Brain Implants

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Direct neural control of complex machines is a long-term U.S. military goal. DARPA has a brain-machine interface program aimed at creating next-generation wireless interfaces between neural systems and, initially, prosthetics and other biomedical devices.
— Rodney Brooks, “Toward a Brain-Internet Link,” WirelessNewsFactor, 10 Dec 2003.

In a Kurzweillian future, the world would become a very strange place, where converging advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology and computer science combine to propel humanity to its next stage of evolution. “By the end of this century, I don’t think there will be a clear distinction between human and machine,” Kurzweil told the Foresight Institute’sEighth Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology.¹

[By 1969,] the miracle of giving light to the blind ^{i, ii, iii, iv} or sound to the deaf ha[d] been made possible by implantation of electrodes, demonstrating the technical possibility of circumventing damaged sensory receptors by direct electrical stimulation of the nervous system.² Computers that become part of our bodies are not so far-fetched.… Surgeons have performed [more than 50,000 ³] cochlear implants on patients with hearing loss.^v “These people are already walking around with chips in their heads,” [Peter Cochrane, head of research at British Telecommunications PLC,] says.⁴

Giving completely paralyzed patients full mental control of robotic limbs or communication devices has long been a dream of those working to free such individuals from their locked-in state.⁵ There is little doubt that direct brain-machine interfaces will be available in the very near future.⁶

Researchers at the University School of Medicine in Philadelphia demonstrated that signals from neuron groupings in rats brains can be used to control a physical device without the rats carrying out a physical action themselves.⁷ “This study breaks new ground in several areas,” said Dr. Eberhard Fetz, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington School of Medicine, who authored a commentary on the research in the “News and Views” section of Nature Neuroscience. “Unlike comparable studies, this is the first demonstration to prove that simultaneous recordings from large ensembles of neurons can be converted in real time and online to control an external device. Extracting signals directly from the brain to control robotic devices has been a science fiction theme that seems destined to become fact.” ⁸

[Miguel Nicolelis and colleagues] at Duke University in North Carolina wired monkey brains to control robotic armsthat mimicked the motions of their real arms (another search; see also another similar study).⁹ “It was an amazing sight to see the robot in my lab move, knowing that it was being driven by signals from a monkey brain at Duke,” said [Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s] Touch Lab director and co-researcher Mandayam Srinivasan. “It was as if the monkey had a 600-mile- (950-km-) long virtual arm.”¹⁰

John P. Donoghue, a neuroscientist at Brown University developing a similar system, said paralyzed patients would be the first to benefit by gaining an ability to type and communicate on the Web, but the list of potential applications is endless, he said. The devices may even allow quadriplegics to move their own limbs again by sending signals from the brain to various muscles, leaping over the severed nerves that caused their paralysis.…

Both he and Nicolelis hope to get permission from the Food and Drug Administration to begin experiments in people [in 2004]. Nicolelis also is developing a system that would transmit signals from each of the hundreds of brain electrodes to a portable receiver, so his monkeys — or human subjects — could be free of external wires and move around while they turn their thoughts into mechanical actions.¹¹

Scientists say they have developed a technology that enables a monkey to move a cursor on a computer screensimply by thinking about it.… Using high-tech brain scans, the researchers determined that [a] small clump[] of cells…were active in the formation of the desire to carry out specific body movements. Armed with this knowledge, [researchers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena] implanted sensitive electrodes in the posterior parietal cortex of a rhesus monkey trained to play a simple video game.… A computer program, hooked up to the implanted electrodes,…then moved a cursor on the computer screen in accordance with the monkey’s desires — left or right, up or down, wherever “the electrical (brain) patterns tells us the monkey is planning to reach,” according to [researcher Daniella] Meeker.¹² [Dr. William Heetderks, director of the neural prosthesis program at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke,] believes that the path to long-lasting implants in people would involve the recording of data from many electrodes. “To get a rich signal that allows you to move a limb in three-dimensional space or move a cursor around on a screen will require the ability to record from at least 30 neurons,” he said.¹³

Dr. Philip R. Kennedy, an [sic] clinical assistant professor of neurology at Emory University in Georgia, reported that a paralyzed man was able to control a cursor with a cone-shaped, glass implant (See also another similar study).¹⁴ Each [neurotrophic electrode] consists of a hollow glass cone about the size of a ball-point pen tip.¹⁵ The implants…contain an electrode that picks up impulses from the nerve endings. Before they are implanted, the cones are coated with chemicals — taken from tissue inside the patients’ own knees — to encourage nerve growth. The implants are then placed in the brain’s motor cortex — which controls body movement — and over the course of the next few months the chemicals encourage nerve cells to grow and attach to the electrodes. A transmitter just inside the skull picks up signals from the cones and translates these into cursor commands on the computer.¹⁶

Scientists at Northwestern University crafted a two-wheeled robot that operated partly on the electrical signals of adisplaced lamprey’s brain (pic, video).¹⁷ The part of the brain used in the experiment normally keeps the lamprey upright in the water. When connected up correctly, the organ can guide the robot towards a light source.¹⁸

Scientists at the University of Tokyo are exploring ways that la cucaracha can become more socially redeeming. Using hardy American roaches, scientists remove their wings, insert electrodes in their antennae (more pics, schematics) and affix a tiny backpack of electric circuits and batteries to their carapace. The electrodes prod them to turn left and right, go backward and forward. The plan is to equip them with minicameras or other sensory devices.^{19, vi} [Later that same year, the motion pictureThe Fifth Element (1997) featured a remote-controlled cockroach equipped with a camera.]

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute have…demonstrated electronic-based neuron transistors that can control the movement of a live leech from a computer. They can detect the firing of a nearby neuron, cause it to fire, or suppress a neuron from firing — all of which amounts to two-way communication between neurons and neuron transistors.²⁰

Rats steered by a computer…could soon help find buried earthquake victims or dispose of bombs, scientists said [1 May 2002]. The remote-controlled “roborats” (more pics, audio, video) can be made to run, climb, jump or turn left and right through electrical probes, the width of a hair, implanted in their brains. Movement signals are transmitted from a computer to the rat’s brain via a radio receiver strapped to its back. One electrode stimulates the “feelgood” center of the rat’s brain, while two other electrodes activate the cerebral regions which process signals from its left and right whiskers.²¹

“They work for pleasure,” says Sanjiv Talwar, the bioengineer at the State University of New York who led the research team.… “The rat feels nirvana.” ²² Asked to speculate on potential military uses for robotic animals, Dr Talwar agreed they could, in theory, be put to some unpleasant uses, such as assassination.²³

[In February 2007, scientists at the Robot Engineering Technology Research Centre at Shandong University of Science and Technology in China announced they had created remote-controlled pigeons (pic) after having had similar success implanting mice in 2005. Their next step is to improve the technology for practical use.]

A team of US scientists have wired a computer to a cat’s brain and created videos of what the animal was seeing. By recording the electrical activity of nerve cells in the thalamus, a region of the brain that receives signals from the eyes, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley were able to view these shapes.… They recorded the output from 177 brain cells that responded to light and dark in the cat’s field of view. In total, the 177 cells were sensitive to a field of view of 6.4 by 6.4 degrees.… In the cat’s brain, as in ours, the signals from the thalamus cells undergo considerable signal processing in the higher regions of the brain that improve the quality of the image that is perceived. Taking an image from a region of the brain before this image enhancement has taken place will result in a poorer image than the cat is able to see.… Given time, it will be possible to record what one person sees and “play it back” to someone else either as it is happening or at a later date.^{24, vii}

In 1870, two German researchers named [Eduard] Hitzig and [Gustav] Fritsch electrically stimulated the brains of dogs, demonstrating that certain portions of the brain were the centers of motor function. The American Dr. Robert Bartholow, within four years, demonstrated that the same was true of human beings. By the turn of the [twentieth] century in Germany Fedor Krause was able to do a systematic electrical mapping of the human brain, using conscious patients undergoing brain surgery [Morgan, James P., “The First Reported Case of Electrical Stimulation of the Human Brain,” Journal of History of Medicine at http://www3.oup.co.uk/jalsci/scope/; Zimmerman, M., “Electrical Stimulation of the Human Brain,” Human Neurobiology, 1982].

