Well, well…look what showed up on Google: the Privacy Impact Assessment.

VS PIA

From the trenches,

Celeste

If you want NoNAIS in Snohomish County here are the following recommendations for the upcoming election:

• Tom Greene
• Renee Sinclair

Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon is checking with the Director of WSDA to see if it is in the plan before he can issue a statement. on NAIS.

Representative Brian Sullivan has not issued a statement opposing NAIS.

If you would like NAIS in Snohomish County here’s your man:

Representative Mike Cooper PRO NAIS

If you prefer fence-sitters who do not uphold the Constitution and will drive farming out of Snohomish County here are your choices:

Cindy Portmann NO COMMENT

Carolyn Diepenbrock NO COMMENT

Sonja Kraski NO COMMENT

Bob Dantini NO COMMENT

Representative John Lovick NO COMMENT

Kerry Watkins NO COMMENT

Rob Beidler NO COMMENT

Kimberly Cole NO COMMENT

John Meno NO COMMENT

From the trenches,

Celeste

Persistent Surveillance Technologies

Now DARPA is on to the ‘terrorist’ chickens, that is ‘information’…… Since when did chickens get such a bad reputation? I thought goats had the bad reputation. Anyhow this article has military orientation application, but you guessed it, they discuss ways to extract humble chicken. Surveillance at it’s finest! This presentation was given in 2005, just about the time the NAIS scheme was ramping up. Can’t you just imagine what they have planned for humans? One last caveat..although this is addressing military application government RFID documents state that you are the adversary.

Dr. Ted Bially – Home of the Fog Lifters

IXO’s mission is to make the battlefield safer for ourselves and more lethal for our adversaries. Our weapon is information technology – and we exploit that technology in every way we can think of, to lift the fog of war for our side and thicken it for the enemy.

But what is the fog of war?

The fog of war is the uncertainty and confusion that occurs when information provided to any level of command is incomplete, inconsistent, late in arriving, difficult to manipulate or hard to visualize. It’s caused by too much information as well as by too little. Even perfectly accurate and up-to-date information can thicken the fog of war if it’s presented to someone who needs it quickly, in hard-to-understand or poorly organized formats.

The fog of war is a long-term phenomenon – it’s there when we’re actually fighting but it’s also there well before the conflict begins and it remains in place long after the shooting stops.

IXO’s mission is to lift that fog for our side while making sure it’s as thick as possible for our enemies. We seek to do that by collecting, processing and exploiting every available item of information that could conceivably contribute to our understanding of the evolving situation – before the conflict starts, during the fight, and after it ends.

So what does information exploitation really mean? How does it contribute to lifting the fog of war? And most importantly, what are the critical gaps in our portfolio of exploitation technologies that your ideas and innovations can help to bridge? Those are my topics for today.

My office dictionary says that to exploit is to:

• Utilize to the greatest possible advantage … and to
• Make use of for self-serving reasons

We want to extract every last molecule of useful information from every possible source, to assure that our troops always have the most complete and up-to-date picture of the battlespace. And we want to provide this information to them unambiguously and in easy to understand ways, so they don’t have to spend valuable time trying to decipher its meaning. This is certainly consistent with the dictionary’s first definition, namely to utilize to the greatest possible advantage.

But for self-serving reasons? Of course! Absolutely! We selfishly want to protect our own troops and give them the greatest possible advantage over the enemy.

The first instruction in a famous old recipe for chicken soup, is to “steal a chicken.” Information is like a chicken. It’s the essential ingredient in the recipe for lifting the fog of war. And like catching a chicken, getting your hands on information isn’t easy. Information doesn’t just lie around waiting to be exploited. It has to be coaxed out of its hiding places – in databases, sensor outputs, intelligence reports, open source literature and also from observant people.

But golly-gee we don’t use satellites……..

Can you say *new technologies* in remote sensing?

Remote Sensing Animals from Space

From the trenches,

Celeste

In the past, these data have alerted us to the impending ecological disasters including over-hunting (e.g.,

white-tailed deer), DDT poisoning (e.g., raptors), invasive species (e.g., starlings) or emerging diseases

(e.g., West Nile virus). Although remote sensing of these data is now possible, no attempt has been made to

systematically use animal monitoring as a sentinel and forecasting system for continent-wide safeguarding

of organisms across levels of biological organization, from humans to soil microbes.

