Category Archives: War

The Independent to 9/11 conspiracists: "Go to Hell"

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London Independent science editor Steve Conner reports a theory from the UK Atomic Energy Authority as indisputable fact, and pronounces the 9/11 case closed:

The discovery that unusual magnetic forces within the girders made them weak at temperatures of about 500C explains away the conspiracy theories that have spread like wildfire since the disaster.

Sergei Dudarev, of the UK Atomic Energy Agency, found that steel loses its strength above 500C because its molecules undergo a physical transition from one state to another due to magnetic fluctuations.

9/11 truthers, however, quickly rounded-up evidence that seems to contradict Dudarev’s assertions about the Twin Towers collapse.

Dudarev takes his paycheck from taxpayers, via the financier Lady Barbara Judge (left), who is chairman of the UKAEA.

Dudarev’s findings reportedly came out of an unrelated study he was conducting for the UKAEA, which is charged with decommissioning nuclear weapons, and promoting nuke energy.

Magnetic forces to blame for 9/11 tower collapse – Science, News – The Independent.

Stanford robots fly "better" than humans

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Dvice.com

Smarter than your average carbon-based life form. Photo: Stanford U.

The Sci-Fi Channel blog says that autonomous choppers developed at Standford University are teaching each other to fly better than a human pilot.

The announcement embraces two common subtexts in media coverage of robotic technologies: that robots will soon be our betters, and that they can be trustworthy as they carry out their benign missions overhead.

Stanford says “there is interest in using autonomous helicopters to search for land mines in war-torn areas or to map out the hot spots of California wildfires in real time.”

That kind of language is the military’s way of easing robot killing machines into our consciences. The choppers will follow the Predator into the killing business soon enough.

DVICE: Stanfords robotic helicopters teach each other tricks, fly better than a human
Crazily enough, the helicopters used aren’t fancy at all. They’re just store-bought RC helicopters, with the complex innards added by the Stanford students. The team includes Professor Andrew Ng, graduate students Pieter Abbeel, Adam Coates, Timothy Hunter, Morgan Quigley, and expert remote controller Garett Oku.

Vaccine will combat weaponized plague

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Another mandatory prick is on the way

(First, it was smallpox. Photo: Steven Stehling)

from Mark:

Plague is a terrorist threat, the University of Central Florida says.

According to the university: In 2005, plague killed 56 people in the Congo, “and another 124 were infected before the epidemic was stopped.”

The disease is more likely to kill you, than if you were infected with smallpox. Mortality rates for untreated plague are well over 50 percent. For smallpox, the mortality rate is about 30 percent.

UCF has new vaccine for plague, however, which can be taken orally: making it more useful in the case of a terrorist plague attack, something scientists, writing for the Lancet last year, is something for which we should be prepared.

UCF professor develops vaccine to protect against black plague bioterror attack
A University of Central Florida researcher may have found a defense against the Black Plague, a disease that wiped out a third of Europe’s population in the Middle Ages and which government agencies perceive as a terrorist threat today.

UCF Professor Henry Daniell and his team have developed a vaccine that early research shows is highly effective against the plague. Findings of his National Institutes of Health and USDA funded research appear in the August edition of Infection and Immunity. The vaccine, which is taken orally or by injection, was given to rats at UCF and the efficacy was evaluated by measuring immunity (antibody) developed in their blood.

All untreated rats died within three days while all orally immunized animals survived this challenge with no traces of the plague in their bodies. The rats were exposed to a heavy dose of Yersinia Pestis bacteria, which causes the plague, at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Maryland. It is one of a few labs in the world authorized to store and work with the highly dangerous agent.

Boston shrinks will challenge association's "ethics"

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from Mark:

Boston area shrinks this month will protest the American Psychological Association’s weak stance against torture.

The APA’s ethics code (see excerpt, below) is giving shrinks a free pass to help U.S. forces commit war crimes at Guantanamo Bay, protester organizers say.

Psychologists have a long history of participating in torture.

The entire “positive psychology” movement, for example, is rooted in sadistic animal experiments by former APA president Martin Seligman, who coached  CIA interrogators (unwittingly, Seligman says) on torture techniques.

Seligman decades ago electrically shocked dogs until they stopped trying to save themselves: a state he called “learned helplessness.”

More recently, Seligman explained his theories at a CIA-organized event. At least CIA two psychologists at Guantanamo credit Seligman with inspiring their torture protocols.

