The Solar wind is a calm 280 km/sec and even though there are ten
sunspots on the Sun today. With all that, A phalanx of new sunspots
rotating over the sun's southeastern limb was expected to boost solar
activity this weekend. So far, however, the spots have not produced strong
flares. Solar activity is low.
Ice Quakes hit Wisconsin
Some strange booms have shaken residents in Fond du Lac County, Wisconsin.
The series of explosion-like sounds rattled residents from Waupun, Campbellsport
and elsewhere Tuesday and sent Fond du Lac County sheriff's deputies out looking
for a cause.
Geologists say the booms were likely a phenomenon commonly known as an ice
quake.
Cracking up: Dennis Olsen measures a giant fissure, which he measured to be an
inch wide and at least eight to ten inches deep, in his rural driveway in Waupun,
Wisconsin, after a weather phenomenon known as an ice quake occurred recently
They are the after-effects of the frost quakes - or cryoseism - which are more
commonly found on glaciers in the polar regions.
It's caused by water that sinks into the soil and bedrock where it freezes and
expands, causing an explosive popping sound that feels like a mild earthquake.
Most frost quakes occur after a heavy rainfall or snow fall when there is a large
amount of moisture on the ground.
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee seismologist Brett Ketter tells Action
Reporter Media he experienced an ice quake this week and initially thought the
pipes had burst in his house.
Mr Ketter says he ran outside in his slippers to see if something had hit his house.
One family had to deal with a giant, 100-foot long crack in their rural driveway.
Cold weather phenomena: It results from water freezing and expanding in the soil
and bedrock
Dennis Olsen heard an explosive sound and initially thought his garage might have
blown up. That wasn't the case. Then he checked his basement, thinking a wall had
split. Everything looked fine.
It wasn't until the next morning that Olsen discovered the driveway fissure.
He called the Fond du Lac County Sheriff's Department. Deputies knew what
happened because other residents in the area had experienced the same booming
sounds of an ice quake.
Olsen said it's the first time he's ever seen the effects of an ice quake.
Frost quake or cryoeism: This graph explains how the frost quakes come about due
to expansion caused by water that has frozen quickly
Earlier this month, Canadian residents also reported hearing similar booms.
'We had the ice storm or freezing rain event, then we had warm temperatures, or
just about freezing at the surface.
Then the temperatures plummeted after that,' said Dayna Vettese, a meteorologist
with the Weather Network.
'That's why we've seen a couple of these events between the ice storm and the
beginning of 2014.'
Around Toronto just after Christmas there was a thaw after some heavy snow fall
that allowed ice to accumulate under the soil.
'It's almost like an earthquake because it's very close to the surface. You will feel a
little bit of shaking, maybe if you're sitting in a chair and it happened, or you're
lying in bed, or some of your dishes might rattle,' said Ms. Vettese.
However, while unusual for Wisconsin and southern Canada, frost quakes are
definitely the norm in the north of the notoriously cold nation.
Once in a Blue Star
The discovery of this new set of “hypervelocity” stars was described at the
annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society this week in
Washington, D.C., and was published in the Jan. 1 issue of the
Astrophysical Journal.
Top and side views of the Milky Way galaxy show the location of four of the
new class of hypervelocity stars. These are sun-like stars that are moving
at speeds of more than a million miles per hour relative to the galaxy: fast
enough to escape its gravitational grasp. The general directions from which
the stars have come are shown by the colored bands.
Credit: Graphic design by Julie Turner, Vanderbilt University. The top view
of the galaxy comes from the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration and the side view comes from the European Southern
Observatory.
“These new hypervelocity stars are very different from the ones that have
been discovered previously,” said Vanderbilt University graduate student
Lauren Palladino, lead author on the study. “The original hypervelocity
stars are large blue stars and appear to have originated from the galactic
center. Our new stars are relatively small – about the size of the sun – and
the surprising part is that none of them appear to come from the galactic
core.”
The discovery came as Palladino, working under the supervision of Kelly
Holley-Bockelmann, assistant professor of astronomy at Vanderbilt was
mapping the Milky Way by calculating the orbits of Sun-like stars in the
Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a massive census of the stars and galaxies in a
region covering nearly one quarter of the sky.
“It’s very hard to kick a star out of the galaxy,” said Holley-Bockelmann.
“The most commonly accepted mechanism for doing so involves interacting
with the supermassive black hole at the galactic core. That means when
you trace the star back to its birthplace, it comes from the center of our
galaxy. None of these hypervelocity stars come from the center, which
implies that there is an unexpected new class of hypervelocity star, one
with a different ejection mechanism.”
Astrophysicists calculate that a star must get a million-plus mile-per-hour
kick relative to the motion of the galaxy to reach escape velocity. They also
estimate that the Milky Way’s central black hole has a mass equivalent to
four million suns, large enough to produce a gravitational force strong
enough to accelerate stars to hyper velocities. The typical scenario involves
a binary pair of stars that get caught in the black hole’s grip. As one of the
stars spirals in toward the black hole, its companion is flung outward at a
tremendous velocity. So far, 18 giant blue hypervelocity stars have been
found that could have been produced by such a mechanism.
Now Palladino and her colleagues have discovered an additional 20 sunsized stars that they characterize as possible hypervelocity stars. “One
caveat concerns the known errors in measuring stellar motions,” she said.
“To get the speed of a star, you have to measure the position really
accurately over decades. If the position is measured badly a few times over
that long time interval, it can seem to move a lot faster than it really does.
We did several statistical tests to increase the accuracy of our estimates.
So we think that, although some of our candidates may be flukes, the
majority are real.”
The astronomers are following up with additional observations.
The new rogues appear to have the same composition as normal disk
stars, so the astronomers do not think that their birthplace was in the
galaxy’s central bulge, the halo that surrounds it, or in some other exotic
place outside the galaxy.
“The big question is: what boosted these stars up to such extreme
velocities? And you know, with every action there is a equal and opposite
reaction. Black holes are spinning at there maximum rotation, according to
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz during 1676–1689 who first attempted a
mathematical formulation of the kind of energy which is connected with
motion (kinetic energy). Leibniz noticed that in many mechanical systems
(of several masses, mi each with velocity vi ),
was conserved so long as the masses did not interact. He called this
quantity the vis viva or living force of the system. If a massive blue star is
flung out onto space at a million miles an hour, then an equal force counter
to the rotation of the black hole was exerted. If the black hole begins to
slow down, the event horizon shrinks, and the structure become more
capable of emitting energy. There are thousand and perhaps millions of
sun worth of information inside a black hole. Who knows what changes
ripple through the galaxy because of such an event? The gravitational
waves of a Sun traveling at such speeds could be very geomagnetically
exciting. That may not be a good thing.
South Carolina Tritium
A radioactive plume has been confirmed in South Carolina and it is now on
the move as shared in this newly released video from ShantiUniverse.
Radioactive tritium has been detected and on the move in groundwater.
This is the 2nd water contamination issue in days including the West
Virginia scare over the past weekend.
Columbia, SC (WLTX) -The Department of Health and Environmental
Control (DHEC) confirmed to the Governor’s Nuclear Advisory Council a
plume of radioactive Tritium is in the groundwater.
“DHEC has documented there is a plume leaking from the site but the
problem with Tritium is it’s hard to remediate, it’s hard to clean it up,” said
Tom Clements, Southeast Nuclear Campaign Coordinator for Friends of
the Earth. “So we have to look at ways to stop it from leaking from the
dump.”
