Monday, 21 March 2011
Warning:
Subject: Possible threat to MCBQ
Ladies and Gentlemen,
There are substantiated indications and warning of possible denial of service attacks on MCBQ by supporters of Wiki-leaks and PFC Manning. It is possible that these attacks will be timed to coincide with protest activity that is scheduled to take place in the vicinity of MCBQ on 20 Mar. Possible threat courses of action could include denial of service attacks on phone, email, and internet services, and could include harassing phone calls (i.e. bomb threats) and mail disruption (i.e. suspicious packages). Additionally, though there is no direct threat, it is possible that actual physical penetrations onto MCBQ property may be undertaken to cause infrastructure damage, vandalism, or harass USMC personnel.
The Base has been involved in detailed response planning with local, regional, and national authorities and is appropriately postured to minimize/mitigate likely threat activity. Because the exact intent of the protest groups is not known, nor the form of attack they may undertake, MCBQ commands and activities should carefully review their OPSEC and physical security posture.
Recommended actions for MCBQ tenant commands and organizations:
1. Develop alternative communication plans (i.e. installation command net and cell phones) to ensure the ability to communicate with MCBQ emergency services during a denial of service attack.
1. Develop alternative communication plans (i.e. installation command net and cell phones) to ensure the ability to communicate with MCBQ emergency services during a denial of service attack.
2. Review MCBQ bomb threat procedures (attached).
3. Review MCBQ procedures for suspicious packages (attached).
4. Area commands shall ensure Installation Command net radios are fully charged and accessible.
5. Ensure Command Duty Officers are briefed on the threat and know the proper response to threatening/harassing phone calls
6. Ensure non-essential fax machines are turned "off"
7. Remind all personnel to be alert for suspicious activity and report it immediately to the MCBQ Security Battalion using the Eagle Eyes hotline (703-432-EYES).
8. Building managers should ensure building perimeters are regularly inspected and that all unmonitored exits are locked when not in use (consider limiting access to a single entrance and mandating ID checks).
9. Remind personnel to avoid posting or discussing aspects of any MCBQ response on Face-Book or other social media forums.
10. Remind personnel, to be aware of phishing (both email and telephone) attempts to gain information about MCBQ personnel or operations.
Additional information concerning protest activities, to include any gate closures, changes to Force Protection Condition, excepted traffic delays, etc., will be distributed via a MCBQ FROSTCALL later this week.
Pete Streng
Director of Operations
3250 Catlin Avenue
Quantico, VA 22134
703-898-9875
Whistleblower slams Japan nuclear regulation
A nuclear industry whistleblower who helped design protective containment vessels for reactors has attacked the Japanese government, its nuclear industry and regulators over their safety record.
Dr Masashi Goto, a nuclear engineer, resigned from his job at the Toshiba Corporation over safety concerns.Toshiba supplied two of the reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant that was stricken by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.
Dr Goto criticises his country's record on nuclear safety.
"We have the government commission overseeing nuclear safety standards and in my opinion they are not doing their job," he told ABC correspondent Eric Campbell last Thursday in Tokyo in an exclusive interview for Four Corners.
He says the Fukushima crisis shows Japan has not yet learned the lessons of history.
"At Three Mile Island the nuclear fuel melted. Fuel is melting here now," he said.
"We have to design reactors to withstand melting fuel rods. Right now the reactor will break down due to the heat generated by the melting rods."
Dr Goto alleges that in Japan's nuclear industry profits take precedence over safety standards.
"No-one says it officially or openly. When setting standards for future earthquakes, the thought is of money - how much is it going to cost?" he said.
"This underlies the government's decision making. They are thinking the costs could have a bad repercussion on the economy."
Dr Goto says one of his special research interests at Toshiba was how to make containment vessels stronger.
He says Japan's nuclear safety standards have been based on an insufficient acknowledgment of the potential severity of natural disasters.
"What's wrong with the standards is that the anticipated level of the worst-case-scenario earthquake is not correct," he said.
"Seismologists have different opinions and predictions. Some say bigger quakes are coming. Others say a big one is unlikely.
"Decisions have been made based on the opinion of the more optimistic seismologist and the opinions of the pessimistic ones are ignored."
The earthquake that shook Japan on March 11 was magnitude 9.0 - the strongest recorded earthquake in Japan, and far stronger than the country's nuclear industry had anticipated.