Psychologists Won’t Let Go of Torture Debate – World of Psychology
“If the conflict (between a psychologist’s moral duties and a government order) is unresolvable via such means, psychologists may adhere to the requirements of the law, regulations, or other governing legal authority.” It is worth noting that this new option is absolute and unqualified and applies not just to the specific requirements enumerated in the code but more generally to all “ethical responsibilities.”

Live long and prosper? We might do neither

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Biotech body snatchers. A genetically “inferior” underclass. Increased terrorist attacks. Futurists will “make it so.“

(Marketing buzzword alert: “Futuring,” a verb, is the act of exploring of the future, according to those who do it. Photo: Futurist Thornton A. May flashes the three-finger “Sustainability Symbol.” More about this strange hand signal shortly. Credit: Dragonpreneur, under a Creative Commons license.)

from Mark:

A new book by a futurist and adviser to three U.S. presidents portrays a horrific near future scenario filled with body snatchers, a booming “neuromarket” for false memory implants, and a self-aware internet that rebels against humanity.

The author of “The Extreme Future,” James Canton, Ph.D. (below), was a student of Alvin Toffler, according to Publisher’s Weekly. He will be speaking at the U.S. Army War College this fall, at a conference aimed not at predicting, but shaping, the future.

“The goal of futuring (exploring the future) is not to predict the future but to improve it,” reads a quote from futurist Edward Cornish, on the U.S. Army War College’s website.

For more about how futurists plan our futures, see these blurbs and broadcasts by Alan Watt.

Bloggers from the military and intel communities are talking about the book. Here is an excerpt from one dot-mil blog:

(Dr.) Canton…includes “Top Ten” lists detailing everything from Energy Trends to Robo-Futures.

In THE EXTREME FUTURE, Dr. James Canton predicts that:

• The high cost of oil will force the West to invent new alternatives to oil and lead to depressed OPEC economies, leading to more terrorism against the West

• Radical life extension will create a two-class global society of those who live over 150 years and of those who cannot afford to

• The Internet will develop an awareness of itself and its own personality and rebel against human controls

• Human cloning will become the ultimate in identity theft

• A nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India is more likely then not

• Copy-cat products from Asia—from drugs to auto parts—will perform better then the original branded products they’re based on

• Radical life extension will reshape entire markets and society

• The new global Innovation Economy will deliver widespread prosperity and wealth

Colorful, cute, creative and useless

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Protesters on the Web and in the streets might believe they are making changes, but they’d be wrong.

(Hello, worthless: For all of their viral videos, chain emails, outlandish performances and guerrilla visual marketing campaigns, the new generation of dissenters have little to brag about. Photo: 2004 Democratic National Convention protesters, by Mark Baard)

from Mark:

The Denver Post, citing their “funky fusion of protest, performance and pompoms,” suggests that protesters are changing their tactics for the YouTube generation. (See excerpt and link, below.) But when young protesters hit the Democratic Convention this summer, they will be corralled into the same caged protest zone I saw at the 2004 in Boston.

And the devastating impacts to Americans of the so-called War on Terror, failing banks and foreclosures, and the emerging police state have never been worse.

Indeed, the mass protests that elsewhere and at other times have forced governments to reverse their unpopular decisions, are completely absent from the American scene. Instead, food riots

That is because, as secret societies historian Alan Watt often notes in his radio programs and audio blurbs, governments and corporations generate apathy as often as they use terror to control the masses.

New generation plans dissent – The Denver Post
A nude-in with bare bodies arranged to spell “PEACE,” traffic- stopping bike blockades, music with a message. Civil disobedience, direct confrontation, radical cheerleading.

That funky fusion of protest, performance and pompoms.

The new generation of activists, and the daisy-in-the-rifle protesters who birthed them, is busy with creative ferment, organizing public dissent for the Democratic National Convention here in August. They are motivated by the desire to create social change with people power, not political power, frustrated by a mounting list of problems, from the housing crisis to soaring prices for gas and food.

Air Force sends up more Cylon Raiders

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Robotic Predator drones are wreaking havoc on Iraqi and Afghani targets. U.S. homeland reconnaissance missions are also on the rise. And like Cylon raiders, while hardware might die, the brains live on–the drones’ human operators are safely ensconced in trailers, Stateside.

Predator combat air patrols double in 1 year
The Air Force plans to expand Predator training by standing up a second Predator training squadron and establish a Predator Weapons Instructor Course in early 2009. This action is necessary to lay the foundation to further increase and enhance joint warfighting capability.

Food Revolution 2030

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The food riots anticipated by military experts have already started. Now the Royal Institute for International Affairs is talking revolution, as a way to approach world hunger.

