David Hambling - New Scientist
23 Jul, 2009
The Pentagon's enthusiasm for non-lethal crowd-control weapons appears to have stepped up a gear with its decision to develop a microwave pain-infliction system that can be fired from an aircraft.
The device is an extension of its controversial Active Denial System, which uses microwaves to heat the surface of the skin, creating a painful sensation without burning that strongly motivates the target to flee. The ADS was unveiled in 2001, but it has not been deployed owing to legal issues and safety fears.
Nevertheless, the Pentagon's Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD) in Quantico, Virginia, has now called for it to be upgraded. The US air force, whose radar technology the ADS is based on, is increasing its annual funding of the system from $2 million to $10 million.
The transmitting antenna on the current system is 2 metres across, produces a single beam of similar width and is steered mechanically, making it cumbersome. At the heart of the new weapon will be a compact airborne antenna, which will be steered electronically and be capable of generating multiple beams, each of which can be aimed while on the move.
The ADS has been dogged by controversy. Jürgen Altmann, a physicist at Dortmund University in Germany, showed that the microwave beams can cause serious burns at levels not far above those required to repel people. This was verified when a US airman was hospitalised with second-degree burns during testing in April 2007.
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Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Microwave weapon will rain pain from the sky
Preview 'The New American Drug Lords'
When 75-year-old Arthur G. Nadel was arrested for running a huge Ponzi scheme which looted almost $400 million from investors, it marked the second time this decade that an owner of what used to be called Huffman Aviation has been implicated in major crimes normally associated with the Mafia.
Ponzi schemes, of course, are a trademark Mob specialty. So is heroin trafficking.
While 78-yr old Wallace J. Hilliard owned Huffman Aviation, and Mohamed Atta took flying lessons there, DEA Agents busted Hilliard’s Learjet while it was carrying 43 lbs. of heroin on July 25, 2000 at Orlando Executive Airport.
Terrorist HIJACKERS, heroin trafficking, hundred million dollar Ponzi schemes… How many small towns with barely ten thousand people “boast” a tiny local airport whose major business is owned by a heroin trafficker disguised as a flight school owner who plays host to terrorist hijackers, and then later is sold through to a piano playing patsy who fronts a massive $400 million Ponzi scheme?
http://www.danielhopsicker.tv/
http://www.madcowprod.com/
'NATO trains Finland, Sweden for conflict with Russia'
From: Afghanistan: Training Ground for War on Russia by Rick Rozoff
26 Jul, 2009 - Global Research
A Swedish newspaper reported on July 24 that approximately 50 troops from the country serving under NATO in the so-called International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had engaged in a fierce firefight in Northern Afghanistan and had killed three and wounded two attackers.
The report detailed that the Swedish troops were traveling in armored vehicles and "later received reinforcements from several soldiers in a Combat Vehicle 90." [1]
The world has become so inured to war around the world and seemingly without end that Swedish soldiers engaging in deadly combat as part of a belligerent force for the first time since the early 1800s - and that in another continent thousands of kilometers from their homeland - has passed virtually without notice.
A Finnish news story of the preceding day, possibly about the same incident but not necessarily, reported that "A Finnish-Swedish patrol, part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), came under fire in northern Afghanistan" on July 23rd. [2]
Three days before that a Swedish commander in the north of Afghanistan, where Finnish and Swedish troops are in charge of ISAF operations in four provinces, acknowledged that "During the last three months, six serious incidents have occurred in our area." [3]
The same source revealed that in the upcoming weeks Swedish troop numbers are to be increased from 390 to 500.
The Svenska Dagbladet reported that over a twelve week period attacks on Swedish-Finnish forces in the area have doubled and that seven attacks preceded the deadly firefight described earlier. "In April, a Norwegian officer was killed by a suicide bomber in a province under Swedish-Finnish control, and several vehicles have been attacked along Mazar-i-Sharif's main road since." [4]
Like Sweden, Finland has also increased troop deployments to Afghanistan lately, ostensibly to provide security for next month's elections but, given the escalation of fighting in the nation's north, certainly to remain there for the duration of NATO's South Asian deployment, one which a German official recently stated would last eighteen years from 2001 onward. In early July Finland dispatched 70 more troops to join the 100 already stationed in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of Balkh Province bordering Kunduz where German troops are waging an almost two week long military offensive.
