BlogWonks

Our concept of litter is often situated in our aesthetic vision of the world, and a short time view…

One of the largest problems in how we view the world is in how we consider the concept of litter and pollution. Ultimately these are false concepts because they are only related to how we see something, and in how long we live and the band of time we live in.

So if there are bacteria and living things that eat the oils and use them for fuel of life, then is oil a polluting chemical?

In other words, when there is an oil spill, you are not damaging a coastline forever, but only making it different to how we saw it a short time ago. What you have done is create a huge pile of food for bacteria to feast on. Is food pollution?

The only difference is the time scale you look at it. Look at it at an hourly scale and it looks different to you, and you are disgusted that the common natural aesthetic vision has been broken. Mostly because WE can’t eat oil and the creatures we like can’t eat oil, and so we don’t appreciate it as much as the bacteria that will eat and live and travel on it.

Give it time, and it will fade into the background again…

The same is true of all our pollution. Give it time, and they will break apart, and degrade. We don’t like plastic soda bottles because they ‘last 100 years’. Well glass bottles can last more than 1000 years!!! So why do we like them more than the plastic ones?  Also the solution is there in the statement. Wait 300 years.

So then the problem is one of space, not one of pollution. And the kicker is that the problem of space will eventually fix itself. If one wants to find the richest deposits of minerals and materials, a garbage dump is the richest supply of such things. it is only a matter of short time that it will be more expensive to mine things from the earth than it will be to mine garbage dumps and render the garbage into raw materials.  

We are approaching that level now with the ability to grind up cars and tires and things and sort the particles recovering around 80% of the material. What is left over would be buried and in another 100 or so years technology would exist to recover that material. By then we would be getting new material, and disposing of material in space sending it with a push to the sun.

The whole idea of burying our nuclear waste for 10,000 or 1,000 years is absurd. we are well within 100 years of safe individual space flight (when we are allowed to each have lots more energy, we then will all be able to do this. restrict energy, none of this higher order life is possible as each new level requires a new level of energy consumption). This means that nuclear waste will eventually be solar destroyed, as the sun is the greenest of all green garbage disposals for humans. (Not to mention that soon it will be easier to manufacture the most nasty things in space where venting stuff gets carried away by the solar wind)

We are on the verge of a new level of freedom… which is why the politicians are all siding with socialism. Like the industrial revolution before it, each new modern level of capitalism makes the politicians less relevant. And they then use their power to hurt the machine, so that it has crisis and it seems to make them very relevant. However the machine would run better without them, and space and all the new nationality type things it will bring, will fracture whatever globalism we have, and again, foil the feudalists who can’t control distributive power AND collect its fruits.

So what if the world runs out of natural resources?  The solar system has more than we could ever possibly use, and we are on the verge of private flight. So we are not long away from our natural resources being scaled up by planetary quantities. Which would make the economics shift and make things like CO2 air scrubbers worth making and not hurt doing so.

Ultimately Marxist ideas and the movements it spawns is nested in the old world idea of running out of ideas, and that progress can’t solve problems (that it now has already solved!). That they are the ones fixed in time that do not see that the wonders will continue if we are allowed to progress to each new levels, and the ideas that they hold are ideas in which validity MIGHT only exist if such new progress was impossible to make.

They are the modern luddites hiding themselves in a veil of belief that allows them to think that halting progress is in some way making progress. that by restricting opportunities, you can create opportunities. That we are going to run out of ideas because Marxists are such very poor visionaries (which is why they keep trying to make a unworkable system work), that they cant see that as the total monetary scale grows, things that were impossible before become possible because they are now cheap. That being green and having a better world is a luxury that the poor can’t afford, or even make, as the expense of the luxury comes at the expense of their lives.

The socialist countries have been the worst polluters, and the ex leaders of such are the largest proponents of having to control all of us, to make stagnant the planet in a totalitarian rule that will then ration all the resources of the solar system before we run out. the western capitalist countries are not only orders of magnitude greener, they are also going back and cleaning up past dirt, and will do so in an endless process till its clean to our satisfaction.

To actually do that, one must be so bourgeoisie that one has the excess wealth to spend it on the luxury and energy to clean things up. Which is why hunters are greener than greenies, and put up money when the greenies want to steal with the power of the state to get theirs.

Without the kind of luxury that makes socialists want to puke, the pools of money are not large enough that the amount taken from them is small enough that we don’t mind making the world clean, green, and truly a better place. The one problem is that those leading the green movement, are not at all interested in actually making a cleaner greener world. They are only interested in using the desire for such as a premise to dictate I fine detail how you or I should live.

The restriction of cheap oil from drilling ANWR and other areas is often touted by these people as a way to make a greener world. However, as claimed above, the proof is in the actions and outcomes, not the platitudes and soft words they use to seduce us into a false idea. This season thousands of Americans and Canadians will go out and chop down trees to burn in their inefficient fire places to make heat and lower the oil costs. Rather than burn dead plants from several million years ago, we will go out and cut the live ones that are scrubbing co2 out of the air, and burn them at 1/6 the efficiency of oil, and throw much much more pollution up the chimneys, than even a poor oil or gas furnace.

Even worse, is that in areas like Kentucky, which is heavy coal country, many people will be taking high sulfur coal and using that in their stoves to get heat rather than buy gas or oil as they are land rich and money poor.

It’s all in how you look at it and how you wish to perceive the situation. They are dictating the ‘right’ perception, and so we are up in arms over a false situation that ultimately will make us respond in ways that we think will help, but will hurt a lot more, and later justify more intervention, till no more justifications are needed and the sham can be throw aside.

Maybe its time for us to take a look at things and start to think about why we see things the way we do, and perhaps not listen to those who only pretend to have our interests at heart, and who clearly only have their own in place. The USA is greener than most other places on the planet, even though we use more material, and use more power. Over time, that will get much better, if we do not stagnate in our progress to solve the problem by creating a dark age. At best, that would only hold off such progress till we forget why we aren’t progressing and a new age dawns.

Lets skip the progressive dark age, and move on to the next renaissance were we might cast away these feudal throwbacks to socialist demagoguery and proceed to expand into the universe that is all around us and provides literally more than a trillion humans could ever use in a thousand years. We are not bound to just the small dreams of big people, we are supplied by the unlimited imaginations of billions of free people. We need not look to the few with such poor views of the world, and of people like us to get to the future; we will get to the future despite them, and in spite of them, as we have always done, if we do not let the left stagnate us in the name of progress.