Despite this, the Tokyo Electric Power Company, which operates the Fukushima plant, boasted in its corporate publicity that its nuclear power stations were "designed for the largest conceivable earthquake" and that "all designs provide margins of safety capable of withstanding even natural disasters".
Grim warnings
Further grim warnings are given in tonight's Four Corners by nuclear experts and activists who have been interviewed over the past week.
American Damon Moglen, director of Friends Of The Earth's climate and energy project, points to the presence of as much as a quarter of a tonne of plutonium in Fukushima's No. 3 reactor, which suffered an explosion last Monday.
"The problem there is, if that plutonium fuel is melting inside the core, if it's being vented out or if an explosion were to break the containment open, we could have - and we have as much as a quarter of a tonne of additional plutonium in that reactor - we could have radioactive releases containing plutonium, which would be just yet another horror to have to deal with," he said.
Dr Ziggy Switkowski, former chairman of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), warns the crisis at Fukushima has done a "great deal of damage" to the industry.
"The nuclear industry has, over time, worked as well as it has because of people's confidence in the integrity of reactors and acceptance that many of the issues associated with the management of spent fuel and waste were properly handled," he said.
"But we've always understood, and we saw this happen in Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, that if the community trust is breached by whatever development, it will take a long, long time to recover it.
"I think this is a turning point for the industry."
Quentin McDermott @'ABC'
Protein found in brain cells may be key to autism
Scientists have shown how a single protein may trigger autistic spectrum disorders by stopping effective communication between brain cells.
The team from Duke University in North Carolina created autistic mice by mutating the gene which controls production of the protein, Shank3.The animals exhibited social problems, and repetitive behaviour - both classic signs of autism and related conditions.
The Nature study raises hopes of the first effective drug treatments.
Autism is a disorder which, to varying degrees, affects the ability of children and adults to communicate and interact socially.
While hundreds of genes linked to the condition have been found, the precise combination of genetics, biochemistry and other environmental factors which produce autism is still unclear.
Each patient has only one or a handful of those mutations, making it difficult to develop drugs to treat the disorder.
Shank3 is found in the synapses - the junctions between brain cells (neurons) that allow them to communicate with each other.
The researchers created mice which had a mutated form of Shank3, and found that these animals avoided social interactions with other mice.
They also engaged in repetitious and self-injurious grooming behaviour.
Brain circuits When the MIT team analysed the animals' brains they found defects in the circuits that connect two different areas of the brain, the cortex and the striatum.Healthy connections between these areas are thought to be key to effective regulation of social behaviours and social interaction.
The researchers say their work underscores just what an important role Shank3 plays in the establishment of circuits in the brain which underlie all our behaviours.
Lead researcher Dr Guoping Feng said: "Our study demonstrated that Shank3 mutation in mice lead to defects in neuron-neuron communications.
"These findings and the mouse model now allow us to figure out the precise neural circuit defects responsible for these abnormal behaviours, which could lead to novel strategies and targets for developing treatment."
It is thought that only a small percentage of people with autism have mutations in Shank3, but Dr Feng believes many other cases may be linked to disruptions to other proteins that control synaptic function.
If true he believes it should be possible to develop treatments that restore synaptic function, regardless of which protein is defective in a specific individual.
Carol Povey, director of the National Autistic Society's Centre for Autism, said: "Animal research can help advance our understanding or the role of genetics and their influence on behaviour, however it is only a small part of the picture when it comes to understanding autism.
"Human brains are far more complex than those of other mammals, and it is believed that a variety of factors are responsible for the development of the condition."
@'BBC'
Reuters Reuters Top News
FLASH: Brent crude rises $1.57 to $115.50/bbl after Western forces pound Libya
Flights of fancy dress: Polly Borland's portraits marry the infantile and the fetishistic
Nick Cave in a blue wig, from Polly Borland's latest series of work, 'Smudge'
In 1978, in Melbourne, Australia, photographer Polly Borland was at a party with a little-known band called The Birthday Party. Borland was getting a ribbing from a friend, but the band's guitarist, Nick Cave, stepped in to defend her.
So began a 30-year relationship between the pair which continues to this day. Borland lives with her husband, the director of The Road, John Hillcoat, in the same area of Brighton as Cave and his wife, the British model Susie Bick. Borland has photographed Cave numerous times, most recently for the cover of "Money and Run", Cave's forthcoming track with supergroup UNKLE. Now, there is Smudge, an exhibition and book featuring Cave posing in various infantile, adapted costumes, opening at Other Criteria, Damien Hirst's central London gallery on 18 March.
