ThinkTanked's Blog

by Claudia Koerner and Erin Kozak - Apr. 22, 2008 10:02 AM
The Arizona Republic

Civilian and military aviation organizations said Tuesday the source of the strange red lights spotted over Phoenix Monday night remained unknown. An official with the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which monitors the skies for security threats, said Tuesday the organization did not know where the lights came from.

Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said that though air traffic controllers at Sky Harbor Airport witnessed the lights, they do not know the cause. Nothing appeared on radar and Gregor said the FAA will not be investigating.

“There's nothing to look into,” Gregor said. Several Valley residents reported seeing strange red lights in the sky on Monday night .

Arizona Republic reporter Anne Ryman, who lives in Deer Valley, reported seeing four lights in a square shape that eventually became a triangular shape. The lights were moving to the east and they disappeared one by one. She said the lights were visible for about 13 minutes at about 8 p.m..

One north Phoenix resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said he saw four or five red lights lined up in a straight line and spaced apart evenly. The lights slowly moved east and became dimmer as the witness watched. He said the last light remained in the sky the longest. Then three jets came from the west and traveled in the direction of the red lights.

An official from Luke Air Force Base stated that they did not have any aircraft in the sky Monday night and that the lights were not part of any Air Force activities.

The Deer Valley airport officials said that the lights were not from any aircraft at that airport.

Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said that air traffic controllers at Sky Harbor Airport also witnessed the lights, but they do not know the cause.

The incident is similar to the "Phoenix Lights" seen on March 13, 1997. Thousands of residents reported seeing a mile-wide, v-shaped formation of lights over the Valley. In that case the lights appeared about 7:30 p.m. and lasted until 10:30 p.m.

RUSSIA THREATENS NUKE STRIKE
Top-ranking Russian military figure Says America had better watch out
By Mark Glenn

Recent statements coming from one of Russia’s highest-ranking military commanders indicate that America and Israel plan to go ahead with war on Iran despite the release of the National Intelligence Estimate late last year. Russia’s military chief of staff General Yuri Baluyevsky threatened the use of nuclear weapons in case of a major threat. He said that, although they have no plans of attacking anyone, they nevertheless “consider it necessary for everyone around the world community to clearly understand, that to defend the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Russia and its allies, military forces will be used, including, preventively, the use of nuclear weapons.”

His statements (which can only have been made in concert with the overall policies established by his boss President Vladimir Putin) come a week after George Bush’s visit to the Persian Gulf, in which he attempted to rally the nations in that region around U.S. and Israeli plans of “confronting Iran’s nuclear program before it is too late.” Baluyevsky’s statement, despite the stark and apocalyptic themes pervading it, comes as no surprise. Over the course of the past year, Russia has taken on an increasingly aggressive defensive posture with regard to the West as a result of what it sees as an overall plan of encircling her with NATO forces that threaten her existence. Russia has resumed long-range bomber patrols (halted with the fall of the Soviet Union), sometimes coming within inches of NATO airspace. She has pulled out of several treaties with the West limiting the size of Russian military forces on Europe’s eastern flank. Incensed at the U.S. plan of using new NATO member nations in Eastern Europe as a staging area for missile defense systems (said to be a necessary defense against Iran), Russia has developed and successfully test fired new missiles—both land- and sea-launched. Russia claims they are sophisticated enough to trump any U.S. missile shield.

Beginning in December (after the release of the NIE), Russia began delivering the nuclear fuel supplies promised to Iran according to their agreement. As of this moment, four shipments have been made totaling 45 tons of the estimated 80 tons necessary for the Bushehr facility to begin refinement. Israel is furious, as evidenced by Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s recent meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov where she called the fuel deliveries “inconceivable.” What is of particular importance in General Baluyevsky’s statement is his mention of “defending the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of, not just Russia, but her “allies” as well. Russia has not, as of this moment, signed formal mutual defense agreements with nations such as Iran and Syria. Both are on Israel and America’s list of countries targeted for destruction. Both are important trading partners occupying Russia’s peripheries and therefore a first-line defense of Russian territory.

