And Now… Texas and U.S. Facing Growing Threat of Domestic IEDs; Suspend Posse Comitatus?
August 4th, 2012Via: Houston Chronicle:
Improvised explosive devices have claimed the lives and limbs of thousands of American soldiers across Iraq and Afghanistan.
And now officials say the devilish devices are posing a growing threat across Texas and the United States.
The accused shooter in the Aurora, Colo., movie theater massacre, James Holmes, allegedly deployed IEDs in his apartment, prompting federal law enforcement agencies to look into possible links to domestic or foreign-based terrorism.
The incident follows disrupted IED attacks in 2010 — a car bomb disarmed in New York City’s Times Square and explosives detected in ink cartridges aboard two U.S.-bound commercial cargo planes.
And with Mexican drug cartels using car bombs in cities bordering Texas, officials along the southwest border are increasingly concerned about ready-to-go devices being smuggled into the United States.
“The domestic IED threat from both homegrown terrorists and global threat networks is real and presents a significant security challenge for the United States and our international partners,” Army Lt. Gen. Michael Barbero, director of the Pentagon’s so-called Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, warned Congress in classified testimony in mid-July.
Terrorists remain committed to deploying IEDs “in traditional as well as new and creative ways” because the devices remain “a cheap and easily accessible means to achieve high visibility effect,” Barbero says.
The growing concern is prompting urgent cooperation between U.S. military experts who are familiar with the devices and civilian law enforcement officers who are not.
But legal restrictions on the activities of U.S. armed forces are slowing crucial collaboration, insiders complain. Federal laws dating back to the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 limit the use of U.S. armed forces in domestic law enforcement and training — impediments some members of Congress are pressing to change.
The Pentagon’s specialized $1.9 billion-a-year IED organization has “saved many servicemen’s lives by teaching lessons learned in blood on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan,” report Reps. Peter King, R-N.Y., Daniel Lungren, R-Calif., and Michael McCaul, R-Austin, leaders of the House Committee on Homeland Security.
“Their hard-won knowledge should now be shared with American lawmen facing these same deadly threats at home,” the lawmakers add.
“To me it’s crazy that the guy who is the expert on IEDs overseas can’t coordinate with the Texas Rangers,” emphasizes McCaul, a former counterterrorism official with the Justice Department. “The military is unable to coordinate with state and local law enforcement, leaving a gaping hole in our security.”
Research Credit: HPLovecraft666
Portland: FBI Raids Homes Looking for ‘Anti-Government or Anarchist Literature’
August 3rd, 2012Via: KGW:
Left behind at one of the homes was a search warrant affidavit that said agents were looking for anti-government or anarchist literature or material; black clothing, backpacks, face coverings and shoes; green, red, black, grey or blue/purple paint; sticks and flags carried during the commission of the offenses and material for making flags; computers, cell phones and electronic storage media, and flares or similar incendiaries, the Oregonian reported.
More: Indybay
Research Credit: TR, RP
‘And who wouldn’t want to be at the forefront of that?’
August 3rd, 2012Business is booming for terminator drone pilots.
Via: Guardian:
The electronic cavern is dark, save for the glow of consoles, and Lt Col Mike Weaver surveys his apprentice warriors with satisfaction as they project American might halfway around the world. One crew – two young men in flight suits seated before half a dozen screens – prepares to fire missiles from a remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) at a boatload of suspected insurgents in Afghanistan. Another crew circles a suspicious bulge by a roadside in Iraq and feeds co-ordinates to ground troops. Another tracks what appears to be a vehicle in Yemen.
“There’s not a lot of time for emotion here. There’s a war going on and we have a job to do,” says Weaver, a veteran F15 fighter pilot.
The only sound is the whirr from multiple computers, their entrails exposed, and the occasional murmur from a pilot into an earpiece.
“I’ve flown manned aircraft and believe me this, in terms of combat, is more up close and personal.”
