Archive for February 5th, 2010
Pentagon Looks to Breed Immortal ‘Synthetic Organisms,’ Molecular Kill-Switch Included
“These people need to be stopped or you’ll be living in a freak fuckin’ show of a planet. I’m not even suggesting going down to the Pentagon or your local Town Hall to protest… but just look into things and maybe… and… I don’t know… discuss it with your friends and family instead of being worried who is gonna win the Super Bowl… all you emotionally crippled man child’s.”
-Fred Face 2/5/09
The Pentagon’s mad science arm may have come up with its most radical project yet. Darpa is looking to re-write the laws of evolution to the military’s advantage, creating “synthetic organisms” that can live forever — or can be killed with the flick of a molecular switch.
As part of its budget for the next year, Darpa is investing $6 million into a project called BioDesign, with the goal of eliminating “the randomness of natural evolutionary advancement.” The plan would assemble the latest bio-tech knowledge to come up with living, breathing creatures that are genetically engineered to “produce the intended biological effect.” Darpa wants the organisms to be fortified with molecules that bolster cell resistance to death, so that the lab-monsters can “ultimately be programmed to live indefinitely.”
Of course, Darpa’s got to prevent the super-species from being swayed to do enemy work — so they’ll encode loyalty right into DNA, by developing genetically programmed locks to create “tamper proof” cells. Plus, the synthetic organism will be traceable, using some kind of DNA manipulation, “similar to a serial number on a handgun.” And if that doesn’t work, don’t worry. In case Darpa’s plan somehow goes horribly awry, they’re also tossing in a last-resort, genetically-coded kill switch:
Develop strategies to create a synthetic organism “self-destruct” option to be implemented upon nefarious removal of organism.
The project comes as Darpa also plans to throw $20 million into a new synthetic biology program, and $7.5 million into “increasing by several decades the speed with which we sequence, analyze and functionally edit cellular genomes.”
Of course, Darpa’s up against some vexing, fundamental laws of nature — not to mention bioethics — as they embark on the lab beast program. First, they might want to rethink the idea of evolution as a random series of events, says NYU biology professor David Fitch. “Evolution by selection is nota random process at all, and is actually a hugely efficient design algorithm used extensively in computation and engineering,” he e-mails Danger Room.
Even if Darpa manages to overcome the inherent intelligence of evolutionary processes, overcoming inevitable death can be tricky. Just ask all the other research teams who’ve made stabs at it, trying everything from cell starvation to hormone treatments. Gene therapy, where artificial genes are inserted into an organism to boost cell life, are the latest and greatest in life-extension science, but they’ve only been proven to extend lifespan by 20 percent in rats.
But suppose gene therapy makes major strides, and Darpa does manage to get the evolutionary science right. They’ll also have a major ethical hurdle to jump. Synthetic biology researchers are already facing the same questions, as a 2009 summary from the Synthetic Biology Project reports:
The concern that humans might be overreaching when we create organisms that never before existed can be a safety concern, but it also returns us to disagreements about what is our proper role in the natural world (a debate largely about non-physical harms or harms to well-being).
Even expert molecular geneticists don’t know what to make of the project. Either that, or they’re scared Darpa might sic a bio-bot on them. “I would love to comment, but unfortunately Darpa has installed a kill switch in me,” one unnamed expert tells Danger Room.
05
02 2010
Google to enlist NSA to help it ward off cyberattacks (The Washington Post)
“USA=China.”
-F.F.
By Ellen Nakashima
The world’s largest Internet search company and the world’s most powerful electronic surveillance organization are teaming up in the name of cybersecurity.
Under an agreement that is still being finalized, the National Security Agency would help Google analyze a major corporate espionage attack that the firm said originated in China and targeted its computer networks, according to cybersecurity experts familiar with the matter. The objective is to better defend Google — and its users — from future attack.
Google and the NSA declined to comment on the partnership. But sources with knowledge of the arrangement, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans’ online communications. The sources said the deal does not mean the NSA will be viewing users’ searches or e-mail accounts or that Google will be sharing proprietary data.
The partnership strikes at the core of one of the most sensitive issues for the government and private industry in the evolving world of cybersecurity: how to balance privacy and national security interests. On Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair called the Google attacks, which the company acknowledged in January, a “wake-up call.” Cyberspace cannot be protected, he said, without a “collaborative effort that incorporates both the U.S. private sector and our international partners.”