Borland meets me at the exhibition space. With her severe bob, large glasses and Australian accent she is easily recognised. She peppers her speech with an effusive laugh that punctuates periods of quieter thoughtfulness.
"Nick's kids are a year older than our son and I am good friends with his wife," she says. "We all hang out together. He asked me to do a shot for him and I asked him for a favour in return. He loved all the dressing up. I just think that he's never been interested in rules. Neither have I. Maybe it's an Australian thing. You get to a certain age and you think: who cares? We've got to enjoy ourselves."
Borland was born in Melbourne in 1958. She was given her first camera, a Nikkor, by her father when she was 16. She says she was studying at art school when she first encountered what went on to be her main influences: Diane Arbus, photojournalist Weegee, Larry Clark.
Shortly after leaving art school, Borland began working for newspapers and magazines. She moved to England in 1989.
Borland's portrait photography subtly undermines her subjects' stature. Given the rare opportunity to photograph the Queen and Gordon Brown, she took their pictures against sparkly backgrounds; Peter Lilley, when there was speculation in the press about his sexuality, sat in front of a glittering backdrop. "Editorial work came easily to me, but it was always a means to an end – it consumed me, it interested me, but I still found it creatively restrictive," she says.
Her artistic work tends to marry the infantile and the fetishistic. In one photographic series, 2001's The Babies, Borland explores the world of infantilism in adult men who enjoy dressing up as babies. In 2008's Bunny, produced with a tall, blonde Brighton actress-turned-model called Gwen, there is equally something stunning yet sinister: in one picture, Gwen is pictured topless, bent in half, wearing what are apparently a pair of stuffed tights which are made to resemble bunny ears (curiously, when discussing her relationship with Gwen now, Borland falls silent). "Much of my work is about love," she says. "I know that sounds naive, but it is about my relationship with people and their ability to trust me. I don't feel like I am manipulating people." She says with the adult baby work she felt like a mother figure. "The common link was that they all felt unloved as kids. I actually felt the whole thing wasn't that psychologically interesting. That's how it resonated with me. That's how they chose to rationalise it. I am a voyeur; at the same time I am willing to get stuck in too." She says she also modelled in the Bunny series, and that you can see her "if you look hard enough".
The new work – various models wearing all-in-one body stockings decorated with cheap fancy dress, their faces concealed with masks – is as much about Borland's relationship with her subjects as it is about imagery.
It all started, she says, when Hillcoat was shooting The Road in Pittsburgh. Borland was left to home-school their young son, and began shooting him and one of his schoolfriends in various costumes. She said she could not stray into the "areas she normally explores" – namely, nudity, and how it interacts with childlike behaviour.
Returning to Brighton, Borland decided to spend longer on the project. She roped in Cave, local photographer Mark Vessey and Sherald Lamden, who was then creative director of Alexander McQueen's contemporary line, McQ. "So it was that I went around to her house in Brighton," writes Cave in the introduction to Smudge's accompanying book. "We played dress up." According to him, Borland squeezed him into everything from body-stockings to rubber bathing caps and crotch-accentuating leotards.
"I thought I would marry the photos of Mark and Nick, which I did separately," she says. "I started with conventional costumes, but I felt that was a bit limited so I started developing my own costumes. Very basic. I used little bits of costume with body stockings and leotards and tights and pantyhose." She says "the ambience is different" with the different models; in many photographs, figure-hugging lycra make the models' identities unmistakeable; in others, through the use of cartoon-like costumes, male and female elide.
Despite Borland's protestations that her portraiture doesn't "stretch her", she has little idea why she is drawn to society's extremes.
"I think that anyone who is working creatively is a bit like litmus paper," she concludes. "I soak up a lot of stuff. I am hyper-sensitive and along the way I lead quite a conventional life. Maybe I am not acting out that stuff because it's in my work. It comes from existential angst. I think life's difficult."
Twenty prints from 'Smudge' will be on display and for sale at Other Criteria Gallery, New Bond St, London W1 (www.othercriteria.com) to 7 April. The accompanying book is published by Actar (£19.90)
Rob Sharp @'The Independent'
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