The plume is moving off the Barnwell Nuclear site southwest toward the
Savannah River Site. Traces of Tritium have also been found in Mary’s
Branch Creek.
“It combines with oxygen to form basically radioactive water. So, it gets
everywhere in the environment,” Clements said. “The level was far above
the drinking water standard but fortunately it doesn’t look like anyone is
drinking the water.”
Chinese Hypersonic Missile Test
China’s military last week conducted the first flight test of a new ultra-high
speed missile vehicle aimed at delivering warheads through U.S. missile
defenses, Pentagon officials said.
The test of the new hypersonic glide vehicle was carried out Jan. 9 and the
experimental weapon is being dubbed the WU-14 by the Pentagon, said
officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The hypersonic vehicle represents a major step forward in China’s
secretive strategic nuclear and conventional military and missile programs.
The new hypersonic vehicle was detected traveling at extremely high
speeds during the flight test over China, said officials who discussed some
details of the test.
The hypersonic craft appears designed to be launched atop one of China’s
intercontinental ballistic missiles, and then glides and maneuvers at speeds
of up to 10 times the speed of sound from near space en route to its target,
the officials said.
A Pentagon spokesman confirmed the test but declined to provide details.
“We routinely monitor foreign defense activities and we are aware of this
test,” Marine CorpsLt. Col. Jeffrey Pool, the spokesman, told
the Washington Free Beacon.
“However, we don’t comment on our intelligence or assessments of foreign
weapon systems,” Pool said in a statement. “We encourage greater
transparency [by the People’s Republic of China] regarding their defense
investments and objectives to avoid miscalculation,” he added.
The United States, Russia, and China are all engaged in a hypersonic arms
race. All three nations are developing high-speed aerospace vehicles. India
is also developing a hypersonic variant of its BrahMos cruise missile.
Hypersonic weapons use cutting edge technology for flying and
maneuvering at ultra-high speeds in space and air. Future weapons will
include powered and unpowered hypersonic vehicles fired from the last
stages of ICBMs and submarine missiles, and from the bomb-bays of
strategic bombers. Hypersonic cruise missiles and surveillance drones also
are expected.
The military advantages of hypersonic craft include precise targeting, very
rapid delivery of weapons, and greater survivability against missile and
space defenses.
Hypersonic speed is between 3,840 miles per hour and 7,680 miles per
hour, also known as Mach 5 to Mach 10.
China military affairs specialists said the hypersonic vehicle test is a
significant milestone and appears to be part of China’s development of
asymmetric warfare weaponry that Beijing calls “assassin’s mace”
weapons—high-technology arms that would assist China’s overall weaker
military forces to defeat the more technologically advanced U.S. military.
Mark Stokes, a former U.S. Air Force officer and specialist on China’s
strategic weapons systems, said China is working on two hypersonic flight
vehicle programs that are long-range strategic arms. Last week’s test
appears to be a new post-boost vehicle designed to launch from a missile.
China is also developing a hypersonic, scramjet-powered vehicle that can
take off independently or be launched from a bomber.
The hypersonic glide vehicle is likely missile-launched after the rocket’s
initial boost phase that then takes off toward its target from near space, or
less than 62 miles from earth, Stokes said.
“A boost glide missile theoretically would be intended to counter existing
mid-course missile defenses,” he said, noting that Chinese technical
studies have shown the vehicle would use penetrating radar for its highaltitude targeting.
The vehicle is part of China’s aerospace weaponry designed to blend the
characteristics of space-transiting ballistic missiles with ground-hugging
cruise missiles, Stokes said.
“Hypersonic aerospace flight vehicles exemplify the merging of the air and
space domains from both operational and industrial perspectives,” Stokes
said.
Stokes, an analyst with the Project 2049 Institute, said Chinese military
reports indicate that its hypersonic glide vehicles will travel from the edge of
space at speeds ranging between Mach 8 and Mach 12, or between 6,084
miles per hour and 9,127 miles per hour.
Such speeds would challenge the current system of U.S. missile defenses.
Those defenses include a combination of long-range interceptors, medium-
range sea and land-based interceptors, and interceptors designed to hit
incoming missiles closer to targets.
Lora Saalman, a specialist on Chinese strategic systems with the Carnegie
Endowment, said China’s hypersonic arms are part of a program to
develop precision-guided missiles and other advanced weapons
capabilities.
Saalman, who spent years in China studying Chinese military and other
writings, said writings on Chinese hypersonic arms indicate Beijing may be
seeking high-speed weapons that are more limited in range and
conventionally armed, although with strategic nuclear potential.
The U.S. Prompt Global Strike program seeks hypersonic and other
conventional and nuclear weapons capable of attacking any location on
earth within an hour. Elements of the U.S. system are expected to be
fielded in the next 10 to 15 years.
China’s hypersonic capabilities also appear to be an outgrowth of precision
strike missiles, like the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile, and China’s own
version of missile defenses, which use high-speed hit-to-kill capabilities,
Saalman said, noting that China has been streamlining its weapons
development process.
“With the integration of strategic analysis and planning into technical
research, China’s pursuit of hypersonic and high-precision weaponry
promises to be faster and more focused than that associated with its
previous [anti-satellite] and [ballistic missile defense] related research and
programs,” Saalman said in an email. “This recent test is a manifestation of
this trend.”
Hypersonics and precision guidance “are growth areas within China in
terms of what they are intending to do with their military,” she said in a
recent speech.
Rick Fisher, another China military affairs expert, said the Chinese
hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV) test represents a significant military
advance for Beijing.
“The beauty of the HGV is that it can perform hypersonic precision strikes
while maintaining a relatively low altitude and flat trajectory, making it far
less vulnerable to missile defenses,” said Fisher, an analyst at the
International Assessment and Strategy Center.
Fisher said arms control advocates often view the U.S. Prompt Global
Strike and similar Chinese hypersonic weapons as part of an isolated
competition caused by misperceptions that can be resolved through arms
talks.
“I’m not against that, but the lessons of recent history are pretty stark: a
paranoid Communist dictatorship is going to seek maximum power to
sustain its position no matter how friendly you try to treat it,” Fisher said.
Fisher said that in addition to China’s hypersonic weapons and other
weaponry similar to the arms in the U.S. Prompt Global Strike program,
China is also building its strategic military capabilities to support its global
power projection.
The Chinese are “actively seeking global military power to challenge the
United States, and it is not yet in any mood to talk, or engage in arms
control, about it,” he said.
Instead of seeking military and other hot line communications, the U.S.
government should build on select military superiorities in order to deter
China into the 2020s and beyond, Fisher said. “I don’t see this
administration being seized with this real challenge,” he added.
The Pentagon’s most recent annual report on the Chinese military said that
in May 2012 China opened a new JF12 shockwave hypersonic wind
tunnel—the largest of its kind in the world—that replicates flying conditions
between Mach 5 and Mach 9.
A Chinese technical paper from December 2012 revealed that China plans
to use on-board precision guidance systems that would be corrected inflight using both satellite and celestial navigation.
A second paper from April concluded that hypersonic weapons pose “a
new aerospace threat.” It reveals that China has studied the U.S. Air
Force’s experimental X-37B Space Plane in order to “effectively track and
intercept” hypersonic vehicles.
“Hypersonic aircraft in aerospace usually have the following unique
characteristics: high, fast, and small,” the paper states. “Their motion is
highly variable. As a result, this type of target is very difficult to track.”
