Filed under: Barack Obama, beijing, Britain, China, copenhagen, Copenhagen treaty, cyber attack, cyber dominance, cyber security, cyber war, David Miliband, Europe, european union, future war, gordon brown, hackers, internet, internet blackout, internet manipulation, internet police, internet war, london, Military, Military Industrial Complex, north korea, Nuke, obama, Russia, south korea, United Kingdom, WW3, ww4 | Tags: Akmal Shaikh, People's Liberation Army, Shaikh
China Will Soon Have Power to Shut Lights Off Britain
UK Telegraph
January 4, 2010
The year is 2050, and a diplomatic dispute between China and Britain risks escalating into all-out war. But rather than launching a barrage of ballistic missiles and jet fighters to destroy key British targets, Beijing has a far simpler plan for defeating its enemy. It simply turns off the lights.
At the flick of a switch elite teams of Chinese hackers attached to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) launch a hi-tech assault on Britain’s computer systems, with devastating consequences. Within minutes the country’s power stations, water companies, air traffic control, government and financial systems are totally shut down.
Britain’s attempt to respond by launching nuclear-armed Trident missiles at China has to be abandoned, as the computer systems that control the weapons system are no longer functioning.
At a time when relations between China and Britain are supposed to be improving, the prospect of Beijing launching a cyber attack against Britain and its allies might seem to be the stuff of fantasy.
After all, it is only two years since Gordon Brown made a highly successful visit to Beijing where the two countries agreed to increase trade by 50 per cent by this year, and to cooperate on a range of issues, such as global warming. As one of the world’s leading economic powers, China’s role on the world stage has transformed dramatically over the past decade, with the huge wealth that Beijing has accumulated from its impressive economic growth playing a key role in supporting the global economy.
As a consequence Western policymakers have intensified their efforts to persuade China to draw on its economic prosperity and play a constructive role in world affairs, such as persuading North Korea and Iran to give up their controversial nuclear weapons programmes.
But last week Mr Brown came up against an altogether different kind of China, one that appears to have no interest in behaving like a proper ally.
For weeks British ministers and officials tried desperately to persuade their Chinese counterparts to commute the death sentence passed on Akmal Shaikh, a mentally ill 53-year-old minicab driver from North London who was convicted of smuggling four kilos of heroin into China two years ago.
Mr Brown is said to have personally raised Shaikh’s case with the Chinese premier, Wen Jiaboa, when they met at last month’s climate change summit in Copenhagen, and David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, made similar entreaties to the Chinese embassy in London.
But for all the talk of improved bilateral ties between the two countries, the Chinese took absolutely no notice. At 10.30am on Tuesday, Shaikh was put to death by lethal injection in the remote province of Urumqi, and his body disposed of in an unmarked grave. And when Messrs Brown and Miliband sought to remonstrate with the Chinese authorities for pressing ahead with Shaikh’s execution, all they received from Beijing in response was a firm admonition not to interfere in China’s internal affairs.
At a stroke the cold reality of China’s attitude to the outside world was laid bare for all to see. Rather than being a partner that can be trusted to work with the West on issues of mutual concern, the Chinese have demonstrated that their default position is that Beijing’s only real priority it to look after its own interests, whether it is enforcing its zero tolerance policy on drug abuse or refusing to cooperate with global efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
China’s self-centred approach to international affairs should come as no surprise to the British government. American President Barack Obama was similarly rebuffed during his state visit to Beijing last November. Mr Obama arrived in China hoping to get Chinese cooperation on a range of issues, such as North Korea, financial stability and human rights. But despite being given a warm reception in public by Chinese officials, including a private guided tour of the Great Wall, the American president left Beijing without gaining any concessions from China on any major issue.
Much of China’s reluctance to engage constructively with the West on issues of mutual concern dates back to the psychological trauma the country suffered during the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century, when British gunboats routinely humiliated the Chinese government of the day. The deep feelings of resentment most Chinese feel for the humiliation they suffered continues to this day, and was even reflected in the official statement issued by the Chinese Embassy in London following Shaikh’s execution. It said the “strong resentment” felt by the Chinese public to drug traffickers was based “on the bitter memory of history”.
To ensure that there is no repeat of a time when foreign powers could push the Chinese people around with impunity, Beijing is today investing enormous effort into developing technology that would render the West’s superior military firepower useless.
There have already been well-documented instances in recent years where Chinese hackers have successfully launched cyber attacks against key Western targets, including the Pentagon and Whitehall. In 2006 Chinese computer hackers were accused of shutting down the House of Commons computer network by flooding it with bogus emails, and the Foreign Office and other key government departments have accused rogue Chinese computer experts of trying to hack in their systems.
In America Chinese hackers are reported to have attempted up to 100,000 attacks on government computers each year, and have successfully penetrated the computer systems of some of the American military’s elite units, such as US Army’s 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions.
But now Western security experts believe Beijing has authorised PLA commanders to draw up a cyber wars blueprint that would give them the capability to neutralise the West’s military firepower by 2050.
The Pentagon recently reported that two highly accomplished Chinese computer hackers had been recruited by the PLA to draft a detailed plan that would enable China to disable the United States’ entire aircraft carrier battle fleet, simply by launching a pre-emptive cyber attack.
This blueprint is now seen as being part of an aggressive push by Beijing to achieve “electronic dominance” over each of its global rivals by 2050, with the US, Britain, South Korea and Russia the main targets. To ensure they recruit the best hackers available it was recently reported that senior PLA officers were holding computer hacking competitions throughout the country, and recruiting the winners to their burgeoning cyber army.
“The Chinese realise that, if it came to a conventional military conflict with the West, they would struggle to compete with the West’s superior military firepower,” said a Western security source. “But by concentrating their efforts on cyber wars they believe they can develop a cheap and highly effective method of achieving technical supremacy over the West.”
The government is now so concerned about the threat posed by China’s cyber warriors that it has established a Cyber Security Operations Centre at the GCHQ listening centre in Cheltenham. Lord West, Mr Brown’s security adviser, said that Britain was developing the capability to strike back against Chinese hackers by recruiting former British hackers to GCHQ.
“You need youngsters who are deep into this stuff,” Lord West explained last year. “If they have been slightly naughty boys, very often they enjoy stopping other naughty boys.”
And he warned that any future war between world powers was more likely to be fought over the Internet than on the battlefield. “As their ability to use the web and the net grows, there will be more opportunity for these attacks,” he said.
Filed under: 1984, augmented earth, Big Brother, biometrics, cameras, cell phone, cell phones, CNN, Control Grid, Darpa, data mining, Dictatorship, Echelon, Empire, global elite, global government, Globalism, google, google earth, government control, government takeover, gps, internet, Internet 2, internet 3, internet of things, internet police, IOT, Media, microchip, microchips, Microsoft, nanny state, New World Order, NWO, Oppression, orwell, Pentagon, Police State, RFID, RFID bracelet, Science and technology, south korea, Spy, Surveillance, surveillance cameras, Total Information Awareness, traffic cameras, uav, Verichip | Tags: intel, internet regulation, korea, motorola, National Intelligence Council, new songdo city, NIC, seoul, u-city, Ubiquitous computing, Ubiquitous living, Ubiquitous positioning, utopia, Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool
Editor’s Note: This could be the start of the New World Order MATRIX, where every ‘thing’ in the world can be located and tracked on the internet
Augmented Google-Earth Tracks Real-Time People, Cars, Weather
Cryptogon
September 30, 2009
The surveillance side of this is the chickenfeed. There’s something far more sinister than the simple surveillance… an angle we haven’t heard about yet.