Last month Finnish forces in the area were attacked twice and a rocket attack struck close to Finnish barracks in the capital of Kabul.
Troops from the other Scandinavian nations have fared even worse. Three Danish soldiers were killed in a bomb attack in Helmand on June 17, bringing the country's death toll to 26. Norway has lost four soldiers.
To illustrate the integration of Finland and Sweden military forces in Afghanistan and under NATO control in general, in late June it was announced that Sweden was purchasing 113 armored vehicles from Finland. Approximately 1,200 of the Finnish-made vehicles "have been ordered by other customers and [they are] currently used operationally in Finland, Poland, Slovenia and Croatia, for example in operations in Afghanistan." [5]
NATO Deployment In Afghanistan "Improves Readiness For Defense Of Finland"
Last month a major Finnish daily newspaper in a feature called "Afghanistan: Now it's Finland's war, too" contained this striking revelation:
"[F]rom the point of view of the Finnish Defence Forces, there is still another important reason for the Afghanistan operation: it improves readiness for the defence of Finland."
The Finnish source quoted the former commander of the nation's troops in Afghanistan, Ari Mattola, as saying, "This is a unique situation for us, in that we will get to train part of our wartime forces. That part will get to operate as close to wartime conditions as is possible." [6]
Comparable claims about the Afghan war being the training ground for military action on their borders - and that can only mean in relation to Russia - have been made by defense and military officials in the Baltic states, Poland and Georgia.
Early this month Finnish Defense Minister Jyri Hakamies divulged that he would further drag his nation into NATO's plans for a drive east aimed against Russia and is paraphrased as asserting that "NATO had approached Finland with an opportunity to take part in cyber warfare training and the country should accept NATO's offer." [7]
NATO's Article 5: Cyber Warfare And Nuclear Weapons
On June 15 US President Barack Obama and Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves met at the White House with American National Security Adviser James Jones, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, and discussed cyber security - which is to say, as the Finnish Defense Minister more honestly called it, cyber warfare. The Estonian president, raised in the United States and a former Radio Free Europe employee, "thanked the United States for its assistance in establishing the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center in the Estonian capital of Tallinn...." [8]
The head of the U.S. Strategic Command, Gen. Kevin Chilton, indicated this May what US and NATO cyber warfare plans might include when he said that "the White House retains the option to respond with physical force - potentially even using nuclear weapons - if a foreign entity conducts a disabling cyber attack against U.S. computer networks...." [9]
The NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania authorized the establishment of the Alliance's cyber warfare center in Estonia in 2008 and last month the Pentagon complemented that initiative by approving a unified U.S. Cyber Command.
For two years American and NATO officials have spoken bluntly about invoking NATO's Article 5 war clause, used for the invasion of Afghanistan and the buildup to that of Iraq, in response to alleged Russian cyber attacks.
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Jianlong told to drop tonghua buyout after clashes
27 Jul, 2009 (Bloomberg)
China’s Jilin provincial government ordered Jianlong Group to abandon a buyout of state-owned Tonghua Iron & Steel Group after workers protesting job losses killed a manager, state-run Beijing News said today.
The instruction, announced via Jilin’s television network last night, also ordered Beijing-based Jianlong to never again take part in any restructuring plan of Tonghua, the newspaper said. Closely held Jianlong had been Tonghua’s second-largest shareholder since 2005, Xinhua News Agency said separately.
The incident underscores the increasingly violent disputes in the country from northwestern Xinjiang province to southern Guangdong, as the global economic crisis brings simmering conflicts to a head, said Liu Kaiming, a labor-relations researcher in China. As many as 7 million Chinese college graduates will need jobs this year, adding to the 20 million job seekers every year, according to government figures.
