The solar wind is 457 km/sec and there are four sunspot clusters on the Sun today. A pair of
CMEs launched into space on July 26th by erupting solar filaments will apparently miss Earth. The odds
of a geomagnetic storm this weekend are low
A 'Black Day' for Liberty - Chris Hedges
Indefinite Military Detention of American Citizens
By Peter Z. Scheer
July 18, 2013 "Information Clearing House -- The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit has
dealt a terrible blow to Chris Hedges, Daniel Ellsberg, Noam Chomsky and the other activists
and journalists suing to prevent the indefinite military detention of American citizens.
Sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act for 2012 would allow the
military to detain indefinitely persons who are deemed to consort with terrorists or those who
commit “belligerent acts” against the United States. Journalists, whose job it is to do just that,
would undoubtedly qualify, Hedges has argued.
The plaintiffs have had successes and setbacks in court.
Here is what Hedges wrote after Wednesday’s decision:
This is quite distressing. It means there is no recourse now either within the Executive,
Legislative or Judicial branches of government to halt the steady assault on our civil liberties and
most basic Constitutional rights. It means that the state can use the military, overturning over two
centuries of domestic law, to use troops on the streets to seize U.S. citizens, strip them of due
process and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers. States that accrue to themselves
this kind of power, history has shown, will use it. We will appeal, but the Supreme Court is not
required to hear our appeal. It is a black day for those who care about liberty.
Exclusive: Former Navy SEAL Tells of Forced
Incarceration under Obama Regime in 2009
“WHEN I WOKE UP, MY ARMS AND LEGS WERE IN CHAINS”
By Sharon Rondeau | The Post & Email
In an initial interview with The Post & Email, Mr. Harry Galvin Butler, III said that in late 2008
and early 2009, all he wanted to do was point out was that Obama was “a phony” and see
Congress act on it in the interest of national security. Instead, he ended up spending virtually the
entire year in federal prisons awaiting a “psychiatric evaluation.”
Butler is a proponent of the U.S. Constitution and the Second Amendment and perceived that
Obama, by virtue of being “a phony,” was “playing with my Constitution.” He told us that Navy
SEALS and other military members “hate phonies.” He has no previous psychiatric history or
criminal record.
Last August, former Marine Brandon Raub was arrested by the Secret Service and FBI, taken
into custody and placed in a psychiatric institution where he was told he would be forced to take
medication which he did not want. He was freed approximately one week later after a federal
judge reviewed his detention and found no probable cause by which to hold him. Raub’s plight
was taken up by The Rutherford Institute, which is suing the government for an unspecified
amount of money.
In a May 22, 2013 press release, Rutherford stated:
The complaint, filed in federal court in Richmond, alleges that Raub’s seizure and detention were
the result of a federal government program code-named “Operation Vigilant Eagle” that involves
the systematic surveillance of military veterans who express views critical of the government.
Institute attorneys allege that the attempt to label Raub as “mentally ill” and his involuntary
commitment was a pretext designed to silence Raub’s speech critical of the government and that
the defendants violated Raub’s rights under the First and Fourth Amendments.
Following Raub’s highly-publicized case, Rutherford revealed that hundreds of other military
veterans had contacted them to relate similar stories of government intimidation and people
“disappearing.” Rutherford Institute President John Whitehead stated that “Brandon Raub’s case
exposed the seedy underbelly of a governmental system that is targeting military veterans for
expressing their discontent over America’s rapid transition to a police state.”
Two days before announcing the civil rights lawsuit, Whitehead expounded on Operation
Vigilant Eagle, which was launched by the Department of Homeland Security, Department of
Justice and the FBI to observe “veterans” for alleged signs of “extremism” and “oppositional
defiance disorder (ODD).” Whitehead also wrote:
That the government is using the charge of mental illness as the means by which to immobilize
(and disarm) these veterans is diabolically brilliant. With one stroke of a magistrate’s pen, these
service men are being declared mentally ill, locked away against their will, and stripped of their
constitutional rights. Make no mistake, these returning veterans are being positioned as enemy
number one.
Navy veteran Darren Wesley Huff is presently incarcerated in a federal prison in Texarkana, TX
resulting from a false FBI affidavit and prosecution witnesses who perjured themselves on the
witness stand after Obama operatives reported “threats” to the Monroe County, TN courthouse
which were never uttered.
The Post & Email has reported in depth on the targeting of veterans under the Obama regime,
including the “Sovereign Citizen” program described by the FBI as including those who make
“References to the Bible, The Constitution of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court decisions,
or treaties with foreign governments.” Both Huff and another Navy veteran, Walter Francis
Fitzpatrick, III, have been characterized as “Sovereign Citizens” in a law enforcement training
program produced in Tennessee but used in various forms across the country.
Butler served as a Navy SEAL from 1969 to 1973 and was in the Reserves from 1973 to 1975.
Following his release from the Navy, he attended Embry Riddle Aeronautical University in
Daytona Beach, FL, where he went through the “Professional Pilot” program and obtained the
necessary FAA Flight Ratings. From there, he went to work for Gulfstream Aerospace flying the
world’s elite to their places of business and play. He became a captain and worked for the airline
for 20 years until his retirement for medical reasons in 2002.
Of his flying training, Butler told us, “Before I made Aircraft Commander I personally made
sure I had 5,000 hours flying time. Then when it came time for my Pilot in Command check ride
I told the Check Airman that I wanted ‘No Slack’. He put me through the ringer and the ride took
two days. I did this for one reason I knew that one day I’d be fighting an Emergency and peoples
lives would be in my hands. I wanted to prove to myself that there was no emergency I could not
handle in the cockpit. I took all those long years of hard work, study + spending every penny I +
the VA could come up with.”
Butler loved his career. He told The Post & Email, “I retired from Gulfstream in 2002 which I
hated. I was 52, at the height of my career + a Senior Demonstration Pilot in Flight Operations at
General Dynamics/Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation.” However, because of medical
complications and increasingly-long flights, Butler said he chose retirement because “I would
not have been able to make it other wise.” He added, “So reluctantly, kicking + screaming I
retired from a job I loved. I tell everyone I never worked a day in my life at Gulfstream, however
I did have one long love affair.”
Following several life-changing operations, Butler said he “has a handicap” but “is not
handicapped,” although he has trouble walking.
Before Barack Hussein Obama was elected in 2008, Butler became alarmed because he believed,
and still believes, that Obama is not a U.S. citizen. Article II, Section 1, clause 5 of the U.S.
Constitution requires that the president be a “natural born Citizen,” although Butler is certain that
Obama meets neither the definition of “U.S. citizen” nor “natural born Citizen.”
Butler said he called his representatives in Congress to no avail to “warn” them that a foreign
national was about to be sworn in to the office of President and Commander-in-Chief.