Tice never did tell his story to Congress about this different aspect of the program.
Well, my guess is that it has something to do with providing surveillance data for this SEAS World Sim thing, and that individual Americans are being watched and potentially targeted with it. Tice’s background seems to involve a lot of traditional electronic warfare, radar and ELINT stuff. Maybe Tice’s deal involved the collection of the mobile phone GPS and/or triangulation data which would provide realtime spacial/geographic data to the SEAS system. In other words, SEAS sees you. They could bring up a map of a city and plot your path based on the information that your phone is exchanging with the mobile network.
—Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation
Via: Popular Science:
Researchers from Georgia Tech have devised methods to take real-time, real-world information and layer it onto Google Earth, adding dynamic information to the previously sterile Googlescape.
They use live video feeds (sometimes from many angles) to find the position and motion of various objects, which they then combine with behavioral simulations to produce real-time animations for Google Earth or Microsoft Virtual Earth.
They use motion capture data to help their animated humans move realistically, and were able to extrapolate cars’ motion throughout an entire stretch of road from just a few spotty camera angles.
From their video of an augmented virtual Earth, you can see if the pickup soccer game in the park is short a player, how traffic is on the highway, and how fast the wind is blowing the clouds across the sky.
Up next, they say they want to add weather, birds, and motion in rivers.
Ubiquitous Computing: Big Brother’s All-Seeing Eye
Filed under: 1984, 1st amendment, 9/11 Truth, Airport Security, Anti-War, Australia, Big Brother, biometrics, Bloggers, Britain, California, cashless society, cell phones, Censorship, China, Cold War, Congress, Control Grid, copyright, Darpa, data mining, DHS, Dictatorship, Dissent, Echelon, Empire, Europe, european union, facebook, False Flag, free speech, George Bush, Germany, global elite, global government, Globalism, google, gps, Homeland Security, inside job, internet, Internet 2, internet blackout, internet censorship, Internet Filtering, internet of things, internet police, IOT, IP, ISP, John McCain, john roberts, korea, london, Media, michael chertoff, microchip, microchips, Microsoft, nanny state, New World Order, New York, Oppression, orwell, Pentagon, Police State, Propaganda, RFID, RIAA, Science and technology, south korea, Spy, Surveillance, Tony Blair, uav, United Kingdom, US Constitution, Verichip, War On Terror, White House | Tags: HP, incheon, intel, internet regulation, john reid, korea, motorola, National Intelligence Council, new songdo city, NIC, NWO, paul otellini, privacy, Recording Industry Association of America, seoul, u-city, Ubiquitous computing, Ubiquitous living, Ubiquitous positioning, utopia, Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool, VIRAT
Australia To Enforce Mandatory Chinese-Style Internet Censorship
Government to block “controversial” websites with universal national filter
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
October 29, 2008
The Australian government is set to impose Chinese-style Internet censorship by enforcing a universal national filter that will block websites deemed “controversial,” as part of a wider agenda to regulate the Internet according to free speech advocates.
A provision whereby Internet users could opt out of the filter by contacting their ISP has been stripped from the legislation, meaning the filter will be universal and mandatory.
The System Administrators Guild of Australia and Electronic Frontiers Australia have attacked the proposal, saying it will restrict web access, raise prices and slow internet traffic speeds.
The plan was first created as a way to combat child pornography and adult content, but could be extended to include controversial websites on euthanasia or anorexia,” reports the Australian Herald Sun.
Communications minister Stephen Conroy revealed the mandatory censorship to the Senate estimates committee as the Global Network Initiative, bringing together leading companies, human rights organisations, academics and investors, committed the technology firms to “protect the freedom of expression and privacy rights of their users”. (Complete black is white, up is down, double talk).
Human Rights Watch has condemned internet censorship, and argued to the US Senate “there is a real danger of a Virtual Curtain dividing the internet, much as the Iron Curtain did during the Cold War, because some governments fear the potential of the internet, (and) want to control it.”
Speaking from personal experience, not only are “controversial” websites blocked in China, meaning any website that is critical of the state, but every website the user attempts to visit first has to pass through the “great firewall,” causing the browser to hang and delay while it is checked against a government blacklist.
This causes excruciating delays, and the user experience is akin to being on a bad dial-up connection in the mid 1990’s. Even in the center of Shanghai with a fixed ethernet connection, the user experience is barely tolerable.
Not only are websites in China blocked, but e mails too are scanned for “controversial” words and blocked from being sent if they contain phrases related to politics or obscenities.
Googling for information on certain topics is also heavily restricted. While in China I tried to google “Bush Taiwan,” which resulted in Google.com ceasing to be accessible and my Internet connection was immediately terminated thereafter.
The Australian government will no doubt insist that their filter is in our best interests and is only designed to block child pornography, snuff films and other horrors, yet the system is completely pointless because it will not affect file sharing networks, which is the medium through which the vast majority of such material is distributed.
If we allow Australia to become the first “free” nation to impose Internet censorship, the snowball effect will only accelerate – the U.S. and the UK are next.
Indeed, Prime Minister Tony Blair called for Internet censorship last year.
In April 2007, Time magazine reported that researchers funded by the federal government want to shut down the internet and start over, citing the fact that at the moment there are loopholes in the system whereby users cannot be tracked and traced all the time. The projects echo moves we have previously reported on to clamp down on internet neutrality and even to designate a new form of the internet known as Internet 2.
Moves to regulate the web have increased over the last two years.
– In a display of bi-partisanship, there have been calls for all out mandatory ISP snooping on all US citizens by both Democrats and Republicans alike.
– In December 2006, Republican Senator John McCain tabled a proposal to introduce legislation that would fine blogs up to $300,000 for offensive statements, photos and videos posted by visitors on comment boards. It is well known that McCain has a distaste for his blogosphere critics, causing a definite conflict of interest where any proposal to restrict blogs on his part is concerned.
– During an appearance with his wife Barbara on Fox News in November 2006, George Bush senior slammed Internet bloggers for creating an “adversarial and ugly climate.”
– The White House’s own de-classified strategy for “winning the war on terror” targets Internet conspiracy theories as a recruiting ground for terrorists and threatens to “diminish” their influence.
– The Pentagon has also announced its effort to infiltrate the Internet and propagandize for the war on terror.
– In an October 2006 speech, Homeland Security director Michael Chertoff identified the web as a “terror training camp,” through which “disaffected people living in the United States” are developing “radical ideologies and potentially violent skills.” His solution is “intelligence fusion centers,” staffed by Homeland Security personnel which will are already in operation.
– The U.S. Government wants to force bloggers and online grassroots activists to register and regularly report their activities to Congress. Criminal charges including a possible jail term of up to one year could be the punishment for non-compliance.
– A landmark November 2006 legal case on behalf of the Recording Industry Association of America and other global trade organizations sought to criminalize all Internet file sharing of any kind as copyright infringement, effectively shutting down the world wide web – and their argument was supported by the U.S. government.
– A landmark legal ruling in Sydney goes further than ever before in setting the trap door for the destruction of the Internet as we know it and the end of alternative news websites and blogs by creating the precedent that simply linking to other websites is breach of copyright and piracy.
– The European Union, led by former Stalinist John Reid, has also vowed to shut down “terrorists” who use the Internet to spread propaganda.
– The EU data retention bill, passed after much controversy and implemented in 2007, obliges telephone operators and internet service providers to store information on who called who and who emailed who for at least six months. Under this law, investigators in any EU country, and most bizarrely even in the US, can access EU citizens’ data on phone calls, sms’, emails and instant messaging services.
