Peripheral Milit_Urb 12

[Image: Bubble City, a drawing by Kiel Johnson at Hyperbole Studios.]

DARPA's Immune Building Dedication is a research effort to develop, integrate, and demonstrate a system to protect buildings against chemical and biological warfare agent attack. This is the first-ever demonstration of an integrated system for building protection in an occupied building under real-world operating conditions. : House of Terror "This afternoon we were treated to a lecture on Budapest, Hungary's House of Terror, "illustrating the grim decades of Nazi and Communist repression." : Munich's New Synagogue opens 68 years after the Nazi Kristallnacht anti-Jewish pogrom when the old Synagogue together with other synagogues and Jewish buildings were trashed, looted and burned. : Penthouse Bunker With Pool : Bionic Dolphin Cruises at 80 mph : The Need for Speed - All Aboard the Underwater Express! to: "...demonstrate stable and controllable high-speed underwater transport through supercavitation. The intent is to determine the feasibility for supercavitation technology to enable a new class of high-speed underwater craft for future littoral missions that could involve the transport of high-value cargo and/or small units of personnel. : Offsite Releases "At the risk of shocking you, it turns out that underground nuclear tests in Nevada vented significant amounts of radiation." : Waging Peace in the Philippines 'it's an innovative, decidedly nonviolent approach by which U.S. military personnel—working with aid agencies, private groups and Philippine armed forces—are trying to curtail terrorist recruitment by building roads and providing other services in impoverished rural communities.' : Airport Defense: Lasers, Microwaves : On sale now: Israeli bomb shelters 'The Jerusalem Post notes that the underground shelter, for use by government officials in case of nuclear or conventional attack, was approved a decade ago (not in response to Iran). The bunker will have a tunnel leading to the city outskirts, emerging “at Emek Ha’Arazim outside Mevaseret Zion near the main Jerusalem-Tel Aviv road.”' : Google Earth Tracks Nukes : General Dynamics to Build Training 'Village' GDC's information technology unit will build an artificial Middle Eastern village near Amman, Jordan, to be used for urban combat training by the U.S. Army and its close allies. The buildings will simulate homes, apartments, banks, a police station, offices and retail shops, he said. They will be wired with high-tech instruments for day and night video and audio recording. The facility also will include special effects to simulate a battlefield. : “Can Dr. Evil Save the World”? details plans by Lowell Wood to solve the global warming problem using geo-engineering. : Portable Nuke Power Plant for the Army? some propose developing a self-contained nuclear power plant that could deploy with forces to provide energy for its garrisons and allow the service to significantly scale back its logistics operations -- including its reliance on foreign oil -- required to sustain troops around the world.

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Caterpillar Homewrecker’s Visit to London: Since 2003 a campaign, triggered by the murder of ISM activist Rachel Corrie, has been building to force Caterpillar to end all contracts with Israel. People have taken action in the UK, the US and all over Europe. Due to pressure from campaigners and rebuke from the U.N., Caterpillar have been forced to make public statements about the use of the D9 by the Israeli army. Caterpillar’s position is that they no longer supply D9’s to Israel but they will not say whether they supply parts to maintain the Israeli army’s existing D9s. : House Demolitions in the West Bank : SmartMobbing against the IDF: The Israeli army cancelled a planned air raid on the home of a Gaza militant on Sunday after several hundred Palestinians barricaded themselves inside the building.

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[Image: The Struggle for Iraq: The Budget, and an Ally; Idle Contractors Add Millions to Iraq Rebuilding, The New York Times, 2006.]

IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION

Iraq corruption 'costs billions' : U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Contracting, Networking Opportunity Day Draws Large Iraqi Turnout : Halliburton's subsidiary KBR, which has caused controversy for its role in reconstructing Iraq, has seen its shares soar after a listing in the US. : Reconstruction Continues... : Iraq Telecommunications & Post Corporation (ITPC), Iraq's sole fixed-line operator, has awarded Nortel a US$20 million contract to build a nationwide optical backbone to deliver high-quality high-bandwidth data, video and multimedia services for personal and business communications. : Halliburton Unit to Pay $8 Million for Overbilling : War, What Is It Good For? There are about 100,000 government contractors operating in Iraq, not counting subcontractors, a total that is approaching the size of the U.S. military force there, according to the military's first census of the growing population of civilians operating in the battlefield.

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Biocidal Terrain - "So setting aside for now any and all skepticism of the polymer's ability to significantly mitigate some future species-ending plague, might we expect biocidal fountains to proliferate soon: like CCTV cameras, littering your daily commute, and misting you from the moment you exit your house till you finally settle down on your office chair? How about so-called respiratory oases retrofitted for the Ebola virus? Or benches, bathroom doorknobs, subway handrails, playground swings, elevator cars, and even nauseatingly boring public sculptures fostering an entirely new level of public intimacy?" : Reinterred City - Simultaneously indulging the fantasies of Dr. Strangelove and the Soprintendenza, Andrew Evans wants to deploy a robot to cities devastated by an earthquake, whereupon this “burrowing robot negotiates through the unstable rubble and solid earth, creating an interred, inhabitable structure from recycled debris.