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8-Year-Old Boy On Terror Watch List

8-Year-Old Boy On Terror Watch List

CBS News
January 14, 2010

Meet Mikey Hicks, public enemy number one, according to a Homeland Security Department watch list.

Photo: Mikey Hicks, 8.

He’s also an 8-year-old cub scout who attends parochial school in Clifton, N.J., and has been receiving the third degree from airport security since he was 2-years-old.

“A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked,” his mother, Najlah Hicks, told in reference to the Nigerian man who allegedly tried to blow up a Detroit bound airplane with explosives in his underwear on Christmas Day.

That’s because Mikey Hicks shares a name with someone who appears to be among some 13,500 on the large “selectee” list, which sets off a high level of security screening. The list apparently does not specify age or gender.

Najla Hicks, a photojournalist who was once cleared to fly with Vice President Al Gore, said the family was amused by the mistake at first but that quickly wore off and seven years later they are still trying to clear it up.

“I understand the need for security,” she added, “But this is ridiculous. It’s quite clear that he is 8 years old, and while he may have terroristic tendencies at home, he does not have those on a plane.”

 



Flight 253 Event a Pretext For Yemen War

Obama Blames al-Qaeda for Christmas False Flag, Sets Stage for Yemen Attack

Kurt Nimmo
Prison Planet.com
January 3, 2010

On Saturday, Obama said the Christmas day non-attack over Detroit was the work of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, the latest incarnation of the perennial boogieman used by government to frighten people into accepting foreign invasions and occupations and an ever-growing police state grid at home.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxDXiZbPpjM

“We know that [Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab] traveled to Yemen, a country grappling with crushing poverty and deadly insurgencies. It appears that he joined an affiliate of al Qaeda, and that this group — Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — trained him, equipped him with those explosives and directed him to attack that plane headed for America,” Obama said in his address to the nation.

Nassir al-Wahishi is the new Osama bin Laden. He was appointed by Ayman al-Zawahiri to run AQAP in Yemen. Al-Zawahiri is a documented intelligence asset. His brother Zaiman al-Zawahiri fought for the CIA in Kosovo and ran terrorist camps under NATO protection in the U.S. zone in Kosovo.

Ayman, according to January 2000 U.S. Congressional testimony, was granted U.S. residence by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. This is almost impossible for many legitimate immigrants to obtain but is often granted to CIA assets that need to get in and out of the country as they perform their assignments.

Ayman al-Zawahiri founded the Egyptian Islamic Jihad with the help of the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization long ago penterated and comprmised by British intelligence. The CIA funneled support to the Muslim Brotherhood in an effort to overthrow Egyptian president Gamal Abddul Nasser, considered the father of Arab nationalism.

“The real Muslim Brothers are those whose hands are never dirtied with the business of killing and burning,” Robert Dreyfuss summarized in 1980. “They are the secretive bankers and financiers who stand behind the curtain, the members of the old Arab, Turkish, or Persian families whose genealogy places them in the oligarchical elite, with smooth business and intelligence associations to the European black nobility (Bilderberg) and, especially, to the British oligarchy.”

The Islamist movement and in particular the violent Jihadist movement are creations of the elite and are used for political purposes contrary to those declared by their wild-eyed adherents who are generally patsies and useful idiots.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is but the latest assemblage of fanatics to be used by the elite to further their agenda of global domination and the mass murder and suffering it requires.

If Nassir al-Wahishi is connected to Ayman al-Zawahiri, it is a pretty safe bet to say he is a tool of the CIA as well. Nassir al-Wahishi also had a close relationship to the Big Kahuna of CIA operatives, the late Osama bin Laden.

“This is not the first time this group has targeted us,” Obama continued in his weekend address. “In recent years, they have bombed Yemeni government facilities and Western hotels, restaurants and embassies — including our embassy in 2008, killing one American. So, as president, I’ve made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government-training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them to strike al-Qaeda terrorists.”

Obama’s statement came one day after Britain’s PM Gordon Brown called an “emergency summit” on “extremism” in Yemen. “Gordon Brown has invited key international partners to a high-level meeting in order to discuss how best to counter radicalization in Yemen,” a statement issued by Downing Street announced. “The prime minister will host the event on 28 January in London.”

“Yemen’s problems are many, and some are already spreading beyond its borders,” the establishment declares from the pages of The Washington Post. “Security and stability are deteriorating. The population is growing rapidly. The economy is collapsing. There are few good options today; things will look worse tomorrow. Immediate and sustained international attention is needed to at least lessen the impact of some problems.”

“While military and counterterrorism operations are critical, long-term development assistance is also necessary.”

Iranian Press TV comments: “Concerns are growing that the same fate as those of Afghanistan and Iraq, suffering violence despite years of foreign military presence, might await Yemen’s Muslim nation.”