Study reveals an oily diet for subsurface life

 

Click here to see image

 

Thousands of feet below the bottom of the sea, off the shores of Santa Barbara, single-celled organisms are busy feasting on oil.

Until now, nobody knew how many oily compounds were being devoured by the microscopic creatures, but new research led by David Valentine of UC Santa Barbara and Chris Reddy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts has shed new light on just how extensive their diet can be.

In a report to be published in the Oct. 1 edition of the journal Environmental Science & Technology, Valentine, Reddy, lead author George Wardlaw of UCSB, and three other co-authors detail how the microbes are dining on thousands of compounds that make up the oil seeping from the sea floor.

“It takes a special organism to live half a mile deep in the Earth and eat oil for a living,” said Valentine, an associate professor of earth science at UCSB. “There’s this incredibly complex diet for organisms down there eating the oil. It’s like a buffet.”

And, the researchers found, there may be one other byproduct being produced by all of this munching on oil - natural gas. “They’re eating the oil, and probably making natural gas out of it,” Valentine said. “It’s actually a whole consortium of organisms - some that are eating the oil and producing intermediate products, and then those intermediate products are converted by another group to natural gas.”

Reddy, a marine chemist at Woods Hole, said the research provides important new clues in the study of petroleum. “The biggest surprise was that microbes living without oxygen could eat so many compounds that compose crude oil,” Reddy said. “Prior to this study, only a handful of compounds were shown, mostly in laboratory studies, to be degraded anaerobically. This is a major leap forward in understanding petroleum geochemistry and microbiology.”

The diet of the single-cell microbes is far more diverse than previously thought, Valentine said. “They ate around 1,000 of the 1,500 compounds we could trace, and presumably are eating many more,” he said.

Research for this project began seven years ago and much of the testing was done at one of the planet’s best natural labs. “We have the world’s most prolific hydrocarbon seep field sitting right offshore of Santa Barbara, about two miles out,” Valentine said. “We have something on the order of 100 barrels of oil a day coming up from the sea floor.”

The source of this oil seepage is near Platform Holly, but it’s not being caused by the drilling. “It’s just oil that is naturally oozing out, probably has been for thousands of years,” Valentine explained. “Holly just happens to be near some of these seepage areas, which is fortuitous because we were able to get samples from about a mile deep.”

By studying samples from the subsurface, the ocean floor, the mid-water, and then from the surface, the researchers could determine how much of the oil was being degraded and digested by the microbes.

Using a new technique devised by Reddy, the scientists were able to pick apart the differences in the makeup of the oil, which is migrating to the surface through faults from deep below the sea floor. The microbes prefer the lighter compounds of oil, the gasoline part of the black goo. They tend to leave behind the heavily weathered residue, which is what makes its way to the surface and, sometimes, to the beaches in the form of tar.

“There always seems to be a residue,” Valentine said. “They (bacteria) hit a wall. There seems to be stages in which they eat. There’s the easy stuff - the steak. And then they work their way to the vegetables, and then garnish, and then they stop eating after awhile. Just depends on how hungry they are and what’s fed to them.”

Reddy’s new diagnostic technology is called a comprehensive two-dimensional gas chromatography (GCxGC). Typically, chromatography involves heating up a sample and putting it into a column around 60 meters long. Compounds are then separated based on their boiling points, which works well with light crude oil, Valentine said. But, with the two-dimensional test, the compounds are put into a cooled trap, for about 10 seconds, and a flash pulse of hot air releases them into the second column. This two-dimensional separation allows the researchers to pick out the many thousands of compounds.

“This new technology was actually too good at its job,” Reddy said. “It was able to separate and help identify significantly more compounds in the oil samples than traditional analytical techniques. The end result was that we were handcuffed with too much data afforded by the GCxGC. However, we overcame this hurdle by using new algorithms to help us interpret the data, which in turn led us to these milestone discoveries.”

The next steps in their research are already under way, according to Valentine. They are following the oil diet in controlled laboratory conditions, and tracking the fate of the oil once it forms a slick at the sea surface.

“When you fly out of the Santa Barbara Airport, you can look down and see these massive slicks,” Valentine said. “You can follow them for about 20 miles. A lot of the oil comes up on the beaches, but then what happens to it after that? Certainly the microorganisms continue to act on it. Evaporation occurs, but most of it can’t evaporate. Some of it breaks down from sunlight. So where does the rest of it end up? We want to know how far the organisms will go in eating the oil and what happens to the residual tar. It doesn’t all stick to our feet and there must be a lot of it out there somewhere.”

Source: University of California - Santa Barbara

 

The Center for Empowered Living and Learning (The CELL)  held a reception yesterday in Denver to introduce its inaugural exhibit, entitled “Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere: Understanding the Threat of Terrorism.”

The CELL is a non-profit, non-partisan institution dedicated to educating citizens on the most important issue of our time — terrorism. The exhibit will make available to the public for the first time learning tools that are capable of teaching citizens about the true nature of terrorism and how it affects each and every one of us in our daily lives.

“The CELL is becoming one of the most talked-about institutions to take root in our great city,” said Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper. “The exhibit does a great job of addressing and explaining the difficult subject of terrorism, and while it is a serious experience, The CELL allows individuals to educate and ultimately empower themselves in the goal of terrorism prevention.”

The keynote speaker at Wednesday’s reception was Brian Jenkins, a senior advisor to the RAND Corporation, and an expert in terrorism, counterinsurgency and homeland security. He is a highly-respected author and commentator and was part of The CELL’s content development team. Mayor John Hickenlooper and The CELL founder Larry A. Mizel introduced Jenkins to the audience.

“It is our intent that once people experience The CELL exhibit, they will be more engaged and focused on the need for community involvement and preparedness in response to the current ongoing global terrorism threat,” said Melanie Pearlman, Executive Director of The CELL. “This is an educational and interactive exhibit that uses state-of-the-art multi-media tools, and was created in consultation with world-renowned terrorism experts and designed by Academy Award-winning artists.”

“We are pleased to have introduced the exhibit today in front of many visitors who are here in Denver attending the Democratic National Convention,” said Pearlman. “They might not otherwise get the opportunity to explore this complex subject matter in a state-of-the-art facility,” Pearlman added. During the past three days of the DNC, The CELL has played host to such dignitaries as Senators Daniel K. Inouye and Jim DeMint, Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, as well as CELL contributor and former Mayor of New York City, Rudy Giuliani.

The CELL also intends to begin working with universities, first-responders and law enforcement officials on programs and outreach that will promote greater awareness and more effective means of combating terrorism. Early efforts have already included co-hosting a seminar with the Naval Post Graduate School on preparedness and response coordination for the Democratic National Convention activities here in Denver for local business and first- responder communities.