But achieving collaboration is not easy, in part because private companies do not trust the government to keep their secrets and in part because of concerns that collaboration can lead to continuous government monitoring of private communications. Privacy advocates, concerned about a repeat of the NSA’s warrantless interception of Americans’ phone calls and e-mails after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, say information-sharing must be limited and closely overseen.
“The critical question is: At what level will the American public be comfortable with Google sharing information with NSA?” said Ellen McCarthy, president of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, an organization of current and former intelligence and national security officials that seeks ways to foster greater sharing of information between government and industry.
On Jan. 12, Google took the rare step of announcing publicly that its systems had been hacked in a series of intrusions beginning in December.
The intrusions, industry experts said, targeted Google source code — the programming language underlying Google applications — and extended to more than 30 other large tech, defense, energy, financial and media companies. The Gmail accounts of human rights activists in Europe, China and the United States were also compromised.
So significant was the attack that Google threatened to shutter its business operation in China if the government did not agree to let the firm operate an uncensored search engine there. That issue is still unresolved.
Google approached the NSA shortly after the attacks, sources said, but the deal is taking weeks to hammer out, reflecting the sensitivity of the partnership. Any agreement would mark the first time that Google has entered a formal information-sharing relationship with the NSA, sources said. In 2008, the firm stated that it had not cooperated with the NSA in its Terrorist Surveillance Program.
Sources familiar with the new initiative said the focus is not figuring out who was behind the recent cyberattacks — doing so is a nearly impossible task after the fact — but building a better defense of Google’s networks, or what its technicians call “information assurance.”
One senior defense official, while not confirming or denying any agreement the NSA might have with any firm, said: “If a company came to the table and asked for help, I would ask them . . . ‘What do you know about what transpired in your system? What deficiencies do you think they took advantage of? Tell me a little bit about what it was they did.’ ” Sources said the NSA is reaching out to other government agencies that play key roles in the U.S. effort to defend cyberspace and might be able to help in the Google investigation.
These agencies include the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security.
Over the past decade, other Silicon Valley companies have quietly turned to the NSA for guidance in protecting their networks.
“As a general matter,” NSA spokeswoman Judi Emmel said, “as part of its information-assurance mission, NSA works with a broad range of commercial partners and research associates to ensure the availability of secure tailored solutions for Department of Defense and national security systems customers.”
Despite such precedent, Matthew Aid, an expert on the NSA, said Google’s global reach makes it unique.
“When you rise to the level of Google . . . you’re looking at a company that has taken great pride in its independence,” said Aid, author of “The Secret Sentry,” a history of the NSA. “I’m a little uncomfortable with Google cooperating this closely with the nation’s largest intelligence agency, even if it’s strictly for defensive purposes.”
The pact would be aimed at allowing the NSA help Google understand whether it is putting in place the right defenses by evaluating vulnerabilities in hardware and software and to calibrate how sophisticated the adversary is. The agency’s expertise is based in part on its analysis of cyber-”signatures” that have been documented in previous attacks and can be used to block future intrusions.
The NSA would also be able to help the firm understand what methods are being used to penetrate its system, the sources said. Google, for its part, may share information on the types of malicious code seen in the attacks — without disclosing proprietary data about what was taken, which would concern shareholders, sources said.
Greg Nojeim, senior counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology, a privacy advocacy group, said companies have statutory authority to share information with the government to protect their rights and property.
05
02 2010
Digging Through Obama’s Closet
Many Americans were shocked by Obama’s meteoric rise to power. Although plenty of other ‘relative unknowns’ have made the jump from Congress or a governorship to the Oval Office, none of them were visible minorities or able to galvanize public sentiment nearly as well as Obama. Following 8 years of despotic rule by George Bush & Co., huge segments of the American public embraced Obama’s candidacy with wanton enthusiasm. His campaign rallies took on an imperialistic tenor, and for many confused Americans he was psychologically conflated as a political messiah – ready, willing and able to act as civilization’s great panacea. Unfortunately, much of the public was simply projecting dreams for a better future onto Obama. They saw in him a clear improvement over Bush and more integrity than Hillary Clinton, and this branding helped him handily mop the floor with John McCain. Nevertheless, branding aside, with a little critical attention Obama’s rise to power begins to seem less accidental, and takes on all the hues of a prolonged, successful grooming process. Barack Obama did not become a global sensation by accident. He had help getting where he is. That help obviously included corporate and financial interests, but it may also have included the involvement of covert intelligence agencies – perhaps most especially the CIA.
