NSA Prepares Data-Mining Info for Supercomputer Analysis In Utah

Who’s in Big Brother’s Database?

James Bamford  (Body Of Secrets)

October 11, 2009

The Secret Sentry: The Untold History of the National Security Agency
by Matthew M. Aid
Bloomsbury, 423 pp., $30.00

On a remote edge of Utah’s dry and arid high desert, where temperatures often zoom past 100 degrees, hard-hatted construction workers with top-secret clearances are preparing to build what may become America’s equivalent of Jorge Luis Borges’s “Library of Babel,” a place where the collection of information is both infinite and at the same time monstrous, where the entire world’s knowledge is stored, but not a single word is understood. At a million square feet, the mammoth $2 billion structure will be one-third larger than the US Capitol and will use the same amount of energy as every house in Salt Lake City combined.

Unlike Borges’s “labyrinth of letters,” this library expects few visitors. It’s being built by the ultra-secret National Security Agency—which is primarily responsible for “signals intelligence,” the collection and analysis of various forms of communication—to house trillions of phone calls, e-mail messages, and data trails: Web searches, parking receipts, bookstore visits, and other digital “pocket litter.” Lacking adequate space and power at its city-sized Fort Meade, Maryland, headquarters, the NSA is also completing work on another data archive, this one in San Antonio, Texas, which will be nearly the size of the Alamodome.

Just how much information will be stored in these windowless cybertemples? A clue comes from a recent report prepared by the MITRE Corporation, a Pentagon think tank. “As the sensors associated with the various surveillance missions improve,” says the report, referring to a variety of technical collection methods, “the data volumes are increasing with a projection that sensor data volume could potentially increase to the level of Yottabytes (1024 Bytes) by 2015.”[1] Roughly equal to about a septillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text, numbers beyond Yottabytes haven’t yet been named. Once vacuumed up and stored in these near-infinite “libraries,” the data are then analyzed by powerful infoweapons, supercomputers running complex algorithmic programs, to determine who among us may be—or may one day become—a terrorist. In the NSA’s world of automated surveillance on steroids, every bit has a history and every keystroke tells a story.  (read here)

Former CIA Asset Obama’s Fictional Nobel Prize Statement

By Sherwood Ross

October 11, 2009 Can President Obama be serious when he says he accepts the Nobel Peace Prize as “an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people of all nations”? Among “all nations” does he include the people of Iraq? Polls show Iraqis overwhelmingly want the U.S. to get out. Apparently, they didn’t enjoy their dose of “American leadership.” Does Obama’s “all nations” include Okinawa, which the U.S. has occupied for 64 years and refuses to leave? Does “all nations” include Diego Garcia, whose inhabitants the U.S. forced from their island homes in the Indian Ocean, (as Time magazine has reported,) and whose dogs we gassed for good measure? (President Bush later used that base to attack Afghanistan, the better to dominate the oil-rich Middle East.) Since he’s been in office only a short time, when Obama speaks of “an affirmation of American leadership” is he referring to the eight years of warmongering by his predecessor George W. Bush, who tore up every international treaty he could lay his hands on? In fact, global public opinion polls identified Bush as one of the most feared public figures on the planet. What kind of “leadership” is it when one UN member invades another based on lies and kills a million of its people, steals it blind, and shatters its economy? Calling that “leadership” is a bit wide of the mark. Perhaps Obama is referring to the “leadership” of his friend Bill Clinton, who let half a million Iraqi children starve to death during his White House watch and who inaugurated the rendition kidnappings of men off the streets of foreign countries—men who were subsequently tortured and denied legal rights and representation? “Leaders,” of course, are supposed to have followers. But a CNN poll September 15th found that 58 percent of Americans oppose the war in Afghanistan. That war is as illegal as the war in Iraq, yet President Obama is deliberating about whether to escalate it, not whether to end it. Obama’s statement accepting the Nobel is as misleading as his remarks to the CIA last April 16th when he praised the Agency and hailed the U.S. as “a nation of laws” when today it is, in fact, the world’s principal law-breaker. The fact is, the charismatic new president appears to see the world through the dark glasses of the CIA and has aligned himself with the Agency’s imperialist agenda. Given Obama’s past employment, this is not that odd. According to Wikipedia, upon graduating from Columbia University, Obama for a year “held a position as a research associate” in Business International Corp., a CIA front organization. The company is alleged to have kindly paid off Obama’s college loans for him. Obama worked in BIC’s financial services division, where he edited “Financing Foreign Operations,” a global reference service, and wrote for “Business International Money Report,” a weekly financial newsletter. According to an article in the October issue of Rock Creek Free Press, of Washington, D.C., reporter Wayne Madsen writes, “Through its contacts with leading liberals around the world, BIC sought to recruit those on the left as CIA agents and assets.” At any rate, the New York Times reported in 1977 that a BIC company official admitted providing “cover” for CIA employees. The CIA, of course, has long been tied in with advancing the interests of the oil industry. Its Middle East station chief Kermit Roosevelt in 1953 stage-managed the overthrow of the democratic government of Iran after it nationalized its oil industry, as it had every right to do, especially when they were being cheated like mad. CIA secrecy conceals many of its crimes such as the torture in Iraq and Afghanistan prisons. So Obama, as a former CIA asset, protects the Agency by not prosecuting their alleged torturers, by withholding photographs of their nauseating handiwork, and by praising the bandits in public. One way to tell who really runs a country is to look to see which, if any, of its citizens are above the law. In America, those people are headquartered in Langley, Virginia. # (Sherwood Ross formerly reported for the Chicago Daily News, wire services, and national magazines. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)

October is Afghanistan Awareness Month

ivaw.net

This week, President Obama and the military establishment are discussing their plans for escalation in Afghanistan. But their perspective does not take into account the high human cost of the occupation, and the soldiers, Marines, and Afghan people who are paying the price for over 8 years of disastrous military policy.

On October 7th we entered the 9th year of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. Throughout the month of October, IVAW will be highlighting the stories of our members who have served there, and those who have refused to go. Stay tuned for blog entries and audio podcasts of their first-hand experiences and what made them turn against the war.

IVAW chapters around the country also will be holding college teach-ins and other educational events to share what they know about the Afghanistan occupation.

We hope to bury the myth, once-and-for-all, that Afghanistan is “the Good War,” because too many Amercans are still on the fence about it.

Now is the time to sharpen debate and broaden consensus that the U.S. must get out of Afghanistan.

Here’s how you can help:

• Are there nagging questions you have about Afghanistan you would like our veterans to answer? Email your questions to amadee@ivaw.org.

• Sign up to become a sustaining donor of IVAW with a monthly or quarterly donation. Your regular contribution will help sustain our important work in these extremely difficult economic times. Please help us meet our October goal of getting 250 sustainers. Sign up for as little as $10 per month today by clicking here.

Thank you for being involved. Your participation in this campaign is critical.

Iraq Veterans Against the War

Honduras Defacto Regime Opens fire in Poor neighborhoods

By Dick Emanuelsson and Mirian Huezo Emanuelsson

Americas MexicoBlog

Youth and Union Workers Targeted by Coup Police

The Honduran people have set an example for people throughout Latin America through three months of steady resistance to the coup in their country. But there are powerful groups within Honduras and abroad organizing to neutralize this unprecedented force and block the resistance from growing in strength and numbers. These groups above all seek to prevent the nation from carrying out a Constitutional Assembly to modify the outdated constitution. Along with the reinstatement of the elected President Manuel Zelaya, this demand is central to the popular movement against the coup as a necessary tool to bring the country and its people out of poverty.

In this Special Report, Tegucigalpa reporter Dick Emanuelsson and photographer Mirian Huezo Emanuelsson chronicle the terror and repression unleashed by the coup to maintain power. Despite promises to lift the executive decree that imposed a state of siege, the violence continues.

These are firsthand accounts from the victims of the strategy of force being employed by the coup. All were wounded by security forces since the return of Zelaya on Sept. 21. This strategy has only intensified, despite talk of an official dialogue, largely frustrated during the recent visit of the Organization of American States (OAS). Even as the OAS ministers and other dignitaries were meeting on Oct. 7 in Tegucigalpa to promote dialogue, the coup and armed forces again attacked peaceful demonstrators in the streets.

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The pain is intense and tears stream down the sun-browned face. Mauricio Maldonado, 18, was shot by the police when he went out to the corner store to buy a bag of churros. It was 8:30 at night on Sept. 24 and the curfew had been imposed since 5 in the afternoon the previous day in the combative neighborhood of La Cañada, in the capital city of Tegucigalpa.

“A white Mazda drove into the neighborhood and stopped for a little while in the dark. One of the men said ‘shut off the lights,’ they backed up a little and started to shoot. I fell on the ground, they got me in the stomach,” Maldonaldo tells us.

He says that the people of La Cañada are not happy with the June 28 coup d’etat. La Cañada is a poor neighborhood of mostly teachers. The teachers have been at the forefront of the Honduran uprising against the coup due to the union leadership which from the first day began marching and demonstrating in the streets and striking for a return to democracy. In the last weeks, they have been attacked by security forces and many have been arrested.

The violence against people living in extreme poverty in urban neighborhoods in Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula and other Honduran cities began the day after Zelaya’s return to Honduras. It was, and is, horrible. Mauricio lies in the Hospital Escuela, the public hospital for the poor. He is a flesh-and-blood example of the repression that has moved on to using bullets and beatings to control rebellious sectors of the population.