Another early researcher into electrical stimulation of the brain was Walter Rudolf Hess, who began research intoESB in the 1930s, jolting patients’ brains with shocks administered through tiny needles that pierced the skull.²⁵ His experiments [also] included the insertion of fine electrically conductive wires into the brains of anaesthetized cats. To noone’s great surprise, given mild electrical stimulation the cats went beserk [Vance Packard, The People Shapers (New York: Bantam Books, 1977); “Hess, Walter Rudolf,” Encyclopedia Americana (New York: Harper & Row, 1969); “Hess, Walter Rudolph,” Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Inc., 1973)].²⁶

During the decades of the 1940s and 1950s, [Canadian pioneer] Wilder Penfield…experimented with electrical brain stimulation on patients undergoing surgery. One of Penfield’s discoveries was that the application of electricity on alert patients could stimulate the memory of past events [Project Open Mind] (full pic, "I smell burnt toast" reenactment surgery video).

Since 1949, the Tulane University Department of Psychiatry and Neurology has done experimentation in the implantation of electrodes into patients’ brains. According to one of their staff-generated reports, “By implantation of electrodes into various predetermined specific brain sites of patients capable of reporting thoughts and feelings, we have been able to make invaluable long-term observations…” [“Stereotaxic Implantation of Electrodes in the Human Brain: A Method for Long-Term Study and Treatment,” Heath, John, Fontana, Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, Tulane University School of Medicine].

Other early researchers into direct brain stimulation were Robert G. Heath…and his associate, Dr. Russell Monroe. Beginning in 1950, with funding from the CIA and the military, among other sources, they implanted as many as 125 electrodes into subjects’ brains, and also experimented by injecting a wide variety of drugs directly into the brain tissue through small tubes; these drugs included LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline. One of Heath’s memorable suggestions was that lobotomy should be used on subjects, not as a therapeutic measure, but for the convenience of the staff [Heath, Robert G. Undated interview in Omni; Cannon, Martin, “Mind Control and the American Government,” Prevailing Winds, 1994; Human Rights Law Journal, “Freedom of the Mind as an International Human Rights Issue,” Vol. 3, No. 1-4; Ross, M.D., Dr. Colin, “The CIA and Military Mind Control Research: Building the Manchurian Candidate,” lecture given at Ninth Annual Western Clinical Conference on Trauma and Dissociation, April 18, 1996].²⁷ Heath of Tulane University, who pioneered the electrical stimulation of human brains, has equipped dangerously aggressive mental patients with self-stimulators. A film shows a patient working himself out of a violent mood by pushing his stimulator button.²⁸

In 1956, James Olds (pic) reported on research in which he had electrically stimulated the brains of rats. Implanting electrodes in rats’ pleasure center of the brain, he attached a device that allowed the rats to activate the electrical impulse. He found that the rats would become so obsessed with self-stimulation that they would literally starve themselves to death.²⁹ Very similar results have since been achieved replacing rats with monkeys [and humans as well].³⁰

Jose Delgado, funded by Yale University, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the U.S. Air Force 6571st Aeromedical Research Laboratory, and other institutions, and linked to Spanish fascist groups by researcher John Judge,³¹…is the man who perfected the stimoceiver [or ‘transdermal stimulator’], a tiny electronic device that is implanted into the brains of humans and animals, and is used to transmit electrical impulses directly to the brain [Delgado, Jose, Physical Control of the Mind (New York: Harper & Row, 1969); and Judge, John, “The Secret Government,” Dharma Combat number 10].³²

Delgado, in a series of experiments terrifying in their human potential, implanted electrodes in the skull of a bull. Waving a red cape, Delgado provoked the animal to charge. Then, with a signal emitted from a tiny hand-held radio transmitter, he made the beast turn aside in mid-lunge and trot docilely away.³³ He has [also] been able to “play” monkeys and cats like “little electronic toys” that yawn, hide, fight, play, mate and go to sleep^viii on command.³⁴ The individual is defenseless against direct manipulation of the brain [Delgado, Physical Control].³⁵

The open publication of Delgado’s bookPhysical Control of the Mind met with a decidedly cool reaction from the public, and this may have warned other researchers in the field to keep quiet about the subject. To this day, Delgado’s is the only popular book on the subject of implants and electrical stimulation of the brain.³⁶

During the latter days of MKULTRA research, a CIA memorandum, dated 22 November, 1961, announced, “Initial biological work on techniques and brain locations essential to providing conditioning and control of animals has been completed. The feasibility of remote control of activities in several species of animals has been demonstrated.… The ultimate objective of this research is to provide an understanding of the mechanisms involved in the directional control of animals and to provide practical systems suitable for human application.” ³⁷

Later breakthroughs in technology were documented in “Two-Way Transdermal Communication with the Brain,” published in 1975. By this time Delgado had linked his brain implants with computers. The monograph records,

“The most interesting aspect of the transdermal stimoceivers is the ability to perform simultaneous recording and stimulation of brain functions, thereby permitting the establishment of feedbacks and ‘on-demand’ programs of excitation with the aid of the computer. With the increasing sophistication and miniaturization of electronics, it may be possible to compress the necessary circuitry for a small computer into a chip that is implantable subcutaneously. In this way, a new self-contained instrument could be devised, capable of receiving, analyzing, and sending back information to the brain, establishing artificial links between unrelated cerebral areas, functional feedbacks, and programs of stimulation contingent on the appearance of pre-determined patterns” [Delgado, Lipponen, Weiss, del Pozo, Monteagudo, and McMahon, “Two-Way Transdermal Communication with the Brain,” a co-operative publication of the Medical University of Madrid, Spain, and Yale University Medical School, 1975].³⁸

Many popular articles on Delgado intend us to think that his primary purpose was the rehabilitation of the mentally and physically sick. This does not happen to be the case. Delgado was a blatant control freak. An example is Delgado’s experimentation on changing the social orientation of animals. One staging area for this experimentation was an island in the Bermudas, where Delgado maintained a free-roving population of gibbons with electronic implants, using electrical brain boosts to build and destroy social orders among those primates as if he was knocking down a row of dominoes [Packard, People Shapers].³⁹

Although well cited, Delgado’s practical results on humans were extremely limited,^ix as most of his research was either merely stated without a results base, or has been reported on second hand.… Reports have been made on his work on the ‘Pandora Project’, which involved modulating electromagnetic fields to a soldier’s head so that the soldier would lose self-control on the battle field. Reports also include how work was carried out to induce schizophrenia artificially through electrical stimulation of the septal zone in the human brain.⁴⁰

Always a visionary in the Orwellian mold, Delgado said, “Looking into the future, it may be predicted that telerecording and telestimulation of the brain will be widely used” [Delgado, Jose, “Radio Stimulation of the Brain in Primates and Man,” New Haven, Connecticut: Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, 1969].⁴¹ He has urged the U.S. government to make “control of the mind” a national goal.⁴²

Another researcher who specialized in brain implants is Dr. Stuart Mackay, who in 1968 penned a textbook titledBio-Medical Telemetry. Mackay reported, “Among the many telemetry instruments being used today are miniature radio transmitters that can be swallowed, carried externally, or surgically implanted in man or animal. They permit the simultaneous study of behaviour and physiological functioning. The scope of observations is too broad to more than hint at a few examples. The possibilities are limited only by the imagination of the investigator” [Dr. Stuart Mackay, cited in Glenn Krawcyzyk, “Mind Control Techniques and Tactics of the New World Order,” Nexus, Dec-Jan 1993].⁴³

By 1994, the London Times estimated that in the previous decade there had been 15,000 cases of persons being implanted with electronic brain devices. It is impossible to know if the Times estimate is at all accurate, since it is unlikely that they would be privy to statistics of secret testing. Certainly, most anti-mind control activists would say that the figure was a gross underestimate.⁴⁴

In July 1996, information was released on research currently taking place into creation of a computer chip called the “Soul Catcher 2025.” Dr. Chris Winter and a team of scientists at British Telecom’s Martlesham Heath Laboratories, near Ipswich, are developing a chip that, when placed into the skull behind the eye, will record all visual and physical sensations, as well as thoughts. According to Winter, “This is the end of death… By combining this information with a record of the person’s genes, we could recreate a person physically, emotionally, and spiritually.” ⁴⁵