Throughout this nightmare in the Middle East, Russia has demonstrated a sane and rational character. By contrast, Israel and the United States under the administration of George Bush, have been irrational and unpredictable. Iraq and Afghanistan are unmitigated disasters and the fact that neither the U.S. nor Israel has learned from these disasters proves they are dangerous to all nations seen as uncooperative in the drive for U.S. and Israeli world hegemony. Indeed, Putin recently compared Bush to a “maniac running around threatening everyone with a razor.”

The Great American Strike - April 15, 2008.

KILLER POSSIBLY FLEEING TO MEXICO
ThinkTanked Exclusive

Perhaps the reason why the military is being so quiet about the murder suspect of the pregnant Marine Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach who was killed by Cpl. Cesar Armando Laurean is because he is an immigrant from Mexico serving in the United States Marine Corps under a immigration Visa. His parents Salvador Sanchez-Laurean and Elvira Ramirez de Laurean are both Mexican immigrants as well who purchased a home in Las Vegas in 2002 and then sold the home in 2006.

In 2006 Cesar and his wife from Ohio Christina Smith-Laurean, whom he married in 2005 in North Carolina, purchased their home at 103 Meadow Trail in Jacksonville, North Carolina and gave birth to their daughter in that same year. The whereabouts of Cesar's parents have not been disclosed to the public.

Cpl. Cesar Armando Laurean was last sighted boarding a Grey Hound Bus in Louisiana which was bound for Texas. Cpl. Cesar Armando Laurean may be fleeing to Mexico to avoid prosecution in the United States.

AT&T and Other ISPs May Be Getting Ready to Filter

By Brad Stone
New York Times

For the past fifteen years, Internet service providers have acted - to use an old cliche - as wide-open information super-highways, letting data flow uninterrupted and unimpeded between users and the Internet. But ISPs may be about to embrace a new metaphor: traffic cop. At a small panel discussion about digital piracy here at NBC’s booth on the Consumer Electronics Show floor, representatives from NBC, Microsoft, several digital filtering companies and telecom giant AT&T said the time was right to start filtering for copyrighted content at the network level. Such filtering for pirated material already occurs on sites like YouTube and Microsoft’s Soapbox, and on some university networks.

Network-level filtering means your Internet service provider – Comcast, AT&T, EarthLink, or whoever you send that monthly check to – could soon start sniffing your digital packets, looking for material that infringes on someone’s copyright. “What we are already doing to address piracy hasn’t been working. There’s no secret there,” said James Cicconi, senior vice president, external & legal affairs for AT&T. Mr. Cicconi said that AT&T has been talking to technology companies, and members of the MPAA and RIAA, for the last six months about implementing digital fingerprinting techniques on the network level. “We are very interested in a technology based solution and we think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this,” he said. “We recognize we are not there yet but there are a lot of promising technologies. But we are having an open discussion with a number of content companies, including NBC Universal, to try to explore various technologies that are out there.”

Internet civil rights organizations oppose network-level filtering, arguing that it amounts to Big Brother monitoring of free speech, and that such filtering could block the use of material that may fall under fair-use legal provisions — uses like parody, which enrich our culture. Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal, who has led the company’s fights against companies like YouTube for the last three years, clearly doesn’t have much tolerance for that line of thinking. “The volume of peer-to-peer traffic online, dominated by copyrighted materials, is overwhelming.

That clearly should not be an acceptable, continuing status,” he said. “The question is how we collectively collaborate to address this.” I asked the panelists how they would respond to objections from their customers over network level filtering – for example, the kind of angry outcry Comcast saw last year, when it was accused of clamping down on BitTorrent traffic on its network. “Whatever we do has to pass muster with consumers and with policy standards. There is going to be a spotlight on it,” said Mr. Cicconi of AT&T. After the session, he told me that ISPs like AT&T would have to handle such network filtering delicately, and do more than just stop an upload dead in its tracks, or send a legalistic cease and desist form letter to a customer. “We’ve got to figure out a friendly way to do it, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.

Pregnant Marine Missing From N.C. Base

CAMP LEJEUNE, N.C. — A 20-year-old pregnant Marine who was expected to testify about something she witnessed on base has been missing since mid-December, authorities said.

The Marine Corps said Wednesday it is cooperating fully with the Onslow County Sheriff's Office in the disappearance of Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, who is about eight months pregnant.