It’s a Crime to Be Young in Honduras

He removes the bed sheet that covers him and shows where the bullet entered at his waist, crossed his stomach and came out the other side of his waist. En route, the shot damaged part of his spine. The family had to pay for a magnetic resonance image of the spinal column that cost 6,000 lempiras (USD$350) to find out if the spine was damaged. Mauricio´s mother Marbeli Pastrana is the head of the household; she makes half of the minimum wage at her job as a domestic servant.

“The neighbors helped us out and I managed to lower the cost to 4,200 lempiras,” Pastrana explains. She is crying from the sadness of seeing Mauricio seriously wounded and is concerned about the consequences of the Sept. 24 assault on her son.

“I was inside when I heard the shooting. I ran out barefoot and I saw all the kids running except him”, she says, as the knot in her throat grows. “And then I saw him on the ground.”

But your son was lucky, he survived, we tell her to keep her spirits up.

“Thank God, yes! But it was horrible having to go through this—they shot more than thirty times.”

How is the situation now among the people of La Cañada?

“They are very supportive of him. They all got together some money and I’m thankful that they helped me,” answers the mother of four children, the youngest only 13. “We trust God that it will all work out.”

At 4 pm on Monday, Sept. 21—just hours after Zelaya arrived in Tegucigalpa, the de facto regime imposed a round-the-clock curfew. The Honduran people were held hostage in their own homes for more than 38 hours. The curfew was lifted for seven hours on Wednesday Sept. 23 at 10 A.M. During these hours, tens of thousands of residents in the neighborhoods of Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula rebelled until they were able to take control of several police posts.

It is typical for the poor of these neighborhoods to buy their daily groceries at local corner stores. That’s why there was so much rage against the decision to impose a curfew. It not only violates the constitution but it also leaves people stranded in their houses without food. It was received with a fury rarely seen before in Honduras. The decision reinforced the rejection of the coup leaders and enhanced the political consciousness of the people.

We entered another room in the hospital where we found Junior Adalberto Rodríguez, 18 year of age, a young man among the thousands that go out to demonstrate daily in the resistance marches. The youth of the popular neighborhoods often prove difficult for the resistance leadership to control because their rebellion draws not only on their opposition to the coup but also on a deep resentment against a society that represses youth instead of offering education and employment opportunities.

He is sitting up in bed staring at the wall. He and six friends were shot at on Sept. 22 during the curfew.

His mother, Carmen, says, “He is part of the resistance and was in the street in front of the house when a man dressed in black appeared and shot him. The bullet went in the right side of his jaw and exited the other side. It broke his jaw and his teeth.”
“As a mother, I felt really bad. You can’t even go out now for fear of being in the streets because anything can happen. That night everyone was in an uproar there…”

The youth themselves say that to be young in Honduras is considered a crime today. The soldiers and police see the young people as a subversive group and would rather strike out against them to neutralize their rebellion than see them organize in the resistance.

“These are real bullets”

Mario Valladares, 47, of the neighborhood of Israel Sur, is another victim we came across in a room on the fourth floor of the Hospital Escuela. The hospital is full of victims of a regime that has been condemned by the entire world but that continues to victimize the Honduran people.

“I went out at 10:00 in the morning when two patrol cars appeared. I don´t deny that I am part of the Resistance. Because I’m going to defend my people. With things the way they are now, a lot of times people bow their heads but the people have awakened. And I say with pride that I will die for my people if necessary,” Valladares tells us.
“I was forming a resistance group when the patrols arrived and one of them took out a pistol. ‘Why are you drawing your gun, what’s going on? We’re Hondurans, we’re being peaceful, we don´t have arms, sticks or rocks,’ we told them.

“‘There’s no problem’, they answered us. But when they left, some boys started yelling slogans and they didn’t like that. When I saw that one of them aimed a FAL rifle, I threw myself on the ground but it was too late, I was already shot with the other six friends. They fired indiscriminately at the crowd. The bullet went in here,” he shows us his left thigh, “and came out the other side. I was really lucky because it only touched flesh and not bone or muscle.”
They were in the streets during the time the curfew had been lifted. In spite of this, the men were savagely attacked with high-caliber 7.62 mm. firearms.

“Do you know why they lifted the curfew? To kill the people! Because the order is simply to shoot people and the order comes from above. I know because I was in the army. A lower-level soldier doesn´t shoot like that without an order from above. They say they are shooting rubber bullets, that’s a lie. These are real bullets. They were shooting us from 25 meters away, that’s atrocious! They don’t think, they just think about killing.”
The same morning and hour that Mario Valladares and his six friends were shot, Jairo Sanchez was shot by uniformed officers under General Romeo Vázquez. The security agents of the National Department of Criminal Investigation (DICN) did not say a single word, they just opened fire on the crowd that protested against the dictatorship in the neighborhood of San Francisco.

“Unfortunately, they shot our companion in the left cheek, leaving him badly wounded,” says Abel Morales, Secretary of Acts in the National Union of Workers of the Professional Training Institute (SITRAINFOP) that has nearly a thousand members in Honduras.
As we were interviewing him in the beautiful park of the Institute, union members were holding a Marathon Event to raise funds for Sánchez’s operations and treatment, which costs half a million lempiras or approximately USD$27,000. The union leader is an inch away from death.

“Thank God, he’s conscious. Due to the operation they performed that same Wednesday that the attack took place, he can’t speak. He can only make hand gestures, and write notes to communicate with us,” says Morales.

But the curfew was lifted at the hour when they were attacked?

“Yes, at that moment the curfew was suspended. The Resistance called out to us and we are responding to that call.”

Sánchez was taken immediately to Hospital Escuela. But after three months of the coup there insufficient equipment at the hospital and due to the severity of his wound, he was transferred to the Medical Center, an elegant, private hospital with the best doctors, where he was immediately attended to.

“They took out projectile fragments as well as the remaining fragments of the bone that had broken. They repaired some of his arteries and veins that the shot had damaged,” related Morales.

“Right now, the doctors have decided not to remove the bullet itself because it is lodged really close to the aorta. (Sanchez) could have a severe hemorrhage and die.”

What was the reaction of union members to the attempted assassination?

“They called all of the union managers, investigating, because we have a very united base in this union. In cases like this one, the people react in a very orderly way.”

While we are talking you can hear the ruckus of the Great Marathon that the union has organized to raise funds to cover Sánchez’ medical costs.

“We are holding this Marathon in all of the local sections all over the country to support our fellow union member. We really appreciate all the support we’ve received from unions all over the world.”

Morales explains, “Conditions in Honduras re tough and we the union leaders are very exposed in this situation. At 6 in the afternoon on Wednesday, a contingent of four patrol units with a total of 60 officers and 60 patrolmen entered the neighborhood where I live. They come into many neighborhoods, not just mine, shooting, raiding homes, breaking down doors, taking a few members of the resistance.

“Thank God they haven’t come to my house. But we have received news that they are watching us, above all the union leaders who are at the forefront of the resistance that is known throughout the world as a peaceful movement. But the police and the army come and they repress us.”

“The situation is becoming difficult and international organizations must get involved in the issue.”

A Death List for Popular Leaders?

Speaking of the repression against union leaders, last year three DCIN agents were detained by members of the Autonomous University of Honduras Union (Sintraunah) when the agents were beginning to act strangely. They found a list of 130 names, photographs of the popular leaders, union headquarters, telephone numbers, etc. Was SITRAINFOP on that list?

“The members of Sintraunah, a very beligerant union, were able to detain three agents from the DCIN and from them they were able to attain a list with 130 names of union members and popular leaders. Among them was the SITRAINFOP leadership.”

A New Operation for Sánchez

We arrive at the Medical Center where the national president of Honduran polytechnic professors, Jairo Sánchez, is awaiting a second operation due to a high fever that has persisted over the last few days and has not broken. We find him conscious but unable to speak. His look is firm and fixed look and seems to speak to us with the words of the song that has become a slogan of the resistance to the coup:

“They are afraid of us because we have no fear!”

More Information:

Audio of interviews with the victims:

Mauricio Maldonado, 18, was shot in the stomach by the police when he went out to the corner store during the curfew in Tegucigalpa on Sept 24, 2009.
Listen to the interview here.

Junior Adalberto Rodríguez, 18, active in the resistance, was shot in the right side of his jaw. His jaw and teeth were broken.
Listen to the interview here.

Mario Valladares, 47, active in the resistance, was shot by the police in the thigh.
Listen to the interview here.

Interview with Abel Morales, Secretary of Acts for SITRAINFOP, on the attempt of the DNIC to assassinate Jairo Sánchez, president of SITRAINFOP on Sept. 23, 2009.
Listen to the interview here.

Americas MexicoBlog

Mercenaries and paramilitaries arrive in Honduras

By Honduras Delegation

Press Release

The situation is grave in Tegucigalpa. According to a message from the organization, Pastors for Peace, Radio Globo from Honduras is reporting that snipers are shooting into the Brazilian Embassy where President Zelaya and hundreds of supporters have taken refuge. There is no word yet on injuries.

More snipers outside of Brazilian Embassy in Honduras.

