Just a few days after a senior US counter-terrorism expert warned that US drone strikes were turning Yemen into the “Arabian equivalent of Waziristan”, US drone strikes yesterday aped the tactic of ‘follow up’ strikes used by the US in Pakistan. According to CNN, a strike in which seven suspected Al-Qaeda militants were killed was followed by a strike on local residents rushing to the scene to help the injured. Local sources said that between eight and twelve civilians were killed in the second, follow-up strike. A Yemeni security officials expressed regret for the civilian casualties and injuries. “The targets of the raids were not the civilians, and we give our condolences to the families of those who lost a loved one.” Over the past few weeks US drone strikes and other military activity has been ratcheted up in Yemen as the White House has given ‘greater leeway’ to the CIA and JSOC to launch attacks. Micah Zenko at the US Council on Foreign Relations estimates there will be more US strikes this month in Yemen than there has ever been in a single month in Pakistan. For details see the Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s excellent database of US covert activity in Yemen.

A device that can send verbal warnings over a long distance or emit a beam of pain-inducing noise will be used in London during the Olympics, officials said. Britain’s Ministry of Defense confirmed the US-made long range acoustic device, spotted attached to a landing craft on the Thames River, will be available for use in the summer games. The LRAD 1000Xi is “an effective long range communications system that broadcasts focused highly intelligible, multi-language messages, instructions and warnings over distances up to 3,000 meters (1.8 miles) to peacefully resolve uncertain situations, a spokesman for the San Diego-based LRAD Corp. said. The corporation denies it is a weapon and the Ministry announced it would be used “primarily in the loud hailer mode”.

In what is being billed as the first of its kind, a billion-dollar futuristic town is being built in New Mexico, but residents need not apply. The new 15-square mile city will be built as a testing ground for new, cutting edge technologies. The Center for Innovation, Testing and Evaluation project will “help researchers test everything from intelligent traffic systems and next-generation wireless networks to automated washing machines and self-flushing toilets. …Complete with highways, houses and commercial buildings, old and new.” Source The unique research facility will appear like a ghost town, as no human beings will be invited to live there. Instead, the only people to be found will be research scientists. The houses, however, will be outfitted with all the amenities as if people were residing there, with appliances and plumbing.

Most Americans still believe that our weather patterns are 100% natural and that our government has absolutely no control over the weather. Unfortunately, that is not the case at all. What you are about to read is evidence that weather modification is happening right now all over the United States. This is never acknowledged by our politicians and it is never talked about by the mainstream media. But it is very, very real. Weather modification programs in some parts of the country have been going on for many years and evidence of these programs is hidden in plain view. So does this mean that if we don’t like the weather we can just blame the government? Well, yes it does, but it also means that the government has been seriously messing around with our environment and there could be “unintended consequences” that are far more dramatic than any of us ever dared to imagine. Those that believed that the government was involved in weather modification were once considered to be “kooks”, but the truth is that authorities aren’t even trying to hide it anymore. For example, the following was recently posted in the “Legal Notices” section of the classified ads in a local newspaper called The Tribune in San Luis Obispo, California….

Brain scans have revealed the workings of the brain’s GPS that underpin our decisions as we navigate towards a destination. Two areas of the brain appear to take turns as our internal guide and work together to steer us through the environment. The brain regions take on different roles to meet our needs, with one keeping track of the distance to our destination as the crow flies, and the other chipping in to calculate the actual distance of the route ahead when we reach a junction. Researchers pinpointed the neural systems by scanning volunteers’ brains as they watched movies shot on the streets of Soho in central London. “We have never known anything about how the brain represents information about future places we want to be,” said Hugo Spiers, a neuroscientist at the Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience at University College London.

An engine failed to fire on the Phobos-Grunt probe, Interfax quoted the Russian space agency chief, Vladimir Popovkin, as saying. The craft was intended to bring back a soil sample. “The engine did not fire, neither the first nor the second burn occurred. This means that the craft was unable to find its bearings by the stars,” Popovkin said at Russia’s Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan. In a forum on the mission’s official website, Anton Ledkov of the Russian Space Research Institute said there were no signals from the craft. But Popovkin said officials were in contact with the probe, which remained in Earth’s orbit, and they had three days to set it on course before its batteries would run out. Russia’s space agency was scaled back because of budget constraints and a brain drain following the 1991 Soviet collapse and has suffered a series of setbacks this year. “They say there is hope to reset it; apparently it’s a problem with the programming but there is very little time,” the lead mission scientist, Alexander Zakharov of the Space Research Institute, told Reuters. “I feel grief. It’s very sad that this is how it all worked out but this is a consequence of our lack of people after such a big interval … Many young people worked on this. There is a lack of experience, we are working almost from scratch.”

Federally-funded high-tech street lights now being installed in American cities are not only set to aid the DHS in making “security announcements” and acting as talking surveillance cameras, they are also capable of “recording conversations,” bringing the potential privacy threat posed by ‘Intellistreets’ to a whole new level. In the days after we first brought attention to the privacy concerns surrounding the new street lights, with our story featuring prominently on the Drudge Report website, the company behind them, Illuminating Concepts, went on the defensive, issuing a press release claiming the devices didn’t represent a “big brother” intrusion. However, as you can see from the video above, ‘Intellistreets’ is big brother on steroids. George Orwell himself would probably have considered the concept too far-fetched to appear in the dystopian classic 1984.

The European Commission has adopted a Communication which sets out the main options for using new technologies, such as biometrics, to simplify life for foreigners frequently travelling to the EU and to better monitor third-country nationals crossing the borders. Enabling smooth and fast border crossing for travellers, while ensuring an adequate level of security, is a challenge for many Member States. Every year more than 700 million EU citizens and third country nationals cross the EU’s external borders. This number is expected to rise significantly in the future. By 2030 the number of people at European airports could increase by 80%, which will result in longer delays and queues for travellers if border checking procedures are not modernised in time. “The Union must continue to modernise the management of its external borders and ensure that the Schengen area is better equipped to cope with future challenges”, said Cecilia Malmström, Commissioner for Home Affairs. “The ‘Smart Borders’ initiative would speed up border crossing for regular travellers but could also help us to better secure our external borders. We now need to make sure that the most efficient systems are in place and I am looking forward to discussing the available options with the European Parliament, the Council and the European Data Protection Supervisor”.

A Department of Homeland Security-funded surveillance drone deployed against insurgents in Afghanistan that can also be used to tase suspects from above has been unveiled by the Montgomery County Sheriff’s office and will be operational within a month. “At $500,000 a pop, Montgomery county spent $250,000 to get the UAV. The rest was covered by a Department of Homeland Security grant,” reports KBTX.com. Although its initial role will be limited to surveillance, the ShadowHawk Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, previously used against suspected terrorists in Afghanistan and East Africa, has the ability to tase suspects from above as well as carrying 12-gauge shotguns and grenade launchers. “We look forward to utilizing it in a variety of capacities that protect our employees from harm to the extent possible and to enhance the protection to our citizens and their safety,” said Montgomery County Chief Deputy Randy McDaniel.

New street lights that include “Homeland Security” applications including speaker systems, motion sensors and video surveillance are now being rolled out with the aid of government funding. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=yuWdBgOHLSk The Intellistreets system comprises of a wireless digital infrastructure that allows street lights to be controlled remotely by means of a ubiquitous wi-fi link and a miniature computer housed inside each street light, allowing for “security, energy management, data harvesting and digital media,” according to the Illuminating Concepts website. According to the company’s You Tube video of the concept, the primary capabilities of the devices include “energy conservation, homeland security, public safety, traffic control, advertising, video surveillance.”