In a recent email to this writer, Butler wrote that Obama is guilty of being “a Phony, Ineligible to
be Eligible, Unfit for Command” and has committed “Abuse of Office as POTUS.”
Butler said that after he began sending emails and making phone calls to members of Congress,
agents from the Secret Service began visiting members of his family, as his address was
unconventional and not easily found. He has been told by his family members that they were
“inundated by lies” from Secret Service agents stating that he was not in his right mind. “They
use the power that they wield by being a government employee, which is ludicrous; it’s wrong;
it’s illegal…if there’s any way we can stop that, it will be a huge plus for this country,” Butler
said. “They all do the same thing.”
Butler is not sure when the Secret Service began contacting his family members. However, he
said that they were surveilling a friend of his in their black SUVs, describing it as “dirty, dirty
pool.”
In our previous interview, Butler told The Post & Email that his family members brought him to
a psychiatrist at the urging of the Secret Service, then a hospital, both on the same day. He
reported being told that he would be given medication, which he refused. Butler was then
surrounded by a dozen men whom he attempted to fight off despite his physical challenges but
was finally subdued by an injection of medication which was forced on him. “When I woke up,
my arms and legs were in chains,” Butler told us.
Butler was taken to the psychiatric wing of the hospital, where he remained for two weeks. He
was then moved to what he called “a private prison” in Ocilla, GA, in Irwin County, where he
spent about a month. Butler was told that he was there for a “psychological evaluation” before a
judge could “make a ruling” on his case. He had neither seen nor been told of any criminal
charges having been filed against him.
The criminal complaint, which Butler said he paid for and received only a month ago, states that
he made threats against Obama, a claim that Butler refutes. Butler told The Post & Email that he
“never threatened bodily harm” to Obama. “SEALS don’t do that,” he said.
Butler explained that before Obama’s first inauguration, he was “trying to get (Sens.) Saxby
Chambliss and Johnny Isakson to wake up.” “This guy’s a phony, this guy’s a phony…I was
writing them and calling them…So when they say they weren’t aware, that’s BS. You can see all
these lies and distortions in the complaint. The thing is, if you do this to the President of the
United States, it only takes one Secret Service agent to have you incarcerated. Nothing happened
until Obama was inaugurated. When he got inaugurated, the very first thing he did was seal
everything in the world related to him, even before he came after me…The order for me to be
arrested came directly from the White House; you can bet your bottom dollar on it,” Butler said.
“All of this is illegal. These guys get away with it for one reason: they have tons of money. All
of this corruption is done by threats and money and pressures from the government. That’s where
it all comes from; that’s the thing that fuels all of this corruption,” Butler told us. “The amount of
money to facilitate this cover-up is a figure beyond anyone’s imagination, and it’s not a problem.
The rich and famous don’t think about money because they have so much, they don’t worry
about it.”
Butler described the facilities where he was kept as “out in the middle of nowhere, like FEMA
camps. They’re on caretaker status, with barbed wire, huge; there would be a handful of people
there, and they all look brand-new. It’s a prison. What happens is the federal marshals are
responsible for moving the inmates around. They put you on a bus that’s got blacked-out
windows so you don’t know exactly where you are. They’ll pull in to a facility out in the middle
of nowhere and you go into a great big huge gate and then they’ll pull out some paperwork.
There are two or three of those facilities between Miami and North Carolina.”
Butler said that if an inmate asked where he was being taken, the marshals would say the name
of the town or city, but that was all.
The Post & Email asked if the marshals escorted him to the door of the facility, to which he
responded, “They take you to the front gate, and that’s as far as they go. You’re in chains. Any
time you leave a facility, you’re in chains. There are two sets of cuffs; the ankle cuffs are wider
than the wrist cuffs, and then you have a chain that goes around the wrist cuffs around your waist
in an overhand knot and it goes down to your legs.”
The Post & Email asked Butler how he felt after having served his country as a Navy SEAL and
being placed in chains, to which he said, “You feel terrible.”
He reported that he sometimes spent 14-16 hours a day on a bus, which caused him great
discomfort as a result of his medical condition. “They give you a bag with a sandwich and an
apple in it, but try to eat a sandwich with your hands chained to your waist,” he said. When we
asked, “How do you do it?” he said, “You can’t. Some of the guys will nudge it a little, but you
can’t get anything out of it.”
We asked if the marshals helped at all in that situation, to which Butler said, “****, no.”
Following Ocilla, Butler was taken to a facility in Miami, FL. -
The Military and Police
Lokee Link
No. Not to men like you.
There are no men like me.
There will always be men like you.
On Jan. 4 of last year, a local narcotics strike force conducted a raid on the Ogden, Utah, home
of Matthew David Stewart at 8:40 p.m. The 12 officers were acting on a tip from Mr. Stewart's
former girlfriend, who said that he was growing marijuana in his basement. Mr. Stewart awoke,
naked, to the sound of a battering ram taking down his door. Thinking that he was being invaded
by criminals, as he later claimed, he grabbed his 9-millimeter Beretta pistol.
The police say that they knocked and identified themselves, though Mr. Stewart and his
neighbors said they heard no such announcement. Mr. Stewart fired 31 rounds, the police more
than 250. Six of the officers were wounded, and Officer Jared Francom was killed. Mr. Stewart
himself was shot twice before he was arrested. He was charged with several crimes, including
the murder of Officer Francom.
The police found 16 small marijuana plants in Mr. Stewart's basement. There was no evidence
that Mr. Stewart, a U.S. military veteran with no prior criminal record, was selling marijuana.
Mr. Stewart's father said that his son suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder and may have
smoked the marijuana to self-medicate.
Early this year, the Ogden city council heard complaints from dozens of citizens about the way
drug warrants are served in the city. As for Mr. Stewart, his trial was scheduled for next April,
and prosecutors were seeking the death penalty. But after losing a hearing last May on the
legality of the search warrant, Mr. Stewart hanged himself in his jail cell.
The police tactics at issue in the Stewart case are no anomaly. Since the 1960s, in response to a
range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of
government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial
rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M-16 rifles to
armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously
reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts
have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop—armed to the teeth, ready to deal
harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.
The acronym SWAT stands for Special Weapons and Tactics. Such police units are trained in
methods similar to those used by the special forces in the military. They learn to break into
homes with battering rams and to use incendiary devices called flashbang grenades, which are
designed to blind and deafen anyone nearby. Their usual aim is to "clear" a building—that is, to
remove any threats and distractions (including pets) and to subdue the occupants as quickly as
possible.
Andy of Mayberry
Daily Republic/Associated Press
Today the U.S. has thousands of SWAT teams. A team prepares to enterahouse in Vallejo, Calif.,
on March 20, above.