“The brain is so complex that one wouldn’t at the outset think that replacing any of its parts is doable,” said Dr. Howard Eichenbaum, a professor of psychology at Boston University and director of the Laboratory of Cognitive Neurobiology there. But advances in neuroscience and computer engineering have made it possible to develop implanted circuits that mimic neural activities, he said. “At least in principle, it looks as though a chip imitating some functions of the hippocampus could be implanted in the future,” he said (pic). “It’s a huge, huge advance in simply duplicating the functions of the hippocampus, which in many ways Dr. [Theodore W.] Berger, [a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California and the director of the Center for Neural Engineeringthere,] has done.” ⁴⁶

Electrical devices called deep brain stimulators, essentially a pacemaker for the brain, have been used for some years to ease the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Now, they’ve just been approved for another degenerative brain disease called dystonia.… The brain stimulators don’t cure dystonia but…they can give patients a better quality of life. The beneficial effect has lasted for almost a decade so far in Parkinson’s patients, and it’s expected the dystonia effect will also be long lasting.⁴⁷

Cyberkinetics Inc. of Foxboro, Mass., has received Food and Drug Administration approval [in 2004] to begin a clinical trial in which four-square-millimeter chips will be placed beneath the skulls of paralyzed patients⁴⁸ that would enable [them] to control computers directly with their brains or possibly help them move their limbs.… “Testing these implants in humans is the next step,” said Eberhard E. Fetz, professor at the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington, who has been experimenting with brain-signal devices since the late 1960s. “Within a decade, we’ll see these being used regularly to control prosthetic devices or activate a patient’s own muscles.” ⁴⁹ At least two other research teams are planning similar brain-machine experiments in people.⁵⁰

For the first time in humans [2004], a team headed by University researchers has placed an electronic grid atop patients’ brains to gather motor signals that enable the patients to play a computer game using only the signals from their brains. The use of a grid atop the brain to record the organ’s surface signals is a brain-machine interface technique that uses electrocorticographic (ECoG) activity — data taken invasively directly from the brain surface.… Eric C. Leuthardt, M.D., a WUSTL neurosurgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, and Daniel Moran, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, performed their research on four adult epilepsy patients who had the grids implanted so that neurologists could find the area in the brain serving as the focus for an epileptic seizure, with hopes of removing it to avoid future seizures.… “To put this in perspective,” Leuthardt said, “the previous EEG-based ^x systems are equivalent to a 1908 Wright brothers airplane in regards to speed of learning to achieve control. Right now, with our results, we’re flying around in an F-16 jet.” ⁵¹

Probes implanted in the brain for diagnosis and treatment could be improved with nanoscale carbon fibers. Biomedical engineer Thomas Webster from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana and colleagues developed a carbon nanofiber-reinforced plastic composite to determine whether it could improve neural and orthopedic prosthetics.

Neural prosthetics, usually made of silicon, can become covered in scar tissue. Orthopedic implants, usually made of titanium or titanium alloys, often become covered in soft tissue.

Knowing that carbon nanofibers and nanotubes have electrical and mechanical properties that might make them suitable for prosthesis, the researchers tested composites of 60-odd nanometer carbon nanofibers in polycarbonate urethane. Polycarbonate urethane is already approved for human use.

They found that neurons cultured on the nanofiber composite developed neurite extensions, which are the first step towards axons and a sign that the materials could encourage interactions essential to neural probes. Additionally, the material had less adhesion to astrocytes, which can impede neural function by producing scar tissue.

For orthopedic applications, the researchers found that bone-forming cells adhered better to composites with a high volume of nanofibers but cells that produce soft fibrous tissue stuck less readily.

The research is reported in the journal Nanotechnology (read abstract).⁵²

[Related to brain implants are implants that are connected to nerves from different parts of the body. Professor Kevin Warwick, for example, had implants inserted into his and his wife’s arms allowing two-way communication. The results were published in his book, I, Cyborg.]

[Another man, whose arms needed to be amputated,] underwent surgery to graft existing nerve endings from his shoulder onto the pectoral muscle on his chest. Those nerves grew into the muscle after about six months. Electrodes on the graft can now pick up any thought-generated nerve impulses to the now-absent limb and transmit those to [a] mechanical prosthesis, controlling the movements of the [“bionic”] arm.⁵³

[The television series Ripley’s Believe it or Not that aired on 5 June 2004 included a segment about French doctors who implanted a computer chip in a paralyzed man’s abdomin connected to implants in his legs that allowed him to stand and walk with a walker by means of computer control.]

We are Borg.
You will be assimilated.
Resistance is futile.⁵⁴

Not everyone is thrilled at the prospect of a post-human future populated by cyborgs, designer children, conscious computers,^xi immortals and disembodied minds roaming the Internet.… [Critics] think this could be the worst calamity to befall us, both as individuals and as a species.^xii And they argue we should be taking steps to prevent it.⁵⁵

If cyborgs are created with superhuman capabilities from a normal human start point, then it certainly brings about a threat to humanity itself. Perhaps the development of direct, military-style cyborgs might be possible to avoid. After all, when cyborgs exhibiting an intelligence that far surpasses that of humans are brought about, it will surely be the cyborgs themselves that make any decisions about how they treat humans.⁵⁶

[Marvin Minsky, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence,] celebrates a future when humans will be able to “upload” the contents of their brains into computers or robotbrains.… [Ray Kurzweil] recently called for replacing the body’s often imperfect molecular blueprint, DNA, withsoftware.… “Transhumanists want to use technology to enhance and fulfill human potential,” [James Hughes, executive director of the World Transhumanist Association based in Willington, Conn.,] said. “That’s very hard to do if you die after only 70 years.” ⁵⁷

“Humanity’s ability to alter its own brain function might well shape history as powerfully as the development of metallurgy in the Iron Age,” cognitive neuroscientist Martha Farah and eight co-authors write in a[n]…issue ofNature Reviews Neuroscience.⁵⁸

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ⁱ A handful of researchers are plumbing the potential of the bionic eye, including Wheaton, Ill.-based Optobionics Corp., led by Dr. Alan Chow, a pediatric ophthalmologist whose artificial silicon retinas have slight [sic] improved the vision of the six patients who’ve received them.
— Jim Krane (The Associated Press) “Bionic Eye Follows Bionic Ear,” Yahoo! News, 27 May 2002.

ⁱⁱ A small, precise dose of electricity can restore sight to some of the million or so Americans considered legally blind. For the past few months, two patients have made out doctors in white lab coats, among other things, thanks to a complex apparatus…made by Second Sight, a privately held firm in Santa Clarita, Calif. The device includes a tiny antenna inside the eye and a retinal implant with pencil-tip-size electrodes that fire electrical signals directly onto the optic nerves and brain. The resolution is extremely crude because there are only 16 electrodes, not enough to recognize faces. Second Sight and a consortium of research laboratories recently received a $9 million federal grant to find a way to squeeze 1,000 electrodes onto the array to make the picture sharper. Powered by an external battery, a mini video camera screwed into a pair of eyeglasses will wirelessly beam images to the array (pic) — all for an estimated cost, including surgery, of $25,000. Scientists concede facial recognition may be five to ten years away. So far, Second Sight has reported no negative side effects in the two patients undergoing clinical trials.
— Aliya Sternstein, “Seeing-Eye Chip,” Forbes, 14 Oct 2002.

ⁱⁱⁱ A pea-sized miniature telescope inserted into the eye is showing promise in improving vision for people with macular degeneration.… Once the telescope is implanted, the eyes no longer work together because the brain cannot merge the magnified image in one eye with the normal image in the other eye. The one-hour surgery involves removing the eye lens and placing the telescope into the patient’s eye with the poorest vision. The eye telescope is one of the newest developments in a bionic revolution, in which plastic, metal and polymers are used to create artificial muscles, ears and other organs that researchers hope will improve the quality of life. “There’s no question there will be a tremendous number of advances in the future that will include devices, whether electrical or mechanical, which will enhance the function of our organs,” said Steve Goldstein, a University of Michigan Henry Ruppenthal family professor of orthopedic surgery and bioengineering.
— The Associated Press, “Miniature ‘bionic’ eye implant rescues vision,” USA Today, 8 Dec 2003.