The sheriff's office has said Lauterbach's mother reported that her daughter was supposed to testify about an on-base incident. What Lance Cpl. Lauterbach was supposed to testify about or any details regarding the court case have been censored from the media by unknown powers that be.

"There are several findings and pieces of evidence that have been discovered that cause law enforcement to be concerned with the circumstances surrounding Maria's disappearance," the sheriff's department said in a statement.

Sheriff's investigators did not return calls seeking additional comment Wednesday, and it was not clear what Lauterbach was expected to say in testimony.

The State Bureau of Investigation also is working on the case. Marine Corps and Navy investigators are cooperating with the investigation, said First Lt. Richard Ulsh, a spokesman with the 2nd Marine Logistics Group.

Authorities say Lauterbach, originally from Dayton, Ohio, was reported missing Dec. 19 by her mother, who last spoke with her daughter on Dec. 13. Her cell phone was found Dec. 20 near the main gate at Camp Lejeune.

Lauterbach's mother, Mary Lauterbach, told the Dayton Daily News on Wednesday that her family is concerned because it is out of character for her daughter not to stay in touch.

"There has been a deafening silence," she said.

Maria Lauterbach is assigned to the 2nd Marine Logistics Group of the II Marine Expeditionary Force. Camp Lejeune officials said she joined the Marine Corps in June 2006 and was trained as a personnel clerk.

FBI Prepares Vast Database Of Biometrics
December 22, 2007, Washington Post

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2
007/12/21/AR2007122102544.html

The FBI is embarking on a $1 billion effort to build the world's largest computer database of peoples' physical characteristics, a project that would give the government unprecedented abilities to identify individuals in the United States and abroad. Digital images of faces, fingerprints and palm patterns are already flowing into FBI systems. Next month, the FBI intends to award a 10-year contract that would significantly expand the amount and kinds of biometric information it receives. And in the coming years, law enforcement authorities around the world will be able to rely on iris patterns, face-shape data, scars and perhaps even the unique ways people walk and talk, to ... identify [people]. The increasing use of biometrics for identification is raising questions about the ability of Americans to avoid unwanted scrutiny. It is drawing criticism from those who worry that people's bodies will become de facto national identification cards. "It's going to be an essential component of tracking," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the Technology and Liberty Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's enabling the Always On Surveillance Society."

The FBI's biometric database ... communicates with the Terrorist Screening Center's database of suspects and the National Crime Information Center database, which is the FBI's master criminal database of felons, fugitives and terrorism suspects. At the West Virginia University Center for Identification Technology Research (CITeR) ... researchers are working on capturing images of people's irises at distances of up to 15 feet, and of faces from as far away as 200 yards. Soon, those researchers will do biometric research for the FBI. Covert iris- and face-image capture is several years away, but it is of great interest to government agencies.

"EWWWWW, KFC KILLS CHICKENS!", are the words I heard coming from my 11 and 8 year old daughters as I place the bucket of chicken down on the dining room table after spending close to $30 for a meal after working late. My daughters refused to eat the meal I had brought home for them! I asked them "What's wrong with chicken?? You've always loved chicken, why do you hate it now?"

This was the kicker... out of my 8 year olds backpack comes a brochure from PETA, an organization against animal abuse, that was handed out to the children at Citrus Springs Elementary School in Citrus County, Florida. Now I'm not sure if other schools in Florida were affected by this or if it was just my daughters school. But I would like to get to the bottom of this.

I found it quite shocking that public schools in Florida would allow organizations such as PETA to disperse their brochures to the children. I'm not necessarily in favor of the way the chickens are treated before going to the slaughter house but I am against organizations throwing their ideas and beliefs at minors without parental consent. The brochure went on to explain how we should demand KFC to use organic chicken and chickens that are raised on open range farms... blah blah blah.

So now I have to deal with questions about slaughtering chickens and now they are against slaughtering cows. Are the public schools trying to turn my daughters into vegetarians?

Needless to say I have a large bucket of chicken in the refrigerator that I will be eating over the next week, the Colonials recipe still tastes great to me and I would like to apologize for the miserable life of the chicken, and forgive me for not giving it a proper burial. Pass me a napkin please... thanks.

Note: My 4 year old daughter, although she mimicked the older kids and said "EWWWW, KFC KILLS CHICKENS!", gladly sat down with me and with a smile ate some KFC chicken with her dad.