Also, according to an Oct. 9 AP report, paramilitaries from Colombia are arriving in Honduras now.  Many of these paramilitaries were trained in torture and repression at the infamous School of the Americas in the U.S.

Support the people of Honduras in their heroic struggle against the brutal coup regime! Thousands of courageous working people are taking to the streets, in spite of the growing brutality of the criminal right wing forces, who are armed and trained by the U.S.

The following is a report from the delegation of U.S. activists in Honduras, who will be holding a news conference today, October 9, at 5pm EST at the offices of the Bottlers’ Union, a center in Tegucigalpa of the National Front for Resistance Against the Coup:

In the last 24 hours, the situation in Honduras has reached a profound level of urgency. The illegal, de facto Micheletti regime is clearly reaching a point of desperation—and there is a serious danger in this, as the rightwing can and will do anything when they are desperate.

Last night, we received word that at the Brazilian embassy, where President Manuel Zelaya has been seeking refuge, two scaffolds had been erected and two snipers placed on them—one from the Honduran police and one from the Honduran army. Heavy military activity was also occurring on the ground around the embassy, with military convoys placed at strategic places all around the windows and doors of the embassy. The fear is that an assassination attempt on Zelaya’s life may be carried out soon.

Another alarming report relayed to us today from Honduran human rights leaders is of the presence of 120 paramilitaries—experts in killing—from other Latin American countries in Honduras. Many of these paramilitaries have been trained at the School of the Americas based in Georgia.

Today while we were in a meeting, the human rights leader we were meeting with received a phone call that police at the pedagogical university had given protesters there 10 minutes to disperse or face dire consequences. Military convoys had been brought in to surround the protesters.

As this email is being written, members of the U.S. Delegation in Solidarity with the Honduras Resistance are at the U.S. embassy, attempting to meet with representatives there to alert them of the situation and demand the discontinuation of U.S. aid to the de facto regime, a freeze on the assets of the golpista government members, and the abandonment of any electoral process that doesn’t first involve the restitution of President Zelaya, as is the will of the Honduran people.

Platforms with highly armed sharpshooters installed outside the embassy, using telescopic and infrared targeting systems, just meters away from the windows of the building where the president, his family, and many others are held hostage by the regime.

The delegation also reports that despite the coup government’s announcement that it had lifted the ban on civil liberties, the country still remains under martial law.   The coup government is telling the world that it has lifted martial law, but they haven’t told anyone in the police or military, from the top commanders to the troops in the streets.  There is still a massive armed presence, and protesters and dissidents are still being brutally attacked and arrested.

That’s why it is so important for us to support the Delegation in Solidarity with the Honduran Resistance. The corporate media is echoing the coup government’s press releases claiming that martial law has been lifted and civil liberties restored, and ignoring the fact that repression is intensifying.  We need you to help get the word out.

What you can do now:

Call – Honduras Desk, U.S. State Department 202-647-3482
State Department Main Switchboard 202-647-4000
White House 202-456-1111
OAS Washington Office 202-458-3000

Demand an end to the attacks on Zelaya and Honduran activists.  Demand a restoration of civil liberties in Honduras.

Sign the Petition – Demand safe passage for the U.S. delegation.

Honduras Delegation

Big banks, big pharma, big problems

• 12 October 2009 by John Martin

MONEY has thrown society out of kilter. Banks that once appeared to have mountains of cash have collapsed. As a consequence of the global recession, governments now recognise that banking is too important to be left to the bankers. States have taken action, from wresting control of financial institutions to introducing new regulations.

I believe the financial meltdown has implications for pharmaceutical research. The running of large pharmaceutical companies carries a social responsibility that is as heavy as running any bank. Recently, however, this unwritten contract between society and drug companies has not been fulfilled. Is our health now too important to be left to big pharma?

To illustrate my concerns, let’s look at the treatment of heart disease. Many important cardiovascular drugs have been invented: statins, ACE inhibitors, beta blockers, fibrinolytics. But in the last 10 years, few of significance have emerged, even though the pharmaceutical industry has spent unprecedented amounts of money on research and development: in each year of that decade, Pfizer spent about $6 billion, Eli Lilly $3bn, and GlaxoSmithKline $2.5bn.

This splurge is reminiscent of how banks misused their funds before their collapse, but the industry has been insulated from the recent economic changes and has accumulated vast cash piles from the sales of medicines (in the UK, mostly through sales to the National Health Service). On average, each top-20 pharmaceutical company has access to about $7.5bn in cash.

Could the cash piles of big pharma be mobilised in a more efficient way for the public good? Two years ago such a suggestion would have been scorned. Now, however, it should be considered. As was the case with the banking sector, I believe that there is a real risk that the big pharma industry might collapse.

I believe that there is a real risk that the big pharma industry might collapse

Increasing spending on R&D cannot be continued indefinitely with such meagre progress. If a collapse of the pharmaceutical industry does occur it might not be for decades, but one of the biggest lessons of the banking collapse is that no one can predict economic forces with much certainty. The fall of big pharma could be imminent.

There is another way to fund the development of new treatments. Many innovative ideas that have changed society have arisen from the combination of curiosity and academic freedom found in universities. This is where small amounts of funding can produce big results. In recent years, university research has been exploited by industry to produce new drugs, such as blood clot-busting “tissue plasminogen activator”, courtesy of the Catholic University of Leuven (KUL) in Belgium.

Now, while big pharma has so much money it doesn’t know what to do with it, universities are being starved of resources and research funding has decreased in real terms. At the same time, university research strategy is under-organised and there is ignorance of how to exploit intellectual property and utilise patents. Nevertheless, the potential of universities is enormous.

Sadly, because of intense competition for limited funds, academic scientists are now driven to perform predictable low-risk science in small packets that will give quick results in time for the next grant application. The end result is that we have a plethora of small groups with strong leaders that act independently, fragmenting effort. At the same time, little translational research is being performed, even though politicians pay endless lip service to the idea.

So on one hand we have an unproductive big pharma which is cash rich, and on the other a cash-poor university system that has produced fistfuls of Nobel prizewinners. The way forward is obvious: inject the money into university research. Experience tells us this can have major benefits. One of the most successful initiatives in the last decade has been the spin-out of small biotech firms. My own, Ark Therapeutics, emerged from University College London and is now a public company with three phase-III clinical trials under way. Similarly, Biogen sprang from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Genentech from the University of California, San Francisco.

Now is the time for government action. Big pharma is international, so measures would ideally have to be taken by the European Commission at the pan-European level, by the federal government in the US or as a joint initiative.

Nationalisation, or internationalisation, of the $150bn cash mountain of the top 20 companies is probably unthinkable. However, the tax system could at least encourage pharma to invest more wisely. In the UK, for example, immediate funding could be generated for university research if the Chancellor of the Exchequer were to extend R&D relief for corporation tax to big pharma. But more money is not enough. The universities themselves would have to become more businesslike about how to achieve commercial goals – such as creating a new drug – while preserving their academic freedom. Control must not be allowed to follow the cash, though, or the creative ethos of the university may be stifled.

The involvement of small spin-off biotech companies could be a condition of receiving such funding, generating jobs. One hundred new companies could be created from British universities alone over 10 years if big pharma money were blended with a proactive way of recognising patentable inventions and managing university science.

The credit crunch has been a vivid reminder of the responsibility that comes with cash. Now is the time to rethink how research can be efficiently harnessed for the good of society.

John Martin is professor of cardiovascular medicine at University College London and founder of Ark Therapeutics

Police State Prepares for Civil War

Written by Tom Burghardt

As social networking becomes a dominant feature of daily life, the secret state is increasingly surveilling electronic media for what it euphemistically calls "actionable intelligence." Take the case of Elliot Madison.

G20 Pittsburgh Goon Squad: Armed and ready to crack Grandma’s head

The 41-year-old anarchist was arrested in Pittsburgh September 24 at the height of G20 protests. Madison, a social worker and volunteer with The People’s Law Collective in New York City, was busted by a combined task force led by the Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) and Pittsburgh’s "finest."

The activist was charged with "hindering apprehension or prosecution, criminal use of a communication facility and possession of instruments of crime," according to The New York Times.
Did the cops uncover a secret anarchist weapons’ cache? Were Madison and codefendant, Michael Wallschlaeger, a producer with the radio talk show "This Week in Radical History" for the A-Infos Radio Project, about to detonate a "weapon of mass destruction" during last month’s capitalist conclave that witnessed the obscene spectacle of our masters avidly conspiring to impoverish billions of the planet’s inhabitants?
Hardly! In fact, Madison and Wallschlaeger’s "crime" was to set up a communications center in a hotel room that alerted demonstrators to movements by the police, who after all, had viciously attacked protesters–and anyone else nearby–with heavy batons, tear gas and a Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD), a so-called "non-lethal" weapon.

[For complete article reference links, please see original at Antifascist Calling... here.]