The design, concept and production of The CELL and its exhibit began in 2004. It will be open to the public beginning Tuesday, September 2, 2008.

The Center for Empowered Living & Learning is located within the Denver Civic Center Cultural Complex, adjacent to the new Denver Art Museum. For more information, please visit http://www.thecell.org/.

Source: Center for Empowered Living and Learning

The US Navy, US Coast Guard and SRI International — a private security firm – are deploying a suite of advanced port security technologies, trained personnel, and are executing tactical procedures as part of a homeland security experiment in the waters of Tampa Bay through the end of August.

Collectively described as an “Adaptive Force Package,” the suite supports local incident response under the command of the Coast Guard, Captain of the Port, with the involvement of numerous federal, state and local law enforcement agencies from the Tampa Bay region. The experiment began on Aug. 20 and will conclude on Aug. 28. Civilian and military visitors will be invited to a briefing and will have an opportunity to observe Adaptive Force Package technology at the conclusion of the experiment.

The Navy’s overarching goal of the experiment is to both demonstrate the platform’s independent employment of Mine Countermeasures Mission Modules developed for the Littoral Combat Ship and to address the US Fleet Forces and Commander of the Navy’s Third Fleet Sea Trials objective for this capability. This limited-objective demonstration will serve as a core event that will benefit Coast Guard and local authorities as they work to improve civil-military procedures and incident response utilizing the Incident Command System to safeguard our nation’s ports and waterways.

The experiment offers participants the opportunity to practice working together under the framework of a Department of Defense and Department of the Navy response to a Department of Homeland Security Maritime Operational Threat Response. The team will study the best use of command and control systems for guiding the flow of information from responding units to the key decision makers in the Unified Command. Further, the team will focus on ways to reduce risks to navigation and the general public while neutralizing an underwater threat.

The Coast Guard will be responsible for incident command in the experiment. Its role is to coordinate the response and actions of private-sector maritime stakeholders with military and civilian law enforcement actions.

SRI International will support in-water operations by surveying the underwater test area, deploying inert mine and improvised-explosive-device like-objects and providing surface support. The SRI team will also deploy specialized, high-resolution 3-D sonar for new change-detection technology that will be used to confirm the identity of any potential threat.

Forensic evidence will be gathered by the Underwater Crime Scene Investigation Team from Florida State University and analyzed by the National Forensic Science Technology Center Mobile Crime Lab.

Participants include the US Coast Guard and the Port of St. Petersburg, the Naval Mine Warfare and Antisubmarine Command, Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division, Program Executive Office (Littoral and Mine Warfare), Office of Naval Research, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, SRI International’s Marine Technology Program and National Center for Maritime and Port Security, National Forensics Science Technology Center and Florida State University.

Source: The US Navy

A Brazilian man was charged by a federal grand jury in New Orleans for his role in a conspiracy to sell a network of computers infected with malicious software, Acting Assistant Attorney General Matthew Friedrich of the Criminal Division and Jim Letten, US Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana, announced on Friday.

Leni de Abreu Neto, 35, of Taubate, Brazil, is charged with one count of conspiracy to cause damage to computers worldwide. The indictment alleges that more than 100,000 computers worldwide were damaged. If convicted, Neto faces a maximum penalty of five years in prison and up to three years of supervised release. Neto also faces the greater of a $250,000 fine or the gross amount of any pecuniary gain or the gross amount of any pecuniary loss suffered by the victims.

According to the indictment, Neto participated in a conspiracy along with others, including an unindicted coconspirator, Nordin Nasiri, 19, of Sneek, Netherlands, to use, maintain, lease and sell an illegal botnet. As defined in the indictment, a botnet is a network of computers that have been infected by malicious software, commonly referred to as “bot code.”

Bot code is typically designed to permit an operator or controller to instruct infected computers to perform various functions, without the authorization and knowledge of their owners, such as launching denial of service attacks to disable targeted computer systems or sending spam e-mail. Installation of bot code is typically accomplished by “hacking” computers with particular security vulnerabilities. Bot code typically contains commands for infected computers to search local networks or the Internet for other computers to infect, thereby increasing the botnet’s size and power.

The indictment alleges that prior to May 2008, Nasiri was responsible for creating a botnet consisting of more than 100,000 computers worldwide, and that Neto used the botnet and paid for the servers on which the botnet was hosted. According to the indictment, between May and July 2008, Neto agreed initially with Nasiri to broker a deal to lease the botnet to a third party. The indictment alleges Neto expected the botnet to be used to send spam through the infected computers. Subsequently, Neto agreed with Nasiri to broker the sale of the botnet and underlying bot code to the third party for 25,000 euros.

Neto was apprehended by Dutch authorities on July 29, 2008, in the Netherlands and is currently in confinement in the Netherlands pending resolution of extradition proceedings. Nasiri was also apprehended by Dutch authorities and is being prosecuted by Dutch authorities in the Netherlands.

The case is being prosecuted by Trial Attorney Jaikumar Ramaswamy of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section, with extensive assistance from Senior Counsel Judith Friedman of the Criminal Division’s Office of International Affairs. The case is being investigated by the Cyber Squad of the FBI’s New Orleans field office, with assistance from the Dutch Hi-Tech Crimes Unit and the Cyber Section of the Brazilian Federal Police.

Houston, we have a problem. We now see clearly why people who despise hierarchies, are not only organizing themselves in such, but don’t realize that they are going against our biology.

Hierarchy is a way of efficiently organizing, and what’s missed by the anti-hierarchicals, is that they are not fixed. So while equality is impossible because like all social creatures, we self organize. Unlike most social creatures though, we create hierarchies in suppositions, so while we may not be tops in the basketball team, we can be tops in the chess club. Most simple herd animals really only focus on one hierarchy, the one that leads to the greatest survival (they all look the same because the best single solution is near the same place, while in humans there are so many different solutions, that we no longer have the same appearance but are widely different). Humans, decidedly more complex, are more free due to the organization imposed by our babies need for safety and time, to more abstractly consider what is tops. Once the shared effort of creating a safe zone was possible, and constantly maintained (as our noisy uncooperative babies need), we were free to abstract hierarchy based on other contributions. This abstraction was the seeds of our natural proclivities to capitalistic exchanges for mutual societal benefit, and that the consideration of who is tops was no longer limited to who could bring in the most meat.