The country's first official SWAT team started in the late 1960s in Los Angeles. By 1975, there
were approximately 500 such units. Today, there are thousands. According to surveys conducted
by the criminologist Peter Kraska of Eastern Kentucky University, just 13% of towns between
25,000 and 50,000 people had a SWAT team in 1983.
By 2005, the figure was up to 80%.
The number of raids conducted by SWAT-like police units has grown accordingly. In the 1970s,
there were just a few hundred a year; by the early 1980s, there were some 3,000 a year. In 2005
(the last year for which Dr. Kraska collected data), there were approximately 50,000 raids.
A number of federal agencies also now have their own SWAT teams, including the Fish &
Wildlife Service, NASA and the Department of the Interior. In 2011, the Department of
Education's SWAT team bungled a raid on a woman who was initially reported to be under
investigation for not paying her student loans, though the agency later said she was suspected of
defrauding the federal student loan program.
The details of the case aside, the story generated headlines because of the revelation that the
Department of Education actually has such a unit. None of these federal departments has
responded to requests for information about why they consider such high-powered military-style
teams necessary.
Americans have long been wary of using the military for domestic policing. Concerns about
potential abuse date back to the creation of the Constitution, when the founders worried about
standing armies and the intimidation of the people at large by an overzealous executive, who
might choose to follow the unhappy precedents set by Europe's emperors and monarchs.
The idea for the first SWAT team in Los Angeles arose during the domestic strife and civil
unrest of the mid-1960s. Daryl Gates, then an inspector with the Los Angeles Police Department,
had grown frustrated with his department's inability to respond effectively to incidents like the
1965 Watts riots. So his thoughts turned to the military. He was drawn in particular to Marine
Special Forces and began to envision an elite group of police officers who could respond in a
similar manner to dangerous domestic disturbances.
Enlarge Image
When a strike force raided the home of Matthew David Stewart, one officer was killed.
Mr. Gates initially had difficulty getting his idea accepted. Los Angeles Police Chief William
Parker thought the concept risked a breach in the divide between the military and law
enforcement. But with the arrival of a new chief, Thomas Reddin, in 1966, Mr. Gates got the
green light to start training a unit. By 1969, his SWAT team was ready for its maiden raid against
a holdout cell of the Black Panthers.
At about the same time, President Richard Nixon was declaring war on drugs. Among the new,
tough-minded law-enforcement measures included in this campaign was the no-knock raid—a
policy that allowed drug cops to break into homes without the traditional knock and
announcement. After fierce debate, Congress passed a bill authorizing no-knock raids for federal
narcotics agents in 1970.
Over the next several years, stories emerged of federal agents breaking down the doors of private
homes (often without a warrant) and terrorizing innocent citizens and families. Congress
repealed the no-knock law in 1974, but the policy would soon make a comeback (without
congressional authorization).
During the Reagan administration, SWAT-team methods converged with the drug war. By the
end of the 1980s, joint task forces brought together police officers and soldiers for drug
interdiction. National Guard helicopters and U-2 spy planes flew the California skies in search of
marijuana plants. When suspects were identified, battle-clad troops from the National Guard, the
DEA and other federal and local law enforcement agencies would swoop in to eradicate the
plants and capture the people growing them.
Advocates of these tactics said that drug dealers were acquiring ever bigger weapons and the
police needed to stay a step ahead in the arms race. There were indeed a few high-profile
incidents in which police were outgunned, but no data exist suggesting that it was a widespread
problem. A study done in 1991 by the libertarian-leaning Independence Institute found that less
than one-eighth of 1% of homicides in the U.S. were committed with a military-grade weapon.
Subsequent studies by the Justice Department in 1995 and the National Institute for Justice in
2004 came to similar conclusions: The overwhelming majority of serious crimes are committed
with handguns, and not particularly powerful ones.
The new century brought the war on terror and, with it, new rationales and new resources for
militarizing police forces. According to the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Department
of Homeland Security has handed out $35 billion in grants since its creation in 2002, with much
of the money going to purchase military gear such as armored personnel carriers. In 2011 alone,
a Pentagon program for bolstering the capabilities of local law enforcement gave away $500
million of equipment, an all-time high.
The past decade also has seen an alarming degree of mission creep for U.S. SWAT teams. When
the craze for poker kicked into high gear, a number of police departments responded by
deploying SWAT teams to raid games in garages, basements and VFW halls where illegal
gambling was suspected. According to news reports and conversations with poker organizations,
there have been dozens of these raids, in cities such as Baltimore, Charleston, S.C., and Dallas.
In 2006, 38-year-old optometrist Sal Culosi was shot and killed by a Fairfax County, Va., SWAT
officer. The investigation began when an undercover detective overheard Mr. Culosi wagering
on college football games with some buddies at a bar. The department sent a SWAT team after
Mr. Culosi, who had no prior criminal record or any history of violence. As the SWAT team
descended, one officer fired a single bullet that pierced Mr. Culosi's heart. The police say that the
shot was an accident. Mr. Culosi's family suspects the officer saw Mr. Culosi reaching for his
cellphone and thought he had a gun.
Assault-style raids have even been used in recent years to enforce regulatory law. Armed federal
agents from the Fish & Wildlife Service raided the floor of the Gibson Guitar factory in
Nashville in 2009, on suspicion of using hardwoods that had been illegally harvested in
Madagascar.
Gibson settled in 2012, paying a $300,000 fine and admitting to violating the Lacey Act. In
2010, the police department in New Haven, Conn., sent its SWAT team to raid a bar where
police believed there was underage drinking. For sheer absurdity, it is hard to beat the 2006 story
about the Tibetan monks who had overstayed their visas while visiting America on a peace
mission.
In Iowa, the hapless holy men were apprehended by a SWAT team in full gear.
Unfortunately, the activities of aggressive, heavily armed SWAT units often result in needless
bloodshed: Innocent bystanders have lost their lives and so, too, have police officers who were
thought to be assailants and were fired on, as (allegedly) in the case of Matthew David Stewart.
In my own research, I have collected over 50 examples in which innocent people were killed in
raids to enforce warrants for crimes that are either nonviolent or consensual (that is, crimes such
as drug use or gambling, in which all parties participate voluntarily). These victims were
bystanders, or the police later found no evidence of the crime for which the victim was being
investigated. They include Katherine Johnston, a 92-year-old woman killed by an Atlanta
narcotics team acting on a bad tip from an informant in 2006; Alberto Sepulveda, an 11-year-old
accidentally shot by a California SWAT officer during a 2000 drug raid; and Eurie Stamps,
killed in a 2011 raid on his home in Framingham, Mass., when an officer says his gun mistakenly
discharged. Mr. Stamps wasn't a suspect in the investigation.
What would it take to dial back such excessive police measures? The obvious place to start
would be ending the federal grants that encourage police forces to acquire gear that is more
appropriate for the battlefield. Beyond that, it is crucial to change the culture of militarization in
American law enforcement.
