"The States put what in Italy's where?!1?1!!?!"

GOOOOOOOODDAY MY FELLOW AMERICANS.

This entry, though probably short and sweet, was brought to my attention earlier today at a school assembly and after 3 different people tried explaining it simply to me in Italian, and I still couldn't wrap my head around it, I ended up going home and researching it through the sides of both the United States and Italy.

The matter of this research is MUOS, which stands for Mobile Use Objective System. These devices are a complex group of 5 satellites in outer space and 4 ground stations, serving for the purpose of enhancing the capability, speed, accessibility, and quality of service for the United States Armed Forces abroad. The 4 ground stations being in Hawaii, southeast Virginia, Australia, and one near and dear to my heart, Niscemi, Sicily.

How this system functions is by ultra-high frequency waves sent through the satellites, the satellites being replacements for cell phone towers, with the system having the same capabilities of a cell phone. The advantage of these satellites are being able to have more contact with "disadvantaged environments", being places with dense forests and limited coverage within the canopy of the trees. This will provide point-to-point and netted communication to the American military, which means access to voice, data, and videos spanning the globe.

I'm gonna guess none of you knew about this, right America?

This 2.11 billion dollar project has been in existence through our Department of Defense since 2004, and is expected to be in full out orbit by 2015.

But what's the problem with it?

If you scan through some articles written by Americans, you will only hear the good things about MUOS and how it will expand the connectivity of our military, yadayadayada. But here in Sicily where this is an everyday issue that is discussed at school, at home, at the public rallies that are held about it, and this is why.

Straight from a page in Italian, www.nomuos.org, MUOS is considered a danger by the people here, because of the high electromagnetic frequency produced by the radiowaves. The health of those who have pace-makers installed in there bodies are also at concern here, because of the electromagnetic field produced could easily be sufficient enough to disturb the progress made by these mechanisms of the people in neighboring communities. The reason this is an issue in Sicily and not in Hawaii, Virginia, or Australia, is because the land base in Niscemi is the only one of these four that is installed close to the public.

So, if we wanna get down to the bare bone of this, we are microwaving people with our high-tech military installations.

As you can see, this is a current event here, not in the States, even though we are the ones doing it. Isn't that kind of messed up? Not accusing anyone here, but I'm just proving how uninformed we are. Me, being a fairly well informed American student that has a pretty large knowledge of the world around her, came here not knowing diddly squat of MUOS. I find it very intriguing.

So, the question is now, MUOS, or no MUOS?

To be continued by 2015.