For the last 6 years or so have gone to a certain camp in adjoining State and watched fireworks display, i would have to say this year was as good as it has been. Here are a few pictures.
The pictures were actually taken by my daughter this year, timing is hard but she got it. The ones from last years blog were mine.
North Korea fires 7 missilesSEOUL (AP) — North Korea launched seven ballistic missiles Saturday into waters off its east coast in a show of military firepower that defied U.N. resolutions and drew global expressions of condemnation and concern.
The salvo, confirmed by the South Korean government, also appeared to be a slap at the United States as Washington moves to enforce U.N. as well as its own sanctions against the isolated regime for its May 25 nuclear test.
The launches came on July 4, which is U.S. Independence Day. The display was similar to one that took place three years ago, also while Americans celebrated the Fourth of July during another period of tensions over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program.
The number of missiles was the same, though in 2006 North Korea also launched a long-range rocket that broke apart and fell into the ocean less than a minute after liftoff.
South Korea said Saturday's missiles likely flew more than 250 miles, apparently landing in waters between the Korean peninsula and Japan.
South Korea and Japan both condemned the launches, with Tokyo calling them a "serious act of provocation." Britain and France issued similar statements.
Russia and China, both close to North Korea, expressed concern over an "escalation of tension in the region," the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement after a meeting in Moscow.
In Washington, the White House had no immediate comment. But two senior officials in President Obama's administration, speaking in advance of the launches, said any reaction was likely to be muted to avoid giving attention to Pyongyang or antagonize it. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
North Korea has engaged in a series of acts this year widely seen as provocative. It fired a long-range rocket it said was a satellite in early April, and in late May it carried out its second underground nuclear test following the first in late 2006.
The country has also stoked tensions with rival South Korea and last month threatened "thousand-fold" military retaliation against the U.S. and its allies if provoked.
In addition, North Korea convicted two American journalists last month and sentenced them to 12 years hard labor for illegally entering the country. It is also holding a South Korean worker for allegedly denouncing its political system.
The secretive communist country is believed undergoing a political transition in which 67-year-old leader Kim Jong Il appears to be laying the groundwork to transfer power to one of his sons. Kim himself took over from his late father, the country's founder.
South Korean officials said Saturday's launches came throughout the day and were part of military exercises. The North, which had warned ships to stay away from waters off the east coast through July 10, also fired what are believed to have been four short-range cruise missiles Thursday.
Speculation had been building for weeks that the launches were coming. The key question has been whether the North might fire an intercontinental ballistic missile, as it vowed to do in late April.
Despite a Japanese newspaper report last month that one might be launched toward Hawaii in early July, U.S. officials have noted no such preparations, which are complex, usually take days and are often observable by spy satellites. Still, that hasn't stopped Washington from boosting missile defenses as a precaution.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency suggested launch activity may be winding down, at least for now. It reported late Saturday, citing an unidentified military official, that the North was pulling personnel from its missile launch site and allowing ships to sail again off the coast. The Defense Ministry said it could not confirm the report.
North Korea's state news agency did not mention the launches, so it was hard to grasp Pyongyang's true intentions. Officials and analysts, however, said they showed the country remains happy to stand up to the international community and appears unwilling to give in to efforts to punish it.
"I think it's a demonstration of their defiance and rejection of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1874, for one thing, and to demonstrate their military power capabilities to any potential adversaries" as well as potential customers for its weapons, said Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based analyst for the International Crisis Group think tank.
Pinkston also said that there was "certainly a political aspect connected" to the launches and that July 4 was perhaps a "symbolic date," suggesting the timing was not a coincidence.
Resolution 1874, which was approved last month and which condemned the North's nuclear test, was the third to be passed by the U.N. Security Council against the country since 2006. All three ban North Korea from launching ballistic missiles.
A senior official in South Korea's presidential office said that while the launches were part of military exercises, "North Korea also appeared to have sent a message to the U.S.," though he did not elaborate.
Analysts have said North Korea's saber rattling is partially aimed at pressuring Washington to engage in direct negotiations. North Korea is believed to desire diplomatic relations and a peace treaty to formally end the 1950-53 Korean War.
Obama's administration has offered dialogue, but it says North Korea must return to stalled international talks on its denuclearization and stop engaging in what Washington sees as provocative behavior threatening allies South Korea and Japan.
Paik Hak-soon, an expert on North Korea at the Sejong Institute, a think tank near Seoul, rejected the idea that the North chose July 4 to confront or annoy the U.S. on its national day.