Consider today's police recruitment videos (widely available on YouTube), which often feature
cops rappelling from helicopters, shooting big guns, kicking down doors and tackling suspects.
Such campaigns embody an American policing culture that has become too isolated,
confrontational and militaristic, and they tend to attract recruits for the wrong reasons.
If you browse online police discussion boards, or chat with younger cops today, you will often
encounter some version of the phrase, "Whatever I need to do to get home safe." It is a sentiment
that suggests that every interaction with a citizen may be the officer's last. Nor does it help when
political leaders lend support to this militaristic self-image, as New York City Mayor Michael
Bloomberg did in 2011 by declaring, "I have my own army in the NYPD—the seventh largest
army in the world."
The motivation of the average American cop should not focus on just making it to the end of his
shift. The LAPD may have given us the first SWAT team, but its motto is still exactly the right
ideal for American police officers: To protect and serve.
SWAT teams have their place, of course, but they should be saved for those relatively rare
situations when police-initiated violence is the only hope to prevent the loss of life. They
certainly have no place as modern-day vice squads.
Many longtime and retired law-enforcement officers have told me of their worry that the trend
toward militarization is too far gone. Those who think there is still a chance at reform tend to
embrace the idea of community policing, an approach that depends more on civil society than on
brute force.
In this very different view of policing, cops walk beats, interact with citizens and consider
themselves part of the neighborhoods they patrol—and therefore have a stake in those
communities. It's all about a baton-twirling "Officer Friendly" rather than a Taser-toting
RoboCop.
Army Operations in American Cities
Following up on recent and unannounced training exercises in Florida and Washington state, the
U.S. military is conducting a drill in Chicago.
The Windy City’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC) told the
Chicago Tribune on Tuesday it is providing support for “routine military training exercises,”
including flying helicopters in the downtown area of the city at night.
“The training sites have been carefully selected to minimize the impact on the daily routine of
residents,” the OEMC said in a statement released to the public.
According to a 2013 U.S. Census Bureau report, 2,695,598 people live in Chicago. Population
density is 11,841.8 residents per square mile, making it one of the most populated urban areas in
the United States.
The “realistic urban training” conducted by the U.S. Special Operations Command, based at
MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, includes the participation of soldiers from the 160th
Special Operations Aviation Regiment headquartered in Fort Campbell, Kentucky.
According to the Tribune, the training is designed to prepare military personnel for overseas
deployments.
In July, we reported on an Army exercise conducted in Port Angeles, Washington, that turned the
small city into a simulated war zone and terrorized residents. Frightened citizens flooded the
police with phone calls complaining about low flying Chinook helicopters.
“Because of the volume of the complaints that we heard, I want to let the Army base know that if
it’s necessary to fly over populated areas, we want advance notice,” Clallam County Sheriff Bill
Benedict told the Peninsula Daily News on July 12.
In January, we reported on the U.S. Army along with other agencies taking over the Carnegie
Vanguard High School in Houston, Texas. Alarmed residents called police and complained about
gunshots and helicopters.
Earlier that month, a training exercise “designed to ensure that military personnel are able to
operate in urban areas and to focus on preparations for overseas deployment” rattled residents of
Miami, Florida. The exercise included simulated machine gun fire over a downtown Miami
freeway.
Earlier this month a Democrat member of the Chicago City Council called for putting troops on
the streets in response to a wave of violence. “I’m calling for the National Guard to come to
Chicago and ride up and down these streets,” declared Rep. Monica Davis. She demanded the
Governor of Illinois, Patrick Quinn, deploy the State Police and the National Guard. In addition,
Davis suggested Quinn appoint a task force to “guide the behavior of the National Guard. We
don’t want them to have us fearing them also. We want them there for safety and protection,”
The News Gazette reported on July 10. The move by Davis demonstrates the readiness of
government bureaucrats to propose militarized solutions to social problems.
Alex Jones and others have linked increased military exercises conducted in populated urban
areas to an effort by the government and the military to acclimate the citizenry to the presence of
combat troops on American streets.
In addition to increased military exercises, the federal government and the United States
Northern Command announced the deployment of military units for domestic homeland security
missions. In September, 2008, the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team was
assigned various tasks including “civil unrest and crowd control,” a detail that was later denied
by Northcom despite the concession that forces would be armed with both non-lethal and lethal
weapons as well as having access to tanks, we reported on November 4, 2008.
“In the next three years the military plans to activate and train an estimated 4,700 service
members for specialized domestic operations, according to Air Force Gen. Gene Renuart,
commander of U.S. Northern Command, which was created in 2002 for homeland defense
missions,” reported the Colorado Independent on November 2, 2008.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency added to the heightened state of domestic
militarization in 2012 when it announced it had graduated its first class of FEMA Corps
members under the rubric of emergency response preparedness. “While the idea of having a
volunteer force of tens of thousands of volunteers scattered across the country to aid in times of
natural disasters sounds great, the details and timing of this new government army is somewhat
curious, if not disturbing,” Infowars.com noted on October 18, 2002.
“Over the past two years, President Obama has signed a number of Executive Orders suspending
all civil and Constitutional rights and turning over management of an America under Martial
Law to FEMA. Also in that time, domestic federal agencies under DHS, including FEMA, have
ordered billions of rounds of ammunition as well as the corresponding firearms. Admittedly,
these new weapons and ammunition aren’t to be used in some far-off war or to fight forest fires
in California, but right here on the streets of America.”
Arctic Time Bomb
The rapidly melting Arctic is an "economic time bomb" likely to cost the world at least $60
trillion, say researchers who have started to calculate the financial consequences of one of the
world's fastest changing climates.
A record decline in Arctic sea ice has been widely seen as economically beneficial until now, as
it opens up more shipping and drilling in a region thought to contain 30 percent of the world's
undiscovered gas and 13 percent of its undiscovered oil.
However, the Arctic's pivotal role in regulating the oceans and climate means that as it melts it is
likely to cause climatic changes that will damage crops, flood properties and wreck infrastructure
around the world, according to research by academics at the UK's University of Cambridge and
Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
(Read more: Tamminen: Global warming solutions that work and save money)
This is likely to end up creating costs that will outstrip any benefits by three or more orders of
magnitude, said Chris Hope of Cambridge's Judge Business School.
"People are calculating possible economic benefits in the billions of dollars and we're talking
about possible costs and damage and extra impacts in the order of tens of trillions of dollars," he
said.
The Arctic has been warming at least twice as fast as the rest of the world for many years and the
area of its sea ice, which melts and refreezes after every summer, has been declining by an
amount almost equal to the size of the UK each year since 2001.
Last year, the summer ice shrank to its lowest point since satellite observations started in 1979,
raising concerns about the impact on the climate.