^iv An implantable chip that can serve as both a prosthetic retina and a drug delivery system has been developed to treat age-related blindness and conditions such as Parkinson’s disease. Created by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, the chip communicates chemically rather than electrically, using neurotransmitters to stimulate cells.… Because the chip can draw droplets of fluid in as well as out, it could also enable researchers to take samples in real time, giving them a chemical picture of what goes on in living tissues during certain processes.
— Gabe Romain, “‘Wet’ Eye Chip Becomes Reality; Uses chemicals to work as artificial retina and drug delivery system,” BetterHumans, 23 June 2004.

^v Physicians of the House Ear Clinic have successfully implanted the first two patients with a Penetrating Electrode Auditory Brainstem Implant (PABI), a revolutionary prosthetic device that is currently in clinical trials. The PABI is based on cochlear implant technology, but extends the utility to stimulating the hearing portions of the brain to restore some degree of hearing function to people deafened by bilateral tumors on their hearing and balance nerves (vestibular schwannomas). The PABI is a modified version of the existing Auditory Brainstem Implant (ABI) with the addition of an assembly of microelectrodes, designed to penetrate into the auditory portion of the brainstem (cochlear nucleus) and send sound signals to the brain.
— “First Successful Use of Penetrating Microelectrodes in Human Brainstem Restores Some Hearing to Deaf Patient,” Business Wire, 16 Jan 2004.

^vi Be on guard next time you step into the shower. It might not be a regular cockroach watching you on the ceiling. It could be a well-heeled voyeur’s spy filming you!
— Ron Henderson, trans., “Cockroaches on a secret mission,” Sydsvenska Dagbladet, 18 Jan 1997, athttp://magazine.magnus.se/artikele.asp?artikel=kackerla.

^vii The idea that advance in neurotechnology will one day allow us to video our whole lives from somewhere inside our brains throws up all kinds of issues about privacy, about the world being a stage, about how we edit and censor our own memories and about how one day someone else may do this job for us.
— Lee Marshall, Screen review “The Final Cut,” at http://www.screendaily.com/story.asp?storyid=16330&r=true.

^viii Sleep induced by electrical stimulation of the brain is similar to spontaneous sleep.
— José M. R. Delgado, M.D., Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 158.

^ix In 1950 the Agency [CIA] tooled up for a battery of mind control experiments on human guinea pigs, underwritten by a network of scientific foundations and academic fronts. Neuropsychiatrists at Tulane, McGill, Yale, UCLA and Harvard, some of them laboring beside Nazi imports, researched the use of brain implants to control behavior.… A monograph written in the 1960s by Dr. Jose Delgado, a Yale psychiatrist hailing from Franco’s Spain, detailed his experiments on an 11-year-old boy with electrodes implanted in his brain. Dr. Delgado stimulated his young subject’s synapses with a radio transmitter at a range of 100 feet. The boy was immediately stripped of his sexual identity, reporting that he wasn’t sure if he was a boy or a girl.
— Alex Constantine, “Journal Preview; 12/95: The Constantine Report,” athttp://www.mindcontrolforums.com/cnst-nws.htm.

^x [Operant conditioning is used in the science of electroencephalograph (EEG)-based cursor control brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies. By successive training of mu (and beta) brainwaves, a cursor can be moved on a computer screen just by thinking about it.]

^xi According to Moore’s Law, computer power doubles every 18 months, meaning that computers will be a million times more powerful by 2034. According to Nielsen’s Law of Internet bandwidth, connectivity to the home grows by 50 percent per year; by 2034, we’ll have 200,000 times more bandwidth. That same year, I’ll own a computer that runs at 3PHz CPU speed, has a petabyte (a thousand terabytes) of memory, half an exabyte (a billion gigabytes) of hard disk-equivalent storage and connects to the Internet with a bandwidth of a quarter terabit (a trillion binary digits) per second. The specifics may vary: Instead of following current Moore’s Law trajectories to speed up a single CPU, it’s likely that we’ll see multiprocessors, smart dust and other ways of getting the equivalent power through a more advanced computer architecture.… By 2034, we’ll finally get decent computer displays, with a resolution of about 20,000 pixels by 10,000 pixels (as opposed to the miserly 2048 pixels by 1536 pixels on my current monitor). Although welcomed, my predicted improvement factor of 200 here is relatively small; history shows that display technology has the most dismal improvement curve of any computer technology, except possibly batteries.
— Jakob Nielsen, “Thirty years with computers,” News.com, 27 May 2004.

^xii [Ethicist Joel Anderson at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri,] points out that it will take time for people to accept the technology. “Initially people thought heart transplants were an abomination because they assumed that having the heart you were born with was an important part of who you are.”
— “World’s first brain prosthesis revealed,” NewScientist.com, 12 March 2003.

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Endnotes

¹ Declan McCullagh, “Kurzweil: Rooting for the Machine,” Wired News, 3 Nov 2000.

² José M. R. Delgado, M.D., Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 201.

³ Cochlear Hearing Implants, “New to Cochlear? Start Here,” athttp://www.cochlearamericas.com/NewToCochlear/new_to_cochlear_index.asp.

⁴ Neil Gross, “Into the wild frontier,” Business Week, 23 June 1997, p. 74.

⁵ E. J. Mundell (Reuters Health), “Monkey Moves Computer Cursor by Thoughts Alone,” Yahoo! News, 30 Jan 2002.

⁶ Peter Passaro, “Is it Possible to Download Knowledge into the Brain? Mind-machine interfaces will be available in the near future, and several methods hold promise for implanting information,” Better Humans, 16 Jan 2004.

⁷ Amanda Onion, “Rat Robots: Scientists Develop Remote-Controlled Rats,” ABCNEWS.com, 2 May 2002.

⁸ “Rats Operate Robotic Arm Via Brain Activity,” Science Daily, 23 June 1999.

⁹ “Monkey brain operates machine,” BBC, 15 Nov 2000.

¹⁰ Rick Weiss, “Monkeys Control Robotic Arm With Brain Implants,” washingtonpost.com, 13 Oct 2003.

¹¹ Mundell, “Monkey Moves Computer Cursor.”

¹² Anne Eisenberg, “Don’t Point, Just Think: The Brain Wave as Joystick,” The New York Times, 28 March 2002.

¹³ Paul Eng, “Moving Thoughts: Scientists Study Brain Implants to Control PCs, Artificial Limbs,” ABCNEWS.com, 13 March 2002.

¹⁴ “Communicating with ‘thought power’,” BBC, 15 Oct 1998.

¹⁵ Jane Wakefield, “BodyTechnic: New funding for brain implants,” ZDNet UK News, 3 Dec 1998.

¹⁶ Eng, “Moving Thoughts.”

¹⁷ Onion, “Rat Robots.”

¹⁸ “Fish-brained robot at Science Museum,” BBC, 27 Nov 2000.

¹⁹ “Peepers creepers; Research at the University of Tokyo is investigating ways in which cockroaches with the mini-cameras can be used to locate vermin or perhaps even survivors of earthquakes,” Time, 27 Jan 1997, 149(4), p. 17.

²⁰ Raymond Kurzweil, “Accelerated Living,” KurzweilAI.net, 24 Sep 2001; See also Ray Kurzweil, “Accelerated Living,” PC Magazine, 4 Sep 2001.

²¹ Reuters, “Remote-Controlled Rats May Hunt Bombs and Bodies,” Yahoo! News, 2 May 2002.

²² Tom Clarke, “Here come the Ratbots; Desire drives remote-controlled rodents,” Nature, 2 May 2002.

²³ James Meek, “Live rats driven by remote control,” The Guardian, 2 May 2002.

²⁴ Dr David Whitehouse, “Looking through cats’ eyes,” BBC News, 11 Oct 1999; See also Garrett B. Stanley, Fei F. Li, and Yang Dan, “Reconstruction of Natural Scenes from Ensemble Responses in the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus,” The Journal of Neuroscience, 15 Sep 1999, 19(18):8036-8042.

²⁵ Jim Keith, Mass Control: Engineering Human Consciousness (Lilburn, GA: IllumiNet Press, 1999), p. 94.

²⁶ Jim Keith, Mind Control, World Control (Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1998), p. 127.

²⁷ Keith, Mass Control, pp. 94-95.

