Free Republic

For the last ten years, development of "smart dust" has moved right along. "Smart Dust" is basically very miniaturized electronic devices. This is similar to stuff like RFID, smart cards, EZ Pass and those rice grain size tracking devices you can have injected into your pets. But Smart Dust takes this all to a new level by being small enough to be disguised as dirt, the kind you can pick up in your shoes or clothing. Each bit of Smart Dust can be given a unique serial number that, when hit with an "interrogation signal" from troops on the ground,...

Editorial Reviews From Publishers Weekly Though Leon compares his mission of going undercover to infiltrate the "Bush-loving extreme Right" to Black Like Me and the work of anthropologist Jane Goodall, a more apropos comparison would be to Beavis and Butthead or some of the stunts featured on Jackass. In these 31 essays, Leon sloppily paints abortion protestors, private security companies, white supremacists, the press, the FBI and anyone who isn't from "Northern California, the land of the peace-loving, true BLUE liberal," with a brush wider than the trailers he assumes most of his "subjects" have crawled out from under. The...

China is showing more indications that it's growing Cyber War capability is actually being put to use. An increasing amount of criminal Internet use is coming out of China. Parallel with that is Chinas formation of a civilian reserve of Internet experts, to help out in wartime. Meanwhile, there is the murky situation regarding who controls all the criminal Internet activity in China. Since China is a police state, and much emphasis, and effort, is put on controlling the Internet, this sudden growing in criminal hacking in China looks suspicious. National governments, especially police states, have been known to cut...

The U.S. Air Force has found a way to get the kind of recruits they need for their Special Operations jobs. This is mainly pararescue, the guys who go in and make dangerous rescues of downed aircrews. The recruiters thought that extreme sports events would be attended by the kind of young, fit and adventure seeking people they were looking for. They were right, and now the army Special Forces and the navy SEALs are setting their sights on the same events. There just aren't enough recruits around for the growing number of Special Operations jobs opening up.

There are a number of trends in Iraq that you hear little, or nothing, about in the mass media. For example; @ The economy. GDP doubled from 2003 to 2004, and was up double digits in 2005. Inflation and unemployment have both been falling steadily. Yes, the terrorists are still at it, but in the background you will notice all those people going to work, all the new cars and all the new construction. While big companies have stayed away from Iraq, and all those nasty headlines, smaller firms have been more aggressive. Life goes on. @ Agriculture. For thousands...

Several recent incidents, including the April 27 arrest of Jeb Ray Corliss IV, who was caught by police as he prepared to skydive off the Empire State Building’s observation deck during rush hour, have called attention to BASE jumping, a fringe sport that’s been around since the early 1980s. The “BASE” in BASE jumping is an acronym that stands for the four locations a skydiver must leap from before he can call himself a BASE jumper: Building, Antenna, Span (in other words, a bridge) and Earth (i.e., a cliff). And the action isn't limited to New York City. On May...

Statement on Immigration Research (Update: On Tuesday, May 16, the Senate passed Sen. Jeff Bingaman's (D-NM) amendment to S. 2611 that significantly reduced the number of legal immigrants who could enter under the bill's "guest worker" program. As a result of this change, our estimate of the number of legal immigrants who would enter the country or would gain legal status under S. 2611 falls from 103 million to around 66 million over the next 20 years.) If enacted, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act (CIRA, S.2611) would be the most dramatic change in immigration law in 80 years, allowing an...

“It would end the U.S. as we currently know it.” That’s Robert Rector of The Heritage Foundation, speaking of what would happen if an immigration proposal by Sens. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) becomes law. Their plan would grant amnesty to 9 million to 10 million illegal immigrants and put those immigrants on a path to citizenship. Moreover, the Martinez-Hagel plan would pave the way for an estimated 103 million persons to legally immigrate to the U.S. over the next 20 years -- fully one-third of the current population of the United States. Current law allows 19 million...

Using probes originally designed to detect and image topographical features on surfaces, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have demonstrated the ability to initiate and spatially localize chemical reactions on the submicron scale. Using probes originally designed to detect and image topographical features on surfaces, scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory have demonstrated the ability to initiate and spatially localize chemical reactions on the submicron scale. They have been able to reliably manipulate chemistry on a very, very small scale in contrast to normal beaker-type reactions carried out in bulk. Such "site-selective"...

In the past two weeks, Iran has been pumping into Iraq two types of extra-lethal weapons in very large quantities. They have already taken their toll in the shooting down of two military helicopters - one American and one British – and an estimated 19 deaths of US military personnel. DEBKAfile’s military and intelligence sources estimate the delivery to Iraqi insurgents as consisting of around 1,000 SA-7 Strela ground-air missiles made in Iran, and a very large quantity of a newly-developed roadside bomb, loaded with compressed gas instead of ball bearings and cartridges, to magnify their blast and explosive power....

Since elected to rule the Palestinians, the leaders of Hamas sound sometimes as though they are talking in different voices – depending on the place and occasion. While one appears to accept 1967 borders, another stands by the “right of refugees” (1948) to return” – another formula for Israel’s destruction, like the demand for a Palestinian state ranging from “the river to the sea.” The tactic is transparent: Hamas, a designated Islamic terror group whose politburo chief resides in Damascus hopes to disarm the more susceptible countries of the West by apparently confused signals to end its government’s isolation and...