The effect the European researchers have focused on is the way warmer Arctic waters are
expected to hasten thawing of the permafrost beneath the East Siberian Sea off northern Russia
that is believed to contain vast deposits of methane. This is a greenhouse gas some 20 times more
potent than carbon dioxide, though it does not last as long in the atmosphere.
(Read more: Obama on climate change: 'We need to act')
There is much debate about how long it might take to release these methane deposits, and what
impact it would eventually have. But some scientists say there is already evidence of large
plumes of methane escaping and others fear this could happen fast enough to accelerate global
warming and eventually speed up other changes such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet,
which contains enough frozen water to push up global sea levels by 7 million.
That is why the group felt it was important to assess the possible economic impact of such
changes, said Peter Wadhams, a professor of ocean physics at Cambridge who believes the
Arctic sea ice could completely vanish in summers as early as 2015.
Read more from the Financial Times
UK climate scientists say oceans hold key as global warming slows
Met Office weathers storm of criticism
Energy chiefs warn on EU oil sands measures
"We're looking at a possibly catastrophic effect on the global climate that has been a
consequence of this extremely fast sea ice retreat," he said.
The researchers assessed the impact of higher methane emissions with a newer version of the
economic model used in the UK government's 2006 Stern Review on the economics of climate
change, which concluded the benefits of curbing global warming early far outweigh the potential
costs of not acting.
Depending on how much methane was emitted, they calculated its potential cost was likely to be
$60 trillion, with 80 percent of the damage occurring in developing countries least able to curb
the impact of more floods, droughts and storms.
(Read more: Want to fight climate change? Build in profits)
"It's not just important for polar bears, it's important for societies and global economies," said
Professor Gail Whiteman of Erasmus, adding her group's research underlined the need for world
leaders to start thinking about what she described as an economic time bomb.
Don’t Be Alarmed by the Drone Blimps Hovering
Over D.C. They’re Here to Stop Cruise Missiles
By Brian Resnick
July 26, 2013 | 8:18 a.m.
(Raytheon)
If America is attacked, we might be saved by blimps. No, not state-of-the-art jet fighters that can fly well beyond the
speed of sound. But blimps: lumbering, relatively jovial blimps—the manatees of aviation.
Within a year, a pair of souped-up $2.7 billion blimps (price includes R&D) will be floated 10,000 feet above the
District of Columbia and act as a 340-mile-wide eye in the sky, detecting incoming missiles and the like.
The design and testing phase for JLENS—the (deep breath) Joint Land Attack Cruise Missile Defense Elevated Netted
Sensor System, produced by Raytheon, a major weapons manufactuer—is over, relays Program Director Doug
Burgess to Popular Mechanics. Now, it is time for implementation. Or, as he puts it, "[We're] getting away from the
Ph.D. engineer types running the system to the 20- or 25-year-old soldier running the system."
The idea to employ blimps to protect a city is actually not new. During World War II, London deployed a similar
system to protect against Nazi air strikes. The barrage balloons, as they were called, acted as fence posts for a spool of
wire that would make it difficult for planes to maneuver in the city. Basically, they were barbed wire fences suspended
a few thousand feet in the air. They were also filled with hydrogen, which upon impact with a plane would explode.
This is what they looked like:
(Wikimedia Commons)
The balloons that will fly over D.C. will perform a similar function, and look remarkably similar—but swap the wire
cabling for state-of-the-art radar and computer processors. And these won't be keeping out Nazi propeller planes;
they'll detect more-modern threats, such as cruise missiles. According to Raytheon, the units will protect a city at
500-700 percent less than the cost to operate the reconnaissance planes necessary to maintain the same amount of
coverage. They will provide a comforting amount of "minutes," rather than the current "seconds" of time for U.S.
forces to decide what to do with the threat of an antiship cruise missile.
The blimps, or aerostats as they are technically called, are 77 yards long, and have a range of 340 miles. They fly at
10,000 feet for 30 days at time. According to an unclassified report by the Defense Department, they've performed
well in testing. "The JLENS radars successfully tracked fighter aircraft, towed targets, and cruise-missile targets,
meeting accuracy requirements within margin," the report states. A test on the Great Salt Lake, reports Popular
Mechanics, revealed that the JLENS can detect a swarm of boats from 100 miles away. The aircraft could potentially
carry weapons, and have fire-control radar, which means they can send information that a ballistic system can
interpret to aim a shot.
A video from Raytheon produced with (fitting?) 80s-style production and music illustrates how it works.
Privacy Be Damned
The imminent health-exchange scandal.
AUG 5, 2013,
VOL. 18, NO. 44 • BY MICHAEL ASTRUE
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Privacy & Terms
I have been dismayed, but unsurprised, to see that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is already spinning the
launch of its federal health insurance exchange this October. The federal and state “exchanges”—HHS recently rebranded them
“marketplaces”—are a linchpin of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that would allow uninsured Americans to assess and select health
insurance plans. Repeated HHS assurances that the systems will be ready for launch have been a critical factor in state decisions
as to whether they should use the HHS portal or build their own; at least 14 states have wisely chosen to build their own systems.
A functional and legally compliant federal exchange almost certainly will not be ready on October 1 for those who will have no
choice but to use the federal portal. The reasons for failure are not short timelines (Congress gave HHS more than three years),
political interference (Congress has not focused on ACA systems), or complexity (states have built well-designed exchanges). The
reason is plain old incompetence and arrogance.
After enactment of the ACA, the former administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Donald Berwick,
had the responsibility of creating systems for the exchanges, which required peripheral support from the Social Security
Administration (SSA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Congress did not appropriate special funding for this initiative, and
Berwick was unwilling to shift adequate funds within CMS for this critical project. Berwick then failed to persuade HHS secretary
Kathleen Sebelius to spend one penny on this effort from her massive ACA discretionary fund. Berwick also failed to bully SSA into
paying for the entire system; he brushed aside the blatant illegality of that approach.
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end article-break
Civil servants at CMS did what they could to meet the statutory deadline—they threw together an overly simplistic system without
adequate privacy safeguards. The system’s lack of any substantial verification of the user would leave members of the public open
to identity theft, lost periods of health insurance coverage, and exposure of address for victims of domestic abuse and others. CMS
then tried to deflect attention from its shortcomings by falsely asserting that it had done so to satisfy White House directives about
making electronic services user-friendly.
In reality, the beta version jammed through a few months ago will, unless delayed and fixed, inflict on the public the most
widespread violation of the Privacy Act in our history. Almost a year ago both I and the IRS commissioner raised strong legal
objections to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which has statutory oversight responsibilities for the Privacy Act. As of
the time of my resignation as commissioner of Social Security last February, OMB lawyers could not bring themselves to bless a
portal in which I could change Donald Trump’s health insurance and he could change mine.