²⁸ Vance Packard, The People Shapers (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1977), p. 45.

²⁹ “Brain, Mind, and Altered States of Consciousness,” New Enlightenment.

³⁰ Professor Kevin Warwick, I, Cyborg (London: Century, 2002), p. 110.

³¹ Keith, Mind Control, p. 127.

³² Keith, Mass Control, p. 97.

³³ Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1988, 1970), p. 194.

³⁴ John A. Osmundsen, “‘Matador’ With a Radio Stops Wired Bull,” The New York Times, 17 May 1965, CXIV(39,195), p. 20.

³⁵ Jose Delgado, cited in Keith, Mind Control, p. 128.

³⁶ Ibidem, pp. 129-130.

³⁷ Ibidem, p. 130.

³⁸ Keith, Mass Control, p. 99.

³⁹ Ibidem, p. 100.

⁴⁰ Ibidem, p. 101.

⁴¹ Warwick, I, Cyborg, p. 112.

⁴² Packard, People Shapers, p. 4.

⁴³ Keith, Mass Control, p. 101.

⁴⁴ Keith, Mind Control, p. 138.

⁴⁵ Ibidem, p. 302.

⁴⁶ Anne Eisenberg, “What’s Next; A Chip That Mimics Neurons, Firing Up the Memory,” The New York Times, 20 June 2002; See also USC Engineering News at http://www.usc.edu/dept/engineering/bergerNYT.

⁴⁷ “Brain ‘Pacemaker’ Helps Alleviate Symptoms Of Dystonia; Disease Makes Patients Stiffen Up So Much They Lose Mobility,” wnbc.com, 21 July 2003.

⁴⁸ Justin Pope (The Associated Press), “FDA Approves Human Brain Implant Devices,” Yahoo! News, 14 April 2004.

⁴⁹ Jeffrey Krasner, “Approval sought to test brain implant; Neuron-fired device would aid paralyzed people, state firm says,” boston.com, 6 Nov 2003.

⁵⁰ Ronald Kotulak, “I, CYBORG,” Chicago Tribune, 1 Aug 2004.

⁵¹ Tony Fitzpatrick, “Thought control: Human subjects play real mind games,” Record, 25 June 2004.

⁵² “Nanoscale Fibers Could Improve Neural Implants,” BetterHumans, 11 Dec 2003.

⁵³ “Brain waves drive man’s bionic arm,” CNN.com, 25 Sep 2003.

⁵⁴ Star Trek, television series.

⁵⁵ Margie Wylie (Religion News Service), “Transhumanists put their faith in technology,” Chicago Tribune, 28 May 2004.

⁵⁶ Warwick, I, Cyborg, p. 239.

⁵⁷ Wylie, “Transhumanists.”

⁵⁸ Tom Siegfried, “Creating brain boosters demands smart approach,” DallasNews.com, 6 June 2004.

CIA Must Disclose Data on Human Experiments

[SEE:

CIAunderlying.pdf

  ;  Human Nature Is the Enemy of the State]

By ANNIE YOUDERIAN 
ShareThis

     (CN) – A federal magistrate judge in San Francisco ordered the CIA to produce specific records and testimony about the human experiments the government allegedly conducted on thousands of soldiers from 1950 through 1975.
     Three veterans groups and six individual veterans sued the CIA and other government agencies, claiming they used about 7,800 soldiers as human guinea pigs to research biological, chemical and psychological weapons.
     The experiments, many of which took place at Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick in Maryland, allegedly exposed test subjects to chemicals, drugs and electronic implants. Though the soldiers volunteered, they never gave informed consent, because the government didn’t fully disclose the risks, the veterans claimed. They were also required to sign an oath of secrecy, according to the complaint.
     The veterans filed three sets of document requests to find out who was tested, what substances they were given, and how it affected them. Between October and April, the government produced about 15,000 pages of heavily redacted records, most of which related to the named plaintiffs only.
      The CIA argued that much of the information requested was protected under the Privacy Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
      U.S. Magistrate Judge James Larson acknowledged that some of the requests were too broad and ordered the veterans to be more specific and to reduce the total number of requests.
      For example, Larson said the plaintiffs’ definition of "test program" is "overbroad," as it not only named experimental programs like "Bluebird," "Artichoke" and "MKUltra," but also included "any other program of experimentation involving human testing of any substance, including but not limited to ‘MATERIAL TESTING PROGRAM EA 1729.’"
     He ordered the veterans to provide a list of specific test programs and test substances.
     But once the plaintiffs narrow their requests, Larson said, they are entitled to most of the information. Each government agency must respond individually to each request, he said, and if an agency denies any request, it must explain — in sufficient detail — why the records are purportedly privileged.
      The CIA has already claimed that some documents are protected under the state-secrets privilege, but Larson said the agency needs to be more specific. He asked for a "supplemental declaration explaining with heightened specificity" why the documents are considered state secrets. Because these documents might contain sensitive information, the judge allowed the CIA to file the declaration under seal.
      Larson rejected the government’s bid to limit the scope of discovery, saying doing so "removes the remaining hurdle" for the CIA to respond to the veterans’ sets of requests.
     "Defendants should respond in earnest to Plaintiffs’ discovery requests, regardless of any ongoing or prior searches, investigations, or litigation," Larson wrote. He said the government can’t limit disclosure to information about the six individual plaintiffs.
     The CIA insisted discovery was unwarranted in its case, because it never funded or conducted drug research on military personnel.
     Larson wasn’t convinced.
     "[T]his court rejects the conclusion that the CIA necessarily lacks a nexus to Plaintiffs’ claims, and orders the CIA to respond in earnest" to the veterans’ requests, "particularly because defendants have presented evidence that would appear to cast doubt on that conclusion," he wrote.
     The government also tried to avoid deposition, claiming too much time had passed since the alleged experiments, and any witnesses familiar with the projects likely no longer work for the government. The CIA further argued, unsuccessfully, that the court should stay discovery until the Department of Defense completes its investigation of the experiments.
     Larson reminded the CIA that it "cannot use the DoD investigation as an excuse to avoid discovery responsibilities."
     He then addressed which topics are fair game for deposition, saying the government must produce witnesses to testify about the following: communication between the VA and test subjects on their health care claims; a 1963 CIA Inspector General report on an experiment called MKUltra, and the basis for each redaction on that report; the scope and conduct of document searches; the doses and effects of substances administered to test subjects; any contract or research proposals concerning the experiments; a confidential Army memo about the use of volunteers in research; all government-led human experiments from 1975 to date, but only those that involve specific drugs; and whether the government secretly administered MKUltra materials to "the patrons of prostitutes" in safe houses in New York and San Francisco, as the veterans claimed.
     Judge Larson ruled for the CIA on other issues, however, saying the agency’s not required to testify about test subjects who withdrew their consent or refused to participate; devices allegedly implanted into certain test subjects; the alleged use of patients at VA hospitals as guinea pigs in chemical and biological weapons experiments; or the drug research studies conducted by Dr. Paul Hoch, who was purportedly funded by the government and caused the death of a patient named Harold Blauer.
     Though Larson declined to sanction the government, as the veteranssought, he warned that he would impose sanctions for any "future unjustifiable discovery recalcitrance."
     Named plaintiffs are the Vietnam Veterans of America, Swords to Plowshare, the Veterans Rights Organization, Bruce Price, Franklin D. Rochelle, Larry Meirow, Eric P. Muth, David C. Dufrane and Wray C. Forrest.

Children of the Taliban

Children of the Taliban, posted with vodpod

[SEE:   Who Is Responsible for Suicide-Bomber Academies?]

Child soldiers: the other Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/apicazo/2010/11/child-soldiers-other-taliban-and-al-qaeda-militants

BY ALHELI PICAZO

“A poignant reality of contemporary conflicts is that increasingly children are being used as cheap and readily available weapons of war. From Colombia to Sri Lanka, from Sierra Leone to Uganda, thousands of children have been used in armed conflict situations. In Afghanistan, our forces are seeing the increasing use of children in combat operations, including as suicide bombers.” ~  Senator Roméo A. Dallaire – Retired Lieutenant General and former commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) & Ishmael Beah – Former child soldier, author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and a UNICEF representative from Sierra Leone. For the Toronto Star, August 18, 2010.