“Many ordinary people in China are now filled with pent-up frustrations as they see their livelihood diminish with the economic crisis,” said Liu, executive director of the Institute of Contemporary Observation in Shenzhen. “It’s spreading from north to south, and many tiny disputes can easily be inflamed into major clashes.”
Up to 1,000 workers gathered at Tonghua’s factory in northeastern China’s Changchun city yesterday morning, demanding to meet manager Chen Guojun, appointed by Jianlong on July 22 to oversee the steel plant’s operation, Beijing News said. The workers refused Chen’s order to return to work, battered him with boots and pushed him from a second-storey office, the newspaper said, without citing a source for its information.
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Severe flu pandemic could kill 63,000 in Scotland, says official study
Severin Carrell - The Guardian
22 Jul, 2009
A severe flu pandemic could kill more than 63,000 people in Scotland within a few weeks and overwhelm mortuaries and crematoriums, an official study has concluded.
The document, released to the Guardian under freedom of information regulations, also warns that at least 5,100 people in Scotland could die even if the flu virus was relatively mild and infected only a quarter of the population.
It warns that mortuaries, crematoriums and cemeteries could be forced to operate round the clock, with old warehouses, council buildings, refrigerated lorries and specialist inflatable mortuaries being requisitioned to temporarily store the dead.
The previously unpublished study was written last year to help councils and health authorities plan for a pandemic, before swine flu hit the UK, leaving at least 31 people dead and infecting an estimated 85,000 people since April.
The Scottish government's study bases its mortality estimates on four scenarios ranging from a relatively mild flu virus infecting 25% of the population and killing 0.37% of those infected, to an "exceptional" and more lethal pandemic affecting half the population.
The relatively mild virus would leave about 5,100 dead, a figure that is very close to the 0.35% mortality rate used to make last week's worst-case prediction that swine flu could kill 65,000 across the UK this winter.
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City plans to use catacombs for swine flu victims
A city council said Saturday it was considering using underground burial chambers, currently a tourist attraction, to store the corpses of swine flu victims if the pandemic worsens.
Exeter City Council said the empty 19th-century catacombs could become an emergency mortuary.
A council spokesman said the plan could be put into operation if the cemeteries and the crematorium could not keep up with funeral demands.
He said: "We have some empty catacombs in an old cemetery in the city. These are 19th century underground burial chambers which are normally a tourist attraction," he said.
"They can, however, be safely used for their original purpose and allow us to temporarily store bodies in the remote possibility that the need should arise."
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Images of brutal riot police violence against protesting Ssangyong workers
1. [21 July 2009] Riot police and management-hired thugs gang up to kick and beat up a union member who already has no possibility of resisting arrest
Source : Photo courtesy of Media Chungcheong
- Person wearing light grey pants, grey socks and dark grey athletic shoes crunched up under feet of policemen is KMWU union member (inside red circle)
- Person holding a steel pipe with green duct tape wrapped around the handle for better grip (far left) and wearing a black shirt with white gloves and white athletic shoes is a management-hired thug (Persons in white helmets are thugs paid by management)
- Persons in black helmets (blue or yellow stripe) are riot police
- Red arrow points at management-hired thug holding shield
- New photos heighten concern over the complete impropriety of public police forces collaborating with privately-contracted thugs to stop a strike
2. [21 July 2009] In addition to steel pipes, management-hired thug wearing construction site gloves also wields a baseball bat
Source : Photo courtesy of Media Chungcheong
3. [21 July 2009] Thugs contracted by Ssangyong Motor Court Receivers also come to factory with martial arts weapons (in photo “nunchaku” are ci rcled in red)
Source : Photo courtesy of Media Chungcheong
4. [21 July 2009] Police use 3 helicopters to take turns to bombard sit-in strikers for hours with tear gas concentrate dropped from the sky
5. [21 July 2009] Unionists trying to wash off chemicals poured out of the police helicopter but that landed on his arm. Unfortunately management cut off the water supply so he is using precious rationed water to get chemicals off his skin
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image from http://www.spitting-image.net