Incredibly, at the time of our appeal, no senior legal official at HHS had reviewed the legal issues raised by this feature of the ACA. It
is my understanding that OMB, despite the recent furor over this administration’s lack of respect for the privacy of citizens, has
ordered agencies to bulldoze through the Privacy Act by invoking an absurdly broad interpretation of the Privacy Act’s “routine use”
exemption.
The Privacy Act is a general prohibition, subject to narrow exceptions, on disclosure of records between agencies or to the public.
The “routine use” exception allows disclosure when the use of a record is “for a purpose which is compatible with the purpose for
which it is collected.” Privacy being essential to patient care, it is impossible to justify a “routine use” exception for a system
knowingly built in a way that will permit disclosure of intimate health care data.
In this regard, the administration is not only preparing to violate the law, it is also holding itself to a far lower privacy standard than
that to which it is trying to hold the private sector. In announcing the administration’s “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights,” last year
President Obama himself said, “American consumers can’t wait any longer for clear rules of the road that ensure their personal
information is safe online.”
A June Government Accountability Office (GAO) report gingerly avoided all the significant privacy and operational issues
surrounding the HHS system, and did little more than report that CMS admitted it was behind on certain parts of the program but felt
it could catch up. Nowhere did our congressional watchdogs show any sign that they had actually tested the system and considered
its readiness for public use.
The end of a Nation
Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts says, “The country is not being run by the President. It
is being run by spy agencies and private interest groups, Wall Street and military security complex . . .They
run the country. The President is a puppet, a figurehead.” Dr. Roberts contends, “If you are a lawless state,
which the United States is, it obeys no international law. It does not obey the Geneva Convention . . . It
tortures people. It doesn’t obey the Constitution. It doesn’t obey anything. It does what it wants. . . . If you are
a lawless state, you disguise yourself as a democracy.” Former President Jimmy Carter agrees. Just last week,
Carter said, “The U.S. has no functioning democracy at this moment.”
Yes, bubbles are forever, bouncing around our brains. Until the next crash. Then,
denial, our brain hibernates … erasing the pain, losses … memory’s suppressed …
the next bubble mania heats up … like now, a new virus spreads, metastasizing …
feasting on bullish market news, short-term profits … a new addiction, disease,
virus takes over the brain … exploding into a neurological social-media experience
… consuming America’s collective brain … slowly climbing a new wall of worry
… building to a new critical mass, a new flash point, then ignition.
The ‘90s dot-com mania was irrational exuberance run amok. American investors
created a grand collective delusion of a perpetual New Economy, a new reality
where it seemed reasonable for 19 high-tech funds to return 100% to 365% in
1999, where your barber’s stock tips seemed reasonable, where the neighborhood
barbecue was where we shared our reasonable plans to retire millionaires soon, in
the New Millennium.
But their “forever bubble” exploded fast in the New Millennium. Shocked
Americans settled into a painful 30-month recession as Wall Street lost $8 trillion
market cap of Main Street’s retirement nest eggs. That same scenario repeated
again in the bank credit meltdown of 2007-2009. And today we’re moving
headlong into the third shocker of the 21st century. Oblivious that history is
repeating, lessons not learned, no wonder we’re baffled.
As with “Irrational Exuberance,” Shiller’s “Bubbles Forever” looks beyond our
24/7 short-term mental trap. He was in Colombia, South America, recently:
“People there told me about an ongoing real-estate bubble … Colombia’s central
bank maintains a home-price index for three main cities — Bogotá, Medellín, and
Cali. The index has risen 69% in real (inflation-adjusted) terms since 2004, with
most of the increase coming after 2007.”
That growth rate reminded him of America’s accelerating growth a few years
earlier when the S&P/Case-Shiller Ten-City Home Price Index shot up 131% from
a 1997 bottom to its peak in 2006, before the bottom collapsed. It’s repeating
across the world.
The warning signs began years earlier in our rally leading up to a 2008 crash.
Investors slowly climbed the wall of worry as media and market bulls cheered
every new record. The warnings were everywhere. But the bulls snorted louder.
And our minds were obviously more receptive to the bulls.
Are the big banks really as powerful as some people say that they are? Do they
really control the global economy ? If y0u asked most people, they would tell you
that governments control the global economy. But the campaigns of our politicians
are funded by the ultra-wealthy, the big banks and the large corporations that they
control. Others would tell you that the Federal Reserve and the rest of the central
banks around the world control the global economy. But the truth is that the
Federal Reserve was established by the bankers and for the benefit of the
bankers. As you will see below, at the very core of the global economy there
exists a “super-entity” of financial institutions that control an almost unimaginable
amount of wealth and power. These financial institutions and the ultra-wealthy
individuals behind them are really the ones that are pulling all the strings. In this
world money equals power, and the borrower is the servant of the lender. When
you follow the pyramid all the way to the top, it begins to become very clear who
really is in control.
In business schools all over America today, instead of dreaming of starting new
businesses and contributing something positive to society, most business students
are dreaming of going to Wall Street and getting rich. But Wall Street doesn’t
actually create or build anything of value for society. Instead, the bankers make
most of their profits by essentially pushing money and paper around. In a recent
article, Chris Martensoncommented on this…
Today, some of the most celebrated individuals and institutions are ensconced
within the financial industry ; in banks, hedge funds, and private equity firms.
Which is odd because none of these firms or individuals actually make anything,
which society might point to as additive to our living standards. Instead, these
financial magicians harvest value from the rest of society that has to work hard to
produce real things of real value.
While the work they do is quite sophisticated and takes a lot of skill, very few of
these firms direct capital to new efforts, new products, and new innovations.
Instead they either trade in the secondary markets for equities, bonds, derivatives,
and the like, which perform the ‘service’ of moving paper from one location to
another while generating ‘profits.’ Or, in the case of banks, they create money out
of thin air and lend it out – at interest of course.
#1 According to the Bank of America Merrill Lynch equity strategy team, their big
institutional clients are selling stock at a rate not seen “since 2008“.
#2 In 2008, stock prices had wildly diverged from where the economic
fundamentals said that they should be. Now it has happened again.
#3 In early 2008, the average price of a gallon of gasoline rose substantially. It
is starting to happen again. And remember, whenever the average price of a
gallon of gasoline in the U.S. has risen above $3.80 during the past three years, a
stock market decline has always followed.
#4 New home prices just experienced their largest two month dropsince Lehman
Brothers collapsed.
#5 During the last financial crisis, the mortgage delinquency rate rose
dramatically. It is starting to happen again.
#6 Prior to the financial crisis of 2008, there was a spike in the number of
adjustable rate mortgages. It is happening again.
#7 Just before the last financial crisis, unemployment claims started skyrocketing.
Well, initial claims for unemployment benefits are rising again. Once we hit the
400,000 level, we will officially be in the danger zone.
