–and many more uses, such as the aerial detection of marijuana fields, are planned.”
The Electronic Battlespace
“The ACTD [Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration] should examine a range of technologies including a network of unmanned aerial vehicles and miniaturized, scatterable public address systems for satellite rebroadcast in denied areas. It should also consider various message delivery systems, to include satellite radio and television, cellular phones and other wireless devices and the Internet.” [emphasis mine] - 65
“Exploits other transformational EW initiatives, including use of the E-Space Analysis Center to correlate and fuse all available data that creates a real time electronic battlespace picture.” [emphasis mine] - 62
How exactly do you create a real time electronic battlespace picture? And where exactly is the battlespace? A very similar statement was made in the Project for a New American Century document Rebuilding America’s Defenses published in September of 2000 (more about this document here and here.)
“New classes of sensors - commercial and military; on land, on and under sea, in the air and in space - will be linked together in dense networks that can be rapidly configured and reconfigured to provide future commanders with an unprecedented understanding of the battlefield.” - pg 59
An article written by Mark Baard from Parallelnormal.com sheds some light on this subject.
“Philadelphia, San Francisco, Houston, and Providence, R.I. are among the cities partnering with private companies and the federal government to set up public broadband internet access. Providence used Homeland Security funds to construct a network for police, which may be made available to the public at a later date…”
“But even if the cities fail to complete their Wi-Fi projects, the military will be able to set up wireless networks within hours, perhaps even faster.”
“The DOD [Department of Defense], which is in the middle of joint urban war-games with Homeland Security and Canadian, Israeli and other international forces, is experimenting with Wi-Fi networks it can set up on the fly.”
“According to a recent DOD announcement for contractors, soldiers will be able to drop robots, called LANdroids… when they arrive in a city. The robots will then scurry off to position themselves, becoming nodes for a wireless communications network.
“The Wi-Fi antennae dotting the urban landscape will serve not only as communications relays, but as transponders that can pinpoint the exact positions of individual computers and mobile phones - a scenario described in the Boston Globe last year.”
“In other words, where GPS loses site of a device, Wi-Fi will pick up the trail.”
“The antennae will also relay orders to the brain-chipped masses, members of the British Ministry of Defense and the DOD believe.”
Tags: DOD
Buying cannabis in the Dutch city of Maastricht will soon mean having your fingerprints taken, your face scanned and your biometric data recorded.All 15 coffee shops in the southern city are spending about 100,000 euros ($134,000) installing a security system that makes it harder for an under-age cannabis smoker to enter than a terrorist to set foot in Europe, according to Marc Josemans, head of the local coffee shop union.
“We are ashamed for this attack on your privacy”, reads an explanatory leaflet about the system starting in September.
The coffee shops face a continual struggle to prove they are not selling to people under the age of 18 or more than 5 grams of cannabis a day to any one individual.
If they can’t, they risk being shut down.
“If a 17-year-old comes here, shows the ID of his very similar-looking older brother and then gets caught by the police with cannabis bought in our shop, we have to prove that he broke the rules, not us,” said Josemans.
Cannabis is theoretically illegal in the Netherlands but has been tolerated in small amounts since the 1970s.
Customers in Maastricht will have their fingers and face scanned. The scans will be compared with stored data and, if everything matches, they will be able to enter the coffee shop.
No names and addresses are stored and details on the amount of cannabis bought every day will be saved only until midnight.
The information is completely secure, coffee shop owners say. But Josemans concedes 90 percent of his clients don’t like the system and he expects the new measures to hurt sales initially.
Tags: marijuana 
An estimated 16-20 million Iranians would die in a nuclear war with Israel, according to a report issued by a respected Washington think tank.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) also estimates that between 200,000 and 800,000 Israelis would be killed, the Jerusalem Post reported.
The report, which is theoretical and based on limited verified knowledge of Israel’s and Iran’s nuclear capability, paints a bleak picture for both nations.
It estimates that a nuclear war would last approximately three weeks and ultimately end with the annihilation of Iran, based on Israel’s alleged possession of sophisticated and powerful nuclear weapons.
The report does not predict the number of deaths due to nuclear fallout.
It lists possible targets for an Iranian strike as Tel Aviv and Haifa, while the list of probable targets in Iran includes Tehran and Tabriz.
The report also points to Israel’s Arrow missile defense system as an obstacle facing any Iranian strike.
Another scenario includes Syria coming to Iran’s defense with chemical and biological warheads launched at Israeli targets. Up to 800,000 Israelis would be killed if that were to happen, according to the report. Syria, however, would be forced to grapple with the deaths of approximately 18 million of its citizens if Israel responded with its nuclear arsenal, the Post reported.
Tags: Iran, Israel, nukes, weapon
US actor Will Smith has stunned fans by reportedly declaring that Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was essentially a “good” person.
In an interview with Scottish newspaper The Daily Record, the 39-year-old Men In Black star said he did not believe Hitler fully understood what effect his policies would have.
“Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, ‘Let me do the most evil thing I can do today,” Smith told the newspaper in a wide-ranging interview.
“I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was ‘good’.
“Stuff like that just needs reprogramming,” Smith said in the interview reported on by World Entertainment News.
Hitler’s totalitarian leadership as Germany’s leader from 1934 until 1945 resulted in the deaths of an estimated six million Jews in the Holocaust and his invasion of Poland in 1939 led to the start of World War II.
The Defense Department has paid $2.7 billion for private security in Iraq since 2003, according to a watchdog group. Rules and regulations for contractors have often come from the Private Security Company Association of Iraq, a trade group funded by the security companies.
The U.S. government disregarded numerous warnings over the past two years about the risks of using Blackwater Worldwide and other private security firms in Iraq, expanding their presence even after a series of shooting incidents showed that the firms were operating with little regulation or oversight, according to government officials, private security firms and documents.
The warnings were conveyed in letters and memorandums from defense and legal experts and in high-level discussions between U.S. and Iraqi officials. They reflected growing concern about the lack of control over the tens of thousands of private guards in Iraq, the largest private security force ever employed by the United States in wartime.
Tags: blackwaterThis Video is a compilation of President Bush Wishing the World a Very Merry Christmas, while claiming “War is Over”
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