The Royal Institute for International Affairs is calling for something “close to a revolution” in agricultural efforts to meet the world’s hunger for food by 2030. A report from Chatham House (link, below), says we may already be at a point where a global middle class of fatties is taking food from the mouths of the poor.

Chatham House – Publications – Reports and Papers – View Paper
In the longer term, the key challenge is to increase the supply of food: the World Bank estimates that demand for food will rise by 50 per cent by 2030, as a result of rising affluence and growing world population. Achieving this challenge will require something close to a revolution, and a massive investment in agriculture in developing countries.

"Accidental" bombing one of many for Air Force

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Last week’s Oklahoma bombing was at least the sixth such accident since 2002. Dummy bombs have struck homes and businesses (or landed near them) in the US, Europe and Asia. They often carry phosphorous and other incendiary materials. — mb


(Dummy bomb: The US Air Force has a habit of accidentally dropping these babies on civilian sites near its bases. And practice bombs ain’t always for practice, history shows. Photo: GlobalSecurity.org)

“God must love the people at Canyon Creek.”

That’s what a manager of an Oklahoma apartment complex told the Associated Press after the U.S. Air Force bombed the complex last week.

But God must also love the factory workers in Choong-chung, Korea, whose workplace the US bombed in 2006:

1/12/2007 – OSAN AIR BASE, Republic of Korea — The 51st Fighter Wing and the Republic of Korea Air Force have completed an exhaustive and Air Force wide investigation of an inadvertent release of a small non-explosive practice munition on Nov. 29, 2006 by an aircraft stationed at Osan Air Base.

An A/OA-10 aircraft assigned to the 25th Fighter Squadron was returning to Osan from a routine training mission at approximately 12:30 p.m. when an apparent systems problem caused the inadvertent release of a 25 pounds practice munition — a BDU-33. The small, non-explosive training munition then struck a civilian factory in northern Choong-chung province damaging the building but causing no injuries.

… And let’s not forget the farmers near East Yorkshire, England, who were bombed by the US in 2004:

US Air Force drops practice bomb
Alan Marsland, who farms land near to the site the bomb landed, said: “It went through the asphalt on this old airfield which is now owned by Allied Grain. Luckily no-one was around.”

Or the West Texas family whose home was hit by the Air Force in 2002.

In fact, all of these incidents involved the BDU-33, which can carry incendiary materials that produce a flash on impact.

The red phosphorous in one BDU-33 also blew off half of Petty Officer John Love’s face a few years ago.

The list goes on.

Continue reading →

For good or ill, robots set to kill

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U.S. engineers are building unreliable, autonomous killing machines, a U.K. computer scientist said today. Terrorists will be making their own.

robart3e.jpgToo cute? Watch the DoD’s 12-year-old Robart III (left) knock down some Coke cans, here. The Army’ s more recent SWORDS robot (below, right) has made the rounds at auto and robotics shows. (Images: U.S. Department of Defense)

While Japanese researchers are building humanoid robots that will care for their aging population, the U.S. Department of Defense is developing autonomous weapons that will decide which humans to cut down.swords22004-12-03.jpg

But there’s a problem: Robots make lousy decision makers, said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey, in a speech at the Royal United Services Institute in Whitehall.

“Current robots are dumb machines with very limited sensing capability,” said Sharkey, in a statement released yesterday. “What this means is that it is not possible to guarantee discrimination between combatants and innocents or a proportional use of force as required by the current Laws of War.”

Sharkey also predicted that terrorists are likely to replace suicide bombers with killer robots, which they can produce for only a few hundred pounds with off-the-shelf parts.

Some military officers argue that without any messy emotions to get in the way, autonomous weapons (AW) will make more efficient killers.

“AW can better discriminate targets and calculate the impacts of an engagement in real time to insure the impact is proportional to the military advantage gained,” writes U.S. Air Force Major Michael A. Guetlein, in a 2005 research paper (click here to download the PDF). “Emotions and adrenaline cease to affect the decision to engage. Instead, the decision becomes one of probabilities.”

Guetlein also predicts that “social conditioning” (his words) will eventually any public objections to giving robots a license to kill.

“Society is likely to welcome some aspects of AW,” Guetlein writes.

–mb

Notes: See my 2004 Wired article, “Robots May Fight for the Army.”

The DoD has been trying for years to turn soldiers into flesh-and-blood-based killing machines. See “The guilt-free soldier,” about emotion-deadening drugs, which my brother, Erik, wrote in 2003.