Both the United States and Russia are also developing hypersonic
weapons.
Current U.S. hypersonic research is being carried out by the Pentagon and
Air Force through the Force Application and Launch from Continental
United States, known as the FALCON program.
Several vehicles are being studied, including the Lockheed HTV-2 or
Hypersonic Technology Vehicle, an unmanned, missile-launched
maneuverable aircraft that glides to earth at speeds up to Mach 20, or
13,000 miles per hour.
Boeing is also working on the X-51 WaveRider, an aircraft-launched,
scramjet-powered vehicle that is being designed for hypersonic attack,
reconnaissance, and commercial transport.
The U.S. Hypersonic Technology Vehicle-2 / Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA)
Another vehicle is the U.S. Air Force experimental X-37B Space Plane that
has been orbiting earth since December 2012.
Russia also is making advances in hypersonic weaponry, including
technologies for both offensive high-speed attacks and defending against
hypersonic strikes.
The Air Force National Air and Space Intelligence Center said in its annual
report on missiles last year that Russia is building “a new class of
hypersonic vehicle” that would “allow Russian strategic missiles to
penetrate missile defense systems.”
Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin recently compared the
development of hypersonic weapons to the emergence of atomic weapons
in the 1950s. He said the first nation to master hypersonic weapons would
launch a new revolution in military affairs.
Rogozin denied Moscow was engaged in a new arms race with the United
States in June. However, he has confirmed that Russia is working on
hypersonic weapons.
“Today, we are experiencing a revolution in military science,” Rogozin told
Russian television June 23. “This revolution is connected with the rapid
development of highly accurate means of destruction. These are cruise
missiles and high-speed rocket weapons. In the future, there will be
hypersonic weapons.”
Rogozin described Moscow’s test of an advanced road-mobile ICBM,
called the RS-26, as a “missile defense killer.” Russian news reports said
the missile flight test involved three dummy warheads that are hypersonic
arms designed to defeat missile defenses.
Russian military experts have written about combining hypersonics with
precision guidance and some have suggested including U.S. hypersonic
weapons in future arms control talks, following Moscow’s past pattern of
using arms agreements to constrain U.S. high-tech weapons.
Russia also is developing an air and space defense system called the S500 with interceptors capable of shooting down hypersonic vehicles.
Ian Easton, in a report published by the Project 2049 Institute, said China’s
hypersonic weapons are part of what he called “the Great Game in space.”
“If there is a great power war in this century, it will not begin with the sound
of explosions on the ground and in the sky, but rather with the bursting of
kinetic energy and the flashing of laser light in the silence of outer space,”
Easton said.
Chinese Navy Continues to Grow
(Reuters) - China is building its second aircraft carrier, which is expected to
take six years, and the country aims to have at least four such ships,
Chinese and Hong Kong media reports said on Sunday.
After two decades of double-digit increases in the military budget, China's
admirals plan to develop a full blue-water navy capable of defending
growing economic interests as well as disputed territory in the South and
East China Seas.
The country's first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning - a Soviet-era ship bought
from Ukraine in 1998 and re-fitted in a Chinese shipyard - has long been a
symbol of China's naval build-up.
Successfully operating the 60,000-tonne Liaoning is the first step in what
state media and some military experts believe will be the deployment of
locally built carriers by 2020. China's first domestically built aircraft carrier
will be a larger version of Liaoning. The design is reportedly based on
drafts of a Soviet-era, nuclear-powered, 80,000 ton vessel capable of
carrying 60 aircraft.
China has made some dramatic technological breakthroughs of late. They
announced they are building a 110,000 ton super-carrier in the next few
years.
In January, 2011, China conducted a test flight of a new stealth fighter jet,
the J-20, on the same day that former US Defense Secretary Robert M.
Gates was in Beijing for talks.
China has also demonstrated remarkable technical ability beyond purely
military pursuits. Just this month, China became the third country, behind
the United States and the Soviet Union, to put an unmanned spacecraft on
the Moon.
By the way, the USS Enterprise is nearly 95 thousand tons and is nuclear
powered. Spending cuts in the last 5 years have slowed the completion of
the newest carrier the USS Ford, and halted the construction of several
other ships. The US Navy nears a low number at 279 vessels, but most
analysts say that the remaining ships are fast, quiet, and effective when
coupled with space-based assets. Remember, the X37-B is the world’s
most dangerous drone.
Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, citing unnamed military sources,
said the reports being taken off the PLA’s website may have been removed
either because the government wanted the construction to be low profile or
because Wang did not have the authority for such an announcement.
The Defense Ministry did not respond to a request for comment.
The Coming China Cities
A Long Island businesswoman wants to build a massive “Chinese
Disneyland” in the Catskills — which would include an amusement park,
huge mansions and a “Forbidden City” laid out according to the principles
of Feng Shui.
The China City of America scheme could bring thousands of wealthy
Chinese immigrants to the tiny Sullivan County town of Thompson, under a
federal program that lets foreigners get visas by investing $500,000 in the
US.
The mastermind behind the plan, Sherry Li, says the development would
eventually draw $6 billion in foreign investment.
“We can kind of view it as a Chinese concept of Disney — so it’s going to
have lot of attractions for families,” she said.
The designs for China City include a college, 1,000 residences, a Chinesethemed retail center and possibly a casino.
The place would feel like a trip to China just 90 miles outside New York
city, as one area would mark parts of the Chinese Zodiac while another
would have 16 buildings representing the major Chinese dynasties.
“Each dynasty will have its building and will have rides go with it,” Li said at
a town council meeting in May where she pitched the original plan.
China City’s website features golden dragons, and projects an initial
investment of $325 million — with $10 million going to a “Temple of
Heaven,” $24 million on a hotel and entertainment complex, and $20 million
to construct a “Forbidden City.”
It also projects a $65 million infusion from the U.S. government – without
naming what agency would make the contribution.
“It’s multiple phases. No project is going to happen in one day. It’s going to
be step-by-step,” Li told the Post, saying the amusement park component
would get built in a later phase.
The plan is now under consideration by the leaders of Thompson,
population 15,000.
It’s already getting a lot of opposition.
“It actually seems surreal but unfortunately it is real,” said Paula Medley, an
activist who heads a local environmental group.
“This is kind of a combination of pie-in-the-sky and ethnic solidarity and
showmanship and a federal program that sort of facilitates this sort of thing.
It’s really an odd mix,” said David North, who authored a new report picking
apart China City’s proposal for the D.C.-based Center for Immigration
Studies.
Others questioned its link to the federal visa program, known as EB-5.
“It sounds like an EB-5 scam,” said Laura Corruzi, a New York City attorney
who vacations in the area. “The financials don’t really support the $6 billion
project.”
The Thompson town council has had at least five meetings on the project,
with the latest Tuesday night.
Li wouldn’t reveal the number of investors she has lined up, but she said
most were Chinese nationals.
“Whoever is interested [will] invest with us. At this point we don’t have
[Chinese] government investors at all,” she said, describing her own
background only as being in the “financial industry.”
“It’s in the thousands of apartments, houses — it’s huge,” said Thompson
town supervisor Tony Cellini. He said the total population of Chinese
coming in eventually could equal the town’s if the developers “fulfill” all their
wishes.
“We’re not certain we have the infrastructure to handle all that at this point,”
he added.
“I believe China City is very serious but they’ve got a long road ahead of
them to get all their approvals.”