We propose to use real-time, networked, in situ micro-sensors to monitor location, activity, and physiological

state of animals down to the size of large insects. The key transformation is that NEON uniquely enables a

continental observational network for mobile organisms. Many of the organisms that can now be observed

include important disease vectors, introduced species, and agricultural pests as well as animals important to

the general public such as charismatic wildlife and songbirds. Examples include crows and “blackbirds”

(transmitting West Nile virus), neotropical migrant songbirds (carrying West Nile virus), bats (distributing

rabies), House finches (carrying conjunctivitis), Mormon crickets (agricultural pests) or Asian longhorned

beetles (introduced species).

MAST will transform the ecological sciences by delivering unprecedented information on the causes and

consequences of:

• population trends (population source and sink areas)

o transforms: habitat conservation practices, land use practices, basic ecology, and animal

conservation.

o example: Is the entire Midwestern U.S. a population sink for Wood thrushes because of current

land use practice?

• disease transmission and propagation across landscapes

o transforms: human health risk forecasting, disease models

o example: How does the West Nile virus travel in birds from the Eastern US to the Central and

Western U.S.? Does the behavior of individual birds change when they are infected by the

virus, such that they move longer distances or approach other birds to transmit the virus?

[Federal Register: October 29, 2007 (Volume 72, Number 208)] [Notices] [Page 61106-61107] From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov] [DOCID:fr29oc07-22]

This section of the FEDERAL REGISTER contains documents other than rules or proposed rules that are applicable to the public. Notices of hearings and investigations, committee meetings, agency decisions and rulings, delegations of authority, filing of petitions and applications and agency statements of organization and functions are examples of documents appearing in this section.

[[Page 61106]] DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE Food Safety and Inspection Service [Docket No. FSIS-2007-0042] Codex Alimentarius Commission: Meeting of the Codex Committee on Food Import and Export Inspection and Certification Systems

AGENCY: Office of the Under Secretary for Food Safety, USDA. ACTION: Notice of public meeting.

SUMMARY: The Office of the Under Secretary for Food Safety, United States Department of Agriculture, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Food and Drug Administration (FDA), are sponsoring a public meeting. The meeting will be held on November 1, 2007, 1 p.m.-3 p.m. to discuss the agenda items coming before the 16th Session of the Codex Committee on Food Import and Export Inspection and Certification Systems (CCFICS) and present draft positions on the agenda items. The 16th Session of the CCFICS will be held November 26-November 30, 2007, in Queensland, Australia. The Under Secretary and FDA recognize the importance of providing interested parties the opportunity to comment on the agenda items that will be debated at this forthcoming Session of the CCFICS. DATES: The public meeting is scheduled for Thursday, November 1, 2007, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. ADDRESSES: The public meeting will be held in Room 0161 of the South Agriculture Building, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC (Smithsonian Metro stop). Documents related to the 16th Session of the CCFICS will be accessible via the World Wide Web at the following address: http://www.codexalimentarius.net/current.asp. The U.S. Delegate to the 16th Session of CCFICS, Dr. Catherine Carnevale, Director, Office of Constituent Operations, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), FDA, invites U.S. interested parties to submit their comments electronically to Dr. Michael Wehr, Acting Deputy Director, Codex Program Coordinator, International Affairs Staff, CFSAN, FDA, E-mail address: michael.wehr@fda.hhs.gov. FOR FURTHER INFORMATION ABOUT THE PUBLIC MEETING CONTACT: Edith Kennard, Staff Officer, U.S. Codex Office, Food Safety and Inspection Service, Room 4861, South Building, 1400 Independence Avenue, SW., Washington, DC 20250, Phone: (202) 720-5261, Fax: (202) 720-3157, E- mail: edith.kennard@fsis.usda.gov.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Background The Codex Alimentarius Commission was established in 1963 by two United Nations organizations, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Health Organization (WHO). Through adoption of food standards, codes of practice, and other guidelines developed by its committees, and by promoting their adoption and implementation by governments, Codex seeks to protect the health of consumers and ensure that fair practices are used in trade. The CCFICS was established to develop principles and guidelines for food import and export inspection and certification systems to facilitate trade through harmonization and to supply safe and quality foods to consumers. Included in the charge is application of measures by competent authorities to provide assurance that foods comply with essential requirements. The Committee is hosted by the government of Australia. Issues To Be Discussed at the Public Meeting Draft Provisional Agenda items to be discussed at the public meeting: Matters Referred to the Committee by the Codex Alimentarius Commission and Other Codex Committees and Task Forces Proposed Draft Appendix to the Guidelines on the Judgement of Equivalence of Sanitary Measures Associated with Food Inspection and Certification at Step 4 Discussion Paper on the Need to Revise the Codex Alimentarius Commission/Guideline (CAC/GL) 20-1995 and CAC/GL 26-1997 Discussion Paper on the Need for Guidance for National Food Inspection Systems Discussion Paper on the Development of Guidelines for the Conduct of Foreign Audit Team Inspections Discussion Paper on the Need for Further Guidance on Traceability/Product Tracing Consistency of the Draft Model Export Certificate for Milk and Milk Products with CAC/GL 38-2001 Other Business and Future Work: Discussion Paper on the Development of a Generic Template for Health Certificates Each issue listed will be fully described in documents distributed, or to be distributed, by the Codex Secretariat.