PanHandlers
#8 Continuing claims for unemployment benefits just spiked to the highest
level since early 2009.
#9 The yield on 10 year Treasuries is now up to 2.60 percent. We also saw the
yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries rise significantly during the first half of 2008.
#10 According to Zero Hedge, “whenever the annual change in core capex, also
known as Non-Defense Capital Goods excluding Aircraft shipments goes negative,
the US has traditionally entered a recession”. Guess what? It is rapidly heading
toward negative territory again.
#11 Average hourly compensation in the United States experienced itslargest drop
since 2009 during the first quarter of 2013.
#12 In the month of June, spending at restaurants fell by the most that we have
seen since February 2008.
#13 Just before the last financial crisis, corporate earnings were very
disappointing. Now it is happening again.
#14 Margin debt spiked just before the dot.com bubble burst, it spiked just before
the financial crash of 2008, and now it is spiking again.
#15 During 2008, the price of gold fell substantially. Now it is happening again.
#16 Global business confidence is now the lowest that it has been since the last
recession.
#17 Back in 2008, the U.S. national debt was rapidly rising to unsustainable
levels. We are in much, much worse shape today.
#18 Prior to the last financial crisis, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben
Bernanke assured the American people that home prices would not decline and
that there would not be a recession. We all know what happened. Now he is once
again promising that everything is going to be just fine.
And Secretary of the Treasury Lew stated this morning that there will be no new spending cuts.
Data Centers Double Since 2011
The federal government estimated it has nearly
doubled the number of data centers it had in 2011,
now totaling over 7,000.
As the Federal Times noted, the "Obama administration estimated the government had about
3,100 data centers" in June of 2011. In June of 2013, a "recount yielded more than 6,000. Now
that number has grown again -- to 7,145." Lawmakers released those numbers on Thursday,
and the Government Accountability Office confirmed the figures.
Rep. John Mica (R-FL), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Government Operations, said
the government will never meet its goal of consolidating data centers at its current pace.
A government official said that the "number of data centers has grown because of changes in the
counting methodology and because agencies discovered more data centers that had previously
been unaccounted for."
David Powner, the director of information technology management issues at GAO, agreed.
“There are some fundamental questions about whether the government really knows what it
has," he said.
The federal government will have one more data center when it opens a massive NSA data
storage facility in Utah this fall.
Swappable Batteries a Flawed Concept
A consortium of Better Place electric car owners, who banded together to try to salvage the
pioneering firm, received court permission Wednesday to acquire the bankrupt company for
some 18 million shekels (less than $5 million).
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The group, led by solar-energy entrepreneur Yosef Abramowitz, pledged to employ at least 50
Better Place staff members and to maintain at least 15 of the company’s 30-plus battery
exchange stations nationwide for two years, Army Radio reported.
In additional to acquiring the Better Place Israel assets, the group received permission to buy
Better Place Switzerland’s intellectual assets for some NIS 25 million ($6.8 million), subject to
approval by a Swiss court, Globes reported.
The owner consortium, the Association for the Promotion of the Electric Car, was formed
expressly for the purpose of buying Better Place, and in the acquisition beat out a group
comprised of Success Parking of Israel and Car Charging Group of the US.
Better Place, started by Shai Agassi, raised more than $800 million for the revolutionary concept
of electric car batteries that could be quickly swapped out at dedicated stations, which would
eliminate the need for lengthy charging and greatly increase vehicle range.
But Agassi was fired last fall and the company went belly up in May, citing losses totaling
almost a billion dollars. Since then, court-appointed liquidators have been processing various
proposals for the firm.
In addition to maintaining the basic functionality of the company, Abramowitz and his team of
Better Place car owners aim to have Better Place declared a national infrastructure project,
eventually becoming a national technology and service platform for all electric vehicles in the
country.
The company has only $9.5 million in assets and has lost over $800 million since it was
established — $454 million of that last year alone. Part of the problem stemmed from Agassi’s
original plan to build the battery switching stations, which drove overhead costs up, as each one
cost some $500,000 to construct.
The company had only attracted some 1,000 drivers throughout all of Israel, each of whom NIS
160,000 ($44,000) for their electric Renault Fluence. But some of the drivers banded together to
try to save the company.
“We see in this a national infrastructure worth hundreds of millions, and which is one of the most
advanced in the world,” said high-tech consultant Efi Shahak, one of the Better Place car owners
in the successful group. “It’s an unbelievable number of working stations. This is [on the cutting
edge of] the current technology of electric vehicles, and Israel is the only place that has it: 37
stations, 2,000 curbside [charging] stands and 1,000 cars. It doesn’t make sense to throw it out.”
National Health Care a Popular Tactic for Tyranny
Even though it’s undeniably true from a historical standpoint, Barack Obama, the Democratic
Party and their accomplices in the Big Media will vilify you, ridicule you and accuse you of
minimizing the tragedy of the Holocaust.
But I don’t really care if they play that card with me. They’ve already played the race card.
They’ve already played the Nazi card. They’ve already played the “extremist” card. Consider me
inoculated from the venomous poison of these vipers.
Here are the facts you should know before accepting a nationalized health-care system that will
place in the hands of government the very keys to your life and liberty.
Adolf Hitler didn’t launch national socialist health care in Germany. It began in the latter part of
the 19th century under Otto von Bismarck, ironically as part of his “anti-socialist” legislation.
Bismarck, like many of today’s U.S. politicians, believed introducing a form of what I call
“socialism lite” would stave off the more virulent forms of the disease.
The Weimar Republic that preceded the Nazi takeover had already witnessed the
transformation of the German health-care system from one focused on individual practitioners
and individual patients to one more concerned with general public health. Prevention became
the watchword. Doctors became more like state functionaries concerned with the nation’s
general health than individuals accountable to patients for health care.
When a worldwide economic crisis hit in 1929, government expenditures for health care were
slashed as were those for public housing, welfare payments and creation programs. The
government health-care system began to apply cost-efficiency calculations to medical
treatments.
The first victims were those considered weak and “unproductive” to the interests of the state.
The eugenicist ideas of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, a hero of today’s
collectivists promoting socialized medicine, were studied and adopted by the Germans. Charles
Darwin’s notions about “survival of the fittest” were applied to social engineering policies.
Before Hitler ever came to power, Germans were already euthanizing or sterilizing large
numbers of the mentally ill and the mentally retarded.
Just as today’s American Medical Association embraces socialized medicine, so did its German
counterpart support the Nazi expansion of state manipulation of medical care for state
purposes.
One of the first Nazi-era laws was the “Law for the Prevention of Progeny of Hereditary
Disease,” which prohibited reproduction by those deemed “genetically inferior.” With it came the
institution of a “Genetic Health Court” of judges and doctors which determined who should be
forcibly sterilized based on the state’s extremely limited knowledge of genetics.