In contrast with the enthusiastic shock many felt towards Obama’s rise to success, fewer would be surprised at the suggestion that the military-industrial complex exercises undue influence in the American political system. Eisenhower warned the world before leaving office in 1961, and JFK’s condemnation of ’secret societies’ operating within the American government may have contributed to or hastened his assassination. A few decades later theIran-Contra debacle illustrated that the military-industrial complex could act with impunitywithout fear of legitimate censure. Oliver North, the scandal’s sacrificial lamb, now works as a ‘political commentator’ for Fox News and is a best-selling NYT author. If this is how we punish culprits found dabbling in treason, one might begin to wonder if Lady Justice should remove her blindfold.
In the modern era, however, the scope of the military-industrial complex’s domination has escaped all semblance of notoriety. This, like Obama’s success, did not arise by accident. Society today has been immersed in Hollywood’s mythology since birth. Most of us would be hard-pressed to remember before we first met Mickey Mouse, for example. But Mickey Mouse isn’t benign, and neither is Hollywood. Among the many useful things Mickey Mouse will teach you is that males solve problems, females need males to solve problems, and the ‘good’ guy always finishes the day happy. Few of us view life this simplistically and many would balk at the suggestion that Mickey Mouse really ‘teaches’ us anything, but we are unwise to think this conditioning has no effect on our psychosocial development.
Similarly, Hollywood has spent the last three decades churning out a remarkable slew of movies involving or centring on war, military life, crime and punishment, and intelligence agencies. More often than not, audiences transpose these romanticized characterizations onto how they think the military-industrial complex operates. In the audience’s eyes acts of dubious morality become justified – the heroes actions are always legitimated by the results they achieve. An obvious example of this perceptive tendency is the public’s enthusiasm for 2008’s The Dark Knight, in which the antihero’s actions – which include illegally surveilling civilians, wanton disregard for social accountability, perjury, vigilantism, tax evasion, and blackmail (to name but a small few) – are excused because he gets the ‘bad’ guy. Likewise, in the popular sci-fi spy drama Alias, covert intelligence agencies are portrayed as rogues while their roguish behaviour is beyond reproof. The lead character, Sydney Bristow, was a top-tier college freshman who was courted and recruited by a covert intelligence agency. She goes on to save the world a few times – occasionally while pregnant – but throughout it all the world remains ignorant of her actions. In Alias’s fictional world, the public is kept perpetually ignorant of the very real threat it is under, all manner of resources are marshalled for various sundry endeavours, and the government exists merely as a means of enabling the antihero’s success. This implicitly anti-democratic message isn’t innocuous and it isn’t simply a rhetorical device used to weave a story. It mirrors an established psychopathology: narcissism.
Narcissism, like any other human characteristic, can take on many different masks. Even still, I don’t think this narcissistic/patriarchal worldview is limited to Hollywood, serialized television, or literature. In fact, I think many within the military-industrial complex would readily sympathize. From their vantage, they’re “watching over” us and “keeping us safe [from ourselves, if need be]“. Thinking the application of this patriarchal worldview passive, in my opinion, would be a mistake. Rather, I would argue this narcissistic psychopathology infects large swaths of the military-industrial complex’s leadership, and some of these ‘defenders of the public’ are willing to go through similarly despotic means to reach their desired ends. As a result, I think it pertinent to consider whether president Obama’s success may be a byproduct of a similar agenda.
Along those lines, let’s check in with John Pilger, who thinks ‘Obama is a corporate marketing creation’. For whatever it’s worth, Noam Chomsky has suggested the term ‘pilgerise’ was“invented by journalists furious about his incisive and courageous reporting, and knowing that the only response they are capable of is ridicule.” So, depending on how much weight you’re willing to give Chomsky’s views, Pilger might be someone to take seriously:
John Richard Pilger is an Australian journalist and documentary maker. He has twice won Britain’s Journalist of the Year Award, and his documentaries have received academy awards in Britain and the US. – (John Pilger)
“It is almost impossible to have an intelligent conversation about Obama. The problem isn’t that people come to him with baggage. Everyone comes to everything in politics with baggage. It’s that they refuse to check it in or even declare it. Any conversation about what he does rapidly morphs into one about who he is and what he might be.” – (Common Dreams)
For some, the suggestion that the CIA had some role in Obama’s rise to power will sound like sheer lunacy. Others will immediately assume the worst and project all sorts of nefarious machinations onto Obama’s past. The path of moderation may be most appropriate, but let’s get a better handle on what’s been said, what we ‘know’, and what we might infer.