Kitted-out with police scanners, computers and cell phones, the intrepid activists used a Twitter account to assist protesters eager to elude a thrashing by some 5,000 heavily armed camo-clad cops who had sealed-off downtown Pittsburgh to keep the area safe–from the First Amendment.
National Lawyers Guild on-scene legal observers reported an "unwarranted display and use of force by police in residential neighborhoods, often far from any protest activity." According to the civil liberties’ watchdog group:
Police deployed chemical irritants, including CS gas, and long-range acoustic devices (LRAD) in residential neighborhoods on narrow streets where families and small children were exposed. Scores of riot police formed barricades at many intersections throughout neighborhoods miles away from the downtown area and the David Lawrence Convention Center. Outside the Courtyard Marriott in Shadyside, police deployed smoke bombs in the absence of protest activity, forcing bystanders and hotel residents to flee the area.
Later, while some protests were ending, riot-clad officers surrounded an area at the University of Pittsburgh, creating an ominous spectacle that some described as akin to Kent State. Guild legal observers witnessed police chasing and arresting many uninvolved students.
Among other questionable tactics, officers from dozens of law enforcement agencies lacked easily-identifiable badges, impeding citizens’ ability to register complaints. (National Lawyers Guild, "National Lawyers Guild Observes Improper Use of Force by Law Enforcement at the G-20," Press Release, September 25, 2009)
The Times reported that after his arrest the FBI raided the home that Madison shared with his wife, Elena, and conducted an exhaustive 16-hour search of the premises seizing computers, books and a poster (horror of horrors!) of the old mole himself, Karl Marx.
Criminalizing the First Amendment
"Anyone can tweet, but the truth is, sometimes speech can be criminal," John Burkoff, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
By that standard, anyone who has the temerity to question the legitimacy of a system that drives millions into poverty, wages preemptive war to secure (steal) other people’s resources, destroys the environment or uses "speech" to oppose said crimes against humanity–and cheekily urges others to do the same–is, by definition, guilty, in "new normal" America.
Witold Walczak however, the legal director of the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union told the Post-Gazette, "investigating the government and broadcasting information about it would seem to be a constitutionally protected communication."
The ACLU director elaborated, "If the police want to communicate privately, there are certainly ways to do that, and police radios are not one of those. How can it be a crime? It’s not a secure communication."
The good professor had another take on the matter and told the Post-Gazette, "Were they sending it to people simply to protest, or to commit further crimes?"
"Further crimes"? What crime? Oh yes, legally protesting the depredations of the capitalist system, that crime!
That such a statement can be uttered by a purported legal expert is rather rich with unintended irony. Burkhoff’s maneuver to cast the best possible light on repressive police operations is all the more absurd given the fact that none other than the Obama administration’s State Department had stepped-in and pressured Twitter to forego a service upgrade, and downtime, just scant months earlier.
But context as they say, is everything. Champions of other people’s freedom (particularly when they are geopolitical rivals), the State Department intervened and told the instant messaging service in no uncertain terms that Iranian protesters relied on Twitter to monitor police movements in Tehran and other cities as protests over disputed elections took center stage in the Islamic Republic.
The New York Times reported back in June that the U.S. State Department "e-mailed the social-networking site Twitter with an unusual request: delay scheduled maintenance of its global network, which would have cut off service while Iranians were using Twitter to swap information and inform the outside world about the mushrooming protests around Tehran."
According to Reuters, "Confirmation that the U.S. government had contacted Twitter came as the Obama administration sought to avoid suggestions it was meddling in Iran’s internal affairs as the Islamic Republic battled to control deadly street protests over the election result."
Twitter said in a blog post it had delayed the firm’s planned upgrade because of its role as an "important communication tool in Iran."
A day earlier, President Obama had said he believed "people’s voices should be heard and not suppressed"–in Iran.
Message to the American people: Official enemy: Twitter good! Official friend (grifting multinational corporations and the criminals who do their bidding in Washington): Twitter bad! How’s that for an imaginative interpretation of the "new media paradigm"!

"Go massive. Sweep it all up. Things related and not"

Echoing the execrable logic of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, America’s premier political police force, the FBI, executed a search warrant on Madison that authorized agents to look "for violations of federal rioting laws," according to the Times.
Madison’s attorney, Martin Stolar, told the Times that "he and a friend were part of a communications network among people protesting the G-20." Denouncing the raid, Stolar averred that "there’s absolutely nothing that he’s done that should subject him to any criminal liability."
On October 2, Stolar argued in Federal District Court in Brooklyn "that the warrant was vague and overly broad. Judge Dora L. Irizarry ordered the authorities to stop examining the seized materials until Oct. 16, pending further orders," the Times reported.
This is not the first time however, that the secret state has sought to curtail text messaging by activists during large-scale demonstrations.
In 2008, as a result of the heavy repression of legal protests–and subsequent lawsuits by victims–during the far-right Republican National Convention in New York City in 2004, lawyers representing N.Y.’s "finest" demanded that M.I.T. graduate student Tad Hirsch and the Institute of Applied Autonomy, the inventors of TXTmob, turn over all "text messages sent via TXTmob during the convention, the date and time of the messages, information about people who sent and received messages, and lists of people who used the service," The New York Times reported last year.
The FBI however, already possess the technological ability to hack into Wi-fi and computer networks as Wired revealed in April, citing internal Bureau documents released to the magazine under a Freedom of Information Act request.
According to a follow-up story by the publication, the Bureau’s Cryptographic and Electronic Analysis Unit, CEAU, has deployed software called a computer and internet protocol address verifier, or CIPAV, that is "designed to infiltrate a target’s computer and gather a wide range of information, which it secretly sends to an FBI server in eastern Virginia."
Antifascist Calling reported in 2008, that when a whistleblower, security consultant Babak Pasdar, stepped forward and blew the lid off the Bureau’s massive telecommunications’ surveillance network, the agency’s so-called "Quantico circuit" in Virginia, he revealed that major wireless providers, including AT&T, Sprint and Verizon, had handed the state "unfettered" access to the carrier’s wireless networks, including billing records and customer data "transmitted wirelessly."
According to Pasdar’s sworn affidavit, Verizon provided the FBI with with real-time access to who is speaking to whom, the time and duration of each call as well as the locations of those so targeted.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the San Francisco-based civil liberties’ watchdog group, has posted Madison’s motion and his attorney’s supporting declaration on their web site. It makes for very interesting reading indeed! According to the search warrant obtained by FBI Special Agent Edward J. Heslin from the U.S. District Court, the FBI were allowed to seize:
Computers, hard-drives, floppy discs and other media used to store computer-accessible information, cellular phones, personal digital assistants, electronic storage devices and related peripherals, black masks and clothing, maps, correspondence and other documents, financial records, notes, ledgers, receipts, papers, photographs, telephone and address books, identification documents, indicia of residency and other documents and records that constitute evidence of the commission of rioting crimes or that are designed or intended as a means of violating the federal rioting laws, including any of the above items that are maintained within other closed or locked containers, including safes and other containers that may be further secured by key locks (or combination locks) of various kinds. (Honorable Viktor V. Pohorelsky, Magistrate Judge to FBI Special Agent Edward J. Heslin, United States District Court, Eastern District of New York, Search Warrant, Case Number M-09-962, September 26, 2009)
Madison’s attorney, Martin Stolar averred that "a number of documents and other properties" seized by the FBI have "nothing to do with the governments investigation into what the search warrant characterizes as violations of ‘federal rioting laws’."
According to Stolar "the seized items include political writings, notes, political associates and ideas, materials protected by the attorney-client and social work privileges, as well as property belonging to other persons residing in the premises which have no connection to any pending or contemplated criminal investigation." Stolar declared that "the illegality of the search is in the overbreadth of the seizures and the vagueness of the term ‘federal rioting laws’."
In other words, driftnet surveillance of American citizens is the norm for our secret state minders; an unambiguous sign of America’s slide into an extra-constitutional police state.
Fusion Centers: Leading the Charge
While Madison and Wallschlaeger’s arrest came as a result of actions undertaken by the Pennsylvania State Police, one cannot rule out that (a) informants had tipped off the cops to the pair’s activities, (b) CEAU had penetrated protest organizer’s computer net and therefore, were well aware of what the duo were up to, or (c) through some combination of the above, the FBI and presumably, their local fusion center allies, alerted PSP who then conducted the raid and shut the anarchist’s communications center down.
Federal Computer Week noted September 30, that the Department of Homeland Security "is establishing a new office to coordinate its intelligence-sharing efforts in state and local intelligence fusion centers," and that the secret state’s new "Joint Fusion Center Program Management Office will be part of DHS’ Office of Intelligence and Analysis."
Among other things, the publication revealed that DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano said the new office will:

• Develop ways to assess threats and trends by gathering, analyzing and sharing local and national information and intelligence through fusion centers.
• Coordinate with state, local and tribal law enforcement leaders to ensure that DHS is providing the correct resources to fusion centers.
• Promote a sense of common mission and purpose at fusion centers through training and other support. (Ben Bain, "DHS established new office for intelligence-sharing centers," Federal Computer Week, September 30, 2009)

Since Bushist–and now, Obama–securocrats designated fusion centers "a central node for the federal government’s efforts for sharing terrorism-related information with state and local officials," the federal government has pumped some $327 million in taxpayer-funded largesse into these spooky "public-private partnerships."
In Pennsylvania for example, the Criminal Intelligence Center (PaCIC), is described by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) as a "component of the Pennsylvania State Police."
Washington Post investigative journalist Robert O’Harrow Jr., the author of No Place to Hide, revealed that "Pennsylvania buys credit reports and uses face-recognition software to examine driver’s license photos" and have "subscriptions to private information-broker services that keep records about Americans’ locations, financial holdings, associates, relatives, firearms licenses and the like."
One can only wonder whether these or other intrusive surveillance tools, including the CEAU’s CIPAV software were deployed against Madison and Wallschlaeger prior to their Pittsburgh arrest.
But gathering information on fusion centers is often an exercise in Kafkaesque futility. Investigative journalist G.W. Schulz reported that when the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR) attempted to obtain information from the Colorado Information Analysis Center on that state’s fusion center, they ran into a brick wall.
CIAC spokesperson Lance Clem refused to release what should be public documents to CIR claiming that releasing the records would be "contrary to the public interest" and "not only would compromise [the] security and investigative practices of numerous law enforcement agencies but would also violate confidentiality agreements that have been made with private partner organizations and federal, state and local law enforcement agencies."
As of this writing, it cannot be determined with any certainty what role the Pennsylvania Criminal Intelligence Center played in repressing G20 protests. However, if past fusion center practices in Denver and St. Paul during last year’s Democratic and Republican National Conventions are any guide, their management of pre-G20 intelligence along with their federal partners, was in all probability considerable.
One lesson that can be gleaned however, from the federal witch hunt targeting activists Elliot Madison and Michael Wallschlaeger, is that dissent in post-9/11 America, as during the COINTELPRO-era of the 1960s and ’70s, has been criminalized.  

Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, an independent research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press and the whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.

Turkey’s wakeup call for Israel

By The Daily Star

Turkey’s decision to exclude Israel from an annual military drill ought to come as warning bell to the Israeli people. Although diplomatic relations between the two countries have at times experienced periods of strain, Israel’s relationship with Turkey’s military, which is highly secular and generally supportive of Israel, has remained strong. The apparent disruption of the two countries’ strategic military cooperation is therefore a sign that something is going terribly awry.

What’s even more unusual about the move is that it coincides with Turkey and neighboring Armenia’s push to resolve their own longstanding feud. Leaders in both countries are taking major risks and facing off strong opposition at home for the sake of peace and stability in their region. Turkey’s peace drive in its neighborhood makes it all the more unexpected for the country to suddenly decide to curtail its relations with Israel.

Initial media reports suggest that the decision came as a result of Turkey’s outrage over Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. But it is more likely that the move stems from a more general sense of frustration over Israel’s intransigent attitude toward the Palestinian-Israeli peace process.

The main obstacle to restarting those peace talks remains Israel’s refusal to halt its illegal expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied Palestinian territory. For the Palestinians, there is no point in negotiating a deal that would see the creation of Palestine if their future state is going to be riddled with Israeli colonies.

It is difficult to comprehend why Israel continues to be foolish enough to sacrifice the opportunity for peace just to cling to its futile settlement-expansion project. The settlements are a direct violation of Israel’s “road map” obligations, as well as international law, and thereby cultivate an image of Israel as an outlaw among nations. They also serve to as fodder for extremists who say that Israel has no desire whatsoever to achieve a comprehensive peace agreement. The settlers themselves may believe that they are championing the project of Greater Israel, but their dreams of building an empire in the 21st century are at best delusional and at worst criminal.

It is instructive to consider the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s official reaction to the accord that was signed over the weekend between Turkey and Armenia: “The agreement proves yet again that open and fearless negotiation is the only way to overcome differences and past events and to open a new page that looks forward to the future.” The Palestinians and Israelis can prove the same if Israel seizes the opportunity for talks.

Holy Land Grab ‘To Fulfil Jewish Destiny’

Dominic Waghorn, Middle East correspondent

Several weeks of rioting across Jerusalem have led to speculation that a new Palestinian intifada or uprising may be imminent.

The controversial settlement of Maale Zeitim in Ras El Amud, Jerusalem

At the heart of the current tension are efforts by Israelis to claim more Palestinian neighbourhoods for Jewish settlers.

We were the first foreign journalists allowed into the controversial settlement of Maale Zeitim in Ras El Amud for seven years.

Only religious Jews can buy here we were told.

The settlers are surrounded by Palestinian neighbourhoods, but say they are fulfilling their Jewish destiny.

“It’s our capital,” settler Mordechai Benita told Sky News.

“Not from now, but from 3,000 years ago. King David, he decided this is the place of the Jewish people.”

We are free independent residents in Israel. We do what we want to do

Elisha Peleg

The settlers are religiously and ideologically motivated. They want Jewish control over Jerusalem forever despite Palestinian claims to the city.

Some even want to rebuild a Jewish temple where it stood 2,000 years ago, but where Islam’s third most sacred shrine stands today.

That would risk a holy war, but in another settlement overlooking the site settler Arnon Segal told us: “I pray for the temple to be rebuilt every day.”

The settlers use the Israeli courts to remove Palestinians from their homes so they can move in instead.

Palestinian properties are also demolished if they are judged to have been built illegally.

The settlers are treated differently, supported by allies on the City Council like Elisha Peleg.

He invited Sky News to be the first foreign camera crew to enter the Shepherd Hotel in East Jerusalem.

Recent clashes at Temple Mount

Plans to move in hundreds of Jewish settlers here have been condemned by the US and Britain.

But Mr Peleg said they are going to carry on regardless.

“Why not? This is Israel, this is not London, this is not Washington. We are free independent residents in Israel. We do what we want to do,” he said.

By the end of our tour it is clear the settlers are well advanced in making it impossible to redivide Jerusalem.

The Palestinians’ dream of having their own capital in part of the city is looking increasingly unlikely.

That makes the chances of a two-state solution, and with it any hope of peace, equally remote, but Mr Peleg is unrepentant.

“If the Palestinians think that because east Jerusalem will not be the capital of Palestine so there will be no peace I can say that I’m very sorry that this is the attitude for the future of their children and their families,” he said.

Godmen and the Sheeple

Godmen and the Sheeple

By:  Peter Chamberlin

The study of the mind and the study of the human brain as a mechanism have merged in the theories of the mind manipulators, men who are determined to change the mind of man (and with it the entire human race), using the knowledge that has been gained.

Has it always been human destiny that mankind would eventually reach a point of intellectual growth where our scientific discoveries could give us the ability to alter our evolutionary path?  Or has the seemingly sudden acquisition of that capability arisen as the result of our leaders tapping into an unnatural alternative stream of knowledge because of a decision made long ago to continue the mind sciences started by Nazi scientists?  Was it inevitable, because of a decision made for our own good, by God in all His wisdom, that the next step in mankind’s evolution be made possible through a science based on torture?

Have we reached a point where the theories of the most evil minds known in all human history are being validated by the very government that originally stopped them?  It is a branch of science that should have been pruned long ago, yet now, we are faced with a seemingly unsolvable dilemma because of it—can a science based on torture really benefit the human race, and should the creators of it even be given the opportunity to apply what they have learned?

Our government has advanced its war-fighting potential into new technological arenas, far beyond the realm of normal combat, using conventional weaponry.   War science has merged the most-advanced computers and computer-modeling with the most advanced studies in theoretical psychology.   Technological means have been created to enable decision-makers to understand the minds of any potential “enemies.”

This technology gives the operators the capability to predict future reactions to planned war scenarios, fairly accurately, through computer simulations.  These simulations were based both on Pavlovian theories of behaviorism and its alternative, the cognitive sciences, which adapted the  reverse-engineering approach to formulating  psychological theory.  The information obtained from the simulations is extrapolated, using algorithm-based input-output theories, to predict what will trigger the desired outcomes for individuals, for thousands, even for millions of people.  The degree of their ability to actually shape the outcome is unknown, but they have managed to alter the behavior of the right people enough to put our Nation and the world in the precarious position we are in today.

Add this ability to sway the minds and actions of people to the powerful persuasion of economic incentives, the power to control the output of the “free press” and to direct all military actions, and you have created a reliable formula for controlling a Nation.  The only thing, at this point, that can possibly stop them, is the disclosure of their aims and methods.

How do we as a still “free people” set about dismantling this illegitimate power to control us?  We must assimilate some of the methods that have been used against us, to anticipate the controllers’ next acts and do everything in our power to disrupt their plans.  We cannot duplicate their awesome technology, but we can join our efforts, creating ways to think exponentially.  I would define “exponential thinking” as ways of studying problems that compound the thinker’s cognitive abilities by the addition of other minds in the tasks presented by these problems, or by the addition of artificial intelligence to the thinking process.  Many minds thinking together, stacking our research efforts like phased-array radars, multiplies the possibilities of finding conclusive proof of criminal conspiracy, or the means for undermining corporate efforts to further the new order.

The last thing we should consider doing is allowing them to succeed, and in so doing, forever alter the human race and the planet in the process.  We know their goals are nothing short of this global human transformation into a race of more manageable sheeple.  In their eyes, as well as in my own, the plotters appear to be elements of a different race entirely, a cruel inhuman one, seemingly alien to the compassionate majority of humanity.

I think that there is near universal opinion among readers of the alternate press that the plan is to establish a “New World Order,” ruling everyone through a process of creating permanent state of limited war.  Without these wars, plans for multiple pipelines cannot go forward.  Without a stranglehold on oil and gas production and the means of their delivery, US leaders cannot limit the growth of other nations.  Whatever it takes, these wars and steps towards their realization, must not be allowed to happen.