In the city of Peshawar, situated along Northwest Pakistan’s tribal area, lies Kachegori – one of the makeshift camps erected to house nearly one million citizens displaced by warring between the Taliban and the Pakistani Army.

More than 15,000 children call Kachegori Camp home, including Wasifullah and Abdurrahman who, in an interview with Frontline correspondent Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, call themselves best friends.

However, despite their shared interests and deep camaraderie, the boys hold opposing views on who’s to blame for the bombings and missile attacks that destroyed their village.

Wasifullah describes finding his 12 year old cousin among the 80 civilians who were killed by an American missile attack.

“His body was being eaten by dogs,” Wasifullah says, his face void of any emotion. “We brought his remains home in bags, [but] we could only find his legs, so we buried [his legs] in our village.”

Obaid-Chinoy notes that although American missile strikes “target the Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders,” they inevitably kill civilians, adding that militants “are quick to make use of the destruction [which] becomes recruitment rally for the Taliban.”

When asked what he aspires to become in the future, Wasifullah replies “God willing, I will join the Taliban.”

In what some ways represents the burgeoning civil war within Pakistan, Wasifullah’s best friend Abdurrahman believes it’s the Taliban who are responsible for the destruction.

When asked what he believes the future hold for him, Abdurrahman replies he’d like “to be a Captain … in the Pakistani Army and kill all the terrorists in Pakistan.”

When confronted with the notion of the two boys meeting in battle, Obaid-Chinoyinquires whether each youngster would be willing to take the life of his best friend.

“Yes,” replies Abdurrahman, the future captain of the Pakistani Army. “If [Wasifullah] is attacking the army, I will retaliate fiercely.”

“Definitely,” counters Wasifullah, the prospective Taliban militant. “If [Abdurrahman] does wrong, I will fight him.”

Displaced, discontented and disconcerted, Wasifullah and Abdurrahman are eager to take up arms and fight against those whom they perceive to be the cause of the growing strife within Pakistan.

Which side of the fight each boy finds himself on, however, largely depends on which side of the battle is first to recruit him.

Looking South to Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan, where the slums have become “a recruiting ground for the next generation of Taliban fighters,” it’s easy to see what becomes of boys like Wasifullah and Abdurrahman.

With nowhere else to go, impoverished children are invited to study at talibanized madrassas. They receive free food and shelter in exchange for their unwavering commitment to learning a bastardized interpretation of the Koran – spending hours rocking back and forth ‘reading’ from a book “written in Arabic, a language they don’t understand.”

It is here they are indoctrinated with the teachings of the Taliban, and of Sharia Law.

“Women are meant for domestic care, and that’s what they should do,” explains Shaheed, a 14 year old madrassa student whose name literally translates as ‘martyr’.

“Sharia Law says it, so why are women wandering around? The government should forbid women and girls from wandering around outside. Just like the government banned plastic bags – no one uses them anymore – we should do the same with women.”

When asked by Obaid-Chinoy what he’ll do after he graduates, Shaheed says he’ll join the Taliban and fully intends to “support them in their war.”

Taking it one step further, Shaheed says he’d ‘love to’ become a suicide bomber, “[because] when I look at suicide bombers younger than me, or my age, I get so inspired by their terrific attacks.”

This sentiment is echoed by Shaheed’s teacher, who jovially tells the Frontlinereporter that war is “in our blood.”

“No matter how many Muslims die, we will never run out of sacrificial lambs [children] … [who] consider this an opportunity to achieve martyrdom. Someone who sees death as a blessing — who can defeat him?”

Qari Abdullah is the Taliban leader personally responsible for recruiting children to carry out suicide bombing operations. Abdullah was himself educated in a radicalized madrassa, and as a child was recruited to fight in Afghanistan.

Explaining in detail how he grooms children – some as young as 5 years of age – for a future with the Taliban, Abdullah tells Obaid-Chinoy:

“The kids want to join us because they like our weapons. They don’t use weapons to begin with, they just carry them for us – and off we go. They follow us because they’re just small kids.”

When asked if he thinks it’s wrong to use children for suicide attacks, Abdullah doesn’t flinch.

“If you are fighting, then God provides you with the means. Children are tools to achieve Gods will, and whatever comes your way, you sacrifice it. So it’s fine”

Youngsters who’ve been ‘sacrificed’ often appear in Taliban recruitment videos; Their loyalties are showcased, their final deeds glorified, their pledge to martyrdom chanted in a disturbing lullaby:

“If you try to find me / after I have died / you will never find my whole body. / You will find me in tiny little pieces.“

Three boys featured in a Taliban propaganda video are Zenola, Sadic, and Mehsud; all three recruits became child suicide bombers who killed six, twenty-two, and twenty-eight respectively.

Wasifullah, Abdurrahman, Shaheed, Zenola, Sadic, and Mehsud – these are The Children of the Taliban: Youngsters who are impoverished from birth, displaced by war, plucked from obscurity, indoctrinated by militants, and ultimately, recruited for terrorism.

They are brought up to believe they’ll be carrying out Gods will; that martyrdom will deliver them eternal salvation.

The indoctrination and recruitment of the Children of the Taliban, in many ways, mirrors the indoctrination and recruitment of Omar Khadr – the Child of Al-Qaeda.

Khadr, a Canadian citizen who, at 15 years of age, was seized by U.S. forces in Afghanistan following an intense firefight, was by every definition a child soldier.

Indoctrinated by his father Ahmed Said Khadr, a senior member of Al-Qaeda, and raised along side the Bin Laden family, Khadr was quite literally Al-Qaeda’s child; a “sacrificial lamb;” a “tool to achieve God’s will.”

Following his capture, however, Khadr became a tool to achieve the Bush Administration’s will; a sacrificial lamb for the Bush/Cheney ‘War on Terror.’

In a 2010 episode of Doc Zone entitled The U.S. vs Omar Khadr, CBC documents the questionable case against, and unjust prosecution of, Khadr; a situation Senator Roméo Dallaire (Lieutenant General, Ret’d) warned of three years earlier:

“Canadians must realize by now that the [Harper] government’s cynicism toward Omar Khadr’s tragic predicament reflects an unacceptable moral position. We are permitting the United States to try a Canadian child soldier using a military tribunal whose procedures violate basic principles of justice [...]

In recent years, we have heard troubling facts about Guantanamo Bay and incontrovertible evidence of U.S. malfeasance.

In July, 2006, the United Nations called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, terming the indefinite detention of individuals without a charge “a violation of the convention against torture.” Two months later, more than 600 U.S. legal scholars and jurists called on Congress not to enact the Military Commissions Act of 2006, as it would rob detainees of fundamental protections provided by domestic and international law.

This act allows prosecutors to use evidence gleaned from abusive interrogations, including coercion and torture. The commissions also sabotage individuals’ ability to defend themselves by barring access to exculpatory evidence known to the U.S. government. In Mr. Khadr’s case, documents to be used as evidence for war-crimes charges, laid in February, 2007, have been altered.“

Furthermore, Dallaire detailed the global ramifications of prosecuting Khadr, a child soldier, as an adult:

“Within the international community, Canada is viewed as gullible for allowing one its citizens to be processed by an illegal tribunal system at Guantanamo, and as hypocritical for quietly acceding to the first ever child-soldier war-crimes prosecution.

Canada’s inaction has profound ramifications. The UN Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, says Khadr’s prosecution sets a hazardous precedent in international law, which will endanger child soldiers in conflict zones. The impunity enjoyed by the real criminals – those who have recruited child soldiers – continues to the detriment of real victims: the thousands of child soldiers around the world.“

Militants throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan are recruiting child soldiers at record pace, using them to monitor the movement of NATO forces to ensure the insurgents’ attacks have maximum impact; Relegating to them the risky assignment of assembling and planting IED’s and land-mines; Arming them with high-tech weaponry and sending them into battle.

As the NATO mission in Afghanistan extends to 2014 and beyond, it’s only a matter of time before soldiers are faced with another ‘Omar Khadr;’ a child in the heart of the battle fighting alongside the either the Taliban or Al-Qaeda.

When that time comes, what will NATO’s response be? Will soldiers turn a blind eye to the thousands of youngsters planting IED’s and land-mines? Will child soldiers who engage in armed combat simply be slaughtered alongside those who recruited them? If apprehended, will adolescents follow the precedent set by the Khadr prosecution, and be arrested, tried, and convicted of war crimes?

