October 2004 - cypherpunks-legacy

Russia Hid Saddam's WMDs
by R.A. Hettinga 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

<http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=10111> Front Page Magazine Russia Hid Saddam's WMDs By Ion Mihai Pacepa Washington Times | October 2, 2003 On March 20, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced the U.S.-led "aggression" against Iraq as "unwarranted" and "unjustifiable." Three days later, Pravda said that an anonymous Russian "military expert" was predicting that the United States would fabricate finding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov immediately started plying the idea abroad, and it has taken hold around the world ever since. As a former Romanian spy chief who used to take orders from the Soviet KGB, it is perfectly obvious to me that Russia is behind the evanescence of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. After all, Russia helped Saddam get his hands on them in the first place. The Soviet Union and all its bloc states always had a standard operating procedure for deep sixing weapons of mass destruction - in Romanian it was codenamed "Sarindar, meaning "emergency exit." I implemented it in Libya. It was for ridding Third World despots of all trace of their chemical weapons if the Western imperialists ever got near them. We wanted to make sure they would never be traced back to us, and we also wanted to frustrate the West by not giving them anything they could make propaganda with. All chemical weapons were to be immediately burned or buried deep at sea. Technological documentation, however, would be preserved in microfiche buried in waterproof containers for future reconstruction. Chemical weapons, especially those produced in Third World countries, which lack sophisticated production facilities, often do not retain lethal properties after a few months on the shelf and are routinely dumped anyway. And all chemical weapons plants had a civilian cover making detection difficult, regardless of the circumstances. The plan included an elaborate propaganda routine. Anyone accusing Moammar Gadhafi of possessing chemical weapons would be ridiculed. Lies, all lies! Come to Libya and see! Our Western left-wing organizations, like the World Peace Council, existed for sole purpose of spreading the propaganda we gave them. These very same groups bray the exact same themes to this day. We always relied on their expertise at organizing large street demonstrations in Western Europe over America's "war-mongering" whenever we wanted to distract world attention from the crimes of the vicious regimes we sponsored. Iraq, in my view, had its own "Sarindar" plan in effect direct from Moscow. It certainly had one in the past. Nicolae Ceausescu told me so, and he heard it from Leonid Brezhnev. KGB chairman Yury Andropov, and later, Gen. Yevgeny Primakov, told me so, too. In the late 1970s, Gen. Primakov ran Saddam's weapons programs. After that, as you may recall, he was promoted to head of the Soviet foreign intelligence service in 1990, to Russia's minister of foreign affairs in 1996, and in 1998, to prime minister. What you may not know is that Primakov hates Israel and has always championed Arab radicalism. He was a personal friend of Saddam's and has repeatedly visited Baghdad after 1991, quietly helping Saddam play his game of hide-and-seek. The Soviet bloc not only sold Saddam its WMDs, but it showed them how to make them "disappear." Russia is still at it. Primakov was in Baghdad from December until a couple of days before the war, along with a team of Russian military experts led by two of Russia's topnotch "retired"generals: Vladislav Achalov, a former deputy defense minister, and Igor Maltsev, a former air defense chief of staff. They were all there receiving honorary medals from the Iraqi defense minister. They clearly were not there to give Saddam military advice for the upcoming war-Saddam's Katyusha launchers were of World War II vintage, and his T-72 tanks, BMP-1 fighting vehicles and MiG fighter planes were all obviously useless against America. "I did not fly to Baghdad to drink coffee," was what Gen. Achalov told the media afterward. They were there orchestrating Iraq's "Sarindar" plan. The U.S. military in fact, has already found the only thing that would have been allowed to survive under the classic Soviet "Sarindar" plan to liquidate weapons arsenals in the event of defeat in war - the technological documents showing how to reproduce weapons stocks in just a few weeks. Such a plan has undoubtedly been in place since August 1995 - when Saddam's son-in-law, Gen. Hussein Kamel, who ran Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological programs for 10 years, defected to Jordan. That August, UNSCOM and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors searched a chicken farm owned by Kamel's family and found more than one hundred metal trunks and boxes containing documentation dealing with all categories of weapons, including nuclear. Caught red-handed, Iraq at last admitted to its "extensive biological warfare program, including weaponization," issued a "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure Report" and turned over documents about the nerve agent VX and nuclear weapons. Saddam then lured Gen. Kamel back, pretending to pardon his defection. Three days later, Kamel and over 40 relatives, including women and children, were murdered, in what the official Iraqi press described as a "spontaneous administration of tribal justice." After sending that message to his cowed, miserable people, Saddam then made a show of cooperation with UN inspection, since Kamel had just compromised all his programs, anyway. In November 1995, he issued a second "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure" as to his supposedly non-existent missile programs. That very same month, Jordan intercepted a large shipment of high-grade missile components destined for Iraq. UNSCOM soon fished similar missile components out of the Tigris River, again refuting Saddam's spluttering denials. In June 1996, Saddam slammed the door shut to UNSCOM's inspection of any "concealment mechanisms." On Aug. 5, 1998, halted cooperation with UNSCOM and the IAEA completely, and they withdrew on Dec. 16, 1998. Saddam had another four years to develop and hide his weapons of mass destruction without any annoying, prying eyes. U.N. Security Council resolutions 1115, (June 21, 1997), 1137 (Nov. 12, 1997), and 1194 (Sept. 9, 1998) were issued condemning Iraq-ineffectual words that had no effect. In 2002, under the pressure of a huge U.S. military buildup by a new U.S. administration, Saddam made yet another "Full, Final and Complete Disclosure," which was found to contain "false statements" and to constitute another "material breach" of U.N. and IAEA inspection and of paragraphs eight to 13 of resolution 687 (1991). It was just a few days after this last "Disclosure," after a decade of intervening with the U.N. and the rest of the world on Iraq's behalf, that Gen. Primakov and his team of military experts landed in Baghdad - even though, with 200,000 U.S. troops at the border, war was imminent, and Moscow could no longer save Saddam Hussein. Gen. Primakov was undoubtedly cleaning up the loose ends of the "Sarindar" plan and assuring Saddam that Moscow would rebuild his weapons of mass destruction after the storm subsided for a good price. Mr. Putin likes to take shots at America and wants to reassert Russia in world affairs. Why would he not take advantage of this opportunity? As minister of foreign affairs and prime minister, Gen. Primakov has authored the "multipolarity" strategy of counterbalancing American leadership by elevating Russia to great-power status in Eurasia. Between Feb. 9-12, Mr. Putin visited Germany and France to propose a three-power tactical alignment against the United States to advocate further inspections rather than war. On Feb. 21, the Russian Duma appealed to the German and French parliaments to join them on March 4-7 in Baghdad, for "preventing U.S. military aggression against Iraq." Crowds of European leftists, steeped for generations in left-wing propaganda straight out of Moscow, continue to find the line appealing. Mr. Putin's tactics have worked. The United States won a brilliant military victory, demolishing a dictatorship without destroying the country, but it has begun losing the peace. While American troops unveiled the mass graves of Saddam's victims, anti-American forces in Western Europe and elsewhere, spewed out vitriolic attacks, accusing Washington of greed for oil and not of really caring about weapons of mass destruction, or exaggerating their risks, as if weapons of mass destruction were really nothing very much to worry about after all. It is worth remembering that Andrei Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb, chose to live in a Soviet gulag instead of continuing to develop the power of death. "I wanted to alert the world," Sakharov explained in 1968, "to the grave perils threatening the human race thermonuclear extinction, ecological catastrophe, famine." Even Igor Kurchatov, the KGB academician who headed the Soviet nuclear program from 1943 until his death in 1960, expressed deep qualms of conscience about helping to create weapons of mass destruction. "The rate of growth of atomic explosives is such," he warned in an article written together with several other Soviet nuclear scientists not long before he died, "that in just a few years the stockpile will be large enough to create conditions under which the existence of life on earth will be impossible." The Cold War was fought over the reluctance to use weapons of mass destruction, yet now this logic is something only senior citizens seem to recall. Today, even lunatic regimes like that in North Korea not only possess weapons of mass destruction, but openly offer to sell them to anyone with cash, including terrorists and their state sponsors. Is anyone paying any attention? Being inured to proliferation, however, does not reduce its danger. On the contrary, it increases it. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Poll Finds Most Americans Have Not Prepared for a Terror Attack
by R.A. Hettinga 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