– The EU also proposed legislation that would prevent users from uploading any form of video without a license.
– The US government is also funding research into social networking sites and how to gather and store personal data published on them, according to the New Scientist magazine. “At the same time, US lawmakers are attempting to force the social networking sites themselves to control the amount and kind of information that people, particularly children, can put on the sites.”
Governments are furious that their ceaseless lies are being exposed in real time on the World Wide Web and have resolved to stifle, regulate and control what truly is the last outpost of real free speech in the world. Internet censorship is perhaps the most pertinent issue that freedom advocates should rally to combat over the course of the next few years, lest we allow a cyber-gag to be placed over our mouths and say goodbye to our last medium of free and open communication.
DARPA building search engine for video surveillance footage
Ars Technica
October 21, 2008
The government agency that birthed the Internet is developing a sophisticated search engine for video, and when complete will allow intelligence analysts to sift through live footage from spy drones, as well as thousands of hours worth of archived recordings, in order to spot a variety of selected events or behaviors. In the past month, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency announced nearly $20 million in total contracts for private firms to begin developing the system, which is slated to take until at least 2011 to complete.
According to a prospectus written in March but released only this month, the Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool (VIRAT) will enable intel analysts to “rapidly find video content of interest from archives and provide alerts to the analyst of events of interest during live operations,” taking both conventional video and footage from infrared scanners as input. The VIRAT project is an effort to cope with a growing data glut that has taxed intelligence resources because of the need to have trained human personnel perform time- and labor-intensive review of recorded video.
The DARPA overview emphasizes that VIRAT will not be designed with “face recognition, gait recognition, human identification, or any form of biometrics” in mind. Rather, the system will search for classes of activities or events. A suggested partial list in the prospectus includes digging, loitering, exploding, shooting, smoking, following, shaking hand, exchanging objects, crawling under a car, breaking a window, and evading a checkpoint. As new sample clips are fed into the system, it will need to recognize the signature features of new classes of search terms.
EU Set to Move ‘Internet of Things’ Closer to Reality
Daniel Taylor
Old-Thinker News
November 2, 2008
If the world-wide trend continues, ‘Web 3.0′ will be tightly monitored, and will become an unprecedented tool for surveillance. The “Internet of Things”, a digital representation of real world objects and people tagged with RFID chips, and increased censorship are two main themes for the future of the web.
The future of the internet, according to author and “web critic” Andrew Keen, will be monitored by “gatekeepers” to verify the accuracy of information posted on the web. The “Outlook 2009″ report from the November-December issue of The Futurist reports that,
“Internet entrepreneur Andrew Keen believes that the anonymity of today’s internet 2.0 will give way to a more open internet 3.0 in which third party gatekeepers monitor the information posted on Web sites to verify its accuracy.”
Keen stated during his early 2008 interview withThe Futurist that the internet, in its current form, has undermined mainline media and empowered untrustworthy “amateurs”, two trends that he wants reversed. “Rather than the empowerment of the amateur, Web 3.0 will show the resurgence of the professional,” states Keen.
Australia has now joined China in implementing mandatory internet censorship, furthering the trend towards a locked down and monitored web.
The Internet of Things
Now, the European Union has announced that it will pursue the main component of Web 3.0, the Internet of Things (IoT).
According to Viviane Reding, Commissioner for Information Society and Media for the EU, “The Internet of the future will radically change our society.” Ultimately, the EU is aiming to “lead the way” in the transformation to Web 3.0.
Reporting on the European Union’s pursuit of the IoT, iBLS reports,
“New technology applications will need ubiquitous Internet coverage. The Internet of Things means that wireless interaction between machines, vehicles, appliances, sensors and many other devices will take place using the Internet. It already makes electronic travel cards possible, and will allow mobile devices to exchange information to pay for things or get information from billboards (or streetlights).”
The Internet of Things consists of objects that are ‘tagged’ with Radio Frequency Identification Chips (RFID) that communicate their position, history, and other information to an RFID reader or wireless network. Most, if not all major computer companies and technology developers (HP, Cisco, Intel, Microsoft, etc.) are putting large amounts of time and money into the Internet of Things.
Cisco and Sun Microsystems have founded an alliance to promote the Internet of Things and further its implementation.
South Korea is at the forefront in implementing ubiquitous technology and the Internet of Things. An entire city, New Songdo, is being built in South Korea that fully utilizes the technology. Ubiquitous computing proponents in the United States admit that while a large portion of the technology is being developed in the U.S., it is being tested in South Korea where there are less traditional, ethical and social blockades to prevent its acceptance and use. As the New York Times reports
“Much of this technology was developed in U.S. research labs, but there are fewer social and regulatory obstacles to implementing them in Korea,” said Mr. Townsend [a research director at the Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California], who consulted on Seoul’s own U-city plan, known as Digital Media City. ‘There is an historical expectation of less privacy. Korea is willing to put off the hard questions to take the early lead and set standards.’”
An April 2008 report from the National Intelligence Council discussed the Internet of Things and its possible implications.
A timeline shown in the April 2008 NIC report
The report outlines uses for the technology:
“Sensor networks need not be connected to the Internet and indeed often reside in remote sites, vehicles, and buildings having no Internet connection. Smart dust is a term that some have used to express a vision of tiny, wireless-connected sensors; more recently, others use the term to describe any of several technologies that range from the size of a pack of gum to a pack of cigarettes, and that are widely available to system developers.
Ubiquitous positioning describes technologies for locating objects that may reside anywhere, including indoors and underground locations where satellite signals may be unavailable or otherwise inadequate.
Biometrics enables technology to recognize people and other living things, rather than inanimate objects. Connected everyday objects could recognize authorized users by means of fingerprint, voiceprint, iris scan, or other biometric technology.”
These trends towards internet censorship and the internet of things are undoubtedly going to continue, but restricting your free speech and violating your privacy will be harder with your outspoken resistance.
DARPA spies on analyst brains; hopes to offload image analysis to computers
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20..-image-analysis-to-computers.html
Security services want personal data from sites like Facebook
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/oct/15/terrorism-security
UK.gov says: Regulate the internet
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/10/20/government_internet_regulation/
Filed under: agriculture, asia, big pharma, California, cancer, Child Abuse, China, Connecticut, Eugenics, fda, federal crime, Genocide, Globalism, health and environment, hong kong, Human Experiments, malthusian catastrophe, medical industrial complex, melamine, Population Control, south korea, Taiwan, WHO | Tags: cyromazine, dangerous candy, deadly candy, eggs, extortion, fish, halloween, halloween candy, Heinz, infant deaths, infanticide, kraft, lactose powder, lipton, lipton iced tea, M&Ms, made in china, mars, milk, netherlands, non-fat milk powder, pet food, poultry, powdered milk, rice, snickers, Taiwan, trick or treating, u.s. food safety, u.s. food supply, vaccines, vioxx, vitamin-d, wheat, wheat gluten, whey powder, white rabbit, whole milk powder, World health organization
FDA Approves Melamine In U.S. Food, Claims It’s Not Harmful
AP
October 4, 2008
Eating a tiny bit of a melamine, the chemical responsible for a global food safety scare, is not harmful except when it’s in baby formula, U.S. food safety officials said Friday.
Melamine-tainted formula has sickened more than 54,000 children in China and is being blamed for the deaths of at least four tots. The chemical has also turned up in products sold across Asia, ranging from candies, to chocolates, to coffee drinks, that used dairy ingredients from China. Authorities in California and Connecticut have found melamine in White Rabbit candies imported from China.