It’s time for NATO to live up to it’s international obligations and adhere to the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and “[recognize] the special needs of those children who are particularly vulnerable to recruitment or use in hostilities … [and] of the need [for] the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict.”

NATO cannot expect to achieve any lasting progress against either the Taliban or Al-Qaeda unless they’re fully prepared to focus, not on the prosecution, but the treatment and rehabilitation of the youngest generation of militant recruits.

Because ultimately, it’s with this generation of children in the Middle East on which the future stability of the entire region rests.

–

I highly encourage you to watch the entire Frontline documentary - Children of the Taliban

FRONTLINE/World editors: To protect certain people whose participation in the film may make them the target of threats, we made a decision to block access to the video in Pakistan.

 

Sec.Def. Gates Walks-Out of OAS Conference After Confrontation With Bolivian President Evo Morales

Tension in the stars between the U.S. and Bolivia

• by  Gianni Tarquini

Evo Morales

The Secretary of Defense of the United States abandons the work of the ninth Conference of Defense OAS after harsh attacks from the President of Bolivia Evo Morales has called his state and imperialist coup

ROME – The Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas has been historically the place where born U.S. hegemony agreements for joint exercises, training for armies and police forces of the weaker nations, deployment of troops, the establishment of military bases , donation and purchase of weapons and vehicles. The ninth is being held in Santa Cruz in Bolivia, 22 to 25 November with the participation of representatives of 30 countries, and, in the wake of the autonomy gained in recent years by the progressive governments of the continent, the summit was the script, On this occasion, distorted and adds another piece to the difficulties in the United States.

The protagonists were the landlord, Evo Morales Ayma, Indian President of Bolivia and the U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
On the opening day of the Bolivian president has called the United States "a state coup" and imperialist, indicated as a supporter of the coup in Honduras in 2009 and those of 2002 in Venezuela and Ecuador in 2010. He recalled that in September 2008, the U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg, had organized an anti-democratic coup civic leaning to the prefects in the eastern regions of his country to oust the elected government of the MAS (Movement Toward Socialism). In this round, Bolivia had the strength and dignity to expel Goldberg as a conspirator.
"The peace in the continent is at stake – has weighed in Morales – until the U.S. government will not cease to intervene with the aim of destabilizing the countries of the region."
The representative of Barack Obama responded to attacks leave the conference, after hearing, impassively, the speech by President of Bolivia. The U.S. Embassy also issued a statement in which he expressed his regret at the way that "Bolivia has missed an opportunity to make progress in key business that you are dealing with in the Conference, such as peace and confidence in the region , democracy, the armed forces and regional security, natural disasters. "

Before the work of the summit, Gates pointed to the dangers lurking for the continent as a result of the treaties that many countries are building with Iran (among these is Bolivia) Recalling the resolutions of the Security Council United Nations Convention against nuclear proliferation to which Iran would not assume. He also added his concerns regarding the increase of drug trafficking in the Andean zone.
Morales has taken these arguments supporting the right to negotiate with all countries of the world, without the "prohibitions" and without "democracies agreed" establishing "in developing countries holders of dignity and sovereignty", also recalled the persecution personally when he was executive producer of coca leaf (allowed and consumed by most of the population in Bolivia) in Cochabamba, where he worked the DEA (Drug Enforcemet Agency) U.S. with great freedom and that, under the pretext of combating drug trafficking, often acted with the purpose of political persecution. In those years, Morales was called the Andean Bin Laden.
The President of Bolivia has finally declared that during his mandate, his country no longer receive military training, they will participate in joint operations with the School of the Americas, directed by U.S. forces.

Santa Cruz Metro in bringing about the ninth Conference of Defence Ministers of the OAS (Organization of American States) in the U.S. Congress is holding the international seminar "Danger in the Andes: threats to democracy, human rights and security of the Inter- ", a sort of summit dell’ultradestra the continent. Participants include: Bolivians Sanchez de Losada Berzaìn Villas and Manfred Reyes, a former President of the Republic’s first Mayor and Prefect of Cochabamba and the second, driven by popular movements and now exiles sought by justice, Guillermo Zuloaga, a fugitive from Venezuelan justice and Globovision president, Otto Reich, left for Latin America of the government of George Bush, U.S. Congresswoman Ileana Ross Lehtinen especially supporter of Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban terrorist blown with Venezuelan citizenship, a former CIA agent.

Something is happening? The freedom won by many Latin American countries can lead to imprudent responses to stories that show the continent experienced any? What will be the position of Barack Obama? What is certain is that the recent victory of Dilma Roussef, and a new heir to President Lula of Brazil, the wind of change and consolidate the forces of the continent and aggregators also force the transnational economic powers and their hegemonic aims to act with greater caution and to deal with the new powerful Brazil and the new South American free states.

DeLay found guilty of two felonies

DeLay found guilty of two felonies, posted with vodpod

Pak Army has allowed US military presence in Quetta: Pentagon report

Afghanistan News.Net
Thursday 25th November, 2010 (ANI)

Pakistan has allowed the United States military and its coalition partners in Afghanistan to maintain a presence in Quetta, Balochistan, the US Department of Defence told Congress in a report.
"Pakistan Army General Headquarters recently approved an ODRP and Coalition presence at the PAKMIL 12 Corps HQ in Quetta, Balochistan," the Pentagon said in its report on the ‘Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan’.
It said that while the US government "recognizes the tremendous effort continuous PAKMIL operations represent for the Pakistan Government, insurgent safe havens along the border will remain the primary problem to achieving a secure and stable Afghanistan."
"One initiative toward this end is increasing the cooperation between Afghanistan, ISAF, and Pakistan Forces along the border to provide a more comprehensive approach to eradicating the insurgency," it added.
The report said that overall, US relations with the PAKMIL have improved. "There have been many positive steps taken to dismantle extremist networks and deny terrorists safe havens in Pakistan. There is still much work to be done, but there is a positive trend line toward achieving the overall strategic goals," it maintained.
The report also took notice of the importance of India’s role in Afghanistan, saying, "India’s presence in Afghanistan cannot be understood without considering the tense, fragile relationship between Pakistan and India. In the beginning of the reporting period, April 26-27, President Karzai visited New Delhi. The visit was seen as successful from both sides, with India reaffirming its commitment to Afghanistan as a reliable partner."
"India continues to be one of Afghanistan’s largest assistance donors, providing 1.3 billion USD funding for major infrastructure projects like power transmission, power lines, roads, etc. Work on the Salma hydroelectric dam in Herat Province continues.
In addition, India provides agriculture assistance and has increased access to degree scholarships and training programs," it added.
The report declared that the long-term stability and security of Afghanistan was intertwined in the dynamics of the region and the continuing influence, both positive and negative, of Afghanistan’s neighbours. (ANI)

Erdogan: We Won’t Remain Silent to Any Israeli Attack on Lebanon

Visiting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed on Thursday not to stand idle during any future Israeli attack on Lebanon or Gaza.
"You are asking us to remain silent while you enter Lebanon with the most advanced tanks and destroy schools and hospitals," Erdogan said about Israel.
He made his comment during a speech at the Annual Arab Banking Conference in Beirut.
Turkey’s only objective in the region is peace and stability, Erdogan said.
His speech came ahead of a trip to south Lebanon to visit Turkish troops serving with UNIFIL and inaugurate a Turkish-funded medical center that specializes in treating burn victims in Sidon.

The TSA, the CIA and the hidden truth about the Christmas bomber

Joseph Cannon

Many opinion pieces have linked the TSA outrages to last year’s “Christmas bomber” incident, which remains a very mysterious affair. This timeline is of use:

* In 2008, former U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff authored a 38 page report warning of terrorists exploiting our security deficiencies – including air travel.

* On Christmas Day 2009, just before the “attempted bombing incident” on board flight 253, there were a total of 40 body scanners in use in 19 airports in the U.S.

* On Christmas Day 2009, numerous witnesses watched while Abdulmutallab, the supposed ‘terrorist’ was escorted TO the plane by several men in suits.

* After the ‘bombing attempt’ Chertoff made a flurry of media appearances suggesting that the “attempted bombing incident” could have been avoided if all airports were using full body scanners.