See .sig, below... :-) Cheers, RAH <http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/28/national/28homepoll.html?th=&oref=login&p…> The New York Times October 28, 2004 Poll Finds Most Americans Have Not Prepared for a Terror Attack By CALVIN SIMS mericans are closely divided on whether they think the United States is prepared to deal with another terrorist attack, but the overwhelming majority have done nothing to prepare for such an attack themselves, according to a recent New York Times poll. The poll found that most Americans are not worried that they or a family member will become a victim of terrorism, with the majority of the respondents saying they do nothing different even when the government raises the terror-alert level. The survey was conducted for use in a documentary produced by New York Times Television on the status of security in the United States. While domestic security has been a major issue in the presidential campaign with Republicans and Democrats warning that another terrorist attack is inevitable, the Times poll suggests that for most Americans the issue is not a preoccupation. "I guess the reason I'm not terribly worried about it is probably the location I'm in," Angela Loston, 24, a writer from Dallas, said in a phone interview after the survey. "Even though I'm in a major city, I am in the state of Texas, so I don't really see something happening here." David Ropeik, who teaches risk communications at the Harvard School of Public Health, said the survey results reflect a well-established, intuitive human response to risk known as optimism bias, in which individuals disproportionately believe that they will not be victims of a peril even though they widely acknowledge that it will occur. "We see the same phenomenon with smoking, obesity and natural disasters. If you don't think it will happen to you, then you won't take any precautions," Mr. Ropeik said. "When it comes to terrorism, there is some truth here. If an attack happens, it's unlikely that you or I will be a victim. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't be prepared." In the survey, 46 percent of the respondents said they did not think the United States was prepared for a terrorist attack, while 43 percent said the country was prepared. To questions of personal readiness, 61 percent responded that they did not have a stockpile of food and water at home in preparation for a terrorist attack. More than 70 percent said they had not selected a family meeting place in case of an evacuation due to terrorism, nor had they established a plan to communicate with relatives. Asked why her family had not designated a gathering place or plan to stay in touch, Gloria Peters, a retiree from San Pablo, Calif., said, "We really haven't discussed that, but we should." She added, "The roads are going to be so packed jammed that it's going to be insane." The survey found that women were more likely to regard both the country and their local communities as ill prepared to deal with another attack. Women are also more apt to express concern that someone in their family could become a victim of terrorism: 46 percent of women said they were very or somewhat concerned compared with 26 percent of men. The Times poll, of 554 adults, was conducted nationwide by telephone Oct. 12 to 13 and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points. Citing the federal government's handling of the current flu vaccine shortage, Eugene Ladisky, a retired engineer from New York, said: "I get the impression that were there a terrorist attack, our government would let us fend for ourselves." Copyrigh -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "When I was your age we didn't have Tim May! We had to be paranoid on our own! And we were grateful!" --Alan Olsen

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U.K. Borough Council Selects PGP Universal
by R.A. Hettinga 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