Iran Knows who is Running America
Iran Says 'Tall, White' Space Aliens Control America
Documents leaked by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden conclusively prove
that the United States has been ruled by a race of tall, white space aliens who also
assisted the rise of Nazi Germany in the 1930s.
These revelations about our alien overlords might not cost you any sleep. But the
part that should concern you a tad is that the UFO story was just published by the
Fars News Agency, the English-language news service of Iran, a nation that may
be very close to acquiring nuclear weapons.
This being a crazy conspiracy theory, naturally the Russians are behind it. The
alleged alien invasion was revealed in a report by Russia’s FSB spy agency, which
found “incontrovertible proof’ that an ‘alien/extraterrestrial intelligence agenda’ is
driving U.S. domestic and international policy, and has been doing so since at least
1945,” said the Iranian news service.
Fars apparently got the story from a hard-core conspiracy site called
whatdoesitmean.com. Here is the gist of the whatdoesitmean.com story as best I
understand it (or as the alien mind-control lasers allow me to understand it):
Snowden, who has been given asylum in Russia, leaked documents that a race of
extraterestrial “tall whites” arrived on Earth, helped Nazi Germany build a fleet of
advanced submarines in the 1930s, and then met in 1954 with President Dwight
Eisenhower “where the ‘secret regime’ currently ruling over America was
established.”
“Most disturbingly, this FSB report warns, is that the ‘Tall White’ agenda being
implemented by the ‘secret regime’ ruling the United States calls for the creation
of a global electronic surveillance system meant to hide all true information about
their presence here on earth as they enter into what one of Snowden’s documents
calls the ‘final phase’ of their end plan for total assimilation and world rule.”
Meanwhile, the U.S. government is embroiled in a “cataclysmic” power struggle
between President Obama, who heads the alien shadow government, and some
unknown force that opposed the U.S.-alien alliance. “Most to be feared by Russian
policy makers and authorities, this [FSB] report concludes, is if those opposing the
‘Tall White’ ‘secret regime’ ruled over by Obama have themselves aligned with
another alien-extraterrestrial power themselves.”
Any good conspiracy theory needs a patina of truth, a bit of intellectual cover to
camouflage the craziness. In this case, the whatdoesitmean.com/Fars story cites
Paul Hellyer, the 1960s Canadian defense minister who is now a fervent UFO
activist. Hellyer allegedly has confirmed the accuracy of Snowden’s UFO leaks.
This is almost a funny story, until one remembers that Iran is a moderately
powerful nation of 76 million people, with a possible nuclear arsenal, relatively
large conventional military power, extensive terrorist capabilities through its
intelligence agencies and Hezbollah, and a fundamentalist government that could
easily engage in hostilities against the U.S. Laugh if you will at conspiracy
theories, but they offer explanatory value for their believers, a way of making
sense of why things happen, even if it is a funhouse-mirror explanation of the
world.
The Fars News Agency is reportedly affiliated with Iran’s influential
Revolutionary Guards, which suggests that either Iran is either desperate to smear
the U.S. any way it can, or there indeed is a very peculiar view of U.S. politics at
the highest levels of the Iranian government.
If there is a bright spot to this as well as a funny bone, it’s that the goal of U.S.
policy is to contain and neutralize Iranian influence. So, perhaps it’s not
necessarily a bad thing that Tehran thinks its main adversary is backed by the
power of space aliens. It’s good to have friends in high places, even if they have
two heads.
Tennessee Firearms Act
The 2014 Tennessee Firearms Freedom Act is a thing of beauty. Not only
does it invalidate any federal gun law that infringes upon a resident’s
constitutional right to bear arms, but it also mandate criminal penalties
against anyone attempting to enforce those federal laws.
A New Bill in Tennessee Could Nullify Federal Gun Control Laws and
Punish LEOs Who Try to Enforce Them - See more
In a press release, the Tennessee Firearms Association said:
The Firearms Freedom Act declares that the States speaking through the
US Constitution expressly prohibited the federal government from having
any regulatory authority over firearms inside the state of Tennessee, and
as such no federal firearms law in Tennessee is valid. These prohibitions
are most prominent in the wording of 2nd and 10th Amendments. The new
push will mandate criminal penalties for any federal or state official
attempting to enforce unconstitutional federal firearms laws within the
borders of Tennessee. It is also expected to authorize citizens to pursue
claims by expressly defining federal firearms laws as intentional civil rights
violations.
Asteroid Headed for Earth
There is more hype and scare rap being foisted out there by those who
would take information provided by scientific magazines. Here is the actual
TIME article in the science section.
A NASA spacecraft has spotted a “potentially hazardous” asteroid nearly
half a mile wide barreling in the general direction of Earth.
The asteroid, named “2013 YP139″, is very dark, 0.4 miles across, and
could come almost as close to the Earth as our moon, based on current
projections. The rock has earned NASA’s “potentially hazardous” distinction
due to its size and projected flight path.
But there’s no need to call Bruce Willis and the rest of the team from
“Armageddon” just yet. The asteroid is still 27 million miles away from
Earth, and won’t get here for another hundred years at least.
That being said, JPL has a central clearing house for all NEO reports.
Most NEO reports are being submitted by amateurs with some impressive
equipment, like a Schmidt-Cassegrain scope of 12” or more. The digital
photos of the same sector of space are recorded over a period of clear sky
time. The stars and planets are deleted, and what is left are the points of
light that are moving. If that point of light can be determined to be moving
in our direction, it is reported and numbered, beginning with the year of its
discovery.
Every day, 100’s of particles strike Earth. Sometimes, auto-sized chunks
strike the atmosphere and explode. Every few years we have one reach
near the ground and cause some destruction. Every million years, an
extinction level event collision occurs. The latter may be able to be
avoided, if we have enough warning.
The United Nations tried to lead international efforts to create plans to
defend the Earth from asteroids that pose a collision risk. The UN’s Action
Team on Near Earth Objects is to work with space agencies around the
world to draw up potential missions in response to asteroid threats.
The goal was originally to establish a global network to provide an early
warning system for any near earth objects that may pose a risk to the
Earth. The Team set out in a draft resolution and accompanying report at a
meeting of the UN’s Fourth Committee of the General Assembly. As far as
I know, the General Assembly tried to vote on something in November of
last year, but the major financial backers were looking more for a way to
tax countries for a fund that would develop better Earth-to-space weaponry.
It sounds to be like the UN opened new possibilities for deception and
global finance.
Missions to deflect an asteroid are likely to be launched years in advance
of a potential impact to gently push any threats off course. Experts believe
missions that use rockets, solar sails or gravity tractors to change an
asteroid's orbit as the most likely solutions. Missions that attempt to
destroy an asteroid, such as those used in the film Armageddon and Deep
Impact, are less likely due to the risk posed by the resultant debris. In
classic crisis management fashion, the UN meeting comes eight months
after a 55 feet wide meteor exploded high in the sky above Chelyabinsk,
Russia, creating widespread damage.
The meteor, which the news media says had not been previously detected,
exploded with the force of more than 30 Hiroshima nuclear bombs high in
the atmosphere. Remember, it is not easy to detect a rocky NEO, because
they do not emit or reflect much light unless the observer is perfectly
positioned to see the reflection. Add to that the fact that only amateurs are
looking for them, and they process for spotting small rocks is extremely
precise, and you have a recipe for a surprise.
Astronomers estimate that there are more than one million asteroids that
are in a near Earth orbit around the sun.
There are currently just 10,000 asteroids being tracked by Nasa’s Near
Earth Object Program.