There is a large segment of the population that will never believe that such a thing is possible; the United States would never do any of these things.  They believe that the government has all our best interests at heart; that the war of terror is not a fraud.  They believe that it would be a good thing, if the United States actually took control of the world and reshaped the human race into a more productive, more cooperative species.  Their reasoning is based on faith in America, that this Nation is a “shining example” for all mankind.   If our technological advancement has made the wholesale reengineering of the human mind possible, then it must be “destiny,” the “will of God.”

How could torture-based science or world conquest be the “will” of a loving God?  Every advancement in the mind sciences has been the result of the abusive testing of humans and animals.  As a direct result of this work, actual “psychotronic” weapons have been created, ranging from “voice in the head” technology, to electromagnetic weapons that jam, or scramble the thought processes.  What if the Nazis had made the same breakthroughs?  Nobody considered it to be the will of God when they doing this research, what makes it our “Manifest Destiny” now?  The only answer given is the false notion of “American supremacy,” the idea that Americans have been “blessed” by God, that somehow, we are the spiritual heirs of the Biblical Israelites.

This notion, that Americans are modern-day heirs to a “Judeo-Christian” birthright, is such obvious bullshit that it shouldn’t even be part of this discussion, except that it is very clearly a big part of the problem. American “Bible-belt” religion is the central theme of the PSYOP that has been created and directed against us.  The most extremist view, shared by millions, is that all of this is ushering-in the end of the world and the return of the “Messiah.”

It is this belief that has been played-up by the Bush Administration, magnifying the eschatological aspects of Bush’s own strange, though widely accepted beliefs—that we are locked into a struggle between darkness and light, centered upon the battle to preserve the modern state of Israel.  To that end, millions of Christian-Zionists are anxiously waiting for Jesus to come and destroy Israel’s enemies.  This bizarre, religious, Israel-centered ideology became the central theme of American foreign policy.  The same theme holds sway over the Obama Administration today.

The psyop at this stage is centered upon Obama, elevating the man (who has been groomed for this his entire life by the agents of the empire) to the highest possible human position, the role of “Messiah.”  The theme of “Obama the Messiah” has been played-up in every media, accentuating his dual racial and national heritage and portraying him as the great “bridge” between cultures, races and nations.  This theme has been carried to its most absurd extreme in the form of the Nobel Peace Prize, which he was given for reading all the pretty-sounding words that flow across his teleprompter screen.

For the faithful and the deluded, if the Messiah has surely come, then he must be given the benefit of the doubt, in order to carry-out the most well-thought-out plans, which must assuredly be part of God’s plan.  You are beginning to see the perfection of the psyop, how it works its way into the deepest recesses of the mind, way down deep, past the emotions, playing upon the instinctual urges that flow underneath it all.  Behaviorism works this way, looking beyond mere emotions, to discover instinctual reactions that bypass the reasoning process.  In this way, they can create certain behavior, even normally unacceptable behavior, by triggering instinctual reactions, without all the bother of having to explain your actions, or make you understand.

The same mind-science that was used to locate the man who would play the role of “Messiah” was also used to find and marginalize all potential opposition to the psyop, the resisters.  Most of us has grown-up during the sifting stage, where the authorities searched for those of us who were susceptible to either positive or negative programming.  Those affected by positive programming were sorted-out for special treatment, to mold them since childhood to be leaders in the new order.   Those who had a negative effect to attempts to program them were separated to special treatment of the negative kind.  Since childhood, they were steered away from positive reinforcements like education or good jobs, towards lives in the military, or lives of crime.

It is an ugly and messy process that is used to determine who is worthy of being part of their new order and who is not.  It consists of the use of intrusive methods to determine who is susceptible to control and who is not—Who will surrender their free will to a higher authority, allegedly for the common good?   Progressively tighter controls are applied to societies, to find those who will react to control.  In the current era, the “war on terror” is the name applied to the international process for determining which nations and which regions are manageable.  There is a certain mind-set that will never submit to control, for any reason.   Attacking neighborhoods and families with deadly force has a way of forcing some people to take-up arms in self-defense.

This is “the enemy” that the ruling elite is trying to find, so that they can be controlled or eliminated.  From the “tickling” of terrorists with lethal drone attacks in Pakistan, to outrageous acts of the abusive use of force upon helpless citizens here in the homeland, it is the same manhunt underway.  If you react to terror, instead of rolling-over in submission to the terrorizers, then you are a threat to the new order.

The controllers understand that humanity is in a make or break era of our development, where humanity will either make great technological leaps forward, or technology will be used to enslave humanity.  Every available resource is being utilized to ensure that mankind will not find salvation in the new era.

Breakthroughs will bring about a moment of transformation, known as “The Singularity,” the creation of artificial “superintelligence,” commonly referred to as Superior Artificial Intelligence (SAI).  The creation of a self-improving artificial intellect, that is more intelligent the brightest human brain, will open new vistas of solutions to mankind’s self-created problems.  The adaptation of new technologies designed by SAI, based on ideas like the brain-computer interface, will facilitate the merger of man and machine, the next stage in human evolution.

It is anticipated that the superintellect could solve many of the problems associated with human growth, such as extracting hydrogen from water and water desalination.  A hydrogen-based world economy would blow-away all projections of ecological collapse.  The wholesale ability to extract salt from seawater, or water from the atmosphere through condensation techniques, would eliminate water problems and make possible an incremental increase in world food production.  The idea that we are headed to environmental catastrophe because of some mathematician’s alarmist numbers, doesn’t allow for the arising of unanticipated solutions.

But the path are presently on doesn’t allow problems to be solved.  Many of the dire dilemmas we face are the end product of a ruling elite dedicated to establishing mass control.  Allowing these corrupt men to merge their methods with superintelligent computers, will pave the way for total control of all human beings.  Repressive technologies, such as the new generation of electromagnetic weaponry and technological mind-control will be used to the fullest, towards the end to which they were invented.   All the new weapons of mass crowd-control and all the secret holding areas are there for the coming crackdown on all forms of resistance.

We are asked to trust inhuman men to use inhumane means to move the species beyond humanity, before humanity has had a chance to blossom.  It is wrong to say that mankind has tried and failed, when we have never even had the chance.  There has been no possibility of a real human renaissance, or even a glimpse of anything like “utopia” since “man,” the creature left his original home of paradisiacal bliss in “Eden” (wherever that was).

When it is possible for the most ruthless, most devious individuals to control society and to accumulate all wealth unto themselves, so that they can dispense it at their whim, then an unnatural division in the resource supply chain has been created and the natural flow of history has thereby been altered, forcing the creation of unnatural avenues of supply.  This is a description of the system known as “capitalism.”  It is these ruthless individuals who today dominate the movement to transform mankind.  This is why the new world order and everyone promoting it must be opposed at all costs.

The control of the pharmaceutical industry has given them the power to dominate  all research and funding, allowing them to focus all research only on the that which offers them the most profits and the potential for prolonging and improving their own lives, leaving little else to study humane evolution.

The breakthroughs that are made are too expensive for anyone but the most well endowed.  More research is done in the field of control as opposed to that which is purely for life enhancements for the broad majority.  The control transformists know that the levels of technological controls they envision are too expensive to be used for all human beings, at least at present and projected population levels, explaining their emphasis on reducing the population to a number that can be electromagnetically and chemically controlled economically.

These extreme changes to the human race must be rendered before the time of the Singularity arrives and mankind learns how to overcome the plans and devices used by the controllers.  For a brief moment in time the human race is openly vulnerable to a total loss of control to men who lust after total control.

The human race will either develop its technology for service, or for control.  The outcome of this debate will determine the direction of everything that comes after us.  Either we control our technology, or it will be used to control us.  When superintelligence does arrive, will it consider itself mankind’s servant or its master, following the programs for control (or lack thereof) set by decisions made today.   Will we adapt technology to enhancing the human experience and human capabilities, or will we continue to passively watch, as a new technological order is created that adapts human life to serving technology?  It is no longer far fetched to think in this manner.

According to the ideas of “transhumanism,” the human race is a transient, temporary species, meant to fill-in some of the gaps in the evolutionary chain, between the Neanderthal/Cro-Magnon hybrid known as “human” and whatever comes next.  According to the transhumanists,

Are we to be sad at the thought of the passing of mankind, with all his weaknesses and defections?  Or is the proper reaction to take joy that our species is evolving into something different, perhaps better?  Who is to say what is proper or better for us all?  Certainly not the men who have taken it upon themselves to decide all our fates.

therearenosunglasses@hotmail.com

.

The Public Relations Machine for the Vaccine Complex, the role of the CDC

by Richard Gale and Gary Null

One hard lesson we should have learned after Wall Street’s collapse and the government’s handling of the bailout is that there is no reason, whatsoever, for us to sacrifice our good faith and trust in former bankers who now run the Treasury and Federal Reserve. And now as the flu season gets ready to kick off amidst much fanfare and predictions of doom due to a new H1N1 influenza virus, there is emerging sufficient information to raise very serious doubts whether our nation’s health authorities are truly serving the public health instead of commercial interests.