He said the launches were more likely a warning to the international community against enforcing U.N. sanctions, which call for searches of North Korean ships suspected of carrying banned items, such as nuclear or missile parts.
He said North Korea will continue to carry out more missile and nuclear tests in the future, as long as relations with the U.S. and South Korea remain tense.
"The structure of confrontation is there, intact," he said.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-07-03-nkorea-missiles_N.htm
Venezuela assumes control of Spanish-owned bank
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez's government assumed control of Venezuela's third-largest bank on Friday - making the state the largest player in the nation's banking system.
The purchase of the Spanish-owned Banco de Venezuela gives Chavez's socialist government control over more than one-fifth of bank deposits as he tightens his grip over the economy.
The acquisition will "strengthen the public banking system," which favors sectors including agriculture, energy, housing and tourism, Finance Minister Ali Rodriguez said in a statement.
In May, the Venezuelan government agreed to pay Spain's Grupo Santander $1.05 billion for the bank, ending months of stalled negotiations.
At the time, Banco de Venezuela had 3.2 million clients, 10 percent of the country's deposits and 6,000 employees.
Combined with other state banks, the government will now control about 21 percent of deposits and 16 percent of loans, a payroll of 15,000 employees and 651 bank branches.
The deal went into effect on Friday with an initial payment of $630 million. The rest will be paid in two equal installments in October and December.
Like the rest of the economy, Venezuela's banking sector is already highly regulated, with the government dictating interest rates and commissions.
Under Chavez, Venezuela has nationalized major players in the steel, electricity and other sectors, including four major oil projects, since 2007.
The Venezuelan consulting firm Ecoanalitica calculates those nationalizations have cost Chavez's government some $23 billion.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090704/D997DI2G1.html
GBPPR Tech Bulletin #9 - Nuclear Electromagnetic Pulse (NEMP) Survival
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This was originally going to be a big long article on some myths/facts of nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NEMP) effects on modern communication gear. Well, it's just going to be some ramdom quotes and comments for awhile.
Excerpt from Gary, KE4ZV
>On the contrary, an EMP will not really affect people, but it will do
>a good job of destroying most unprotected transistor circuitry. Old
>tube technology is pretty much immune.
That's the myth, but it has been pretty well discredited. For a normal low air burst or ground burst detonation, the EMP effects reach no further than the flash burn and blast effects, IE roughly 30 miles for the typical "city buster" bomb. In other words, if it cooks your radio, it'll cook you too.
For a very high altitude detonation, EMP effects can spread over a wide area outside the range of flash burn and blast effects. But to be damaged, electronic equipment needs to be connected to fairly long unprotected exposed conductors in order for enough voltage to be induced to cause breakdown. The ARRL published tests on a number of amateur radios, tested in a military EMP simulator, to see what would typically happen in such a case. Battery powered VHF/UHF equipment using a "rubber ducky" antenna was immune to damage. Equipment connected to unprotected mains power suffered power supply damage. And HF equipment connected to unprotected outside antennas suffered receiver front end damage. For solid state equipment, this damage was to the first RF stage transistor, for tube equipment, it was damage to the first stage grid resistor. No transmitters suffered damage.
And there is effective EMP protection available. EMP can be considered merely as a fast risetime form of nearby lightning strike. In both cases, an induced surge enters the equipment via a long exposed conductor. If you are using good lightning surge protection with fast risetime protectors, such as the EMP rated units sold by Polyphaser (and others), and have practiced the kind of station layout I've preached about here many times, there should be no more cause for concern about EMP damage than from lightning surge damage.
Thanks to inverse square effects, an EMP detonation at a 200 mile altitude, the ideal height to maximize EMP effects, has a field strength at your antenna about equivalent to a lightning strike at 7 miles. But the effect on very long exposed conductors, like the power grid or the telephone grid, is as if there were simultaneous lightning strikes 7 miles from *every* point of the grid. This causes a huge voltage to develop on these extended grids, and can cause severe damage to them. Your radio and antennas don't represent such a widespread grid, so they are only subjected to the equivalent of a single lightning surge.
In any case, if you were to suffer EMP damage, the receiver and mains power supplies would be the most likely candidates for damage. CW transmitters offer you no advantage in either of those cases since you still need a working receiver and power source to establish communications regardless of operating mode.