For an official-esque, sanitized timeline of Obama’s life, see here. It adds an explicit chronology and gives a skeletal overview, but if you dig a little deeper, things get muddy. The domain is registered to ‘Eran Sadeh’ – an Israeli who remotely registered the site. Try doing a search for “barack obama timeline” and it’ll come up first.
To get things started, we need to be very clear in demonstrating that Obama is no spring chicken:
Obama: “It’s ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton brags ‘I’ve met leaders from eighty countries’–I know what those trips are like! I’ve been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There’s a group of children who do native dance. You meet with the CIA station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that [with] the assistance of USAID has started something. And then–you go.”
“You do that in eighty countries–you don’t know those eighty countries. So when I speak about having lived in Indonesia for four years, having family that is impoverished in small villages in Africa–knowing the leaders is not important–what I know is the people. . . .”
“I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college–I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. . . .” – (Huffington Post)
05
02 2010
Yemen on the Brink: Implications for U.S. Policy
Statement of Congressman Ron Paul
United States House of Representatives
Statement on House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing:
‘Yemen on the Brink: Implications for U.S. Policy’
February 3, 2010
Mr. Chairman, I am extremely concerned over current US policy toward Yemen, which I believe will backfire and leave the United States less safe and much poorer. Increasing US involvement in Yemen may be sold as a fight against terrorism, but in fact it is more about expanding US government control and influence over this strategically-placed nation at the gateway to Asia.
The current administration, according to today’s testimony of Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman, has dramatically increased foreign aid to Yemen, from $17 million in FY 2008 to $40 million in FY 2009, to $67 million for FY 2010, to, according to the president’s recent budget sent to Congress, $106 million for FY 2011. That represents an incredible six-fold increase in US aid to Yemen over just four years, at a time when the US economy continues to falter.
When I look at the US assistance plan for Yemen I see that it is primarily focused on nation-building. That is the failed idea that if the United States sends enough money to a foreign government, with which that government purchases US-manufactured weapons and hires US-based consultants and non-governmental organizations, that country will achieve a strong economy and political stability and in gratitude will become eternally friendly to the US and US interests. I have yet to see a single successful example of this strategy.
According to Assistant Secretary Feltman’s statement, “Priorities for U.S. assistance include political and fiscal reforms and meaningful attention to legitimate internal grievances; better governance through decentralization, reduced corruption and civil service reform; human rights protections; jobs-related training; economic diversification to generate employment and enhance livelihoods, and strengthened natural resource management.” How can we believe that the US government can achieve abroad what we know it cannot effectively achieve at home? We are going to spend millions of dollars to help create jobs in Yemen as we continue to shed jobs in the United States?
Yemen is a country mired in civil conflict. The Shi’ites in the north, who make up a significant percentage of the country’s total population and a majority in their region, have been fighting against what they see as the discriminatory policies of the Sunni-based government in the capitol, Sana’a, for years. Yemenis in the south, who up until 1990 were a separate country, likewise oppose the central government and threaten to escalate this opposition. Added into this mix are elements of what are called al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), some of whom are left over from the US-supported fight against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, and others have been radicalized by their exposure to Wahhabi extremism in US-allied Saudi Arabia. Still others in AQAP are veterans of the insurgency against US occupation of Iraq. We cannot forget either those Yemenis who were held for years by the United States without charges at Guantanamo Bay. How many of those were innocent of terrorist actions or intent but became radicalized under such conditions?
Saudi Arabia’s concern over the Shi’ite unrest in north Yemen has led to unsubstantiated claims of Iranian involvement in attempt to draw the US into a regional problem that has nothing to do with the United States. Saudi Arabia has struggled with unrest among its own Shi’ite population and is determined to prevent any spill-over. There are some here in the US who repeat false claims of Iranian involvement in the hope of expanding the US military presence in the area. Others in the United States irresponsibly call for a US pre-emptive war in Yemen. We should be clear on this: expanded US involvement in Yemen plays into the hands of bin Laden and his organization as has been made clear on many occasions. Luring the United States into a conflict in Yemen by falsely advertising it part of a war on terror will certainly radicalize the Yemeni population against the United States. It will weaken our over-extended military and it will further destroy our economy.
Similarly, the US-backed central government in Sana’a stands to gain by claiming its internal problems are part of a global crisis that requires US intervention. The central Yemeni government has much to gain by making its battles and its problems our battles and our problems. But that gain will come at the expense of US soldiers, US security, and the American economy. I wonder how long it will be before the US establishes a permanent base on the strategic territory of Yemen?