Professor Richard Crowther, former chair of the UN Working Group on
Near Earth Objects and head of the UK space delegation to the UN, said
the steps taken by the UN would lead to greater global cooperation on how
to tackle asteroids.
He said: “If you are trying to change the orbit of an asteroid so that it
misses the Earth, there are not just technical considerations that need to
have been rehearsed but also political ones.
“Which way would you deflect it and what would happen if it did not deflect
enough? Would you deflect it over areas where there were least population
or least infrastructure.
“Then there is the question of who has the authority to act on behalf of
humanity.
“The recommendations put before the UN General Assembly will see the
establishment of a network to identify asteroids and work out if they are
likely to hit the Earth.
“There is also a framework to form a collection of space agencies that will
work collectively to come up with mission to deflect or mitigate a potential
impact identified by the warning network.
“These will probably not be formal UN entities but the UN would probably
try their best to have oversight.”
It is a little like you demanding to have oversite on a new skyscraper that
happens to be under construction on your city block. If you’re not paying
for it, you’re not going to be involved in oversite, no matter how much you
complain about the appearance. A very similar demand was made about
HAARP by civilians who are aware of the potential hazard of an
ionospheric heater capable of steering weather patterns or triggering an
Earthquake. Cry all you want, and they are never going to let you inside
that government fence.
Scientists have found that the Chelyabinsk meteor broke off a much
larger asteroid that is in orbit around the sun and have not ruled out that
other debris from the same source could also be on a collision course with
the Earth. That little meteor caused 1,000 injuries when it exploded high in
the Earth’s atmosphere. Had it exploded at a lower altitude or over a more
densely populated area, then the destruction could have been far worse.
The UN endorsement of international collaboration to tackle such threats in
the future came as the Association of Space Explorers, an organization
formed of former astronauts, gathered for a conference to discuss the
threat posed by asteroids.
You can see how much funding and actual support they get, because they
first took a series of recommendations for how the world could tackle the
threat posed by near Earth asteroids to the UN in 2007. Here we are, 7
years later and nothing significant has been done except a couple of good
movies.
At a meeting last week at the American Museum of Natural History in New
York members of the ASE spoke about the importance of international
collaboration. They also promoted the launch of a new $450 million
private space-based telescope designed to spot asteroids approaching.
The B612 Foundation, co-founded by former Apollo astronaut Russel
Schweichart, is raising money for the space telescope – called Sentinel –
that they aim to launch in 2017.
Thomas Jones, a former Nasa astronaut and member of the ASE, said:
“We’ve all been up in orbit and seen impact craters around the globe as we
have circled our planet.
“Asteroid impacts have dramatically altered the course of life on Earth and
a rogue asteroid will certainly strike Earth, posing a global threat to human
life and society.
“Search efforts to date have discovered scarcely 1% of potentially
hazardous near-Earth objects, and current telescopes were unable to warn
us of the February 2013 Chelyabinsk impact.
“This leaves 99% of the objects big enough to level a major metropolitan
area – undiscovered.”
The recommendations put before the UN's General Assembly by the UN’s
Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space set out the need to
establish an “International Asteroid Warning Group” – a network of
telescopes and astronomers working together to identity, map and predict
the path of asteroids.
A “Space Missions Planning Advisory Group” would also see national
space agencies to prepare technology and ensure plans are in place for
missions to deflect an asteroid if necessary. Mr Jones added: “The
planning that group does will then be available to the world’s space
agencies to actually deflect a rogue object.
“UN Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space is going to monitor
detections and help plan a deflection campaign if that is necessary.”
There are a number of asteroids that are currently deemed to pose a
potential risk to the Earth in the future. Earlier this month scientists said
they had identified a 1,345 feet wide asteroid that could pass close
enough to risk hitting the Earth in 2032.
Professor Crowther said: “There are a number of characteristic asteroids
that may come to us and we need to look at what missions are most
appropriate.
“We need to look at the technology we would need to deliver those
missions, such as accurate homing, interception and propulsion, and how
long it will take to build these up.
“It means when you actually need to use them in anger, you have some
confidence that they will work. It will inform the technology road maps of the
space agencies.
"There is no single country that has all the technology required to do this
end it is much easier to work together to have an international
collaboration.”
Still, the technology capable of detection and that of actually doing
something about a chunk much bigger than a city bus would require
enough lifting and blasting power to win a war in a single day. Who would
you trust with such power? The UN? Yeah, didn’t think so.
North Carolina Taxes EV’s
Owners of the nearly 1,600 all-electric vehicles registered in North Carolina and
newly-registered all-electrics will be required to pay a $100 annual fee starting this
month.
The fee is in addition to other required registration fees.
Registration renewals due during January are expected to affect the first 146
vehicles in this group.
Officials with the N.C. Department of Transportation said that owners of allelectric vehicles are being billed because they do not otherwise pay taxes for road
use and maintenance. The owners of vehicles fueled by gasoline pay for road
upkeep through gas taxes metered at each fill-up.
According to legislation passed by the N.C. General Assembly in July, owners of
“a plug-in electric vehicle that is not a low-speed vehicle and that does not rely on
a nonelectric source of power” are required to pay the new fee when they are titled
and registered or renewing their registration.
Owners of hybrid vehicles that use a combination of gasoline and electricity are
not required to pay the special fee.
On University Parkway in Winston-Salem, Modern Nissan sells the Nissan Leaf,
and Modern Chevrolet sells the Chevrolet Volt electric cars. The Leaf is an allelectric car and the Volt is an electric car that uses gas as a back-up.
Rob Fowler, the president of Modern Automotive Network, which owns both
dealerships, is surprised at North Carolina’s new annual fee given the fact that
there has been a national push in recent years to get people to buy electric cars.
People can still get a tax credit up to $7,500 for buying or leasing electric cars, and
some states offer additional tax credits.
But North Carolina “is adding a penalty,” Fowler said. “Although it’s a small one,
it still seems a little odd or out of step with the big picture of promoting electric
vehicles.”
Fowler said that electric cars are in a start-up phase in the country.
“The more we promote electric vehicles, the lower the cost will be for production
and the more infrastructure there will be for charging stations,” he said.
The N.C. Department of Transportation pulled the plug on four free charging
stations for electric vehicles at state rest areas in March 2013. The charging
stations were part of a pilot program. Two were in Alamance County and two were
in Johnston County.
The four charging stations were provided by Raleigh-based Praxis Technologies
Inc. through a grant from the N.C. Department of Commerce Green Business Fund
Program.
The NCDOT said that the charging stations were able to charge a vehicle in six to
seven hours.
Between Dec. 14, 2011 and Feb. 12, 2013, 146 vehicles were charged at the
stations for a total of 117 hours. The total cost of the power used was $44 (on
average 31 cents per user).
Steve Abbott, a spokesman for the NCDOT, said that in June 2012 the General
Assembly passed a law directing the NCDOT to require “plug-in” drivers to pay
for electricity they consumed at rest stops.
“We couldn’t come up with a way to do that, so they took the machines down,”
Abbott said.
fdaniel@wsjournal.com
(336)727-7366
Underground Nuclear Explosion At Crippled Japan Atomic Plant
Shocks The World
By DNA | January 3, 201487 Comments
An ominous edict issued from the Office of the President of
Russia today to all Ministries of the Russian Government ordering
that all “past, present and future” information relating to Japan’s
Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster now be rated at the highest
classification level “Of Special Importance” states that this condition
is “immediately and urgently needed” due to a series of underground
nuclear explosions occurring at this crippled atomic plant on 31
December as confirmed by the Ministry of Defense (MoD).