Weaver is speaking from Holloman air force base in New Mexico, about 8,000 miles from the scenes depicted on the screens, but he and the crews embody not only the “war on terror” but the future of US military force.
…
An increasing number of students are teenagers straight from high school. Others are veteran flyers of fighters, bombers and cargo planes who have been reassigned or are here by choice because of the dwindling number of available cockpits. “F16 pilots used to say they were coming from a Ferrari to a Ford Festiva but you hear less of that now,” says Chris, a sensory operator instructor.
“A lot of the higher-up ranks are here because they know this is the future. And who wouldn’t want to be at the forefront of that?” He indicated a Predator on a runway.
Full Disk Encryption on Solid State Drives
August 3rd, 2012I’m planning a system build and I want to use a SSD this time. TrueCrypt advises against using their crypto system with SSDs because SSDs use wear leveling routines to prolong the life of the memory modules. The problem is that, theoretically, the drive could write multiple versions of information, some of which could be recovered.
But… (And here’s the question for you guys who know more about this than me)
If I do a clean OS install on the SSD and then do full disk encryption on the (single volume) drive, wouldn’t that prevent the possibility of data leaks due to wear leveling?
Knight Capital Group Down 60% Intraday
August 2nd, 2012Via: Los Angeles Times:
Knight Capital Group, a major brokerage, said it lost $440 million in a trading glitch that rattled the stock market and renewed concerns over computerized trading on Wall Street.
The Jersey City, N.J.-based firm said the pre-tax loss left its capital base “severely impacted.”
Knight pinned the technology malfunction on newly installed software that sent “numerous erroneous orders” into the stock market on Wednesday.
The brokerage said Thursday morning it removed the software from its systems and that none of its clients were affected.
“Although the company’s capital base has been severely impacted, the company’s broker-dealer subsidiaries are in full compliance with their net capital requirements,” the firm said in a statement.
On Wednesday, Knight had redirected clients elsewhere while it reviewed the problem.
“Knight will continue its trading and market making activities at the commencement of trading today,” the firm said Thursday. “The company is actively pursuing its strategic and financing alternatives to strengthen its capital base.”
The New York Stock Exchange, where Knight’s erroneous trades were routed, identified irregular trading in 148 stocks shortly after the opening bell on Wednesday. The exchange wound up undoing some trades in six firms’ stocks.
The Unemployment Rate Is a Farce
August 2nd, 2012Via: Breakout:
It is widely regarded as the most important barometer of them all, and fittingly, the monthly jobs report gets more attention and more coverage than almost all other economic data combined. Unfortunately, it is also broken.
That’s right. For all its stature, the payroll report (which will be released Friday) has a major flaw — and it’s a doozy. The headline unemployment rate is essentially a bunch of bunk.
The current 8.2% figure you hear about so often is wildly inaccurate and doesn’t fairly reflect the true state of the nation’s labor force. It’s a deficiency that Wall Street-types have long adjusted for with a wink-wink sort of acceptance, knowing full well that the so-called “U-3” headline number is actually a quagmire of exclusions and adjustments that under-reports the real situation by as much as 50%.
“It’s simply a matter of Congress saying, ‘We’re not going to use this number. We’re going to use the other numbers that you’ve calculated that we think are more representative of what the unemployment situation really looks like in this country,'” says Congressman Duncan Hunter in the attached video. He points out that changing the calculation wouldn’t cost a thing, since the data is already available.
Congressional Probe Reveals Cover-Up of “Auschwitz-Like” Conditions at U.S.-Funded Afghan Hospital
August 2nd, 2012Via: Democracy Now:
A congressional investigation has revealed a top U.S. general in Afghanistan sought to stall an investigation into abuse at a U.S.-funded hospital in Kabul that kept patients in “Auschwitz-like” conditions. Army whistleblowers revealed photographs taken in 2010, which show severely neglected, starving patients at Dawood Hospital, considered the crown jewel of the Afghan medical system where the country’s military personnel are treated. The photos show severely emaciated patients, some suffering from gangrene and maggot-infested wounds. The general accused of the cover-up is Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, one of the nation’s highest-ranking commanders in Afghanistan, who served as the commander of the $11.2-billion-a-year Afghan training program. We speak to Michael Hastings, contributing editor at Rolling Stone magazine and a reporter for BuzzFeed, which has been following the story closely.