By 1935, Nazi Germany was performing forced abortions up to the sixth month of pregnancy.
Thousands of handicapped children were killed by pediatricians under the direction of Ernst
Wentzler at the German Children’s Hospital in Berlin. Other medical researchers, including the
infamous Josef Mengele, used the children in their own gruesome and torturous experiments.
Ultimately, of course, all this desensitization to state-approved and state-conducted murder and
mayhem led directly to genocide – the attempted systematic destruction of the Jews in Europe.
Am I suggesting that socialized medicine of the kind being promoted in America today leads
inevitably to holocaust and mass murder?
No.
But I am saying it is a necessary prerequisite for government-directed holocaust and mass
murder to occur.
It’s also clear that the kind of state-enforced medical rationing and the politicization of medicine
observed in Germany before and during Hitler’s reign of terror would not be possible without
that first step of nationalized health care.
This does not mean Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are little Hitlers in the
making. I am not calling them Nazis, though they share some common values and common
friends with the German national socialists. I am saying their statist work in the area of so-called
“health-care reform” can make it possible for some future American version of Hitler to carry out
his most diabolical plans.
In America, unlike anywhere else in the world, our Constitution strictly limits the role of
government in our lives because our founders understood the inherent and inevitable threat to
life, liberty and prosperity posed by the state.
Try to find in that document any hint of a government power to be responsible for essential
services like food, housing or medical care. It’s not there – for a very good reason. The
government is supposed to be dependent on the people, not the people on government.
Literal Smart Dust Opens Brain-Computer Pathway to “Spy on Your Brain”
Some might have heard about Smart Dust; nanoparticles that can be employed as sensor
networks for a range of security and environmental applications. Now, however, literal
Smart Dust for the brain is being proposed as the next step toward establishing a braincomputer interface.
Photo: Neurogadget.com
By Nicholas West
Activist Post
July 20, 2013
The system is officially called “neural dust” and works to “monitor the brain from the
inside.” Inventors are attempting to overcome the hurdle of how to best implant sensors
that can remain over the course of one’s life. Researchers at Berkeley Engineering
believe they have found a novel way to achieve this:
This paper explores the fundamental system design trade-offs and ultimate
size, power, and bandwidth scaling limits of neural recording systems.
A network of tiny implantable sensors could function like an MRI inside the
brain, recording data on nearby neurons and transmitting it back out. The
smart dust particles would all contain an extremely small CMOS sensor
capable of measuring electrical activity in nearby neurons. The researchers
envision a piezoelectric material backing the CMOS capable of generating
electrical signals from ultrasound waves. The process would also work in
reverse, allowing the dust to beam data back via high-frequency sound
waves. The neural dust would also be coated with polymer. (Source)
The investment in neuroscience has received a $100 million dollar commitment via
Obama’s BRAIN project, while Europe has committed $1.3 billion to build a
supercomputer replica of the brain in a similarly comprehensive and detailed fashion as
the Human Genome Project mapped DNA. The Brain Waves project is divided into four
modules, each tasked with studying the impact of developments in the field of
neuroscience and neurotechnology. The titles of the modules reflect the areas of
examination:
Module 1: Society and policy
Module 2: Implications for education and lifelong learning
Module 3: Conflict and security
Module 4: Responsibility and the law
The results from these modules have been published, and clearly illustrate how this
panel views the lower public masses in light of their status as the elite arbiters of human
destiny. The dual approach to this investigation must be kept in mind as the U.S.
government is now rolling out the BRAIN initiative as the next great thing since the
human genome project. The ramifications are potentially even more momentous.
We often hear from critics that these think-tanks are an essential part of scientific
discovery, and that drawing conclusions of a nefarious nature about their intent is
paranoid conspiracy theory -- they are only thinking, after all. I would submit that
objective scientific inquiry is absolutely necessary and that the proper role of science is
to disseminate results to the public for open debate, prior to their implementation.
However, think-tanks such as the Royal Society betray, by their own language,
subjective biases (and corporate connections) that have no place in true science.
Concurrently, there is massive long-term investment in nanotech applications via the
National Nanotechnology Initiative 2011 Strategic Plan. This 60-page document lays out
a projected future “to understand and control matter” for the management of every facet
of human life within the surveillance matrix of environment, health and safety. Twentyfive U.S. Federal agencies are participating.
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The concept of Smart Dust has been applied and/or proposed for use in the following
ways, just to name a few:
Nano sensors for use in agriculture that measure crops and environmental conditions.
Bomb-sniffing plants using rewired DNA to detect explosives and biological agents.
“Smart Dust” motes that wirelessly transmit data on temperature, light, and movement (this can also be
used in currency to track cash).
However, this is the first time that there is a working plan to apply Smart Dust to the human brain.
Researchers claim it will be some time before (if ever) this is workable. One aspect that is interesting to
note, is that once these particles are sent into the brain, it will be ultrasound that activates the system for
full monitoring. This is an area of research that also has been looked at by DARPA as one of the future
methods of mind control.
Their idea is to sprinkle electronic sensors the size of dust particles into the cortex and to interrogate them
remotely using ultrasound. The ultrasound also powers this so-called neural dust.
Each particle of neural dust consists of standard CMOS circuits and sensors
that measure the electrical activity in neurons nearby…
The neural dust is interrogated by another component placed beneath the
scale but powered from outside the body. This generates the ultrasound that
powers the neural dust and sensors that listen out for their response, rather
like an RFID system.
The system is also tetherless–the data is collected and stored outside the body
for later analysis. (source, MIT)
Read “tetherless” as “wireless” — or remote controlled analysis of the human brain, thus
opening the door (theoretically) for remote mind control. As I’ve highlighted before, this
is a two-way street — some people might feel content, for example, with sending their
brain’s information out to a doctor for evaluation, but this sensor network could also
transmit data back, as is admitted here:
That’s why Seo and co have chosen ultrasound to send and receive data.
They calculate that the power required to use electromagnetic waves on the
scale would generate a damaging amount of heat because of the amount of
energy the body absorbs and the troubling signal-to-noise ratios at this
scale.
By contrast, ultrasound is a much more efficient and should allow the
transmission of at least 10 million times more power than electromagnetic
waves at the same scale. (emphasis added).
In case anyone believes that this has little chance of success, MIT highlights that one of
the authors of the research has already achieved this with a remote controlled beetle.
The human brain is clearly of vast, perhaps infinite, complexity — and this is without
even introducing concepts such as “the mind” or “the soul.” Nevertheless, it is clear that
the reductionists are doing their very best to “Solve the Brain” – measuring it, mapping
it, and making sense of it. (source)
Are we to believe that “controlling it” has been left off the list for mere ethical reasons?
Not likely.