And frankly, for some time (perhaps years) after a massive exchange of nuclear weapons, HF would be useless thanks to disruption of the ionosphere. Only VLF would work for long range communications, which is why the military operates VLF stations for nuclear command and control. VHF+ would continue to work for short range communications. Since neither typically uses Morse, Morse knowledge would be virtually useless after a nuclear exchange.
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Excerpt from Phil, KA9Q
No, not HF CW. Try LF packet radio. Have you heard of the Ground Wave Emergency Network (GWEN)? It is specifically designed to work after the Big One is dropped.
You have to admit that for this application, packet has some nice advantages over CW. For example, it'll keep working after all the humans on the planet (yes, this includes all of the CW operators) have been killed off by radiation. (Remember "On the Beach"?)
I may not think much of the doomsday thinking that led to the construction of GWEN. But I must admit to being glad to have it around because I can use it to annoy the heck out of the "CW, vacuum tubes, blood and guts forever" types who keep insisting that they'll have a complete monopoly on communications after a nuclear war has toasted all of the more modern electronics... :-)
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Excerpt from Gary, KE4ZV
According to the ARRL test data in the Navy's NEMP simulator, that's not the case. The real hazard is to radios connected to long exposed unprotected conductors, IE mains power or HF antennas. In the tests, tube type HF rigs sustained damage to the front end coil assemblies. Battery powered VHF solid state radios sustained no damage. HF radios, solid state or tube, protected by suitable NEMP suppression (properly installed) suffered no damage. And no disconnected radio suffered any damage.
The high impedance of tube equipment tends to make it more susceptable to flashovers in the input circuitry. Since that's harder to change than a tube, the advantage of tubes is moot. NEMP protection is available today, and with that properly installed, there is no reason to fear NEMP.
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Excerpt from QST August 1986, "EMP and the Radio Amateur"
... condensed from NCS TIB 85-10 "EMP threat testing of protection devices for amateur / military affiliate radio systems equipment". I quote "The electric field strength remains fairly constant in the 10 kHz to 1 MHz band; it decreases by as factor of 100 in the 1 to 100 MHz band and continue to decrease at a faster rate for frequencies greater than 100 MHz" So, it appears that EMP field strength decreases by at least an order of magnitude for each decade of frequency above 1 MHz. So. Your quarter inch vent will resonate and allow radio wave to pass above about the 10 GHz range. 10 GHz is 4 decades above 1 MHz so:
The electric field strength transmitted through a quarter inch hole will be less than one ten thousandth the electric field strength in open air.
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Excerpt from the Nuclear Weapons FAQ
5.5 Electromagnetic Effects
The high temperatures and energetic radiation produced by nuclear explosions also produce large amounts of ionized (electrically charged) matter which is present immediately after the explosion. Under the right conditions, intense currents and electromagnetic fields can be produced, generically called EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse), that are felt at long distances. Living organisms are impervious to these effects, but electrical and electronic equipment can be temporarily or permanently disabled by them. Ionized gasses can also block short wavelength radio and radar signals (fireball blackout) for extended periods.
The occurrence of EMP is strongly dependent on the altitude of burst. It can be significant for surface or low altitude bursts (below 4,000 m); it is very significant for high altitude bursts (above 30,000 m); but it is not significant for altitudes between these extremes. This is because EMP is generated by the asymmetric absorption of instantaneous gamma rays produced by the explosion. At intermediate altitudes the air absorbs these rays fairly uniformly and does not generate long range electromagnetic disturbances.
The formation EMP begins with the very intense, but very short burst of gamma rays caused by the nuclear reactions in the bomb. About 0.3% of the bomb's energy is in this pulse, but it lasts for only 10 nanoseconds or so. These gamma rays collide with electrons in air molecules, and eject the electrons at high energies through a process called Compton scattering. These energetic electrons in turn knock other electrons loose, and create a cascade effect that produces some 30,000 electrons for every original gamma ray.
In low altitude explosions the electrons, being very light, move much more quickly than the ionized atoms they are removed from and diffuse away from the region where they are formed. This creates a very strong electric field which peaks in intensity at 10 nanoseconds. The gamma rays emitted downward however are absorbed by the ground which prevents charge separation from occurring. This creates a very strong vertical electric current which generates intense electromagnetic emissions over a wide frequency range (up to 100 MHZ) that emanate mostly horizontally. At the same time, the earth acts as a conductor allowing the electrons to flow back toward the burst point where the positive ions are concentrated. This produces a strong magnetic field along the ground. Although only about 3x10^-10 of the total explosion energy is radiated as EMP in a ground burst (10^6 joules for 1 Mt bomb), it is concentrated in a very short pulse. The charge separation persists for only a few tens of microseconds, making the emission power some 100 gigawatts. The field strengths for ground bursts are high only in the immediate vicinity of the explosion. For smaller bombs they aren't very important because they are strong only where the destruction is intense anyway. With increasing yields, they reach farther from the zone of intense destruction. With a 1 Mt bomb, they remain significant out to the 2 psi overpressure zone (5 miles).