<http://news.scotsman.com/print.cfm?id=3683738&referringtemplate=http%3A%2F%…> print The Scotsman Thu 28 Oct 2004 8:46am (UK) Pgp Corporation Announces That U.K. Borough Council has Selected Pgp Universal "PA" Business Editors/Technology Writers PALO ALTO, Calif. - (BUSINESS WIRE) - Oct. 28, 2004 - Bournemouth will use award-winning encryption solution to secure email communications and help comply with regulations PGP Corporation, a global leader in enterprise encryption solutions, today announced that the Bournemouth Borough Council in Dorset, U.K., has selected PGP(R) Universal to secure electronic communications containing personal information between the Council and its residents, merchants, and other government agencies. "A great deal of the information held by the Council is private, including personal and health information, data about schools and students, and tax and voting records," said Fred Baert, Bournemouth's Information Communication Technology (ICT) Security Officer. "The 1998 Data Protection Act and the Freedom of Information Act both require the Council to ensure the security of electronic communications, and the Council's own security policy states that confidential information must be encrypted. PGP Corporation is the market leader in encryption, so choosing a PGP solution seemed like the right thing to do." "Regulatory mandates and societal concerns continue to pressure all types of organizations to secure confidential information in electronic communications," said Phillip Dunkelberger, president and CEO for PGP Corporation. "We are pleased the Bournemouth Borough Council chose PGP Universal to help comply with requirements for encrypting private data transmitted via email." About PGP Corporation Recognized worldwide as a leader in enterprise encryption technology, PGP Corporation develops, markets, and supports products used by more than 30,000 enterprises, businesses, and governments worldwide, including 90% of the Fortune 100 and 75% of the Forbes International 100. PGP products are also used by thousands of individuals and cryptography experts to secure proprietary and confidential information. During the past ten years, PGP(R) technology has earned a global reputation for standards-based, trusted security products. PGP Corporation is the only commercial security vendor to publish source code for peer review. The unique PGP encryption product suite includes PGP Universal -- an automatic, self-managing, network-based solution for enterprises -- as well as desktop, mobile, and FTP/batch transfer solutions. Contact PGP Corporation at www.pgp.com or 650-319-9000. About Bournemouth Borough Council The Bournemouth Borough Council is the government body that sets policies for the 164,000 residents of the Borough of Bournemouth in Dorset. The Council is the largest provider of services for children and adults in home or residential care and landlord to more than 15,000 people. It is responsible for maintaining local roads/highways, caring for the environment, and supporting the town's schools as well as sports, leisure, and entertainment facilities. For more information, visit http://www.bournemouth.gov.uk. PGP is a registered trademark and the PGP logo is a trademark of PGP Corporation. Product and brand names used in the document may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners. Any such trademarks or registered trademarks are the sole property of their respective owners. - 30 - BRM/se* CONTACT: Jump Start Communications, LLC for PGP Corporation Lori Curtis, 970-887-0044 (U.S.) +44 0845 331 2059 (U.K.) lori(a)jumpstartcom.com -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: Donald's Job Description
by Tyler Durden 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

You MUST be new here, Pete ole boy... >Do you really think Kerry wouldnt have signed the Patriot Act if he >was president? Federalized the drivers license requirements? Pushed >for socialized medicine with central controls? Kerry or Bush, Kang or >Kodos, in the end it means the same thing. I'm sure there are several Cypherpunks who would be very quick to describe Kerry as "needs killing". You MIGHT find some Cypherpunks put up a weak counter-argument just to keep an open mind on the matter, but I doubt it. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Get ready for school! Find articles, homework help and more in the Back to School Guide! http://special.msn.com/network/04backtoschool.armx

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Death Notice: Matt Heckaman
by J.A. Terranson 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