The only way such a system would clearly work is if we were hard-wired to make these choices, just as we are hardwired in how we count, how we naturally have a sense of fairness, even a natural understanding of exchange predicated on mutual value (or else when cheated we wouldn’t care).

Now once again, MRI technology (among others) is starting to show us that we are very much the expression of what our genes and our development has dictated us to be over millennia. In order for nature to flip a switch, there has to be a switch to flip. The nature nuture argument is predicated on ignoring the pre-existing condition of that switch.

Not the National institutes of health have discovered that different brain areas are activated when a person moves up and down a pecking order. In essence, different switches are flipped. Since we can’t tell you where we are verbally in the order, and our behavior changes based on where we are, this is a natural thing we do and often do not notice it happening. Though our ancestors were much more attuned to these natural proclivities as our culture adapted to our biology, not our biology adopted to culture.

These switches that are thrown internally then change our motivations, focus, interests, and those things lead to changes in our mental and physical well being. What is worse is that ultimately, negating these things through ideological practices, tend to intimately affect our biology, not just affect our mental regard for ourselves in some abstract way. In this way, our enlightened selves are killing ourselves by causing us to live like something we are not, like something else.

All this aside, the research detailed below is some remarkable work in teasing out our real inner natures as defined by our genetic biology, our store house of what has worked separated from what hasn’t worked through the crucible of time and merit.

Human brain appears ‘hard-wired’ for hierarchy

Human imaging studies have for the first time identified brain circuitry associated with social status, according to researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) of the National Institutes of Health. They found that different brain areas are activated when a person moves up or down in a pecking order – or simply views perceived social superiors or inferiors. Circuitry activated by important events responded to a potential change in hierarchical status as much as it did to winning money.

“Our position in social hierarchies strongly influences motivation as well as physical and mental health,” said NIMH Director Thomas R Insel, M.D. “This first glimpse into how the brain processes that information advances our understanding of an important factor that can impact public health.”

Caroline Zink, Ph.D., Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg, M.D., Ph.D., and colleagues of the NIMH Genes Cognition and Psychosis Program, report on their functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) study in the April 24, 2008, issue of the journal Neuron. Meyer-Lindenberg is now director of Germany’s Central Institute of Mental Health.

Prior studies have shown that social status strongly predicts health. Animals chronically stressed by their hierarchical position have high rates of cardiovascular and depression/anxiety-like syndromes. A classic study of British civil servants found that the lower one ranked, the higher the odds for developing cardiovascular disease and dying early. Lower social rank likely compromises health through psychological effects, such as by limiting control over one’s life and interactions with others. However, in hierarchies that allow for more upward mobility, those at the top who stand to lose their positions can have higher risk for stress-related illness. Yet little is known about how the human brain translates such factors into health risk.

To find out, the NIMH researchers created an artificial social hierarchy in which 72 participants played an interactive computer game for money. They were assigned a status that they were told was based on their playing skill. In fact, the game outcomes were predetermined and the other “players” simulated by computer. While their brain activity was monitored by fMRI, participants intermittently saw pictures and scores of an inferior and a superior “player” they thought were simultaneously playing in other rooms.

Although they knew the perceived players’ scores would not affect their own outcomes or reward –and were instructed to ignore them – participants’ brain activity and behavior were highly influenced by their position in the implied hierarchy.

“The processing of hierarchical information seems to be hard-wired, occurring even outside of an explicitly competitive environment, underscoring how important it is for us,” said Zink.

Key study findings included:

– The area that signals an event’s importance, called the ventral striatum, responded to the prospect of a rise or fall in rank as much as it did to the monetary reward, confirming the high value accorded social status.

– Just viewing a superior human “player,” as opposed to a perceived inferior one or a computer, activated an area near the front of the brain that appears to size people up – making interpersonal judgments and assessing social status. A circuit involving the mid-front part of the brain that processes the intentions and motives of others and emotion processing areas deep in the brain activated when the hierarchy became unstable, allowing for upward and downward mobility.

– Performing better than the superior “player” activated areas higher and toward the front of the brain controlling action planning, while performing worse than an inferior “player” activated areas lower in the brain associated with emotional pain and frustration.

– The more positive the mood experienced by participants while at the top of an unstable hierarchy, the stronger was activity in this emotional pain circuitry when they viewed an outcome that threatened to move them down in status. In other words, people who felt more joy when they won also felt more pain when they lost.

“Such activation of emotional pain circuitry may underlie a heightened risk for stress-related health problems among competitive individuals,” suggested Meyer-Lindenberg.

In collaboration with other NIMH researchers, Zink and colleagues are planning follow-up studies to explore brain activity in response to the experimental social hierarchy in patients with mental illnesses like schizophrenia or autism, which are marked by social and thinking deficits. The researchers will also be exploring whether particular gene variants might differentially affect brain responses in similar experiments.

Source: National Institute of Mental Health

The owner of an international electronics business has pled guilty to one-count arising from a conspiracy to illegally export controlled microprocessors and electronic components to government entities in India that participate in the development of ballistic missiles, space launch vehicles, and fighter jets.

The guilty plea was announced on Tuesday by Kenneth L. Wainstein, Assistant Attorney General for National Security; Jeffrey A. Taylor, US Attorney for the District of Columbia; Joseph Persichini, Jr., Assistant Director in Charge, FBI Washington Field Office; Darryl W. Jackson, Assistant Secretary for Export Enforcement, US Department of Commerce, and Julie Myers, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Parthasarathy Sudarshan, 47, a resident of Simpsonville, South Carolina, entered his guilty plea in US District Court for the District of Columbia before the Honorable Ricardo Urbina to the felony charge of conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act and the Export Administration Regulations; and to violate the Arms Export Control Act and the International Traffic in Arms Regulations.

The Honorable Ricardo Urbina is scheduled to sentence Sudarshan on June 16, 2008.

“The defendant participated in a clandestine network that circumvented our export laws and put sophisticated technology in the hands of foreign companies that were listed as endusers of concern for proliferation reasons,” stated US Attorney Taylor.

“With this prosecution, the defendant will no longer be able to make a profit at the expense of our national security. This case also demonstrates the priority our government has placed on combating such networks.”

By fraudulently acquiring and shipping controlled missile technology overseas, this defendant violated both our federal law and our national security. It is fitting that he stands convicted and faces a serious penalty for his criminal conduct,” said Assistant Attorney General Wainstein.

According to court documents filed by the government, Sudarshan did business as Cirrus Electronics (”Cirrus”) and held himself out to be Cirrus’ CEO, Managing Director, and President and Group Head. Cirrus has offices in Simpsonville, South Carolina, Singapore, and Bangalore, India.