Some Jordanian Special Operations personnel are in Iraq, providing training to Iraqi forces, but are doing it discreetly. Jordan has taken the lead, at least as far as Arab countries are concerned, in helping to train the new Iraqi army and police. The Jordanian security forces are among the best trained and most professional in the Arab world. Jordan has long depended on Iraq as a trading partner and ally, even when Saddam was in charge. Jordan was not comfortable being that close with Saddam, and the Jordanian government, at least, is glad to see Saddam gone. Jordan wants the...

The terrorist groups contain a lot of technically expert people, who have made use of modern electronic technology. Cell phones, wi-fi, encryption, and expertly produced videos and Power Point instruction material on how to be a terrorist, abound. But more and more stories are heard in the coffee shops about how smart ass young terrorists got their comeuppance when the Americans, the acknowledged masters (and often inventors) of these technologies, used this edge to catch or kill the terrorists. All Iraqis know about the jammers American convoys have, because these damn things shut down most wireless devices until the American...

Arizona Sen. John McCain, the early front-runner for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination, had a potential John Connally/Mike Dukakis/John Kerry moment earlier this month, and hardly anyone seems to have noticed. What McCain did was make some disturbing informal remarks to the Israeli daily Haaretz – informal only in the sense that as a still undeclared candidate, his comments, as Haaretz’s Amir Oren wrote, "reflect the personal opinion of a senior and influential figure in the area of defense policy in the United States Senate, rather than an attempt to formulate policy guidelines for his administration." McCain told Haaretz that...

Amid heightened threats from president Ahmadinejad, Tehran opens a back door into Israel for its penetration-cum-terror agents: Sudan to the NegevDEBKAfile’s intelligence sources reveal that two Iranian Revolutionary Guards companies were dropped at Khartoum’s military airfield May 2 by a C-130 transport and driven to a secret military installation on the outskirts of the Sudanese capital. Their arrival signals the onset of an Iranian military airlift to Sudan of a fully equipped RG brigade with armor, a major escalation of the clandestine Iranian threat to Egypt and Israel alike. DEBKAfile’s security sources report the ongoing routine of illicit Sudanese infiltrations...

The New left and the Views of C. Wright Mills Written: Summer, 1961 First Published: International Socialist Review, New York, Volume 22, No. 3, pp. 67-79. Transcription/Editing: 2005 by Daniel Gaido HTML Markup: 2005 by David Walters Public Domain:George Novak Internet Archive 2005; This work is completely free. In any reproduction, we ask that you cite this Internet address and the publishing information above. In capitals as distant as Warsaw and Tokyo, London and New York a significant new current of thought has been taking shape among intellectuals on the left. Despite the differences in their surroundings and in their...

LAKE FOREST, Calif. -- Liquidmetal(R) Technologies Inc. (OTC:LQMT) announced today that the winter sports division of Head NV (NYSE:HED) has added a Liquidmetal line of skis to be offered for the 2005/2006 ski season. The ultimate energy return of the Liquidmetal alloy is incorporated within a Liquidmetal(R) jacket that covers the entire length of the ski core. Given the fact that the Liquidmetal alloy does not deform on impact, combined with the torsional stability of the HEAD Intelligence(TM) technology, designers are now able to offer a ski with increased response and power. Several of HEAD's ski lines will take advantage...

The abrupt resignation (ouster?) of Porter Goss as director of the Central Intelligence Agency lays bare the rocky state of America’s most prestigious secret service amid critical missions on three fronts, Iraq, Afghanistan and the war on al Qaeda. The White House quickly denied US media reports that the CIA chief, entrusted 20 months ago with reforming the agency after the twin intelligence failures of 9/11 and Iraq, had been forced to quit. At a hastily called press conference Friday, President George W. praised Goss for his “help to make this country a safe place and help us win the...

Almost a decade ago, on February 23, 1987, astronomers noticed that a star 167,000 light-years from Earth in the Large Magellanic Cloud had blown apart. This blazing act of self-destruction released an amount of energy equivalent to that of 100 suns over their lifetime. Ever since, scientists have watched the fading aftermath of supernova 1987A--and the second act of the show is now beginning: An immense shockwave from the explosion is smashing into a mysterious ring of gas that surrounds the dead star, causing it to light up once again. ADVERTISEMENT (article continues below) Supernova 1987A was the brightest stellar...

While much of our efforts are focused upon critiquing what the media writes, often the situation in the Mideast is distorted by what doesn't make it to the newspapers and TV news. Leaving an impression that Israel is experiencing a period of relative calm, much of the media has consistently failed to report on the continuing Qassam missile attacks from Gaza and other terrorist activities, including an aborted Palestinian attempt to destroy the Karni Crossing from Gaza into Israel last week. (Photo: AFP) Perhaps more conspicuously absent from the media's coverage is the revelation, covered extensively in Israeli sources such...