High altitude explosions produce EMPs that are dramatically more destructive. About 3x10^-5 of the bomb's total energy goes into EMP in this case, 10^11 joules for a 1 Mt bomb. EMP is formed in high altitude explosions when the downwardly directed gamma rays encounter denser layers of air below. A pancake shaped ionization region is formed below the bomb. The zone can extend all the way to the horizon, to 2500 km for an explosion at an altitude of 500 km. The ionization zone is up to 80 km thick at the center. The Earth's magnetic field causes the electrons in this layer to spiral as they travel, creating a powerful downward directed electromagnetic pulse lasting a few microseconds. A strong vertical electrical field (20-50 KV/m) is also generated between the Earth's surface and the ionized layer, this field lasts for several minutes until the electrons are recaptured by the air. Although the peak EMP field strengths from high altitude bursts are only 1-10% as intense as the peak ground burst fields, they are nearly constant over the entire Earth's surface under the ionized region.
The effects of these field on electronics is difficult to predict, but can be profound. Enormous induced electric currents are generated in wires, antennas, and metal objects (like missiles, airplanes, and building frames). Commercial electrical grids are immense EMP antennas and would be subjected to voltage surges far exceeding those created by lightning, and over vastly greater areas. Modern VLSI chips are extremely sensitive to voltage surges, and would be burned out by even small leakage currents. Military equipment is generally designed to be resistant to EMP, but realistic tests are very difficult to perform and EMP protection rests on attention to detail. Minor changes in design, incorrect maintenance procedures, poorly fitting parts, loose debris, moisture, and ordinary dirt can all cause elaborate EMP protections to be totally circumvented. It can be expected that a single high yield, high altitude explosion over an industrialized area would cause massive disruption for an indeterminable period, and would cause huge economic damages (all those damaged chips add up).
A separate effect is the ability of the ionized fireball to block radio and radar signals. Like EMP, this effect becomes important with high altitude bursts. Fireball blackout can cause radar to be blocked for tens of seconds to minutes over an area tens of kilometers across. High frequency radio can be disrupted over hundreds to thousands of kilometers for minutes to hours depending on exact conditions.
Links
Radio Frequency Weapons and Proliferation: Potential Impact on the Economy
PolyPhaser Nuclear EMP Protection Devices
GWEN Ground Wave Emergency Network
The Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Contains a few errors, good overall
Engineering and Design - Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) and Tempest Protection for Facilities Proponent: CEMP-ET Straight from the U.S. Army. (Text)
Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS) Radios designed to survive in a nuclear environment
SINCGARS Datasheet (1.2M PDF)
The Electromagnetic Bomb - A Weapon of Electrical Mass Destruction (909k PDF)
Bell System Nuclear Design Criteria (1969)
Notes
Atmospheric NEMP burst tend to be vertically polarized.
The Effects of Nuclear War, Office of Technology Assesment, OTA-NS-89, May 1979.
NEMP has a pulse shape corresponding to the NCS TIB-85-10.
Solid state electronics are more power efficient than legacy tube-type equipment, making for easier portable battery operation.
GBPPR HERF / EMP Projects
GBPPR Microwave Oven Experiments
GBPPR HERF Device
GBPPR Electromagnetic Pulse Experiments - Part 1
GBPPR Electromagnetic Pulse Experiments - Part 2
GBPPR Electromagnetic Pulse Experiments - Part 3
GBPPR 2.45 GHz Magnetron to Coax Assembly
http://www.qsl.net/n9zia/emp.html
Iran judiciary told to confront hostile satellite TV
TEHRAN (Reuters) - The head of Iran's judiciary called on Sunday for the prosecution of people working for increasingly influential anti-establishment satellite TV channels and websites, state television reported.
"The daily growth of anti-regime satellite channels and ... websites needs serious measures to confront this phenomenon," it quoted a circular issued by Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi-Shahroudi as saying.