Among the recipients of US technology in this case were the Vikram Sarabhai Space Centre (VSSC), an enterprise within the Department of Space of the Government of India, and Bharat Dynamics, Ltd. (BDL), an enterprise within the Ministry of Defence of the Government of India.

The US government has determined that VSSC participates in India’s space launch vehicle program and that BDL participates in India’s development and production of ballistic missiles. As such, both VSSC and BDL are on the Department of Commerce’s Entity List and exports of US-origin commodities to these entities are restricted and require prior authorization in the form of a license from the Department of Commerce.

Between 2002 and 2006, Sudarshan acquired electrical components with applications in missile guidance and firing systems in the United States for VSSC and BDL. In particular, in the case of at least two US vendors, Sudarshan and others at Cirrus provided the US companies with fraudulent certificates that claimed that the endusers of these electrical components were non-restricted entities in India, when, in fact, the items were for VSSC. There were no export licenses for any of the shipments to VSSC and BDL.

To further conceal from the US government that goods were going to entities in India on the Department of Commerce Entity List, Sudarshan would route the products through its Singapore office and then send the packages on to India.

In addition to supplying VSSC and BDL with components, Sudarshan acquired microprocessors for the Tejas, a fighter jet under development in India. The microprocessors were necessary for the navigation and weapons systems of the Tejas. Because the microprocessors are on the US Munitions List, the State Department must license any export of the products.

On two occasions in 2004 and 2006, Cirrus caused the shipment of a total of 500 microprocessors to the Aeronautical Development Establishment, an enterprise within the Ministry of Defence of the Government of India that was responsible for the development of the Tejas. There were no licenses for these shipments.

“Today’s plea illustrates the FBI’s commitment to ensure the safety and security of our nation’s citizens and our country’s protected national security information and technology,” said FBI Assistant Director in Charge Persichini. “The FBI also recognizes the invaluable investigative assistance provided by the Department of Commerce Office of Export Enforcement.”

“One of the highest enforcement priorities of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security is ensuring that dual-use items don’t end up in dangerous hands,” said Commerce Assistant Secretary Jackson. “The Department of Commerce’s Entity List puts exporters on notice regarding endusers that are of proliferation concern. This case demonstrates that we will take action against those exporters who evade our export control system.”

“The customs laws of the United States are in place to ensure that sensitive technologies do not fall into the wrong hands. When exporters skirt the law or cover up their activities to fill their own pockets, they do so at the expense of national security. We will aggressively pursue these cases and see that those who violate export regulations are prosecuted to the full extent of the law,” said Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Myers.

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he’s a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org). In addition, he’s the new editor for the House Conservatives Fund’s weblog. Kouri also serves as political advisor for Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor Michael Moriarty.

The lamestream media told you:

“U.S. missile takes out crippled satellite”

“Hit on orbiter probably destroyed toxic-fuel tank”

“Confirmation that the fuel tank has been fragmented should be available within 24 hours,” the Pentagon said.

This front page news coverage was brought to you in an unbylined article from the Associated Press.

The Uninvited Ombudsman notes however that:

Obeying their government handlers, the AP defied even elementary logic and ran the headlines above, even though they flatly contradict each other. But they do make the missile launchers sound good.

Based on the quote in the third line, an accurate headline would read, “U.S. missile effect on satellite unknown,” but this is not what the press release said, would require thought on the part of the “reporters,” and would cast doubts on the military announcement, so it was avoided, following SOP.

“But the Pentagon did say those things, and we reported them accurately, so it’s not an error,” an unknown reporter was overheard saying, following SOP.

After smacking the reporter upside the head, the Uninvited Ombudsman told him what everybody already knows — the Pentagon is a building and cannot speak.

The actual results of the anti-satellite missile test were learned the next day, but didn’t improve the flawed reporting that preceded it. The Pentagon denied that the satellite shoot-down was a test of a satellite-shoot-down system, counting on the AP to report that claim, which they did.

Countries around the world though expressed doubts, but were brushed aside. “Those people complain about everything,” the Pentagon was overheard saying. Whether America owning a workable satellite-shoot-down system is a good thing was unclear.

Countless critics who asked why a re-entry at 2,700 degrees capable of destroying the Space Shuttle wouldn’t ignite and explode a single tank loaded with rocket fuel, went unanswered. “Whatsamatter you,” said one critic, “don’t you trust the government?”

A review of stories leading up to the shootdown showed an interesting progression of facts: Spy satellite not working since launch in 2006, satellite orbit erratic, satellite plunge to earth unlikely to hit anything since most of earth is water or uninhabited, satellite fuel tank may pose risk, satellite fuel does pose risk, military reluctant to attempt untested shootdown, military will attempt shootdown, military shoots down satellite with system that is not a satellite shootdown system.

Government sources later announced the destruction was successful, and released videos as confirmation. News credibility and circulation numbers continue to plummet.

There are 37 research reactors in the United States, mostly located on college campuses. Of these, 33 reactors are licensed and regulated by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Four are operated by the Department of Energy and are located at three national laboratories. Although less powerful than commercial nuclear power reactors, research reactors may still be attractive targets for terrorists.

The US House of Representatives requested the Government Accountability Office to examine the basis on which DOE and NRC established the security and emergency response requirements for DOE and NRC-licensed research reactors, and to examine the progress that the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has made in converting US research reactors that use highly enriched uranium to low enriched uranium fuel.

The DOE developed the security and emergency response requirements for its research reactors using its Design Basis Threat — a process that establishes a baseline threat for which minimum security measures should be developed. These research reactors benefit from the greater security required for the national laboratories where they are located, which store weapons-usable nuclear materials.

The DOE also has concluded that the consequences of an attack at some of its research reactors could be severe, causing radioactivity to be dispersed over many square miles and requiring the evacuation of nearby areas. As a result, all facilities where DOE reactors are located have extensive plans and procedures for responding to security incidents.

NRC based its security and emergency response requirements largely on the regulations it had in place before September 2001. NRC decided that the security assessment it conducted between 2003 and 2006 showed that these requirements were sufficient. While it was conducting this assessment, NRC worked with licensees to improve security when weaknesses were detected.

However, GAO found that NRC’s assessment contains questionable assumptions that create uncertainty about whether the assessment reflects the full range of security risks and potential consequences of attacks on research reactors. For example, Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) — a contractor NRC used to assist in performing its assessment — found that some NRC-licensed research reactors may not be prepared for certain types of attacks.