[Posted to a variety of places, as Matt was a prolific coder who maintained many ports and worked on literally dozens of projects] -- Yours, J.A. Terranson sysadmin(a)mfn.org 0xBD4A95BF "An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core" S. Plath, Temper of Time ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ http://obit.pumphreyfuneralhome.com/obit_display.cgi?id=161939&listing=Curr… Matthew Heckaman Ferraro Born in Mishawaka, IN on Jan. 4, 1982 Departed on Oct. 20, 2004 and resided in Gaithersburg, MD. Memorial Service: Oct. 30, 2004 Cemetery: Arlington National Cemetery Columbarium Please click on the links above for locations, times, maps, and directions. Matthew Heckaman Ferraro (age 22) Matthew of Gaithersburg, MD, formerly of Montreal Canada, passed away on Wednesday, October 20, 2004. He was the beloved husband of Stacie Jo Ferraro; loving son of Claire Ferraro (husband, Eddy) and Marshall Heckaman (wife, Sharon) of Indiana; loving brother of Andria, David and Allan; stepbrother of Cynthia Ferraro (Daniel Aston) son-in-law of Mike and Marjorie Bland of Maryland and their daughters, Resha and Stephanie; grandson of Adrien and Cecile Blanchette of Montreal, Canada and John and Ruth Heckaman of Indiana; grandson-in-law of Anastacia Quitania. He was predeceased by a stepbrother Jonathan Ferraro. Also survived by his aunts and uncles, Helene Blanchette (Denis Pare) and Pierre Blanchette of Montreal, Canada, Nicole Blanchette (Brian Smith) of London, Ont., Dorothy (Doc) Anderson of Illinois and by all his extended family and friends in Montreal, Indiana, Maryland and elsewhere. Matthew was an active duty PV2 of the United States Army. A memorial service will be held at PUMPHREY.S COLONIAL FUNERAL HOME, 300 West Montgomery Avenue (Rte 28 just off I-270, exit 6-A) Rockville, MD on Saturday, October 30, 2004 at 1 PM. Inurnment service with Military Honors will be held at Arlington National Cemetery Columbarium on Thursday, November 4, 2004 at 10 AM.

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Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms
by R.A. Hettinga 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