Members of the public may access these documents via the World Wide Web at the following address: http://www.codexalimentarius.net/current.asp. Public Meeting At the November 1, 2007, public meeting, the agenda items coming before the 16th Session of the CCFICS will be discussed and attendees will have the opportunity to pose questions and offer comments. Written comments may be offered at the meeting or sent to the U.S. Delegate for the 16th Session of the CCFICS, Dr. Catherine Carnevale (see ADDRESSES). Written comments should state that they relate to activities of the 16th Session of the CCFICS. Additional Public Notification Public awareness of all segments of rulemaking and policy development is important. Consequently, in an effort to ensure that minorities, women, and persons with disabilities are aware of this notice, FSIS will announce it online through the FSIS Web page located at http://www.fsis.usda.gov/regulations/2007_Notices_Index/.

FSIS will also make copies of this Federal Register publication available through the FSIS Constituent Update, which is used to provide information regarding FSIS policies, procedures, regulations, Federal Register notices, FSIS public meetings, and other types of information that could affect or would be of interest to constituents and stakeholders. The [[Page 61107]] Update is communicated via Listserv, a free electronic mail subscription service for industry, trade groups, consumer interest groups, health professionals, and other individuals who have asked to be included. The Update is also available on the FSIS Web page. Through Listserv and the Web page, FSIS is able to provide information to a much broader and more diverse audience. In addition, FSIS offers an electronic mail subscription service which provides automatic and customized access to selected food safety news and information. This service is available at http://www.fsis.usda.gov/news_and_events/e-mail_subscription/. Options range from recalls to export information to regulations, directives and notices. Customers can add or delete subscriptions themselves, and have the option to password protect their accounts. Done at Washington, DC, on October 23, 2007. F. Edward Scarbrough, U.S. Manager for Codex Alimentarius. [FR Doc. E7-21142 Filed 10-26-07; 8:45 am] BILLING CODE 3410-DM-P

From the trenches,

Celeste

Wonder what NAIS could do to our country? Countries blocking country. Does the Proper Health Certificate sound familiar? If it doesn’t, you best check into the regulations being systematically implemented. Take heed!

Monday, 22 October, 2007 @ 8:43 PM Beirut & Damascus – Syria’s government renewed a ban on Lebanese potatoes entering the country on Wednesday, falsely claiming that the produce does not have a “proper health certificate”.

Lebanese farmers have complained that Syria is smuggling Syrian potatoes into Lebanon, warning that if this continues their livelihoods will be at stake. They have also complained that most Syrian produce enters the Lebanese market without a health certificate.

Most of Lebanon’s potato exports go to Iraq and the Gulf Arab states. But the potato ban is likely to inflict heavy losses on Lebanese farmers because most of the exports are transported by land through Syria.

Last week, Lebanese Agriculture Minister Tall Sahli persuaded his Syrian counterpart to lift the ban on importing Lebanese potatoes.