However, NRC disagreed with SNL’s finding. In 2006, NRC concluded that the consequences of attacks would result in minimal radiological exposure to the public. In addition, NRC assumed that terrorists would use certain tactics in attacking a reactor but did not fully consider alternative attack scenarios that could be more damaging.

The NRC assumed that a small part of a reactor could be damaged in an attack, resulting in the release of only a small amount of radioactivity. However, according to experts at Idaho National Laboratories and the Department of Homeland Security, it is possible that a larger part of a reactor could be damaged, which could result in the release of larger amounts of radioactivity.

The NNSA has made progress in changing from HEU to LEU fuel in U.S. research reactors but may face difficulty in converting some of the remaining research reactors. Since 1978, NNSA has converted eight currently operating U.S. research reactors, including two in 2006.

Also, the NNSA plans to convert 10 more U.S. research reactors by September 2014 — five of which are scheduled for conversion by 2009. However, NNSA faces difficulties in converting the remaining five reactors because these reactors cannot operate with the currently available LEU fuel. NNSA is now developing a new LEU fuel that will allow the remaining five reactors to operate.

But, according to NNSA, developing this fuel has been problematic, as early efforts experienced failures during testing. NNSA officials acknowledged that further setbacks are likely to delay plans to convert these research reactors.

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he’s a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org). Kouri also serves as political advisor for Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor Michael Moriarty.

He’s former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed “Crack City” by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He’s a news writer for TheConservativeVoice.Com and PHXnews.com. He’s also a columnist for AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he’s syndicated by AXcessNews.Com. He’s appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc. His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com. Kouri’s own website is located at http://jimkouri.us

A chemist employed by a corporation headquartered in Houston, Texas, involved in researching, developing and supplying fire-proof coating and intumescent products has been indicted and charged with theft of trade secrets and computer fraud, according to United States Attorney Don DeGabrielle and FBI Special Agent in Charge Andrew R. Bland.

Qinggui Zeng, a/k/a Jensen Zeng, 45, a legal permanent resident from the People’s Republic of China, was arrested by FBI agents on January 29, 2008, and ordered detained in federal custody pending further criminal proceedings.

The indictment returned by a federal grand jury in Houston on Wednesday, February 20, 2008, charges Zeng with two counts of theft of trade secrets and one count of computer fraud. Zeng is expected to appear in federal court for arraignment on the charges on a date to be set by the court in the near future.

A “trade secret” is defined under federal law as including all forms and types of information — financial, business, scientific, technical, economic or engineering — that the owner has taken reasonable measures to keep secret, and that has independent economic value because it is not generally known or ascertainable by the public. A confidentiality agreement is an agreement signed by an employee promising not to disclose the confidential, proprietary or trade secret information belonging to his employer.

According to allegations contained in the indictment, Zeng was employed in January 2005 as a formulation chemist by a subsidiary of a worldwide paint and coatings company based in the Netherlands and headquartered in Houston, Texas. The company is a researcher, developer and supplier of an epoxy-based fire-proof coating and intumescent products. The company is the only manufacturing company in the world that had developed proprietary and confidential manufacturing techniques, processes and mixtures that could successfully fabricate an intumescent fire-proofing product which it marketed in interstate commerce. The company took reasonable measures to keep the information secret.

According to the federal indictment, Zeng allegedly signed a confidentiality agreement with his employer and was aware of his responsibility to keep and maintain the confidentiality of his employer’s proprietary interest in trade secrets. Between Nov. 1, 2005, and Jan. 29, 2008, Zeng is accused of accessing without authorization his employer’s protected computer system and obtaining the trade secret formula for the intumescent fire-proofing product with the intent to defraud his employer.

Zeng is accused of downloading the trade secret formula from the company’s database with the intent to convert the trade secret to the benefit of a person other than his employer on or about November 1, 2005, and again on Jan. 29, 2008, and concealing the formula in a box under the insulation in the attic of his residence.

The indictment also alleges Zeng formed his own business in October 2007 for the purpose of marketing intumescent fire-proofing coating.

Each count of theft of trade secrets carries a maximum punishment of 10 years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine upon conviction. Computer fraud and abuse carries maximum punishment of five years imprisonment and a $250,000 fine upon conviction.

The investigation leading to the charges against Zeng are the result of an investigation conducted by the Houston office of the FBI. The case will be prosecuted by Special Assistant United States Attorney Bret Davis.

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he’s a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org). Kouri also serves as political advisor for Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor Michael Moriarty.

He’s former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed “Crack City” by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He’s a news writer for TheConservativeVoice.Com and PHXnews.com. He’s also a columnist for AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he’s syndicated by AXcessNews.Com. He’s appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc. His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com. Kouri’s own website is located at http://jimkouri.us

Well I guess the girls are going to take over technology “the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls”.

Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain

By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM

THE prototypical computer whiz of popular imagination — pasty, geeky, male — has failed to live up to his reputation.

Research shows that among the youngest Internet users, the primary creators of Web content (blogs, graphics, photographs, Web sites) are not misfits resembling the Lone Gunmen of “The X Files.” On the contrary, the cyberpioneers of the moment are digitally effusive teenage girls.

“Most guys don’t have patience for this kind of thing,” said Nicole Dominguez, 13, of Miramar, Fla., whose hobbies include designing free icons, layouts and “glitters” (shimmering animations) for the Web and MySpace pages of other teenagers. “It’s really hard.”

Nicole posts her graphics, as well as her own HTML and CSS computer coding pointers (she is self-taught), on the pink and violet Sodevious.net, a domain her mother bought for her in October.

“If you did a poll I think you’d find that boys rarely have sites,” she said. “It’s mostly girls.”

Indeed, a study published in December by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that among Web users ages 12 to 17, significantly more girls than boys blog (35 percent of girls compared with 20 percent of boys) and create or work on their own Web pages (32 percent of girls compared with 22 percent of boys).

Girls also eclipse boys when it comes to building or working on Web sites for other people and creating profiles on social networking sites (70 percent of girls 15 to 17 have one, versus 57 percent of boys 15 to 17). Video posting was the sole area in which boys outdid girls: boys are almost twice as likely as girls to post video files.

Explanations for the gender imbalance are nearly as wide-ranging as cybergirls themselves. The girls include bloggers who pontificate on timeless teenage matters such as “evil teachers” and being “grounded for life,” to would-be Martha Stewarts — entrepreneurs whose online pursuits generate more money than a summer’s worth of baby-sitting.

“I was the first teenage podcaster to receive a major sponsorship,” said Martina Butler, 17, of San Francisco, who for three years has been recording an indie music show, Emo Girl Talk, from her basement. Her first corporate sponsorship, from Nature’s Cure, an acne medication, was reported in 2005 in Brandweek, the marketing trade magazine.