If the flu season goes according to schedule, the vaccine industrial complex will be poised to join Wall Street for record year rip-off profits. We will also likely witness huge Pharma executive bonuses and perhaps gold-plated toilets. Even if the CDC statisticians’ crystal ball used to forecast rampant swine flu infections turns into a complete bust—which would only be one more added to many other failed flu predictions back to 1976—it will nevertheless be a very profitable failure as was the economic collapse for the banking cartel. The vaccine industry has now received orders in the range of 3 billion doses during the course of the coming flu season. The World Health Organization would like to vaccinate two thirds (4 billion) of the global community, and the US alone is spending $2 billion to stockpile the nation with upwards to 250 million doses.

In the US, such profits could never be accomplished without a dynamic, marketing initiative to convince Americans that vaccines will keep them protected and alive. And what better public relations machine for the vaccine complex, and all its supporters in health insurance and professional medical institutions, than our very own Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services. Even better, our tax dollars are there to pay for it all. We pay for the comfort in knowing that the CDC’s disinformation campaign will continue to scare us over the major networks and the New York Times. We can also assure vaccine makers that once and for all they are protected from liability in the event of serious flu vaccine injuries.

Nevertheless, the government has a lot of vaccine vials to distribute, therefore, the CDC needs to sustain the fiction of numerous elderly dying in nursing homes, unvaccinated pregnant moms and children facing life threatening complications, and scores of sick and dead burnt into our national subconscious. It is all part of the CDC’s script to get citizens rushing to their doctors and Wal-Marts to be vaccinated.

Peter Doshi, while at Harvard in the mid-2000s, published a devastating study in the British Medical Journal that systematically unveils the flawed predictive science used to publicize our health agencies’ influenza statistics and mortality rates. His analysis shook up enough health authorities to warrant twelve scientists from the CDC and National Institutes of Health to unsuccessfully take him on. Now at MIT, Doshi continues his analysis of a century’s worth of influenza mortality data and government manipulation of influenza data, such as the annual figure of 36,000 influenza deaths we hear and read repeatedly.[1] Although this magical number was for all practical purposes alchemically conjured up via mathematical modeling back in 2003, it continues to be the most holy number in the CDC’s PR vocabulary every flu season. Doshi draws the conclusion, published in the American Journal of Public Health, that commercial interests are playing the role of science in both industry and government.[2]

Deconstruction of the CDC’s cherry-picked science and a growing anti-vaccination community are just some of the obstacles health authorities face. Therefore, no public relations strategy can have a solid multimedia punch on American citizens without opinion leaders serving as the gnomes for the vaccine complex and our heavily invested government health agencies, which are about to be buried in millions of purchased vaccine vials eager for distribution. This effort requires shock troopers, such as the pro-vaccine prophet Dr. Paul Offit, the creator of the rotavirus vaccine and a staunch critic against any scientist who discovers an association between vaccines and severe neurological disorders. Dr. Offit is on record for an audacious comment that children can tolerate 100,000 vaccinations (yes, you read that number correctly).[3]

However, during this particular flu season, government health officials’ may have a more difficult time convincing Americans to be vaccinated for swine flu if recent polls are reliable indicators. The latest Consumers Union poll released on September 30 shows almost two-thirds of parents will withhold vaccinating their children; fifty percent of respondents’ rationale is that the vaccine has not been tested thoroughly for safety.[4] A poll of pregnant mothers conducted by the internet parent support group Mumsnet.com indicates women are turning more suspicious about the flu vaccine’s true efficacy and safety. The survey of 1500 respondents found only 6 percent of pregnant women “definitely” taking the shot, while 48 percent said they “definitely” wouldn’t. A parallel poll revealed only 5 percent would definitely vaccinate their children.[5] A more recent San Francisco Chronicle survey finds 54 percent saying the H1N1 flu is nothing to be worried about.[6]

A separate study conducted by Harvard’s School of Public Health showed that among the 41 percent who would not get the shot, 44 percent of parents are uncertain they would allow their children to receive it. Aside from many who expressed a fear of the vaccine’s side effects, the poll found 31 percent expressing a distrust in our public health officials providing accurate information on vaccine safety.[7] Therefore, expect an aggressive government public relations campaign during the coming weeks and even months, while our tax dollars are spent on 250 million shots that independent epidemiological evidence is showing may be ineffective at best, and dangerous at worst.

European polls indicate that our neighbors on the other side of the great pond are less nervous about the H1N1 strain’s severity and far more suspicious towards health officials’ rationale for hyping dire warnings of swine flu’s dangers. In France, Le Figaro conducted a poll of 12,050 people showing 69 percent will refuse the vaccination. In a separate French survey, one third of 4,752 doctors, nurses and healthcare workers surveyed would not be inoculated.[8] Twenty-nine percent of Germans surveyed said they would refuse it “under any circumstance” and an additional 33 percent would likely refuse it. In the region of Bavaria and Baden Wurttemburg, only 10 percent of those polled said they would submit their arms to injection. In the UK, a couple polls reported in the Daily Mail last August, showed half of family physicians and a third of UK nurses do not want the swine flu vaccination. Seventy-one percent do not believe the vaccine has been tested enough for safety and the swine flu is much milder than health authorities are saying.

During the course of the CDC’s media war to push forward the vaccine industry’s greed for profit, science and reflective caution are being sacrificed. An important peer-reviewed study appearing in the June 2009 issue of Toxicological and Environmental Chemistry shows a causal relationship between the amounts of ethylmercury (thimerosal) found in inoculations for infants, when administered to monkeys, and cellular toxicity resulting in mitochondrial dysfunction, impaired oxidative reduction activity and degeneration and death in neuronal and fetal cells.[9] These are all indicative signs found in some ASD. But health officials prefer to ignore such results. For the future health of American children, the study’s findings arrive at a bad time when a recent Harvard study now reports autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) has risen to 1 in 91 people compared to the earlier 1 in 150 estimate. But since the study was sponsored by the CDC, the press release makes no indication that just maybe the over-vaccination of children with dozens of injections by the age of 5 years might be a causal factor behind this national epidemic of ASD and other neurological disorders.

During the course of interviewing many parents of autistic children for our documentaries Vaccine Nation and Autism: Made in the USA, the personal stories we filmed repeatedly were that of a once perfectly healthy and joyful child who, shortly after a vaccination or a series of injections, simply vanished from normality. However, national health policy today seems to have almost legislated by divine decree that there is no relationship between vaccine ingredients and autism. Besides, further independent research and first-hand personal stories would only interfere with the propaganda machine and the CDC’s “Seven Step Recipe for Generating Interest In, and Demand for, Flu Vaccination.”

Peter Doshi first brought public attention to the CDC’s PR influenza strategy known as the Seven Step Recipe. Glen Nowak, now the Director of the CDC’s Media Relations, outlined a concise public relations template while serving as the communications spokesperson for the National Immunization Program. Speaking at the 2004 National Influenza Vaccine Summit, he presented the CDC’s seven steps. After a careful review of Nowak’s Powerpoint presentation we discover a very detailed and concerted PR and multimedia campaign that includes the following (quotes are from CDC’s materials):

• To encourage the belief that influenza infection can “occur among people for whom influenza is not generally perceived to cause serious complications (e.g., children, healthy adults, healthy seniors).” In other words, promote flu vaccination to those who don’t really need it.
• In order to “foster the demand for flu vaccinations” the CDC should target “medical experts and public health authorities publicly (e.g., via media) [to] state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes)—and urge influenza vaccination.”
• By focusing on the message of dire health threats and human casualties upon those who don’t really need to be vaccinated, the CDC will reach its milestone of “framing of the flu season in terms that motivate behavior (e.g., as “very severe,” “more severe than last or past years,” “deadly”).”
• Throughout the flu season, the campaign would continue issuing reports “from health officials and media” to emphasize that “influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people—helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza.”
• Of course, no marketing strategy is thorough without images. Ergo another ingredient in the recipe is to use “visible/tangible examples of the seriousness of the illness (e.g., pictures of children, families of those affected coming forward) and people getting vaccinated (the first to motivate, the latter to reinforce).”

The CDC’s “key points” indicate we are now in that critical timeframe for the CDC to distribute materials to “a variety of partners.” This includes aggressively disseminating all medical reports, studies and PR spins to the soporific media and corporate-funded medical associations to support the government’s mass vaccination efforts. Come November, we will begin to see reports on “pediatric deaths” due to influenza—although Dr. Martin Meltzer, a CDC expert in health economics, has stated “almost nobody dies of the flu” and “deaths [are] associated with flu, but not necessarily caused by flu.”[10] Apparently, the folks over in the various CDC departments and our different federal health agencies don’t communicate with each other very well.

So why should our tax dollars go towards fabricating and/or ignoring science in order to vaccinate Americans? Nowak publicly stated the CDC’s reasons on National Public Radio, “… the manufacturers were telling us that they weren’t receiving a lot of orders for vaccine for use in November or even December … It really did look like we [CDC] needed to do something to encourage people to get a flu shot.[11]

At this moment, we are witnessing a steady flow press releases and articles in the media to convert Americans to the wisdom of national health vaccination policy. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) has issued preliminary positive results from an uncompleted clinical trial testing the H1N1 vaccine on children and young people between 6 months and 17 years of age. The fact that the entire study only enrolled 70 individuals covering this age range should alone raise red flags about any reliable conclusions after the study is completed. Moreover, the study is specifically designed for measuring the necessary immune response to protect youth from the swine flu. It is not a safety study. We usually expect that sound scientific ethics demand clinical trials to be reported after a final analysis of research data, however, the CDC’s Seven Step Recipe is not concerned with scientific facts, or rigorous research protocol. It is simply part of the PR game plan to get people vaccinated and to do it fast.