But sources told the Central News Agency that Syrian farmers have pressed their government to renew the ban to protect domestic producers.

Sahli said that a joint committee from both countries will be formed soon to review all the problems and take appropriate measures and said he may visit Syria to discuss the outstanding issues.

He added Syrian officials are concerned that Lebanese potatoes may carry disease. Sahli said Lebanon may consider testing Lebanese potatoes in local labs before allowing them to enter the Syrian market.

Source: Central News Agency

From the trenches,

Celeste

Aerial Photography-Catalog of Aerial Photography

A unique and highly-used collection of aerial photography is housed in the Earth Sciences & Map Library. Unlike maps, which portray the physical and cultural landscape with generalized symbols and colors, aerial photography reveals the terrain as it exists in nature. All buildings, bridges, roads, urban and rural areas, and other man-made features are depicted as they were at the time of photography. Physical features, such as vegetation type and distribution, river widths and courses, shorelines, landslide areas, etc. are shown with detail that no map can depict. Aerial photography is, therefore, extremely useful both for specific site evaluation and for regional analysis, as well as for historical perspectives. It is used by engineers, architects, city and regional planners, geographers, geologists and historians.

(And the USDA and your State Department of Ag’s)

The Earth Sciences & Map Library has over 80,000 images covering California and other selected areas. The majority of photos are 9 x 9 inch contact prints with stereographic coverage. (Stereoscopes are available for patron use.) For some flights, blackline enlargements or positive transparencies are available. The majority of photos are black-and-white images. Some recent flights are in color. In general, scales vary from 1:40,000 to 1:2,400. Historical coverage is available for some areas from 1931 to the present. We have also acquired some aerial photography on CD-ROM. Selected images from various flights are available online.

The Library’s collection emphasis is on San Francisco and the East Bay; however, our collection responsibilities also include the nine counties surrounding the San Francisco Bay and northern California, exclusive of the Central Valley. Very low-level photography is collected primarily for the Bay Area. For areas of the state not collected by Berkeley, cooperative collection responsibilities are in place with the map collections of other UC campuses and Stanford University. Faculty, staff and students may borrow aerial photography held by these other campuses. Please inquire at the Earth Sciences and Map Library for information on their holdings and on our borrowing procedures. In addition to California areas, the library has photography of selected urban areas, such as Boston, Chicago, Denver, Las Vegas, Portland, Seattle, Hong Kong, Mexico City, Venice, Italy, etc. Also available is a small collection of World War I aerial photographs for certain areas in Europe and World War II photography for areas in Japan, Korea , Taiwan, and Wake Island.

The Earth Sciences and Map Library has cumulative indexes for all of its aerial photography. An online version of this Catalog of Aerial Photography is available.

Think that this is not happening over you? A few years ago a company came to our door with a framed picture of our home and land taken from the sky.

From the trenches,

Celeste

Are you Snohomish County farmer and NoNAIS? We have an event to go to on this Tuesday morning, October 30 @ 10:00 AM. Our County Executive Aaron Reardon has a platform of ‘Fighting for Farms’ for the election yet he has remained silent on NAIS, the National Animal Identification System. Here is your opportunity to ask our County Exec about NAIS, seize the moment!

Details:

News Release– October 26, 2007
Contact: Veltry Johnson, Executive Office
Office: 425.388.3883
Cell: 425.754.6581
Email: Veltry.Johnson@co.snohomish.wa.us
Snohomish County Agriculture Sustainability Project

What: Snohomish County Agricultural Sustainability Project, a community-based initiative to preserve and strengthen the County’s local agricultural economy for the next 100 years.

Who: County Executive Aaron Reardon and regional farmers
When: Tuesday, October 30, 2007, 10 a.m.
Where: The Farm (a working family farm owned and operated by Ben and Carol Krause)
7301 Rivershore Road, Snohomish or www.swanstrailfarms.com/page7512.asp

Visuals:

School children navigating the Farm’s popular Washington State corn maze: a 12-acre Washington State map with roads, towns and places.

Children and families picking out pumpkins from the Farm’s colorful pumpkin patch.

School children and their families petting the animals, playing in the historic barn and enjoying a hay wagon ride.

Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon will launch the County’s Agricultural Sustainability Project during a news conference at the Farm, a 125-acre working family farm along the Snohomish River.

This project, facilitated by Snohomish County’s Office of Economic Development with support and oversight from the Snohomish County Agricultural Advisory Board and the local agricultural community, will engage the public in creating an Agricultural Sustainability Plan and a long-term vision of agriculture in Snohomish County.
Executive Reardon will release details of the project including the public involvement process to set priorities for the County’s agricultural economy at a series of community engagement meetings.

Editor’s note: Press kits, photo opportunities and interviews will be made available.

From the trenches,

Celeste

Our grandchildren named one of our last *kids* Peter Parker Spidey Goat after the super-hero Spider-man. It is a great name but I always forget the Parker part….just don’t watch those cartoons like I used to. You can be assured that the goats on our farm are not genetically modified, much less with spider genes. But for those of you that this is a new concept here is an article posted from the UK recently:

FLASH BACK: BBC News Reports On GM Spider Goats

Source: BBC News – GM goat spins web based future

A goat that produces spider’s web protein is about to revolutionise the materials industry. Stronger and more flexible than steel, spider silk offers a lightweight alternative to carbon fibre. p to now it has been impossible to produce “spider fibre” on a commercial scale. Unlike silk worms, spiders are too anti-social to farm successfully.

Now a Canadian company claims to be on the verge of producing unlimited quantities of spider silk – in goat’s milk.

Using techniques similar to those used to produce Dolly the sheep, scientists at Nexia Biotechnologies in Quebec have bred goats with spider genes.

New kids on the block

Webster and Pete – first of many alled Webster and Pete, the world’s first “web kids” cannot dangle from the ceiling, nor do they have a taste for flies.
In fact they look like any other goat. But when they mate, it is hoped they will sire nanny goats that produce milk that contains the spider silk protein.
This “silk milk” will be used to produce a web-like material called Biosteel.
Naturally occurring spider silk is widely recognised as the strongest, toughest fibre known to man.

Spider’s web is lighter and stronger than steel Its tensile strength is greater than steel and it is 25 percent lighter than synthetic, petroleum-based polymers.
These qualities will allow BioSteel to be used in applications where strength and lightness are essential, such as aircraft, racing vehicles and bullet-proof clothing.

Kind to humans

Another advantage of spider silk is that it is compatible with the human body.
That means BioSteel could be used for strong, tough artificial tendons, ligaments and limbs.

The new material could also be used to help tissue repair, wound healing and to create super-thin, biodegradable sutures for eye- or neurosurgery. The medical need for super-strong, flexible and biodegradable materials is large,” said Costas Karatzas, Nexia’s Vice President of Research and Development. This breakthrough in goat nuclear transfer technology will move our BioSteel program into the clinical testing phases earlier than by using traditional strategies,”

Cloning the future

Nexia’s first transgenic goat, called Willow, was born in 1998. Willow’s genes had been engineered to produce a therapeutic human protein. year later Willow was followed by Clint, Arnold and Danny, the world’s first cloned goats.

Dolly – world’s first cloned sheep

Using a technique similar to that used to produce Dolly the sheep, cells were taken from the body of one goat and transferred into mature unfertilised eggs. These eggs had had their original nuclei removed and replaced by nuclei taken from cells grown in culture and obtained from a separate, source goat.

Using spider genes pinpointed by researchers at the University of Wyoming, Nexia then succeeded in breeding Webster and Pete, the world’s first goats to carry the spider web gene. The two goats have now been transferred to a stud farm in New York state and are expected to start work siring a herd of “silk milk” goats this autumn.

Attempts to create artifical spider’s web have failed in the past because it is difficult to make the very long protein chains found in the natural version. he silk milk technique works because the way mammals produce milk proteins and spiders make silk proteins are broadly similar.

Genetically modified plants and animals consistently escaped from their ‘experimental’ areas and have cross-bred with local agricultural products. How does one know if what they are eating has been genetically modified? For the most part your don’t. I did a Public Disclosure request here in Washington State on the location of genetically modified crops and have been stone-walled, which is why WSDA has a law suit on their hands.

So if your nice glass of milk seems a little silky next time….maybe it has a little spider in it. How creepy is that?

From the trenches,

Celeste