Since then, more than half a dozen companies, including Go Daddy, the Internet domain and hosting provider, have paid to be mentioned in her podcasts, which are posted every Sunday on Emogirltalk.com.

“It’s really only getting bigger for me,” said Martina, an aspiring television and radio host who was tickled to learn about the Pew study.

“I’m not surprised because girls are very creative,” she said, “sometimes more creative than men. We’re spunky. And boys … ” Her voice trailed off to laughter.

The “girls rule” trend in content creation has been percolating for a few years — a Pew study published in 2005 also found that teenage girls were the primary content creators — but the gender gap for blogging, in particular, has widened.

As teenage bloggers nearly doubled from 2004 to 2006, almost all the growth was because of “the increased activity of girls,” the Pew report said.

The findings have implications beyond blogging, according to Pew, because bloggers are “much more likely to engage in other content-creating activities than nonblogging teens.”

But even though girls surpass boys as Web content creators, the imbalance among adults in the computer industry remains. Women hold about 27 percent of jobs in computer and mathematical occupations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In American high schools, girls comprised fewer than 15 percent of students who took the AP computer science exam in 2006, and there was a 70 percent decline in the number of incoming undergraduate women choosing to major in computer science from 2000 to 2005, according to the National Center for Women & Information Technology.

Scholars who study computer science say there are several reasons for the dearth of women: introductory courses are often uninspiring; it is difficult to shake existing stereotypes about men excelling in the sciences; and there are few female role models. It is possible that the girls who produce glitters today will develop an interest in the rigorous science behind computing, but some scholars are reluctant to draw that conclusion.

“We can hope that this translates, but so far the gap has remained,” said Jane Margolis, an author of “Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing” (MIT Press, 2002). While pleased that girls are mastering programs like Paint Shop Pro, Ms. Margolis emphasized the profound distinction between using existing software and a desire to invent new technology.

Teasing out why girls are prolific Web content creators usually leads to speculation and generalization. Although girls have outperformed boys in reading and writing for years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, this does not automatically translate into a collective yen to blog or sign up for a MySpace page. Rather, some scholars argue, girls are the dominant online content creators because both sexes are influenced by cultural expectations.

“Girls are trained to make stories about themselves,” said Pat Gill, the interim director for the Institute for Communications Research and an associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

From a young age they learn that they are objects, Professor Gill said, so they learn how to describe themselves. Historically, girls and women have been expected to be social, communal and skilled in decorative arts.

“This would be called the feminization of the Internet,” she said.

Boys, she added, are generally taught “to engage in ways that aren’t confessional, that aren’t emotional.”

Research by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, the result of focus groups and interviews with young people 13 to 22, suggests that girls’ online practices tend to be about their desire to express themselves, particularly their originality.

“With young women it’s much more about expressing yourself to others in the way that wearing certain clothes to school does,” said John Palfrey, the executive director of the Berkman Center. “It ties into identity expression in the real world.”

That desire is never so evident as when girls criticize online copycats who essentially steal their Web page backgrounds and graphics by hotlinking (linking to someone else’s image so it appears on one’s own Web page). Aside from depleting bandwidth, it is the digital equivalent of arriving at a party wearing the same dress as another girl, Professor Palfrey said.

No wonder that girls post aggressive warnings on their sites such as “Do not jock, copy, steal, or redistribute any of my stuff!” or, more to the point: “hotlink and die.”

While creating content enables girls to experiment with how they want to present themselves to the world, they are obviously interested in maintaining and forging relationships.

When Lauren Renner, 16, was in fifth grade, she and a friend, Sarada Cleary, now 14, both of Oceanside, Calif., began writing about their lives on Agirlsworld.com, an interactive e-zine with articles written for and by girls.

“Girls from everywhere would read it and would ask questions about what they should do with a problem,” Lauren said. “I think girls like to help with other people’s problems or questions, kind of, like, motherly, to everybody.”

Today Lauren and Sarada are among more than 1,000 girls who regularly submit content to Agirlsworld. They make a few extra dollars writing online articles and dreaming up holiday-related activities, like Mother’s Day breakfast recipes, which are posted on the site.

“At school there’s just a certain type of people,” Sarada said. “They’re just local. Online you get to experience their culture through them.”

THE one area where boys surpass girls in creating Web content is posting videos. This is not because girls are not proficient users of the technology, Professor Palfrey said. He suggested, rather, that videos are often less about personal expression and more about impressing others. It’s an ideal way for members of a subculture — skateboarders, snowboarders — to demonstrate their athleticism, he said.

Zach Saltzman, 17, of Memphis, said content creation among his circle of male friends includes having a Facebook profile and posting videos of lacrosse games and original short films on YouTube.

“I actually really never thought about doing my own Web site,” said Zach after returning from an SAT class.

He hasn’t posted a video himself and doesn’t have a blog because, as he put it, “it really never interested me and I don’t have time to keep up with it.”

Zach does, however, have a Facebook profile where he uploads digital photographs.

“It’s really the only way I keep my pictures organized because I don’t make photo albums and stuff like that,” he said.

Asked whether the findings of the Pew study seemed accurate to him, he said: “That’s what I see happening. The girls are much more into putting something up and getting responses.”

On Tuesday, a jury returned guilty verdicts on all counts against defense contractor Brent Roger Wilkes, who was accused of bribing former GOP Congressman Randall “Duke” Cunningham, according to documents obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police.

Wilkes was found guilty of conspiracy, bribery, honest services wire fraud, and money laundering. The defendent was ordered to pay $636,116 in forfeiture, and $501,300 in fines and special assessments. The Court ordered Wilkes remanded immediately into custody to begin serving his sentence.

According to Assistant US Attorneys Sanjay Bhandari, Valerie H. Chu, Jason A. Forge and Phillip L.B. Halpern, who prosecuted the case, Wilkes provided more than $700,000 in bribes to Cunningham over nearly a decade. In return, Cunningham illegally directed more than $80 million in defense contract funds to Wilkes’s company, ADCS, Inc., located in Poway, California. Wilkes’s illicit profits totaled tens of millions of dollars.

United States Attorney Karen P. Hewitt said, “The citizens of San Diego and, indeed, the nation at large, are well served by the sentence imposed today. It reflects the egregiousness of the corrupt conduct in which Brent Wilkes engaged and marks one more step in the restoration of the public’s confidence in the integrity of our system of government and those who participate in it. Brent Wilkes has earned every day of the sentence he received.”