I hope, as we begin to debate the foreign affairs budget for next year, that we may yet change course from that of the last administration, where the failed policies of interventionism, militarism, and nation-building have left the United States in a diminished position in the world.
http://www.campaignforliberty.com/article.php?view=585
05
02 2010
Subverted Tea Party Movement Told to Embrace Republican Platform
“What a joke. These idiots have absolutely nothing to do with our movement. Stop confusing the already confused public.”
-F.F.
Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
February 5, 2010
The Tea Party movement is now almost completely unrecognizable from what it was a few short years ago. It came to prominence in 2008 when the Libertarian Party of Illinois planned to hold an April 15, 2009 anti-tax “Boston Tea Party” in Chicago. In February 2009, the idea grew after CNBC personality Rick Santelli, speaking from the floor of the Chicago stock exchange, criticized the Obama administration’s tax and economic policies and urged Americans become Tea Party activists.
In fact, the idea began as the Boston Tea Party in 2006. It was founded by a group of former Libertarian Party members who criticized the party for its “abdication of political responsibilities,” declaring that “Americans deserve and desperately need a pro-freedom party that forcefully advocates libertarian solutions to the issues of today.” The Boston Tea Party opposed statism at all levels. “The Boston Tea Party supports reducing the size scope and power of government at all levels and on all issues, and opposes increasing the size, scope and power of government at any level, for any purpose.”
How things have changed.
It didn’t take long for establishment Republicans to steal the idea and claim it as their own. A few weeks after Rick Santelli made his comments, Ron Paul’s media coordinator Steve Gordon went on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow show and complained about what he characterized as an attempt by Republicans to hijack the idea. Gordon specifically blamed former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.
It didn’t take long for Republicans to embrace the idea. RNC Chairman Michael Steele, Sarah Palin, and Rep. Michele Bachmann from Minnesota have suggested the Tea Party should be rolled into the Republican Borg hive.
Now there will be a national Tea Party convention in Nashville. It will be a parade of Republican statists with former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin leading the charge. “I look forward to meeting many Americans who share a commitment to limited government, common sense and personal responsibility. This movement is truly a grassroots, organic effort. It’s not a top-down organization,” Palin wrote for USA Today, “it’s a ground-up call to action that already has both political parties rethinking the way they do business.”
Ground-up? Tea Party candidates for the 2010 mid-term elections “will be expected to support the Republican National Committee platform,” according to Fox News. “If a particular candidate meets the proposed Tea Party criteria he or she would be eligible for fundraising and grassroots Tea Party support.”
“Once elected to office, members would be required to join a Congressional Tea Party Caucus, attend regular meetings and be held accountable for the votes they cast. Those who stray from the Tea Party path would risk losing it’s support and a likely re-election challenge.”
In other words, business as usual. Under the rule of George W. Bush and the Republicans, “inflation-adjusted spending on the combined budgets of the 101 largest programs they vowed to eliminate in 1995 has grown by 27 percent, according to the libertarian Cato Institute. Eight years of a Republican president, six with a Republican-controlled Congress, resulted in bigger government, the biggest expansion of entitlements in 40 years and a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street that continues to grow,” writes Donny Ferguson of the Libertarian National Committee.
Maddow explains how the Republican subverted Tea Party movement is a blessing for statist progressives.
Bush and the Republicans also invaded two sovereign nations and killed more than a million Iraqis. Democrats by and large supported these war crimes. They also overwhelmingly supported the Republicans when they attacked the Constitution and the Bill of Rights (the so-called Patriot Act being only the most egregious example).
If the co-opted Tea Party embraces the Republican National Committee platform, it will finalize its mutation from a grassroots libertarian organization into an establishment statist tool pushing a national debt for the banksters, bloated government, taxation, perpetual war, and continued attacks on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
It should be obvious by now that the Republicans plan to run Sarah Palin against Obama in 2012. This will be a disaster for the Republicans because many Americans are not fooled by her sudden Tea Party plumage. Republicans are desperate to regain control of the White House and Congress and give us four or eight more years of Bush and his warmongering statist neocons. It is a shabby and absurdly transparent gimmick.
Real Tea Party activists and supporters need to reject Palin, Huckabee, Gingrich, and the Republicans out of hand. They should be vocal about their rejection. Otherwise we will end up with another ideologue and teleprompter reading cigar store Indian for the ruling elite.
http://www.infowars.com/subverted-tea-party-movement-told-to-embrace-republican-platform/