“Of Special Importance” is Russia’s highest classification level and
refers to information which, if released, would cause damage to the
entire Russian Federation.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was a catastrophic failure at
the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant on 11 March 2011. The failure
occurred when the plant was hit by a tsunami triggered by the 9.0
magnitude Tōhoku earthquake.
The plant began releasing substantial amounts of radioactive materials
beginning on 12 March 2011 becoming the largest nuclear incident since
the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the second (with Chernobyl) to measure
at the highest Level 7 on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES).
This is what has been hyped out there:
“According to this report, MoD “assests” associated with the Red
Banner Pacific Fleet detected two “low-level” underground atomic
explosions occurring in the Fukushima disaster zone on 31
December, the first measuring 5.1 magnitude in intensity, followed by
a smaller 3.6 magnitude explosion moments later.”
The truth is more consistent with uncontained fissile material:
Two shallow earthquakes have struck eastern Japan near the Fukushima
nuclear disaster site.
A 5.1 magnitude earthquake was recorded 80km southwest of Fukushima
and was shortly followed by a 3.6 magnitude earthquake in the same area,
the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
The tremor was 9.9km deep, the US Geological Survey said, adding it took
place 13km North West of Takahagi.
There were no reports of any damage but it was strong enough to shake
high-rise buildings in the capital, AFP reported.
UPI also said that part of the Joban Expressway was briefly closed to
undertake safety checks. The earthquake was felt in Miyagi, Fukushima
and Tokyo.
Tokyo Electric Power, which is involved in the Fukushima clean-up, said
the earthquake had not affected the Fukushima plant, where crews are
currently working to remove radioactive waste spilled during the 2011
Tohoku earthquake.
Earlier in December, the Ministry of Environment announced that the
government-funded $35bn clean-up operation will take two to three years
longer than originally forecast, missing the March 2014 deadline.
While measures are being taken to ensure a similar disaster cannot
happen again, experts recently warned that a similar earthquake could take
place. The area is very geologically active. I visited this plant in 2002 and
was told the same thing when I was there. They had detectible
earthquakes all the time, and the locals worried about having a nuclear
facility of that size and power right there on the fault line. “Not so good,”
they would tell me.
An international team of experts analysed the fault line that caused the
earthquake and tsunami and said the intensity of it was the result of a
number of factors – the fault line was extremely thin and the clay deposits
were made of extremely fine sediment, meaning the rock slipped easily
The MoD further reports that the 5.1 magnitude event corresponds to the
energy equivalent in megatons of TNT of 0.0005, while the 3.6 magnitude
event equals 0.0000005.
As a comparison, the MoD states that the atomic bomb dropped on
Hiroshima in 1945 by the United States released the equivalent of 16
Kilotons = 0.016 megatons of TNT, about the energy equivalent of a
magnitude 6 earthquake, and the largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated
was the Tsar bomb, a device exploded by the Soviet Union on 30 October
1961, with an energy equivalent of about 50 megatons of TNT.
Important to note, this report continues, was that the architect of Fukushima
Daiichi Reactor 3, Uehara Haruo, warned on 17 November 2011 warned
that a “China Syndrome” (aka: Hydrovolcanic Explosion) was “inevitable”
due to the melted atomic fuel that had escaped the container vessel and
was now burning through the earth.
The MoD further reports that evidence that these underground nuclear
explosions were about to occur began after mysterious steam plumes were
first spotted on 19 December for a short period of time, then again on 24,
25, 27 D
Most curious to note, this report continues, is that the United States
appears to have had a more advanced notice of these underground nuclear
explosions as evidenced by their purchase earlier this month (6 December)
of 14 million doses of potassium iodide, the compound that protects the
body from radioactive poisoning in the aftermath of severe nuclear
accidents, to be delivered before the beginning of February 2014.
New reports are coming from the United States western coastal areas
detailing ocean lifestocks are leaving the area in high numbers due to
Fukushima radiation. They are either dead, or they have migrated to other
habitats. You should know that migratory sea life is far up the food chain.
As you go higher and higher up the food chain, the amount of nuclear
material will increase in concentration. That is to say, when a tuna eats
food that is as radioactive as the surrounding water, the flesh of the tuna is
packed with tens of thousands of times the radiation as an individual
plankton or krill. When you eat that fish, your body will absorb that
material, and when it decays in your body the damage will occur.
As to the American people being allowed to know the full and horrific mass
death event now unfolding around them, this report warns, is not be as the
Obama regime has, in effect, ordered all of their mainstream news media
organs not to report it, and as recently confirmed by former MSNBC
host Cenk Uygur who was told not to warn the public about the danger
posed by the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant during his time as a
host on the cable network.
World experts in nuclear material handling are warning that as Fukushima
pollution spreads all over Earth (as large amounts of fish, seaweeds, and
everything in ocean has been already been polluted, and these products
are the main danger for mankind as they can end up being eaten by people
on a massive scale) this report warns that Putin’s order to classify all
information relating to this nuclear mass death event “Of Special
Importance” is vital to protect the economic and social stability interests of
the Russian Federation as this global catastrophe continues to worsen by
the day.
The Great West Virginia River Caper
A detailed synopsis of Freedom Industry’s bankruptcy filed Friday, Jan. 17,
after poisoning 100,000 houses and 300,000 people in West Virginia with
its mystery chemical, was presented by MSNBC late Friday.
“The company at the center of the West Virginia water crisis appears to be
dodging lawsuits and creditors,” says MSNBC’s Chris Hayes.
Only eight days after Freedom Industries, a distributor for the Koch
brothers, was found to have caused the water crisis, it has filed Chapter 11
Bankrupcy.
Freedom has operated with almost no government oversight and subject to
almost no state and local monitoring.
There is, however, much more to this story in the state that has been a
model of corporatism for the rest of the nation, as reporter Bob Kincaid
told Hayes Friday in the report below.
One thing that remains unmentioned in relation to the West
Virginia chemical leak, absent from any advisory or warning, is what
toxicologists, such as Dr. Riki Ott, repeatedly told Gulf Coast residents after
the 2010 BO Gulf oil catastrophe. That is:
“If you can smell the poison, you are being poisoned.”
The other thing that too many Gulf Coast survivors learned the hard way is,
that no amount of poison is “safe.”
Finally, an advisory was issued Friday about children and the water crisis.
Dr. Raheel Khan, president of the West Virginia chapter of the American
Academy of Pediatrics, has stated that younger children may also be more
at risk.
A report published Friday said children should only drink bottled water, but
many question if that is enough to protect the young from being poisoned.
West Virginians first learned about the water crisis on January 9, when
authorities warned 300,000 people living in nine West Virginia counties
tonot use tap water or do anything with it except flush their toilets with it.
Over 7,000 gallons of a chemical, known as “Crude MCHM,” had leaked
from a Freedom Industry storage tank into the Elk River — the key water
supply source for the area.
A strong licorice odor was a signal that achemical was present. Officials
warned they could not say the water was safe.
Last weekend, state health officials said they had guidance from the
Centers For Disease Control.
Monday, officials began lifting the water ban in some areas. As that
happened, the number of residents having to go to emergency rooms
surged.
Water continues injuring and/or making people sick, some with even short
exposure, including people in areas where the water ban was lifted and
despite their flushing home water systems as officials directed.