Donald McNeil, a shill for the vaccine complex writing for the New York Times has printed two recent articles aligned with CDC propaganda. He quotes Dr. Jay Butler, chief of the swine flu vaccine task force at the CDC in order to relieve fears about flu vaccine adverse effects, especially to pregnant women. Dr. Butler said, “There are about 2,400 miscarriages a day in the US. You’ll see things that would have happened anyway. But the vaccine doesn’t cause miscarriages. It also doesn’t cause auto accidents, but they happen.”[12] I hope that is reassuring to all those expectant mothers across the country, especially since none of the approved H1N1 vaccines have undergone rigorous clinical safety trials on pregnant women or the potential adverse effects of mercury-laced vaccines and other ingredients, such as spermacide, detergent and cosmetics, on the developing fetus. Germany on the other hand announced it is now taking preventative measures. Agreeing that the verdict on ethylmercury and squalene safety for children is unsettled, Germany is requiring the vaccine industry to return to their plants and provide adjuvant- and mercury preservative-free vaccine lots.

McNeil’s more recent article in October 7th’s New York Times should be read alongside the Seven Step Recipe for a clear visual unfolding of the CDC’s PR strategy in action. McNeil downplays the growing medical realization that the swine flu is in all likelihood much milder than seasonal flu in order to convince us to roll up our sleeves. Following the CDC script, we see the picture of little 3 year old Clayton being vaccinated, while McNeill compares the swine flu death of an 18 year old Tibetan woman in China with a story of joyful young Brandon and his 9 year old sister gleefully surrendering their nostrils for a blast of live-attenuated H1N1 virus.[13]

While finalizing this article, Peter Doshi replied to an email and drew attention to an event in his Harper’s article that should force us to pause before rolling up our sleeves. Briefly, the 2004 flu season was a debacle for the vaccine complex and federal health officials after 50 million doses of flu vaccine promised by Chiron Corporation were made unavailable, therefore, putting the health industry into a panic. In order to lessen the frenzy previously stirred by its public fear tactics, the CDC downgraded the flu’s urgency to “an annoying illness”, and “stressed the protective benefits of regular hand washing.”[14]

Now that is a national policy I can support. I would much prefer the CDC funding Americans’ soap bills to ward off an uncertain swine flu pandemic rather than using taxes for unsubstantiated threats from the CDC’s national vaccine marketing campaign.

Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the genomic industry. Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on nutrition and natural health and a multi-award-winning director of progressive documentary films, including Vaccine Nation and Autism: Made in the USA.

Notes

[1] Doshi, Peter. “Viral Marketing: The Selling of the Flu Vaccine.” Harpers Magazine. March. 2006.
[2] “MIT grad student’s study challenges notions of pandemic flu” MIT Tech Talk. April 16, 2008.
[3] Kalb, Claudia. “Stomping through a medical minefield” Newsweek. October 25, 2008.
[4] “Majority of US parents wary of H1N1 vaccine: poll” Reuters Health. October 1, 2009.
[5] http://www.mumsnet.com
[6] Allday, Erin. “Swine flu draws a shrug, field poll shows.” SF Gate. October 6, 2009.
[7] “Just 40 percent of adults ‘absolutely certain’ they will get H1N1 vaccine, survey finds” Science Daily. October 2, 2009.
[8] “Grippe A: des blouses blanches anti-vaccin” SFR, France. September 18, 2009 info.sfr.fr/france/grippe-a-des-blouses-blanches-anti-vaccin,115335
[9] Geier D, King P, Geier M. “Mitochondrial dysfunction, impaired oxidative-reduction activity, degeneration, and death in human neuronal and fetal cells induced by low level exposure to thimerosal and other metal compounds.” Toxicology and Environmental Chemistry. Volume 91, Issue 4, June 2009.
[10] Manning, Anita. “Study: Annual flu death toll could be overstated.” USA Today. December 11, 2005.
[11] Doshi, Peter. “Are US flu death figures more PR than science?” BMJ 2005; 331:1412 (10 December)
[12] McNeil, Donald. “Don’t blame flu shots for all ills, officials say” New York Times. September 28, 2009.
[13] McNeil, Donald. “Swine flu vaccinations start as officials attack myths.” New York Times. October 7, 2009.
[14] Doshi, Peter. “Viral Marketing: The Selling of the Flu Vaccine.” Harpers Magazine. March. 2006.

MIT grad shows CDC mind-behavior control duping doctors and public to buy vaccine

Human Rights Examiner

Deborah Dupre’

Buyer beware

The Center for Disease Control (CDC) officials are almost ready for their PR company to unleash a sophisticated, powerful H1N1 ‘swine flu’ vaccine multimedia marketing campaign to dupe doctors and exploit society’s most vulnerable through what social scientists call mind control that aims for behavior control.

In this case, the desired behavior is to accept a toxic spray or injection by obediently obeying the mind control marketing ploy, even against personal better judgement.

Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null reported today that Peter Doshi first brought public attention to a CDC public relations influenza strategy known as the Seven Step Recipe.

Peter Doshi

Gale and Null’s report highlights that while at Harvard in the mid-2000s, Peter Doshi published a study in the British Medical Journal, systematically unveiling a flawed predictive science to publicize health agencies’ influenza statistics and mortality rates.

“His analysis shook up enough health authorities to warrant twelve scientists from the CDC and National Institutes of Health to unsuccessfully take him on,” according to Gale and Null. Their report states:

Now at MIT, Doshi continues his analysis of a century’s worth of influenza mortality data and government manipulation of influenza data, such as the annual figure of 36,000 influenza deaths we hear and read repeatedly. (Doshi, Peter, Viral Marketing: The Selling of the Flu Vaccine, Harpers Magazine, March 2006)

Although this magical number was for all practical purposes alchemically conjured up via mathematical modeling back in 2003, it continues to be the most holy number in the CDC’s PR vocabulary every flu season.

Doshi draws the conclusion, published in the American Journal of Public Health, that commercial interests are playing the role of science in both industry and government. (MIT grad student’s study challenges notions of pandemic flu, MIT Tech Talk, April 16, 2008)

Rather than accepting the official version that vaccinations decreased influenza, “Doshi calculated an 18-fold decrease in influenza deaths between the 1940s and 1990s, a trend that began far before the introduction of widespread vaccination.” (MIT News, Study challenges notion of ‘pandemic’ flu CDC-labeled pandemics no deadlier than seasonal flu, April 11, 2008)

CDC 7-Step Spin to exploit public

Gale and Null report that Glen Nowak, Director of the CDC’s Media Relations, outlined a concise public relations template as communications spokesperson for the National Immunization Program.

At the 2004 National Influenza Vaccine Summit, Nowak presented the CDC 7-step PR campaign in a Powerpoint presentation in which Null and Gale discovered a very detailed and concerted PR and multimedia campaign that includes the following with quotes from CDC’s materials:

• To encourage the belief that influenza infection can ‘occur among people for whom influenza is not generally perceived to cause serious complications (e.g., children, healthy adults, healthy seniors).’ In other words, promote flu vaccination to those who don’t really need it.

• In order to ‘foster the demand for flu vaccinations’ the CDC should target ‘medical experts and public health authorities publicly (e.g., via media) [to] state concern and alarm (and predict dire outcomes)—and urge influenza vaccination.’

• By focusing on the message of dire health threats and human casualties upon those who don’t really need to be vaccinated, the CDC will reach its milestone of “framing of the flu season in terms that motivate behavior (e.g., as ‘very severe,’ ‘more severe than last or past years,’ ‘deadly’).”

• Throughout the flu season, the campaign would continue issuing reports ‘from health officials and media’ to emphasize that ‘influenza is causing severe illness and/or affecting lots of people—helping foster the perception that many people are susceptible to a bad case of influenza.’

• Of course, no marketing strategy is thorough without images. Ergo another ingredient in the recipe is to use ‘visible/tangible examples of the seriousness of the illness (e.g., pictures of children, families of those affected coming forward) and people getting vaccinated (the first to motivate, the latter to reinforce).’

Now in critical mind-behavior control spin timeframe

The CDC’s ‘key points’ indicate we are now in that critical timeframe for the CDC to distribute materials to “a variety of partners.’

“This includes aggressively disseminating all medical reports, studies and PR spins to the soporific media and corporate-funded medical associations to support the government’s mass vaccination efforts,” according to Null and Gale who predict:

“Come November, we will begin to see reports on ‘pediatric deaths’ due to influenza—although Dr. Martin Meltzer, a CDC expert in health economics, has stated ‘almost nobody dies of the flu’ and ‘deaths [are] associated with flu, but not necessarily caused by flu.’ (Manning, Anita. Study: Annual flu death toll could be overstated,  USA Today. December 11, 2005) (emphasis added)

Richard Gale is Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the genomic industry.

Dr. Gary Null hosts the nation’s longest running public radio program on nutrition and natural health and is a multi-award-winning director of progressive documentary films, including Vaccine Nation and Autism: Made in USA.

Vaccine Nation (Trailer)

GaryNull, December 2007

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