Iran accused Western powers of interfering in its affairs, after the announcement that hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won a landslide victory in the June 12 election prompted protests in which at least 20 people were killed.
The circular, addressed to branches of the judiciary, called for judicial personnel to be assigned to deal with such violations.
"Those who cooperate with such websites and television channels will face prosecution," Hashemi-Shahroudi said.
For the first time in Iran, foreign-based satellite TV channels, particularly the BBC's Persian TV, and blogs played a big part in providing news and comment about the election.
Iranians are more used to hearing political messages blared through loudspeakers on small trucks, seeing gaudy posters and being herded to campaign rallies.
The BBC launched its Persian TV service in January, funded with 15 million pounds ($25 million) a year of British government money. The BBC increased the number of satellites carrying the service after Iran interfered with transmission during the election.
Iran expelled the BBC's correspondent in Tehran because of the broadcaster's election coverage, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has called Britain the "most treacherous" of Iran's enemies.
Popular social networking and content-sharing site Facebook was blocked in Iran on May 23, joining political and human rights websites which had already been blocked. More than 150,000 Iranians are Facebook members.
More than 23 million of Iran's 70 million people have access to the Internet, and over 45 million have mobile phones.
Two losing contenders in the presidential election have unleashed fierce attacks on the official outcome of the vote.
Moderate former prime minister Mirhossein Mousavi and reformist cleric Mehdi Karoubi also say the government wants to force Iranians to rely on state-run media, which they say favour Ahmadinejad.
Both men issued statements on their websites saying Ahmadinejad's new government would be "illegitimate" -- even though Khamenei, the Islamic Republic's ultimate arbiter, has upheld the result and thrown his weight behind the president.
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-40815420090705
The call for a Global currency is broadening.
India Joins Russia, China in Questioning U.S. Dollar Dominance
July 4 (Bloomberg) -- Suresh Tendulkar, an economic adviser to Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, said he is urging the government to diversify its $264.6 billion foreign-exchange reserves and hold fewer dollars.
“The major part of Indian reserves is in dollars -- that is something that’s a problem for us,” Tendulkar, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council, said in an interview yesterday in Aix-en-Provence, France, where he was attending an economic conference.
Singh is preparing to join leaders from the Group of Eight industrialized nations -- the U.S., Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Canada and Russia -- at a summit in Italy next week which is due to tackle the global economy. China and Brazil will also send representatives to the summit.
As the talks have neared, China and Russia have stepped up calls for a rethink of how global currency reserves are composed and managed, underlining a power shift to emerging markets from the developed nations that spawned the financial crisis.
“There should be a system to maintain the stability of the major reserve currencies,” Former Chinese Vice Premier Zeng Peiyan said in a speech in Beijing yesterday, highlighting China’s concerns about a global financial system dominated by the dollar.
Fiscal and current-account deficits must be supervised as “your currency is likely to become my problem,” said Zeng, who is now the head of a research center under the government’s top economic planning agency. The People’s Bank of China said June 26 that the International Monetary Fund should manage more of members’ reserves.
Russian Proposals
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has repeatedly called for creating a mix of regional reserve currencies as part of the drive to address the global financial crisis, while questioning the dollar’s future as a global reserve currency. Russia’s proposals for the Group of 20 major developed and developing nations summit in London in April included the creation of a supranational currency.
“We will resume” talks on the supranational currency proposal at the G-8 summit in L’Aquila on July 8-10, Medvedev aide Sergei Prikhodko told reporters in Moscow yesterday.
Singh adviser Tendulkar said that big dollar holders face a “prisoner’s dilemma” in terms of managing their holdings. “That’s why I’m telling them to do this,” he said.
He also said that world currencies need to adjust to help unwind trade imbalances that have contributed to the global financial crisis.
“The major imbalances which led to the current situation, the current account surpluses and deficits, have to be addressed,” he said. “Currency adjustment is one thing that suggests itself.”
Emerging-Market Dependence
For all the complaints about the dollar, emerging markets such as India remain dependent on the currency of the U.S., the world’s largest economy and a $2.5 trillion export market. The IMF said June 30 that the share of dollars in global foreign- exchange reserves increased to 65 percent in the first three months of this year, the highest since 2007.
Tendulkar said that the matter needs to be taken up in international talks, and that it emphasizes the need for those talks to go beyond the traditional G-8.
“They can meet if they want to,” he said. “The G-20 has a wider role, has representation of the countries that are likely to lead the recovery process.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aR7yfqUwTb4M
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