Sunday, the Charleston Gazette reported one of Freedom Industries’ wellconnected executives, Carl Lemley Kennedy II, has two prior felonies. In
2005, he was charged with tax evasion and failure to pay the government
Freedom employees’ tax withholdings while he was the company’s
accountant from 2000 to 2003. The other felony came in 1987, for selling
cocaine.
The Information Age Just got Smaller
By Electricity, Researchers Switch the Magnetic State and Electric
Resistance of a Single Molecule on and off/Blueprint for Novel, Compact
Storage Media
One bit of digital information stored on a hard disk currently consists of
about 3 million magnetic atoms. Researchers from Karlsruhe, Strasbourg,
and Japan have now developed a magnetic memory with one bit per
molecule. By an electric pulse, the metal-organic molecule can be switched
reliably between a conductive, magnetic state and a low-conductive, nonmagnetic state. This novel correlation for molecules is now reported in the
Nature Communications journal.
Using a scanning tunneling microscope tip, defined electricity pulses were
applied to the molecule, which switches between different magnetic states.
“The superparamagnetic effect prevents smaller bit sizes from being
reached in a hard disk,“ explains Toshio Miyamachi, first author of the
study and researcher at the Center for Functional Nanostructures (CFN) of
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). This superparamagnetic effect
implies that magnetic memory crystals are increasingly susceptible to
thermal switching with decreasing size. Consequently, information may
soon be lost. “We chose another approach and placed a single magnetic
iron atom in the center of an organic molecule consisting of 51 atoms. The
organic shell protects the information stored in the central atom.”
Apart from the ultimate density of one bit per molecule, this type of memory
based on so-called spin crossover molecules also has the advantage of the
writing process being reliable and purely electric. “Using a scanning
tunneling microscope, we applied defined electricity pulses to the
nanometer-sized molecule,” adds Wulf Wulfhe-kel, head of the research
group at KIT’s Physikalisches Institut. “This reproducibly changes not only
the magnetic state of the iron, but also the electric properties of the
molecule.” Hence, the two magnetic configurations lead to varying
conductances, such that the magnetic state of the molecule can be
determined easily by a simple resistance measurement.
The present study reports the fundamentals and shows the principle
feasibility and advantages of memories consisting of spin crossover
molecules. “These memristive and spintronic properties combined in a
molecule will open up a new field of research,” the researchers are
convinced. Memristors are memories that store information in the form of
resistance variations. Spintronics uses the magnetic spin of individual
particles for information processing. Work was carried out at the
laboratories of the Center for Functional Nanostructures (CFN) of KIT, the
Institut de Physique et Chimie des Matériaux (IPCMS) in Strasbourg, the
SOLEIL synchrotron in Paris, and the Chiba University, Japan.
Cyberdyne Systems Takes another Quantum Leap
Engineers from the University of Illinois have developed a new line of
miniature, swimming bio-bots – the first class of synthetic structures
capable of traveling through viscous biological fluids on their own.
Their bio-hybrid machines, which are detailed in the January 17 edition of
the journal Nature Communications, can swim like sperm and are modeled
after flagella, or single-celled creatures that have long tails, the researchers
explained in a statement.
“Micro-organisms have a whole world that we only glimpse through the
microscope,” said lead investigator Taher Saif, a mechanical science and
engineering professor at the university. “This is the first time that an
engineered system has reached this underworld.”
Saif and his colleagues began by creating the body of this bio-bot using a
flexible polymer, and then they cultured heart cells near the junction of its
head and tail. Those cells self-aligned and synchronized to beat together,
sending a wave down the machines’ tails and propelling them forward, they
explained.
According to the university, this self-organization is “a remarkable emergent
phenomenon” and while they do not fully understand exactly how the cells
on the flexible polymer tail are able to communicate with one-another, they
have to beat together in the correct direction in order for movement to
occur in the tail.
Saif explained that the bio-bots require “the minimal amount of engineering
– just a head and a wire.” After that, the cells are introduced and begin
interacting with the structure so that it can become functional. His team
also built machines with two tails, which are capable of swimming even
more quickly.
Creating aquatic bio-bots with multiple tails also makes it possible for them
to navigate, the researchers said. They predict that future versions of these
machines could be constructed in order to detect certain chemicals, sense
light, or be instructed to travel towards a specific target for environmental or
medical purposes.
“The long-term vision is simple,” explained Saif, who is also part of the
university’s Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology.
“Could we make elementary structures and seed them with stem cells that
would differentiate into smart structures to deliver drugs, perform minimally
invasive surgery or target cancer?”
Saif was joined on the project by fellow University of Illinois researchers
Brian J. Williams and Sandeep V. Anand, as well as Arizona State
University’s Jagannathan Rajagopalan. Their work was completed as part
of Emergent Behaviors in Integrated Cellular Systems (EBICS), a National
Science Foundation-funded Science and Technology Center dedicated to
building living, multi-cellular machines to solve real world problems.
“The most intriguing aspect of this work is that it demonstrates the
capability to use computational modeling in conjunction with biological
design to optimize performance, or design entirely different types of
swimming bio-bots,” said EBICS director Roger Kamm, a professor of
biological and mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT). “This opens the field up to a tremendous diversity of
possibilities. Truly an exciting advance.”
See an animation of the bio-bots in motion and a video of a free-swimming
bot.
This grant was made to MIT from the Advanced Research Projects
Agency. What a great source of money for universities. Well, I contacted
my source and learned that it happens to be a front agency for DARPA. I
obtained a copy of the DARPA fiscal budget report containing billions of
taxpayer dollars being pumped into projects let out to lots of university and
government contract labs. What I found in this report is enough to occupy
a month of radio programs. The following are direct quotes from the report.
The mission statement goes like this:
Mission Description:
(U) The Defense Research Sciences Program Element is budgeted in the
Basic Research Budget Activity because it provides the technical
foundation for long-term National Security enhancement through the
discovery of new phenomena and the exploration of the potential of such
phenomena for Defense applications. It supports the scientific study and
experimentation that is the basis for more advanced knowledge and
understanding in information, electronic, biological and materials sciences.
(U) The Bio/Info/Micro Sciences project will explore and develop potential
technological breakthroughs that exist at the intersection of biology,
information technology and micro/physical systems to exploit advances and
leverage fundamental discoveries for the development of new technologies,
techniques and systems of interest to the DoD. The project will apply
information and physical sciences to discover properties of biological
systems that cross multiple length scales of biological architecture and
function, from the molecular and genetic level through cellular, tissue,
organ, and whole organisms’ levels. Key focus areas include
multidisciplinary programs in BioComputational Systems; Simulation of BioMolecular Microsystems; Bio Futures; Biological Adaptation, Assembly, and
Manufacturing; Nanostructure in Biology; and Brain Machine Interface.
This is the definition for the bio-mechanical side of Transhumanism. This is
a multi-billion annual business not to find cures for cancer. That is the
article you get fed through the main stream media and YouTube. The
money trail leads directly to National Defense, or should we just call it what
it is. Government Defense. Defense against whom? Well, wouldn’t you
like to know? BY the way, airmen, soldiers, sailors, and marines are no
longer referred to in that manner. They are now called warfighters.
Going back to the DARPA Document:
The Electronic Sciences project explores and demonstrates electronic and
optoelectronic devices, circuits and processing concepts that will provide:
(1) new technical options for meeting the information gathering,
transmission and processing required to maintain near-real time knowledge
of the enemy and the ability to communicate decisions based on that
knowledge to all forces in near-real time; and
(2) provide new means for achieving substantial increases in performance
and cost reduction of military systems providing these capabilities.