FDA Conspired with Chemical Industry to Declare Bisphenol-A Harmless
Mike Adams
Natural News
October 24, 2008
The FDA has been caught red-handed conspiring with the chemical industry to conclude that Bisphenol-A, the plastics chemical, is harmless to human health. As revealed by the Environmental Working Group (see below), the FDA based its evaluation of BPA on a report authored by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), a trade group that represents chemical companies and plastics manufacturers.
The FDA’s evaluation concluded that BPA was perfectly safe for consumers of any age, including infants. This conclusion stands in direct opposition to the Canadian government, which declared BPA to be a toxic chemical on Oct. 18 and moved towards banning the chemical in baby bottles.
Even the U.S. National Institutes of Health says BPA may be dangerous, admitting it is concerned about BPA’s “effects on development of the prostate gland and brain and for behavioral effects in fetuses, infants and children.”
How the FDA conspires with industry
The FDA, however, has never met a corporate-sponsored chemical it didn’t like. Thanks to industry pressure, the FDA has once again stepped to the tune of private industry while betraying the safety of the American consumer. This decision on BPA is the latest example of why the FDA has become an enormous threat to the health and safety of the American people.
Two days ago, NaturalNews reported the FDA’s masterminding of an extortion racket that targets small health supplement companies and threatens their owners with imprisonment if they don’t pay huge sums of money to FDA contractors (http://www.naturalnews.com/024567.html).
It is now clear to most independent observers that the FDA is operating a criminal protect racket that seeks to multiply the profits of drug companies and chemical companies while betraying the health and safety of the American people. FDA decision boards are routinely stacked with “experts” who are on the take from the corporations impacted by their decisions, and even while the FDA is giving the big thumbs up to deadly pharmaceuticals and cancer-causing chemicals, it is targeting health supplement companies with threats so severe they would be considered criminal if uttered by anyone else.
Thanks to the FDA, it remains illegal in the United States to even link to a scientific study on the health benefits of cherries if you happen to sell cherries. Telling the truth about anti-cancer herbs can land you in prison, and placing a customer testimonial on your health product website can earn you a visit from FDA agents accompanied by armed SWAT-style assault teams (http://www.naturalnews.com/021791.html).
The FDA, it seems, has turned reality upside down and is now telling us that all the poisons are safe while all the natural substances are dangerous. Consider this:
According to the FDA:
• Aspartame is perfectly safe, but stevia is too dangerous to use in foods
• Vioxx is perfectly safe, but cherries are too dangerous to treat arthritis pain
• Chemotherapy is safe enough for everyone, but anti-cancer herbs might poison you
• Vaccines are so safe that we should inject all our teenage girls with them, but Vitamin D has no biological benefit whatsoever and has no effect on preventing infections
• Bisphenol-A is safe enough for babies to drink, but human breast milk is dangerous and outlawed from being sold
The FDA: Harming babies for profit
The number of babies that have been harmed or killed by the FDA is beyond accounting. This agency, through its outright abandonment of its duty to protect the People, has established itself as the single most dangerous organization operating on U.S. soil, far exceeding the harm posed by criminal gangs, white-collar criminals or even terrorist cells.
http://www.naturalnews.com/024567.html
FDA Covers-up Big Pharma’s Pills Contaminated With Machine Particles
http://www.naturalnews.com/024625.html
Filed under: 9/11, Britain, Censorship, Dictatorship, Empire, Europe, european union, global police force, Globalism, gulf, kosovo, kuwait, media blackout, middle east, Military, military base, Military Industrial Complex, muslims, nation building, New World Order, occupation, Pentagon, permanent military bases, philippines, Police State, qatar, rome, Russia, Saudi Arabia, south korea, Soviet Union, Troops, United Kingdom, Vietnam, Washington D.C., world police force | Tags: soldiers, u.s. soldiers, ussr
761 U.S. Military Bases Across the Planet
Alternet
September 8, 2008
Here it is, as simply as I can put it: In the course of any year, there must be relatively few countries on this planet on which U.S. soldiers do not set foot, whether with guns blazing, humanitarian aid in hand, or just for a friendly visit. In startling numbers of countries, our soldiers not only arrive, but stay interminably, if not indefinitely. Sometimes they live on military bases built to the tune of billions of dollars that amount to sizeable American towns (with accompanying amenities), sometimes on stripped down forward operating bases that may not even have showers. When those troops don’t stay, often American equipment does — carefully stored for further use at tiny “cooperative security locations,” known informally as “lily pads” (from which U.S. troops, like so many frogs, could assumedly leap quickly into a region in crisis).
At the height of the Roman Empire, the Romans had an estimated 37 major military bases scattered around their dominions. At the height of the British Empire, the British had 36 of them planetwide. Depending on just who you listen to and how you count, we have hundreds of bases. According to Pentagon records, in fact, there are 761 active military “sites” abroad.
The fact is: We garrison the planet north to south, east to west, and even on the seven seas, thanks to our various fleets and our massive aircraft carriers which, with 5,000-6,000 personnel aboard — that is, the population of an American town — are functionally floating bases.
And here’s the other half of that simple truth: We don’t care to know about it. We, the American people, aided and abetted by our politicians, the Pentagon, and the mainstream media, are knee-deep in base denial.
Now, that’s the gist of it. If, like most Americans, that’s more than you care to know, stop here.
Where the Sun Never Sets
Let’s face it, we’re on an imperial bender and it’s been a long, long night. Even now, in the wee hours, the Pentagon continues its massive expansion of recent years; we spend militarily as if there were no tomorrow; we’re still building bases as if the world were our oyster; and we’re still in denial. Someone should phone the imperial equivalent of Alcoholics Anonymous.
But let’s start in a sunnier time, less than two decades ago, when it seemed that there would be many tomorrows, all painted red, white, and blue. Remember the 1990s when the U.S. was hailed — or perhaps more accurately, Washington hailed itself — not just as the planet’s “sole superpower” or even its unique “hyperpower,” but as its “global policeman,” the only cop on the block? As it happened, our leaders took that label seriously and our central police headquarters, that famed five-sided building in Washington D.C, promptly began dropping police stations — aka military bases — in or near the oil heartlands of the planet (Kosovo, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait) after successful wars in the former Yugoslavia and the Persian Gulf.
As those bases multiplied, it seemed that we were embarking on a new, post-Soviet version of “containment.” With the USSR gone, however, what we were containing grew a lot vaguer and, before 9/11, no one spoke its name. Nonetheless, it was, in essence, Muslims who happened to live on so many of the key oil lands of the planet.
Yes, for a while we also kept intact our old bases from our triumphant mega-war against Japan and Germany, and then the stalemated “police action” in South Korea (1950-1953) — vast structures which added up to something like an all-military American version of the old British Raj. According to the Pentagon, we still have a total of 124 bases in Japan, up to 38 on the small island of Okinawa, and 87 in South Korea. (Of course, there were setbacks. The giant bases we built in South Vietnam were lost in 1975, and we were peaceably ejected from our major bases in the Philippines in 1992.)
Filed under: China, Dictatorship, Empire, France, Germany, Japan, Kim Jong-il, Madeleine Albright, north korea, Nuke, putin, Russia, south korea, Uncategorized | Tags: Pyongyang, Toshimitsu Shigemura
Kim Jong Il: dead, alive or using a body double?
Russia Today
September 9, 2008
The health of North Korea’s dictator, Kim Jong Il, has come under the spotlight, just as his country celebrates 60 years since its foundation. The leader did not attend a military parade dedicated to the state holiday. The 66-year-old has not appeared in public for more than three weeks, leading to various rumours emerging. A Tokyo professor even claims Kim died five years ago.