Hewitt commended the outstanding work of the agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Internal Revenue Service and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service, who investigated this case.

FBI Special Agent in Charge, Keith Slotter commented, “Public corruption at any level denies the American public of the honest services the public expects and deserves from our representatives. Today’s sentencing serves notice that the FBI will continue to root out corruption at all levels to protect the freedoms and services the public deserves.”

“[Tuesday's] sentencing sends a clear message to the American public that those individuals who attempt to buy our elected officials for their own personal financial gain will be fully prosecuted,” said Debra D. King, Special Agent in Charge, IRS-Criminal Investigation, Los Angeles Field Office.

“IRS Criminal Investigation will aggressively follow the money trail and do our part to combat public corruption,” she said.

“The American taxpayer expects the Department of Defense (DoD) to manage a procurement system that is free of bribery and corruption. The corrupt behavior of our public officials and DoD contractors misappropriates precious dollars in products and services destined for our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines. This investigation demonstrates the most egregious case of bribery and corruption between a sitting U.S. Congressman and a DoD contractor that I have ever witnessed in my career,” said Rick Gwin, Special Agent in Charge, Defense Criminal Investigative Service (DCIS), Western Field Office.

According to case records, the breakdown of the charges is as follows:

COUNT 1 Conspiracy to commit Bribery, Honest Services Fraud, and Money laundering, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371, which is punishable by 5 years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine.

COUNTS 2-11 Honest Services Wire Fraud, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1343 and 1346, which is punishable by 20 years in prison and/or a $250,000 fine.

COUNT 13 Bribery of a Public Official in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 371, which is punishable by 15 years in prison and/or the greater of a $250,000 fine or three times the monetary equivalent of the bribe.

COUNT 14 Money Laundering (“concealment”) in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1956(a)(1)(A)(I), which is punishable by 20 years in prison and/or the greater of a $500,000 fine or twice the value of the property involved in the transaction.

Jim Kouri, CPP is currently fifth vice-president of the National Association of Chiefs of Police and he’s a staff writer for the New Media Alliance (thenma.org). Kouri also serves as political advisor for Emmy and Golden Globe winning actor Michael Moriarty.

He’s former chief at a New York City housing project in Washington Heights nicknamed “Crack City” by reporters covering the drug war in the 1980s. In addition, he served as director of public safety at a New Jersey university and director of security for several major organizations. He’s also served on the National Drug Task Force and trained police and security officers throughout the country. Kouri writes for many police and security magazines including Chief of Police, Police Times, The Narc Officer and others. He’s a news writer for TheConservativeVoice.Com and PHXnews.com. He’s also a columnist for AmericanDaily.Com, MensNewsDaily.Com, MichNews.Com, and he’s syndicated by AXcessNews.Com. He’s appeared as on-air commentator for over 100 TV and radio news and talk shows including Oprah, McLaughlin Report, CNN Headline News, MTV, Fox News, etc. His book Assume The Position is available at Amazon.Com. Kouri’s own website is located at http://jimkouri.us

The Los Alamos National Laboratory, which is operated by the National Nuclear Security Administration, is responsible for, among other things, designing nuclear weapons.

Over the past decade, security personnel documented numerous security, safety, and project management weaknesses at NNSA’s nuclear weapons complex, including LANL. In particular, during the Clinton Administration LANL has experienced a series of high-profile security incidents that drew attention to the laboratory’s inability to account for and control classified information and maintain a safe work environment.

In July 2004, LANL’s director declared a suspension — or stand-down — of laboratory operations to address immediate concerns, including the loss of classified computer disks. During the stand-down, laboratory teams identified more than 3,400 security and safety issues.

As a result of systemic management concerns, and the fact that the laboratory contractor –the University of California — did not adequately address these problems, the Department of Energy (DOE) decided in 2003 to allow other organizations to compete for the management contract at LANL.

The University of California, which had been the exclusive management and operating contractor since the 1940s, was replaced in June 2006 by Los Alamos National Security, LLC, (LANS). LANS is a consortium of contractors that includes Bechtel National, Inc.; the University of California; BWX Technologies, Inc.; and the Washington Group International, Inc.

Congress asked General Accountability Office security analysts to provide information detailing recent security, safety, and management problems at LANL. The GAO provided Congressional staffers with information on these issues.

As requested, the GAO report provides information on security incidents that compromised or potentially compromised classified information, incidents involving the loss of or failure to properly account for special nuclear material (highly enriched uranium or plutonium) and radiological material, nuclear safety concerns at the laboratory, safety accidents involving LANL employees or contractor personnel, and project management weaknesses that may have resulted in significant cost overruns.

According to the GAO’s preliminary report, LANL experienced 57 reported security incidents involving the compromise or potential compromise of classified information from October 1, 2002, through June 30, 2007, according to DOE’s ITAC database.

Thirty-seven (or 65 percent) of these reported incidents posed the most serious threat to US national security interests. Of the remaining 20 incidents, 9 involved the confirmed or suspected unauthorized disclosure of secret information, which posed a significant threat to U.S. national security interests. The remaining 11 reported security incidents involved the confirmed or suspected unauthorized disclosure of confidential information, which posed threats to DOE security interests.

Examples of the most serious types of security incidents reported by DOE include the following:

* LANL could not account for nine classified removable electronic media items, including data disks, during the relocation of these items to a different on-site facility. DOE concluded that these items were likely destroyed prior to their relocation.

* A law enforcement search of a LANL subcontractor’s home in Los Alamos, New Mexico, recovered classified information in the form of a USB “thumb drive” and documents. The subcontractor, who possessed a DOE security clearance, had removed the information from a highly classified facility at the laboratory.

In response to the last incident, in July 2007, enforcement actions were taken by DOE, including the issuance of a preliminary notice of violation to the University of California with a proposed civil penalty in the amount of $3 million, a separate preliminary notice of violation to LANS with a proposed civil penalty in the amount of $300,000, and a Secretarial Compliance Order to LANS.

The preliminary notice of violation cited both the University of California and LANS for serious violations of DOE’s classified information and cyber security requirements. In response to security weaknesses in the handling and processing of classified data, LANL officials told analysts that they have implemented a number of measures to strengthen controls since June 2006, including destroying an estimated 1.4 million “legacy” classified documents; reducing the number of accountable electronic classified items from 87,000 to 4,472; reducing the number of vaults and vault-type rooms holding classified data from 142 to 114; and consolidating classified material and classified processing operations into a “Super Vault Type Room.”

There