Anaheim’s Paramilitary Police
August 2nd, 2012Most of the corporate media coverage of the situation in Anaheim shows pretty normal looking riot police, but individuals have posted many images of personnel (I assume Anaheim PD) in military dress.
Photo by Killuminatii:
And what branch of the military is this guy from?
More:
NYT Photos Don’t Do Justice to Police Presence at Anaheim Protests
Anaheim Police Dressed in ACU’s Stop Protest Near Disneyland
Related: Magic Kingdom: Anaheim Riot Police Block Protesters from Disneyland
Research Credit: TR
Body Blow to New Zealand: Pacific Fibre Dead
August 2nd, 2012
I honestly thought we were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.
It turned out to be the train.
Telecom wins again, the rest of New Zealand loses.
Via: interest.co.nz:
A Kiwi project to lay another undersea internet cable between New Zealand, Australia and the United States was scuppered by American concerns about Chinese investment in the venture and fears that might allow for Chinese espionage.
Pacific Fibre director Rod Drury told interest.co.nz it was made “very clear” by American authorities they would not permit significant Chinese investment in the US$400 million 13,000 km fibre-optic cable linking Auckland, Sydney and Los Angeles.
The next logical step after allowing a Chinese stake in the venture was demands for the use of Chinese equipment and technology in the cable, which would not have been allowed by the US government.
The project had been on track “several times” but ultimately fell through. Pacific Fibre had been caught in the middle of “real political issues” between the US and China, Drury said.
—
Shock at Cancelled $400m Cable Plan
Via: New Zealand Herald:
Pacific Fibre’s cancellation of plans for the country’s second international fibre cable has been labelled “devastating news” for internet competition.
Pacific Fibre hoped to build a 12,950km fibre cable between Auckland, Sydney and Los Angeles at an estimated cost of $400 million but announced yesterday it had failed to raise enough capital for the project.
…
Pacific Fibre hoped to rival the Southern Cross Cable Network’s pipe, which is the only link transporting internet traffic in and out of New Zealand.
The second cable would have brought competition to the market and the price of international internet capacity down, Pacific Fibre argued.
This, it said, would allow internet companies to increase the monthly data caps they offer, so users could take advantage of the faster speeds of the Government’s $1.5 billion ultra-fast broadband network.
The UFB scheme aims to provide download speeds of 100 megabits per second to 75 per cent of New Zealand by the end of 2019.
Drury, Pacific Fibre’s co-founder, said the cost of New Zealand broadband made it hard to connect globally and it was “this market failure” the company had been looking to address.
“We still cannot see how the Government’s investment in UFB makes sense until the price of international bandwidth is greatly reduced,” Drury said.
Research Credit: harflimon
NREL: 200,000 GW of Solar Could be Installed; 4,000 TWh/a
August 2nd, 2012What if that lab had the funding equivalent of what the U.S. is spending on the war over a period of two or three days?
—Chart: The Cost of the War in Iraq vs. Spending on Solar Energy Research
Here’s another one for our herniating Woulda-Coulda-Shoulda file folders.
The consolation prizes were a decade plus of wars, financial collapse, an unblinking surveillance grid and a snarling police state… Now topped off with Hope and Change.
Have a nice day.
Via: PV Magazine:
According to a new study released by NREL, the technical potential of photovoltaics and concentrating solar power (CSP) in the U.S. amounts to just under 200,000 GW, which could generate around 399,700 TWh of energy annually.
Related:
U.S. Renewable Energy Technical Potentials: A GIS-Based Analysis
Afghanistan: U.S. Spends $20 Billion Per Year for Air Conditioning in Tents