Western media claim that he is ill, while a local newspaper in the South Korean capital Seoul reported Tuesday that Kim collapsed last month.
It is not known how serious the condition of the North Korean leader. According to South Korean diplomats based in North Korea’s capital Pyongyang, Kim lost consciousness on August 22. After that a group of five Chinese doctors traveled to Pyongyang and is now taking care of him. South Korean officials also say the 66-year-old leader suffers from obesity, diabetes and a number of other diseases.
South Korean media, though, doubts the North Korean leader sought medical help from China as before they mainly looked to Germany, France and Russia.
At the same time, Seoul intelligence data claims the North Korean leader has health problems but is still capable of fulfilling his duties.
A new book by Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor at Japan’s Waseda University, recently added fuel to the long-lasting speculation. In “The true Character of Kim Jong Il” Shigemura claims Kim Jong Il died in the autumn of 2003. Shigemura believes this happened within 42 days after September 10 when the North Korean leader was last seen in public.
In the years that preceded his “death” Kim undertook some big moves influencing the country’s relationship with the outside world. These include the June 2000 summit with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung, a visit from Russian leader Vladimir Putin the following month and then U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in October 2000. August 2003 saw the opening of six-way talks on halting North Korea’s nuclear weapons programmes.
According to the professor, a group of senior officials took power in their hands willing to protect their positions. The role of “Kim Jong Il” went to several of his doubles controlled by one of the “puppet-masters”.
There has been no reaction from official Pyongyang but the association of Korean residents of Japan strongly denied the claim.
Filed under: 1984, 4th amendment, Airport Security, Big Brother, biometrics, brain manipulation, Britain, cashless society, cell phones, Congress, consolidation, Control Grid, Echelon, Europe, european union, Germany, global elite, global government, Globalism, gps, internet, john roberts, london, Media, microchip, nanny state, New World Order, New York, Oppression, orwell, Police State, RFID, Science and technology, south korea, Spy, Surveillance, uav, United Kingdom, US Constitution, Verichip, zbigniew brzezinski | Tags: HP, hwaseong dongtan, incheon, intel, internet of things, korea, motorola, new songdo city, NWO, paul otellini, privacy, seoul, u-city, Ubiquitous living, utopia
Consolidation of U.S. Intelligence Into Global Intel Network by 2015
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9752
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-10010..ss&tag=feed&subj=Crave
Passengers Details Should Be Given To Government
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/tra..uld-be-given-to-the-Government.html
Unmanned Spy Plans To Police Britain
http://www.independent.co.uk/ne..lice-britain-886083.html
Secret EU security draft risks uproar with call to pool policing and give US personal data
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/07/eu.uksecurity
Governor Wants Speed Cameras On Interstates
http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/bl..,CST-NWS-blago07.article
Filed under: Anti-War, asia, civil liberties, civil rights, Dictatorship, Dissent, Empire, free speech, George Bush, human rights, Iran, Iraq, Lee Myung-bak, Mad Cow, nation building, neocons, occupation, Oppression, police brutality, Police State, Protest, south korea, War On Terror | Tags: water cannon, water cannons
Canada Press
August, 5, 2008
Police fired water cannons at thousands of protesters Tuesday as U.S. President George W. Bush got a volatile reception in South Korea at the start of his Asian trip.
Duelling demonstrations reflected mixed sentiments in South Korea, where public opinion surveys remain generally positive about America, though many people decry Washington for a variety of issues.
Bush will meet Wednesday with President Lee Myung-bak for the third time since the conservative, pro-American leader took office in February.
Some 18,300 police were on high alert with riot gear and bomb-sniffing dogs to maintain order during Bush’s brief visit, the National Police Agency said.
About 30,000 people gathered in front of Seoul City Hall for an afternoon Christian prayer service supporting Bush’s trip. Large South Korean and U.S. flags were held aloft by balloons overhead along with a banner reading, “Welcome President Bush.”
As evening approached, an estimated 20,000 anti-Bush protesters gathered nearby. Police turned water cannons on them as they tried to move onto the main central downtown boulevard, telling the crowd that the liquid contained markers to tag them so they could be identified later.
“I don’t have anti-U.S. sentiment. I’m just anti-Bush and anti-Lee Myung-bak,” said Uhm Ki-woong, 36, a businessman who was wearing a mask and hat like other demonstrators in an apparent attempt to conceal his identity.
Twelve demonstrators were arrested, along with another 12 at an earlier attempted demonstration near the military airport where Bush landed, police said.
South Korean Officer Opposes Violent Crackdown on Peaceful Protesters
Filed under: 1984, Big Brother, Britain, Dictatorship, Empire, Europe, european union, Fascism, Israel, jews, nanny state, New York, NYPD, Oppression, orwell, police brutality, Police State, Protest, south korea, Surveillance, United Kingdom, War On Terror, Zionism | Tags: Christopher Long, Christopher Ryan, critical mass, Officer Patrick Pogan
Critical Mass Bicyclist Assaulted by NYPD
NY Post
July 29, 2008
A rookie cop – the son of a highly respected New York City detective – has been stripped of his badge and gun after being caught on video viciously attacking a bicyclist who was part of a Times Square demonstration. ‘
The startling YouTube video shows Officer Patrick Pogan, 22, apparently setting his sights on – and then tackling – a bicyclist as he pedaled along Seventh Avenue as part of last Friday’s controversial Critical Mass ride.
Christopher Long, 29, was among a throng of riders as he whizzed toward the corner of West 46th Street at 9:30 p.m. and appeared to try and swerve away from the officer.
But the video shows Pogan pick up his pace as he stares down Long before shoving the cyclist, slamming him to the pavement.
To the dismay of stunned pedestrians, Long, who was not wearing a helmet, hurtles several feet through the air as he flips off the bicycle and lands on the curb.
Pogan and a second officer then lunge toward the prone cyclist as the video fades to black. The footage, filmed by a tourist and posted anonymously on YouTube, sparked imme diate public outcry and prompted the NYPD to place Pogan on desk duty while the Internal Affairs Bureau investigates.
The NYPD declined to comment further.
What the video doesn’t show is Pogan arresting Long for attempted assault in the third degree, resisting arrest and disorderly conduct – charges that kept the Bloomfield, NJ, man behind bars for 26 hours before his release late Saturday.
Adding insult to injury, the criminal complaint drafted by Pogan bears little resemblance to what was witnessed by onlookers and recorded on video.
In court papers, Pogan accused Long of purposely swerving his bicycle to block traffic and then using it as a weapon to run down the officer, knocking him off his feet and causing a “laceration” on his forearm. “You are pawns in the game. I’m going to have your job,” Long told Pogan, as he flailed and kicked his arms and legs, according to the complaint.
Pogan has been on the force for just three weeks since graduating from the Police Academy on July 2 and is assigned to Midtown South.
A third-generation cop, Pogan lives at home with his father – Patrick Pogan Sr., a highly respected detective and biochemical and mass-destruction expert who is retired from the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
“He’s my son. I’m proud of him. He’s third-generation that’s been serving the city,” said Pogan Sr., who was at home in Massapequa Park, LI, today and said he had not seen the video. “These people are taking over the streets and impeding the flow of traffic. Then you gotta do what you gotta do,” said Pogan, 51.
Long declined comment through his lawyer.
“If it wasn’t caught on video people would not have believed it,” said Christopher Ryan, who rides with Critical Mass and is filming the monthly protests for a documentary. “The video just shows what the cyclists have been saying all along, that the police are still harassing and intimidating them from doing group rides,” said Ryan. “An officer assaulted a cyclist for no reason. It’s just crazy.”