I'll see you one fizzled October surprise, and raise you... Are we having fun, now? Cheers, RAH -------- <http://www.washingtontimes.com/functions/print.php?StoryID=20041027-101153-…> The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com Russia tied to Iraq's missing arms By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published October 27, 2004 Russian special forces troops moved many of Saddam Hussein's weapons and related goods out of Iraq and into Syria in the weeks before the March 2003 U.S. military operation, The Washington Times has learned. John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security, said in an interview that he believes the Russian troops, working with Iraqi intelligence, "almost certainly" removed the high-explosive material that went missing from the Al-Qaqaa facility, south of Baghdad. "The Russians brought in, just before the war got started, a whole series of military units," Mr. Shaw said. "Their main job was to shred all evidence of any of the contractual arrangements they had with the Iraqis. The others were transportation units." Mr. Shaw, who was in charge of cataloguing the tons of conventional arms provided to Iraq by foreign suppliers, said he recently obtained reliable information on the arms-dispersal program from two European intelligence services that have detailed knowledge of the Russian-Iraqi weapons collaboration. Most of Saddam's most powerful arms were systematically separated from other arms like mortars, bombs and rockets, and sent to Syria and Lebanon, and possibly to Iran, he said. The Russian involvement in helping disperse Saddam's weapons, including some 380 tons of RDX and HMX is still being investigated, Mr. Shaw said. The RDX and HMX, which are used to manufacture high-explosive and nuclear weapons, are probably of Russian origin, he said. Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita could not be reached for comment. The disappearance of the material was reported in a letter Oct. 10 from the Iraqi government to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Disclosure of the missing explosives Monday in a New York Times story was used by the Democratic presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, who accused the Bush administration of failing to secure the material. Al-Qaqaa, a known Iraqi weapons site, was monitored closely, Mr. Shaw said. "That was such a pivotal location, Number 1, that the mere fact of [special explosives] disappearing was impossible," Mr. Shaw said. "And Number 2, if the stuff disappeared, it had to have gone before we got there." The Pentagon disclosed yesterday that the Al-Qaqaa facility was defended by Fedayeen Saddam, Special Republican Guard and other Iraqi military units during the conflict. U.S. forces defeated the defenders around April 3 and found the gates to the facility open, the Pentagon said in a statement yesterday. A military unit in charge of searching for weapons, the Army's 75th Exploitation Task Force, then inspected Al-Qaqaa on May 8, May 11 and May 27, 2003, and found no high explosives that had been monitored in the past by the IAEA. The Pentagon said there was no evidence of large-scale movement of explosives from the facility after April 6. "The movement of 377 tons of heavy ordnance would have required dozens of heavy trucks and equipment moving along the same roadways as U.S. combat divisions occupied continually for weeks prior to and subsequent to the 3rd Infantry Division's arrival at the facility," the statement said. The statement also said that the material may have been removed from the site by Saddam's regime. According to the Pentagon, U.N. arms inspectors sealed the explosives at Al-Qaqaa in January 2003 and revisited the site in March and noted that the seals were not broken. It is not known if the inspectors saw the explosives in March. The U.N. team left the country before the U.S.-led invasion began March 20, 2003. A second defense official said documents on the Russian support to Iraq reveal that Saddam's government paid the Kremlin for the special forces to provide security for Iraq's Russian arms and to conduct counterintelligence activities designed to prevent U.S. and Western intelligence services from learning about the arms pipeline through Syria. The Russian arms-removal program was initiated after Yevgeny Primakov, the former Russian intelligence chief, could not convince Saddam to give in to U.S. and Western demands, this official said. A small portion of Iraq's 650,000 tons to 1 million tons of conventional arms that were found after the war were looted after the U.S.-led invasion, Mr. Shaw said. Russia was Iraq's largest foreign supplier of weaponry, he said. However, the most important and useful arms and explosives appear to have been separated and moved out as part of carefully designed program. "The organized effort was done in advance of the conflict," Mr. Shaw said. The Russian forces were tasked with moving special arms out of the country. Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots. The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said. Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq. The Russian units were dispatched beginning in January 2003 and by March had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents on Russian arms supplies to Iraq while dispersing arms to Syria, the second official said. Besides their own weapons, the Russians were supplying Saddam with arms made in Ukraine, Belarus, Bulgaria and other Eastern European nations, he said. "Whatever was not buried was put on lorries and sent to the Syrian border," the defense official said. Documents reviewed by the official included itineraries of military units involved in the truck shipments to Syria. The materials outlined in the documents included missile components, MiG jet parts, tank parts and chemicals used to make chemical weapons, the official said. The director of the Iraqi government front company known as the Al Bashair Trading Co. fled to Syria, where he is in charge of monitoring arms holdings and funding Iraqi insurgent activities, the official said. Also, an Arabic-language report obtained by U.S. intelligence disclosed the extent of Russian armaments. The 26-page report was written by Abdul Tawab Mullah al Huwaysh, Saddam's minister of military industrialization, who was captured by U.S. forces May 2, 2003. The Russian "spetsnaz" or special-operations forces were under the GRU military intelligence service and organized large commercial truck convoys for the weapons removal, the official said. Regarding the explosives, the new Iraqi government reported that 194.7 metric tons of HMX, or high-melting-point explosive, and 141.2 metric tons of RDX, or rapid-detonation explosive, and 5.8 metric tons of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, were missing. The material is used in nuclear weapons and also in making military "plastic" high explosive. Defense officials said the Russians can provide information on what happened to the Iraqi weapons and explosives that were transported out of the country. Officials believe the Russians also can explain what happened to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
by MAILER-DAEMON＠ibuc.com 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

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Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
by MAILER-DAEMON＠ibuc.com 28 Oct '04