* The Washington Post printed an article on January 1, 2010, calling Chertoff out for using his government credentials to promote a product that benefits his clients. It was revealed that Rapiscan Systems, the manufacturer of the naked body scanner Chertoff was recommending, was a client of Chertoff’s security consulting agency.

* Rapiscan has since received over $250 million in scanner orders.

Hard Times Turn Single-Family Homes Into Familial Communes

More families find three generations living under the same roof

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10329/1105985-28.stm

By Tim Grant, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

United Feature Syndicate

An illustration of Ed Stein, author/illustrator of the comic strip “Freshly Squeezed.”

Families are coming back together in ways this nation has not seen in 50 years.

Multiple generations of the same family are finding themselves living under one roof, as children take longer to leave home, grandparents care for grandchildren and adult children help care for their aging parents.

Since bottoming out around 1980, the trend has risen to a 50-year high point because of more people in need of help after losing jobs, filing for bankruptcy, facing foreclosure or having their savings wiped out in the stock market.

As of 2008, a record 49 million Americans, or 16.1 percent of the total U.S. population, lived in a family household that contained at least two adult generations or a grandparent and at least one other generation, according to a recent Pew Research Center analysis of Census data.

Those numbers are believed to be even higher today.

“This is a trend we will see increase in the immediate future,” said Jeff Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., and leading author of the multigenerational family study.

In the past, it was fairly common for multiple generations to share the same roof.

The fictitious Walton family had three generations living together in the hit 1970s TV series set in the Virginia mountains during the Great Depression. Even so, there were only 32 million multigenerational families in the 1940s compared with nearly 50 million today.

Even the White House now qualifies as a multigenerational household with the president, first lady, their two daughters and girls’ grandmother sharing the family living quarters.

The trend has found its way into the newspaper funny pages.

Cartoonist Ed Stein brings a modern twist to the comics page with his strip, “Freshly Squeezed,” which looks at family togetherness after the economic collapse.

In the new strip — which is running in the Post-Gazette through this week on a test basis — Liz and Sam have it all: a happy marriage, a precocious preteen son and a house that’s just the right size for the three of them. But when Liz’s parents lose their retirement savings in the economic collapse, they’re forced to move in with their grown children and grandchild.

The strip, launched in September, is based on Mr. Stein’s own experience 20 years ago when his mother died and his then 80-year-old father decided to move in with him while he and his wife raised toddlers.

“It’s not easy to try to balance a life where three generations are living under the same roof,” said Mr. Stein, who lives in Denver. “I wanted to design a comic strip that touched the emotional reality of what people are experiencing.

“I hope it is emotionally honest about the issues that come up,” he said.

Older adults, however, are not the age group most responsible for the overall rising trend. That distinction belongs to young adults ages 25 to 34 who have boomeranged back to live with their parents after being on their own.

Just 11 percent of young adults in this age group lived in multigenerational family households in 1980. By 2008, 20 percent did, according to Pew researchers.

“If there is a positive to this trend, it’s that people and families realize we are interdependent and need each other,” said Donna Butts, executive director of Generations United in Washington, D.C.

“Multigenerational family living is our roots. We will see a larger population of American families living in multigenerational households in the foreseeable future,” she said, adding that even divorced people are cohabitating with ex-spouses now because they can’t afford to move out.

The multigenerational household trend is a fact of life here as well as across the country.

More often these days, when families in the Pittsburgh area shop for new homes, they want more than anything else extra bedrooms and more living space to accommodate more family members.

“It’s as if they know it’s going to happen, and they want to plan ahead,” said Robbins Bobbitt, an agent with Howard Hanna Real Estate. “Some of it might be due to the economy, and some of it is due to families pulling together to take care of each other.”

She said many clients were asking for flexible space such as a gameroom that could do double duty, a first-floor office that could be converted to a bedroom, a first-floor master bedroom or a basement apartment.

Circumstances vary in each case. Grown children are moving back into their old rooms. Families are taking in Grandma and Grandpa. Down-and-out brothers and sisters need a chance to get back on their feet, and even out-of-work aunts and uncles are looking for a place to crash until the economy recovers.

These family reunions are not always happy occasions.

This week, a Hempfield man admitted to police that he shot his wife in the shoulder while they were arguing over a relative moving in. The 63-year-old man fetched a loaded .357-caliber Magnum from a cupboard and pointed it at his 58-year-old wife. He claimed he wanted only to scare her and that the shooting was an accident.

Multigenerational living arrangements work best when families come back together by choice, such as when elder parents move in to help care for a child, or so grown children can care for their own parents without traveling outside the home.

“They realize a richness in past family traditions and culture being passed to younger generations,” Ms. Butts said.

The living arrangements are not always as positive when prompted by stressful circumstances.

Several families in the Pittsburgh area who live in multigenerational housing conditions declined to be interviewed for this report due to the embarrassment some family members felt regarding the economic reasons that forced them to move in with relatives.

There was a time when multiple generations living under the same roof was as normal as horse-drawn buggies. In 1940, about 25 percent of the population lived in a household with more than one generation.

But the extended family household fell out of favor in this country right after World War II when the suburbs developed and single-family homes proliferated.

By 1960, Pew researchers say, 15 percent of households in this country were multigenerational families. The number continued to drop until it hit its lowest level of 12.1 percent in 1980. From there, it’s been inching back up.

“The reversal has taken place among all major demographic groups, and it, too, appears to be the result of a mix of social and economic forces,” the Pew report said.

One factor, according to Pew researchers, has been a wave of immigration dominated by Latin Americans and Asians that began around the 1970s. These immigrants are more inclined to live in multigenerational households to establish themselves after arriving here.

But the trend accelerated among native-born Americans in recent years as the Great Recession took center stage. The Pew research showed that in 2008, 2.6 million more Americans were living in such a household than in 2007.

Census data shows Hawaii has the largest percentage of multigenerational family households because of the high cost of housing there and because it is a more culturally acceptable way of life.

Tim Grant: tgrant@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1591.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10329/1105985-28.stm#ixzz16Huq9YrW

The Dirt on Yair Klein In Columbia/Antigua/Honduras/Guatemala/Costa Rica

The Quest for Security in the Caribbean: Problems and Promises in Caribbean

By Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith

http://books.google.com/books?id=vpsXKLynSCgC&pg=PA261&lpg=PA261&dq=Vere+Bird+Jr.,+Lt.+Col.+Clyde+Walker,&source=bl&ots=d3KpfiDsov&sig=clJssa-6K8Wkf7FkEuwAu5fpRnA&hl=en&ei=o63tTPmHOIOClAfb5PSMAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

Drooling Body Scanner Technician Caught Masturbating While High School Girls Waited In Line

Body Scanner Operator Caught Masturbating at Colorado Airport

[Cache link from Twelfth Bough, thanks to malcontent ]

August 4th, 2010

by Hugh Muzzbe

Not only do the new airport body scanners take risque pictures but according to the U.S. Marshals Service, the images in their thousands are being saved on hard disks.

DENVER – USA – A full body scanner operator was caught masturbating during a scanning session by airport staff late Tuesday.

Airport officials at Denver International airport were on high alert yesterday when a full body scanner operator was caught masturbating in his booth as a team of High School netball players went through the scanner.
"The young ladies were going through the scanner one by one, and every time one went through, this guys face was getting redder and redder. His hand was moving and then he started sweating. He was then seen doing his ‘O’ face. That’s when the security dragged him out of his booth and cuffed him. He had his pants round his ankles and everybody was really disgusted," Jeb Rather, a passenger on a flight to New York told CBS news.
The controversial scanners display every minute detail of a person’s body and have been called intrusive by privacy campaigners. Body scanners penetrate clothing to provide a highly detailed image so accurate that critics have likened it to a virtual porn shoot. Technologies vary, with millimeter wave systems capturing highly detailed pictures of genitals, and backscatter X-ray machines able to show precise anatomical detail. The U.S. government likes the idea because body scanners can detect concealed weapons better than traditional magnetometers.
"What do you want to do, get blown up by a goddamn Arab at 30,000 feet or we get to see your private parts? It’s up to you, the ball’s in your park," head of the TSA’s scanning department, Rodney Schroeder, told CNN.