By the way, the funding goes into hundreds of high-tech areas. You know
the Google chip you have heard about from various sources? It is an
interface. No, it doesn’t connect the liver to the brain. That was done
already by the designer. This is something much more interesting.
DARPA calls it the The Brain Machine Interface program will create new
technologies for augmenting human performance through the ability to
access neural codes in the brain in real time and integrate them into
peripheral device or system operations. This will require neuroscience and
technology, significant computational efforts, and new material design and
implementation. Closed-loop control of peripheral devices using brain
signals will be examined. Examination of different brain regions will be
accomplished in order to generate coded patterns to control peripheral
devices and robotics. Techniques will be examined to extract these signals
non-invasively.
Using brain signals to control remote devices by extracting those signals
non-invasively means that they don’t have to plug you in like NEO, they just
dial you up. What do you bet it is not a one-way connection?
Well, maybe this will help. More, from the DARPA report:
The Computer Exploitation and Human Collaboration program will develop
information processing technologies for users to interact with computers in
an intuitive fashion, and enable collaborations as well as intelligent
exchange of information in a seamless manner. Architectures for nomadic
software, redesign of classical computer operating systems and secure
exchange of information over insecure channels are some of the technical
challenges in this area. Database currency and management of
dynamically changing worldviews are the important areas of research in
pervasive computing.
This program will explore new man-machine interaction paradigms, based
on implicit interaction where the human’s intent and capability is inferred
and used to drive the interaction. Research will address information
overloading and simplifying user interfaces to effectively enhance
warfighter performance by providing concise salient information awareness.
The creation of powerful multi-agent systems and tools for effective
decision-making and analysis in complex multi-participant environments will
also be addressed.
The technologies developed will provide radically new analysis of
emergent collaborative and competitive behavior and will push the
envelope of “deep” reasoning in decision making by systematically
incorporating the interaction and intent. High-performance, user-centered,
multimodal interfaces, which will be capable of interpreting users’
combined natural communication and activity patterns, will also be
developed. Overall, the program will provide vastly expanded power and
improved utility, robustness and efficiency of interaction for a wide range of
users, tasks and environments.
When Police are too Expensive
This may be the greatest protection racket of them all. (Reuters) - A drive
by some American cities to cut costly police retirement benefits has led to
an extraordinary face-off between local politicians and the law enforcement
officers who work for them.
In Costa Mesa, California, lawmaker Jim Righeimer says he was a target of
intimidation because he sought to curb police pensions. In a lawsuit in
November, Righeimer accused the Costa Mesa police union and a law firm
that once represented them, of forcing him to undergo a sobriety test (he
passed) after driving home from a bar in August 2012.
That followed a call to 911 by private detective Chris Lanzillo, who worked
for the police union and the law firm that represented it, according to the
suit. Lanzillo is also named as a defendant, accused of following Righeimer
home from the bar.
Disputes such as these have intensified as Detroit and two California cities,
Stockton and San Bernardino, have gone bankrupt in the past two years.
Police pension costs were a major factor in the financial troubles facing all
three.
Now large cities, including San Jose and San Diego, say they have no
choice but to alter pension agreements lest they end up in bankruptcy too.
The suit by lawmaker Righeimer also said that an FBI raid of the law firm
last October uncovered evidence that an electronic tracking device had
been attached to the underside of the car driven by another lawmaker,
Steve Mensinger, one of Righeimer's allies in the pension fight.
"What we are alleging is a conspiracy to gather information against political
opponents", said John Manly, a lawyer representing Righeimer and
Mensinger.
Calls to Lanzillo's lawyers went unanswered. Lanzillo is not listed in any
public directory.
The FBI confirmed that some of its agents were present at the raid, but
referred all other questions to the Orange County district attorney, which
applied for the search warrant. Robert Mestman, senior deputy district
attorney, said: "I cannot comment. It is a pending investigation."
The police union, the Costa Mesa Police Association, denies any
knowledge of the purported tactics. It fired the law firm, Lackie, Dammeier,
McGill & Ethir, after allegations of the harassment first surfaced. Several
calls to the lawyer representing the firm, which is in the process of being
wound down, went unanswered.
'IN A DIFFERENT AGE'
For many city and county governments, police are by far their largest single
cost. For example, in the California city of Desert Hot Springs, which is
teetering on bankruptcy, 70 percent of the budget is spent on police
salaries and pensions.
"There was a time when no politician would dare to cut back on public
safety, let alone their pensions," said David Harris, a law professor at the
University of Pittsburgh and a specialist in police and police behavior. "Now
we are in a different age."
Police union officials claim there is a push by conservative political
operatives to take away promised pensions from public servants who do a
physically demanding and dangerous jobs, and that police officers are
being forced to pay for officials' incompetent management of city finances.
In Stockton, when then city manager Bob Deis warned in 2011 that police
layoffs might be necessary, the police union bought the house next to his
and immediately began noisy renovations.
"It's like being a party in a law case and the other side buys the house next
to yours," said Deis, who retired late last year. He and his wife sued with
allegations of intimidation, in a case that has since been settled. The noise
has stopped and the police union has agreed to sell the house within two
years.
The police union had also erected a giant billboard welcoming visitors to
the "2nd most dangerous city in California" with Deis's phone number on it.
The billboard has been taken down.
Kathryn Nance, president of the Stockton Police Officers' Association,
denied that the union ever tried to intimidate Deis. "Obviously that is his
opinion," Nance said. "His allegation is ridiculous, at best."
FLURRY OF PARKING TICKETS
There also have been allegations of intimidation by police in Cranston,
Rhode Island.
On January 9, Cranston Mayor Allan Fung announced that state police will
take over an investigation into a flurry of parking tickets issued in the wards
of two council members. The pair claim the tickets were issued as
retribution after they voted against a new contract for police that would
have given them a pay raise.
Fung announced that Police Chief Marco Palombo Jr. had been placed on
administrative leave while the Rhode Island state police investigate the
parking ticket allegations.
Fung said "new allegations" had emerged about the conduct of police that
was troubling, and that a number of police officers are under suspicion of
misconduct.
"The Cranston police were definitely sending us a message," said Paul H.
Archetto, one of the councilmen. "It's intimidation and an abuse of power."
Major Robert Ryan, a spokesman for the Cranston Police Department,
said: "The matter is under investigation, and pursuant to law enforcement's
bill of rights, no-one is going to comment on this."
Ryan said the police chief was unavailable for comment.
'GET DIRTY'
Police union leaders say their members are being victimized by some local
politicians.
"They are using scare tactics by telling the public that cities are going broke
because of public pensions," said Chuck Canterbury, the national president
of the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents more than 325,000
officers.
"Most police officers contributed every month to their pensions. The cities in
trouble did not do the same," Canterbury said. "When the economy got bad
and the investment returns did not live up to the standard, all of a sudden
they say it was the unions that got greedy."
Ron DeLord, a former Texas policeman and consultant to police unions in
the United States and abroad said the view of many rank-and-file officers is
that they are up against forces who do not wish to negotiate.
In 2008 DeLord told officers in American Police Beat Magazine to "get dirty
and fight to win," by getting personal with reformist council members and to
"bloody their noses."
DeLord told Reuters last month that he had learnt to be more collaborative
since 2008, but said of the "get dirty" message: "I wrote it. I believe it."