Reality Check

lgf: Two Arrested with Explosives Near Charleston

Far be it for me to predict anything bad happening. That just isn’t me. I’m more of a preparedness guy for those things that happen that no one can predict. But in the last few days, there have been some strange and disturbing signs of “things to come”.

13 July 2007 - A counterterrorism expert goes public with this remark: “I predict, based primarily on information that is floating in Europe and the Middle East, that an event is imminent and around the corner here in the United States. It could happen as soon as tomorrow, or it could happen in the next few months. Ninety days at the most,” said Mr. Aviv.

29 July 2007 - Several “Hazmat” incidents in the DC area, College Park, Greenbelt, Naylor Rd, Anacostia, and Takoma Park. Dead birds were found at those locations as well. A black truck was observed to be common to all stations prior to the HAZMAT event for those locations. According to news reports it was a “mistake” by a contractor.

4 Aug 2007 - Authorities closed a highway outside Charleston for more than five hours Saturday night after police found explosives in the trunk of a car, a newspaper reported, citing an FBI agent. The vehicle with Florida tags was driven by two men of Middle Eastern descent.

Authories in Goose Creek - Berkeley County police pulled over a vehicle in a routine traffic stop near Meyers Road and Highway 176 around 6 p.m.Saturday. The vehicle with Florida tags was driven by two men of Middle Eastern descent. Some type of explosives were found in the trunk. Those explosives were detonated after three o’clock this morning.
Two men were arrested, and charges of possession of unlawful explosives are being prepared. Officials are not at this time releasing any additional information on the number of charges or types of explosive devices they found.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070805/ap_on_re_us/highway_closed

I don’t know about you folks, but I smell an East Coast thing happening, and soon. Explosives being found, middle eastern men in cars carrying them, ‘accidents’ (read: TESTING) happening, and multiple, many, many attempts to pass materials that APPEAR suspicious into checked luggage on airplanes in recent weeks.

Amazingly the AP article above mentions NOTHING about “Middle Eastern Men”. Little Green Footballs made the connection somehow, and as of yet, I’ve got no backup data on it.

But, something is up. Something is going to happen, and soon. I don’t know what yet, but are you prepared?

Some updates to the site this month….

Sunday was my 50th birthday. Wow. Half a century. Doesn’t seem like I’ve been around that long. It also happens that my wife and I were married thirty years ago, on my birthday so, we celebrated both my birthday and our wedding anniversary.

I bought my wife a pretty diamond ring, and made a joke about it… it is one of those three-diamond sets, with a meaning of “Past, Present, Future”. She asked me what if I knew what it meant, and I said, “Sure. One diamond for each decade,” and grinned at her. She was kind of amused.

For my Birthday though, I got a neat little radio. She let me pick it out, because she is never sure what sort of electronic gadgets I want or will use. I don’t pick her clothes out, and she doesn’t pick out radios. Even though she too, is a ham radio operator, she prefers I take the time to do the research on the electronics. That’s good with me though.

The radio is pretty cool. It’s a Yaesu VX-7RB. It has four bands one can transmit on, the 6M (50 Mhz), 1.2M (220 Mhz), 2M (144 Mhz) and the 70 cm (440) bands. The receiver is wideband and can receive from approximately 500Khz to around 1 gigahertz. Typical of idiotic laws in the United States (due to a senator being overheard breaking the law way back when) cellular frequencies are blocked.

Short of the blocked cell frequencies, I can scan a whole lot of spectrum with this radio, pick up some of the local police and fire (mostly they are on digital trunking now in my region though), weather frequencies (including an emergency alert), multiple programable channels (around 1000), and it picks up shortwave too. Cool radio.

The wife is practicing her testing this last month and is going in on Saturday to upgrade from Novice to at least Technician class. That will at least get her on 2m with me now. We’re supposed to be attending local emergency communications training in September as well, for ARES.