Police Brutality in South Korea – (2008)
Israel Police Brutality of Innocent Jews
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/jul/25/smoking
Police chief defends spying on protesters as terrorists
http://rawstory.com/rawreplay/?p=1562
Police attempt to arrest teenager prompts mass riot in England
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art..—asking-girl-pick-piece-litter.html
Filed under: 1st amendment, 7/7, 9/11, 9/11 commission report, 9/11 Firefighters, 9/11 Truth, 9/11 workers, Canada, Colin Powell, Dictator, Donald Rumsfeld, False Flag, FBI, first responders, FOIA, Fox News, free speech, George Bush, inside job, Iraq, Media, Media Fear, Military, neocons, Pentagon, Police State, Propaganda, Psyops, rumsfeld, south korea, State Sponsored Terrorism, thomas kean, UN, US Constitution, Vancouver, War On Terror, We Are Change, wtc-7, WW2 | Tags: montreal, syngman rhee
Rumsfeld says another terror attack could help solve the low threat perception of terrorism
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
May 16, 2008
Shocking excerpts of confidential recordings recently released under the Freedom of Information Act feature former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld talking with top military analysts about how a flagging Neo-Con political agenda could be successfully restored with the aid of another terrorist attack on America.
The tape also includes a conversation where Rumsfeld and the military analysts agree on the possible necessity of installing a brutal dictator in Iraq to oversee U.S. interests.
The tapes were released as part of the investigation into the Pentagon’s “message force multipliers” program in which top military analysts were hired to propagandize for the Iraq war in the corporate media.
In attendance at the valedictory luncheon Rumsfeld hosted on December 12, 2006 were David L. Grange, Donald W. Sheppard, James Marks, Rick Francona, Wayne Downing, and Robert H. Scales, Jr. among others.
The most extraordinary exchange takes place when Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong bemoans shrinking political support for Neo-Con war plans on Capitol Hill and suggests that sympathy for the Bush administration’s agenda will only be achieved after a new terror attack.
Rumsfeld agrees that the psychological impact of 9/11 is wearing off and the “behavior pattern” of citizens in both the U.S. and Europe suggests that they are unconcerned about the threat of terror.
DELONG: Politically, what are the challenges because you’re not going to have a lot of sympathetic ears up there until it [a terror attack] happens.
RUMSFELD: That’s what I was just going to say. This President’s pretty much a victim of success. We haven’t had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it’s not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same thing’s in Europe, there’s a low threat perception. The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack. And when that happens, then everyone gets energized for another [inaudible] and it’s a shame we don’t have the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats…the lethality, the carnage, that can be imposed on our society is so real and so present and so serious that you’d think we’d be able to understand it, but as a society, the longer you get away from 9/11, the less…the less…
In another exchange, after assuring that comments are “off the record,” Rumsfeld and one of the military analysts agree that Iraq could use a “Syngman Rhee” to take control of Iraq. Syngman Rhee was the ruthless authoritarian dictator of South Korea from after World War II through the Korean War to 1960. If the invasion of Iraq was about liberating the Iraqis from a tyrant in the form of Saddam Hussein why is Rumsfeld talking about installing an even more brutal dictator?
Click here for the audio clip. Newsvine has the recording in full.
Rumsfeld’s admission that the correction for dwindling support of the Neo-Con imperial crusade is another terror attack is perhaps the most startling and blatant indication that 9/11 was an inside job.
Read Full Article Here
The 9/11 Commission Was Set Up To Fail
Montreal 9/11 Truth to City Hall: If there is an attack we will not believe you
http://www.washingtonpost.com/w..02478.html?hpid=sec-health
BBC may try to smear 9/11 Truth with new WTC-7 documentary
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2008/062008_smear_attack.htm
Gov’t says FBI agents can’t testify about 9/11
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/06/19/america/Sept-11-Lawsuits.php
‘Pentagon Papers senator’ calls for new 9/11 probe
http://www.thevillager.com/villager_268/pentagonpapers.html
Fox News Stokes Phony Controversy Over UN Official Who Supports 9/11 Probe
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,369122,00.html
We Are Change member arrested for filming in Vancouver, Colin Powell Confronted
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1QPMt8VI8Tk
Filed under: airstrikes, bribery, Britain, DEBT, defense department, DoD, Europe, George Bush, Iraq, iraqi deaths, John McCain, JP Morgan, Military, nation building, neocons, occupation, Pentagon, poland, shiites, south korea, State Sponsored Terrorism, sunni, Taxpayers, Tony Blair, Troops, United Kingdom, War On Terror | Tags: Henry Waxman, sons of iraq
US paying allies to fight war in Iraq
Times of India
May 31, 2008
The tale of massive fraud and embezzlement of millions of dollars by the US military in its operations in Iraq continues. Testifying before the US Congress Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on 22 May, Mary Ugone, deputy inspector general of accounts in the Pentagon said that an audit of $8.2 billion spending related to the Iraq war showed that $7.8 billion had been improperly spent.
Over 180,000 payments, mostly since the war started in 2003, were made by the defense department to contractors for everything from bottled water to vehicles to transportation services.
In her testimony, Ugone also revealed that $135 million were given to forces from three countries UK, South Korea and Poland to facilitate their participation in the war. This is the first time that the US has officially admitted paying its allies in the so-called Coalition of the Willing that invaded Iraq in March 2003.
In his opening statement, Henry Waxman, chairman of the committee, said that wounded soldiers are getting notices from the Pentagon to return signing bonuses with interest since they had not completed the full term. “There is something very wrong when our wounded troops have to fill out forms in triplicate for meal money while billions of dollars in cash are handed out in Iraq with no accountability,” he said.
In an earlier report released in November 2007, the Inspector General had concluded that the Defense Department couldn’t properly account for over $5 billion in taxpayer funds spent in support of the Iraq Security Forces. It said that thousands of weapons, including assault rifles, machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenade launchers were unaccounted for, and millions of dollars had been squandered on construction projects that did not exist.
Ugones testimony gave detailed examples of the bizarre manner in which US defense officials doled out huge amounts of money without recording where it was going. In one case a sum of $320 million was paid an Iraqi official for paying salaries with only an incompletely filled voucher signed by one official. Since no details of the spending plan were attached as required by Pentagon rules the auditors have no clue as to where the money went. This payment was made from assets seized from Iraq.
Auditors found that the Pentagon gave away $1.8 billion from seized Iraqi assets. There were 53 vouchers noting these payments but not even one adequately explained where the money went.
In another instance, two vouchers, one for $5 million and the other for $2.7 million showed payments to a vendor for goods and services provided except that there were no details of what goods or services were actually delivered.
Over $2.7 billion was spent on providing equipment and services to the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF). The auditors found that $2 billion of this was not properly accounted for. For example, 31 heavy tracked recovery vehicles costing $10.2 million were given to the ISF, but 18 of them could not be traced because identification numbers were not recorded.
US Paying Sunni Insurgents Not to Kill Troops
Antiwar
February 19, 2008
It is impossible to keep up with all the Bush regime’s lies. There are simply too many. Among the recent crop, one of the biggest is that the “surge” is working.
Launched last year, the “surge” was the extra 20,000-30,000 U.S. troops sent to Iraq. These few extra troops, Americans were told, would finally supply the necessary forces to pacify Iraq.
This claim never made any sense. The extra troops didn’t raise the total number of U.S. soldiers to more than one-third the number every expert has said is necessary in order to successfully occupy Iraq.