28 Oct '04

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Cyclotrimethylene trinitramine
by R.A. Hettinga 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RDX> Cyclotrimethylene trinitramine >From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (Redirected from RDX) Cyclotrimethylene trinitramine, also known as RDX, cyclonite, or hexogen, is an explosive material widely used by the military. There are many interpretations of its acronym including (but not limited to) Royal Demolition eXplosive and Research Department Explosive. In fact the latter is nearest to the mark. New explosives were given an identification number preceded by the letters 'RD' indicating 'Research and Development'. For some reason, this explosive was unable to be given a number (the story goes that the department that issued the numbers had just blown itself up - but this may be apocryphal). Instead the letter 'X' was appended to indicate 'unknown' with the intention of adding the number later. Although a number was issued, the term 'RDX' stuck. In its pure synthesised state it is a white crystalline solid. As an explosive it is usually used in mixtures with other explosives and plasticizers or desensitizers. It is stable in storage and is considered the most powerful and brisant of the military high explosives. RDX forms the base for a number of common military explosives: Composition A (wax-coated, granular explosive consisting of RDX and plasticizing wax), composition A5 (mixed with 1.5% stearic acid), composition B (castable mixtures of RDX and TNT), composition C (a plastic demolition explosive consisting of RDX, other explosives, and plasticizers), composition D, HBX (castable mixtures of RDX, TNT, powdered aluminium, and D-2 wax with calcium chloride), H-6, Cyclotol and C-4. [edit] Properties It is a colourless solid, of density 1.82 g/cm3. It is obtained by reacting concentrated nitric acid on hexamine. It is a heterocycle and has the shape of a ring. It starts to decompose at about 1700C and melts at 2040C. Its structural formula is: hexahydro-1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine or (CH2-N-NO2)3 At room temperatures, it is a very stable product. It burns rather than explodes, and only detonates with a detonator, being unaffected even by small arms fire. It is less sensitive than pentaerythritol tetranitrate (PETN). However, it is very sensitive when crystalized, below -40C. Under normal conditions, RDX has a Figure of Insensitivity of 80. The manufacture of RDX can easily pollute soil and groundwater. [edit] History The discovery of RDX dates from the 1890s when a German (Hans Henning) offered it as a medicine. Its explosive properties were not recognized until 1920 (Herz?). In the 1920s RDX was produced by the direct nitration of hexamine. It was only in 1940 that an efficient production method was found, possibly at the McGill University Department of Chemistry (Meissner?). It was widely used during WW II, often in explosive mixtures with TNT such as Torpex (TNT (42%),RDX (40%) and aluminium (18%)). RDX was used in one of the first plastic explosives. Categories: Explosive chemicals | Heterocyclic bases | Nitroamines Article Discussion Edit this page History Create an account or log in Navigation ? Main Page ? Community portal ? Current events ? Recent changes ? Random page ? Help ? Donations Search Toolbox ? What links here ? Related changes ? Special pages In other languages ? Deutsch ? Frangais ? Polski ? ? ? Slovenscina ? This page was last modified 20:56, 26 Oct 2004. ? All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License (see Copyrights for details). ? About Wikipedia ? Disclaimers -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Europe opts for biometric passports
by R.A. Hettinga 27 Oct '04

27 Oct '04

<http://news.com.com/2102-1012_3-5429679.html?tag=st.util.print> CNET News Europe opts for biometric pasports By Lars Pasveer http://news.com.com/Europe+opts+for+biometric+pasports/2100-1012_3-5429679.… Story last modified October 27, 2004, 5:56 PM PDT Ministers for European Union member states agreed on Tuesday to adopt biometric passports. The first biometric passports are set to arrive in 18 months and initially will record the facial characteristics of the bearer. In three years, European travelers will also have to provide a fingerprint for the passport. The facial and fingerprint data will be stored on an embedded chip, along with a digital copy of the bearer's photo. The decision, made at a meeting of interior ministers in Luxembourg, is not yet final. Austria, Finland and the Netherlands have voiced minor concerns about the proposal, but they will probably not turn out to be insurmountable obstacles. The European push for biometrics is heavily influenced by a United States policy change for passports for people from "visa waiver" countries after the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. plans to introduce a biometric passport requirement by this fall for these countries were widely seen as unrealistic. However, by Oct. 26 next year, all visitors from these countries will have to provide a machine-readable passport with biometric data. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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