The real purpose of the “surge” was to hide another deception. The Bush regime is paying Sunni insurgents $800,000 a day not to attack U.S. forces. That’s right, 80,000 members of an “Awakening group,” the “Sons of Iraq,” a newly formed “U.S.-allied security force” consisting of Sunni insurgents, are being paid $10 a day each not to attack U.S. troops. Allegedly, the Sons of Iraq are now at work fighting al-Qaeda.
This is a much cheaper way to fight a war. We can only wonder why Bush didn’t figure it out sooner.
The “surge” was also timed to take account of the near completion of neighborhood cleansing. Most of the violence in Iraq during the past five years has resulted from Sunnis and Shi’ites driving each other out of mixed neighborhoods. Had the two groups been capable of uniting against the U.S. troops, the U.S. would have been driven out of Iraq long ago. Instead, the Iraqis slaughtered each other and fought the Americans in their spare time.
In other words, the “surge” has had nothing to do with any decline in violence.
With the Sunni insurgents now on Uncle Sam’s payroll, with neighborhoods segregated, and with Sadr’s militia standing down, it is unclear who is still responsible for ongoing violence other than U.S. troops themselves. Somebody must still be fighting, however, because the U.S. is still conducting air strikes and is still unable to tell friend from foe.
On Feb. 16, the Los Angeles Times reported that a U.S. air strike managed to kill nine Iraqi civilians and three Sons of Iraq.
The Sunnis are abandoning their posts in protest, demanding an end to “errant” U.S. air strikes. Obviously, the Sunnis see an opportunity to increase their daily pay for not attacking Americans. Soon they will have consultants advising them how much they can demand in bribes before it pays the Americans to begin fighting the war under the old terms. If Sunnis are smart, they will split the gains. Currently, the Sunnis are getting shafted. They are only collecting $800,000 of the $275,000,000 it costs the U.S. to fight the war for one day. That’s only about three-tenths of one percent, too much of a one-sided deal for the Americans.
If the Sunnis negotiate their cut to between one-quarter and one-half of the daily cost to the U.S. of the war, the Sunnis won’t need to share in the oil revenues, thus helping the three factions to get back together as a country. Even 20 percent of the daily cost of the war would be a good deal for the Sunnis. A long-term contract in this range would be expensive for Uncle Sam, but a great deal cheaper than John McCain’s commitment to a 100-year Iraqi war.
If Bush’s war turns out to be as big a boon for the Sunnis as it has for Tony Blair, we might have a modern-day version of The Mouse That Roared – a movie about an impoverished country that attacked the U.S. in order to be defeated and receive foreign aid – only this time the money comes as a payoff for not fighting the occupiers.
As the world now knows, Blair’s “dodgy dossier” about the threat allegedly posed by Iraq was a contrivance that allowed Blair to put British troops at the service of Bush’s aggression in the Middle East. Now that Blair is out of his prime minister job, he has been rewarded with millions of dollars in sinecures from financial firms such as JP Morgan and millions more in speaking engagements. As part of the payoff, the Bush Republicans have even put Mrs. Blair on the lucrative lecture circuit.
Ask yourself, do you really think Blair knows enough high finance to be of any value as an adviser to JP Morgan, or enough about climate change to advise Zurich Financial on the subject? Do you really believe that after hearing all the vacuous speeches Blair has delivered in those many years in office anyone now wants to pay him huge fees to hear him give a speech? Even when it was free, people were sick of it.
Blair is simply collecting his payoff for selling out his country and sending British troops to die for American hegemony.
The Sunnis seem inclined to do the same thing if Bush will pay them enough.
Is the next phase of the Iraq war going to be a U.S.-Sunni alliance against the Shi’ites?
Filed under: 1984, 4th amendment, ACLU, Airport Security, Australia, Big Brother, Britain, DHS, Europe, european union, Homeland Security, Japan, LA, las vegas, Miami, michael chertoff, New York, new zealand, Oppression, Police State, south korea, Surveillance, Texas, TSA, United Kingdom, US Constitution, War On Terror, washington | Tags: metal detectors
Britons visiting America will now have to register 72 hours in advance
UK Daily Mail
June 3, 2008
British visitors to the United States will have to register their trip with the American government 72 hours before they leave, it will be announced today.
The new plans – the latest in a series of measures designed to strengthen security – will see all travellers from countries which do not currently require a visa forced to register online three days before flying.
The scheme is expected to be announced today by Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff, to take effect from January
It will apply to citizens of the 27 visa waiver programme countries which include most of western Europe, Australia, Brunei, Japan, New Zealand and Singapore.
The US has also signed agreements with eight other countries including the Czech Republic, Hungary and South Korea which will put them on track to join the visa waiver programme.
Last year many European countries expressed concern about the idea of registering before travel.
The initial proposal was that passengers should register 48 hours in advance and many large European companies, including several in the UK, claimed the move would prevent deal-clinching, last-minute flights for business.
Now US officials say they want people to register even further in advance- but with the concession that once a traveller has registered under the new rules for the first time, it will be valid for multiple entries over two years.
Read Full Article Here
10 airports install body scanners
Devices can peer under passengers’ clothes
Thomas Frank
USA Today
June 6, 2008
Body-scanning machines that show images of people underneath their clothing are being installed in 10 of the nation’s busiest airports in one of the biggest public uses of security devices that reveal intimate body parts.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently started using body scans on randomly chosen passengers in Los Angeles, Baltimore, Denver, Albuquerque and at New York’s Kennedy airport.
Airports in Dallas, Detroit, Las Vegas and Miami will be added this month. Reagan National Airport in Washington starts using a body scanner today. A total of 38 machines will be in use within weeks.
“It’s the wave of the future,” said James Schear, the TSA security director at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, where two body scanners are in use at one checkpoint.
Schear said the scanners could eventually replace metal detectors at the nation’s 2,000 airport checkpoints and the pat-downs done on passengers who need extra screening. “We’re just scratching the surface of what we can do with whole-body imaging,” Schear said.
The TSA effort could encourage scanners’ use in rail stations, arenas and office buildings, the American Civil Liberties Union said. “This may well set a precedent that others will follow,” said Barry Steinhardt, head of the ACLU technology project.
Scanners are used in a few courthouses, jails and U.S. embassies, as well as overseas border crossings, military checkpoints and some foreign airports such as Amsterdam’s Schiphol.
The scanners bounce harmless “millimeter waves” off passengers who are selected to stand inside a portal with arms raised after clearing the metal detector. A TSA screener in a nearby room views the black-and-white image and looks for objects on a screen that are shaded differently from the body. Finding a suspicious object, a screener radios a colleague at the checkpoint to search the passenger.
The TSA says it protects privacy by blurring passengers’ faces and deleting images right after viewing. Yet the images are detailed, clearly showing a person’s gender. “You can actually see the sweat on someone’s back,” Schear said.
The scanners aim to strengthen airport security by spotting plastic and ceramic weapons and explosives that evade metal detectors and are the biggest threat to aviation. Government audits have found that screeners miss a large number of weapons, bombs and bomb parts such as wires and timers that agents sneak through checkpoints.
Read Full Article Here
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap_travel/20080602/ap_tr_ge/..r8R1rC3fcdAXucwAaAR.UU80F
Filed under: 2008 olympics, beijing, China, Dissent, human rights, Japan, Kim Jong-il, north korea, olympics, Protest, south korea, tibet, tibet protests, torch relay, UN, Uncategorized | Tags: Pak Hak Son, Pyongyang
North Korea gives Olympic torch a rare welcome
Haroon Siddique
London Guardian
April 28, 2008
The Olympic torch has made a peaceful procession through North Korea, where the regime is an ally of China. In a reversal of protests that have dogged the flame’s world tour, thousands of cheering people lined the 12-mile route through the capital, Pyongyang, waving pink paper flowers and small flags with the Beijing Olympics logo and chanting: “Welcome, welcome.”
The scenes were in stark contrast to those seen yesterday in the South Korean capital, Seoul, where clashes broke out between 500 Chinese students and about 50 demonstrators criticising Beijing’s policies.
The students threw stones and water bottles as some 2,500 police tried to keep the two sides apart. A North Korean defector covered himself with petrol and tried to set himself on fire, but police restrained and carried him away.
The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, was not seen at today’s event in Pyongyang. Pak Hak Son, chairman of the north’s Olympic committee, told Japan’s Kyodo news agency that despite his absence Jong was “paying great interest to the success of the Olympic torch relay”.
Protests against human rights abuses and state repression were notably absent on the route through North Korea, which has criticised the disruption to the flame’s progress elsewhere and supported Beijing in its crackdown against protests in Tibet.
“We express our basic position that while some impure forces have opposed China’s hosting of the event and have been disruptive. We believe that constitutes a challenge to the Olympic idea,” Pak said.
The UN children’s agency Unicef had been asked to participate in the North Korean leg of the relay but withdrew in March, saying it was not sure the event would help its mission of raising awareness of conditions for children.
Filed under: 1984, AI, army, artificial intelligence, Britain, China, defense department, DoD, enemy combatant, Europe, Geneva Convention, India, Iraq, Military, Military Industrial Complex, robot, Russia, Science and technology, south korea, super weapons, Troops, United Kingdom, War On Terror
A.I. War Machines a “Threat to Humanity”
AFP
February 27, 2008
Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP.
“They pose a threat to humanity,” said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.
Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world — from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones — can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.
There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.
The first three armed combat robots fitted with large-caliber machine guns deployed to Iraq last summer, manufactured by US arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said Sharkey.
But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.
It we are not careful, he said, that could change.
Military leaders “are quite clear that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more cost-effective and give a risk-free war,” he said.
Several countries, led by the United States, have already invested heavily in robot warriors developed for use on the battlefield.
South Korea and Israel both deploy armed robot border guards, while China, India, Russia and Britain have all increased the use of military robots.
Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defense’s Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December.
James Canton, an expert on technology innovation and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, predicts that deployment within a decade of detachments that will include 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots.
The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern, said Sharkey.
Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon-of-choice. “I don’t know why that has not happened already,” he said.
But even more worrisome, he continued, is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines.
“I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me,” Sharkey said.
Ronald Arkin of Georgia Institute of Technology, who has worked closely with the US military on robotics, agrees that the shift towards autonomy will be gradual.
But he is not convinced that robots don’t have a place on the front line.
“Robotics systems may have the potential to out-perform humans from a perspective of the laws of war and the rules of engagement,” he told a conference on technology in warfare at Stanford University last month.
The sensors of intelligent machines, he argued, may ultimately be better equipped to understand an environment and to process information. “And there are no emotions that can cloud judgement, such as anger,” he added.
Nor is there any inherent right to self-defence.
For now, however, there remain several barriers to the creation and deployment of Terminator-like killing machines.
Some are technical. Teaching a computer-driven machine — even an intelligent one — how to distinguish between civilians and combatants, or how to gauge a proportional response as mandated by the Geneva Conventions, is simply beyond the reach of artificial intelligence today.
But even if technical barriers are overcome, the prospect of armies increasingly dependent on remotely-controlled or autonomous robots raises a host of ethical issues that have barely been addressed.
Arkin points out that the US Department of Defense’s 230 billion dollar Future Combat Systems programme — the largest military contract in US history — provides for three classes of aerial and three land-based robotics systems.
“But nowhere is there any consideration of the ethical implications of the weaponisation of these systems,” he said.
For Sharkey, the best solution may be an outright ban on autonomous weapons systems. “We have to say where we want to draw the line and what we want to do — and then get an international agreement,” he said.
http://thought-criminal.org/article/node/1339
Living Neural Networks Could Drive War Machines
http://www.thought-criminal.org/article/node/1335
Robot wars ‘will be a reality within 10 years’
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/m..008/02/27/scirobots127.xml
Filed under: 2008 Election, Afghanistan, Germany, Iraq, Japan, John McCain, Military, military base, nation building, neocons, occupation, south korea, Troops, War On Terror
McCain: Occupy Iraq for “Ten Million Years”
Hit Him Again
January 5, 2008
What we have in Iraq is no longer a war, it is a military government exercising control over an occupied nation or territory. There is no standing enemy, just disorganized criminals who resent our presence. We can build dozens of bases there, there is no enemy to oppose it. We can build an embassy the size of the Vatican, there is no enemy to oppose it. And apparently, we can keep our troops there for the next “ten million years,” says John McCain.
McCain insist[ed] that what matters most is ending American casualties, not their presence in Iraq. He said he would be fine with keeping troops in Iraq for decades as long as they weren’t being harmed, similar to the arrangements that exist in South Korea, Japan and other countries.
“A thousand years. A million years. Ten million years,” McCain said. “It depends on the arrangement we have with the Iraqi government.”
Watch him fight with a questioner from the audience on this point:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf7HYoh9YMM
McCain cannot articulate a benefit to having troops in Japan, South Korea, Germany, or any of the other 130 countries our military currently occupies. Most importantly, the cost of keeping troops in Iraq for the next 10 million years is exorbitant. Considering that the “war” in Iraq has cost $480B over the last 4 four years on a pretty linear projection, we can estimate the cost, assuming a ridiculously-low 1% constant rate of inflation (I had to do this because the typical 3% breaks the calculator), over the next 10 million years.
The Total Cost: $3.28×10^43219 That’s a “3? with 43,000 zeros after it.
Filed under: genetically modified, GM, Science and technology, south korea, strange news
Koreans Clone Glow In The Dark Kittens
AFP
December 12, 2007
South Korean scientists have cloned cats by manipulating a fluorescent protein gene, a procedure which could help develop treatments for human genetic diseases, officials said Wednesday.
In a side-effect, the cloned cats glow in the dark when exposed to ultraviolet beams.
A team of scientists led by Kong Il-keun, a cloning expert at Gyeongsang National University, produced three cats possessing altered fluorescence protein (RFP) genes, the Ministry of Science and Technology said.
“It marked the first time in the world that cats with RFP genes have been cloned,” the ministry said in a statement.
“The ability to produce cloned cats with the manipulated genes is significant as it could be used for developing treatments for genetic diseases and for reproducing model (cloned) animals suffering from the same diseases as humans,” it added.
The cats were born in January and February. One was stillborn while two others grew to become adult Turkish Angoras, weighing 3.0 kilogrammes (6.6 pounds) and 3.5 kilogrammes.
“This technology can be applied to clone animals suffering from the same diseases as humans,” the leading scientist, Kong, told AFP.
“It will also help develop stemcell treatments,” he said, noting that cats have some 250 kinds of genetic diseases that affect humans, too.
The technology can also help clone endangered animals like tigers, leopards and wildcats, Kong said.
South Korea’s bio-engineering industry suffered a setback after a much-touted achievement by cloning expert Hwang Woo-Suk turned out to have been faked.
The government banned Hwang from research using human eggs after his claims that he created the first human stem cells through cloning were ruled last year to be bogus.
Hwang is standing trial on charges of fraud and embezzlement.
South Korean Cloned Cats Glow Red In The Dark
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/l…page_id=1965&ito=1490
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