 

Obama Administration Prepares Public Opinion for Attack on Yemen

globalresearch.ca
January 3, 2010

Five days after the unsuccessful attempt by a Nigerian student to set off a bomb aboard a Detroit-bound passenger jet, US military and intelligence officials are said to be preparing expanded military action against targets in Yemen, the Arab country where the student allegedly received terrorist training and was equipped with an explosive device.

A series of US media reports suggest that new US-backed military attacks inside Yemen are imminent. Citing “two senior US officials,” CNN reported: “The US and Yemen are now looking at fresh targets for a potential retaliation strike.”

The network said the officials “both stressed the effort is aimed at being ready with options for the White House if President Obama orders a retaliatory strike.” CNN continued: “The effort is to see whether targets can be specifically linked to the airliner incident and its planning. US special operations forces and intelligence agencies, and their Yemeni counterparts, are working to identify potential Al Qaeda targets in Yemen, one of the officials said.”

The network said the Obama administration and the long-time Yemeni dictator, Field Marshal Ali Abdullah Saleh, had reached an agreement to allow the US to fly cruise missiles, fighter jets and armed drones, used for remote-control assassinations, in Yemeni airspace. Talks were still ongoing on whether Saleh will give permission for the entry of US helicopter-borne Special Forces.

The report comes after a series of statements by top administration officials, including Obama himself, pledging that “all elements of US power” will be used in response to the failed attack on Northwest Flight 253. The White House has been under heavy fire from its Republican opponents over the evident security failure, and a military action would serve to divert public attention from the ongoing revelations of how the CIA and other US agencies ignored warnings about the impending attack.

Yemen’s foreign minister, Abu Bakr al Qirbi, told the BBC that his country was seeking stepped up military aid, presumably as part of a package deal—in effect, a bribe for allowing the country’s territory to be turned into a battlefield for US commandos.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama administration was discussing nearly tripling its military and counterterrorism aid to Yemen in the coming year. US aid jumped from $4.6 million in 2006 to $67 million this year, and would rise to as much as $190 million in 2010, according to “a senior military official.

Reuters, citing unnamed “defense and counterterrorism officials,” reported that “the Obama administration was exploring ways to accelerate and expand US assistance to Yemeni forces to root out the Al Qaeda leadership in the country, while keeping the role of the US military and intelligence agencies as behind the scenes as possible.”

The news agency reported a clash between Yemeni security forces and Al Qaeda fighters in the western Hudaydah province, around the town of Deir Jaber.

The Los Angeles Times cited a Yemeni terrorism expert as the source of an estimate that Al Qaeda has “as many as 2,000 militants and sympathizers exploiting the country’s economic and political chaos to create a base for jihad at the edge of the Persian Gulf.” This is ten times more than other media estimates of the number of such militants in Yemen, and 20 times the number of Al Qaeda forces said by US officials to be in Afghanistan now.

The Times report is part of an effort by the US media to portray Yemen as a lawless hotbed of terrorism and a major threat to the United States, in order to justify in advance an American attack, or even a full-scale invasion.

It was followed by an even more apocalyptic comment by “terrorism expert” Steven Emerson, interviewed Wednesday morning on CBS’ “Early Show.” He said that while the Pakistan-Afghanistan border was still “number one” for terrorist activity, the area surrounding the Gulf of Aden, including Yemen and Somalia, was “fast coming up the ladder.”

    “Yemen possibly could surpass Pakistan in the next year, given the terrorist trajectory for providing a haven for Al Qaeda,” he claimed. In light of the fact that the Obama administration is mobilizing 100,000 American troops as well as hundreds of warplanes and drones for combat along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, such a comparison is extremely ominous.

    Emerson took particular note of “literally scores of American Muslim students studying and being trained in Yemen to this day…. There’s a pool of potential terrorists out there that have Western passports that can board planes without visas.”

The clear goal of such far-fetched claims is to create a pogrom atmosphere directed against all young American Muslims, particularly those of Arab or East African origin.

These comments were made one day after press reports of an alleged abortive attempt by a Somali man equipped with explosive powder and a syringe to board a passenger jet in Mogadishu, the capital city. This is the same modus operandi as that of the Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, aboard Northwest Flight 253 on Christmas Day. The Somali was arrested by African peacekeeping troops on November 13 and never succeeded in getting on the plane.

The Washington Post, the leading newspaper in the US capital, published an editorial Wednesday noting that in the wake of the Christmas Day bombing attempt, allegedly originating in Yemen, “some are asking whether the United States should launch a military offensive in that impoverished Arabian nation.” The editorial continued: “The answer, of course, is that it already has.”

Citing a series of raids conducted by Yemeni and US forces, the Post praised the Obama administration for having “significantly stepped up US counterterrorism operations in Yemen,” including the dispatch of CIA and Special Forces personnel. But it warned: “Still, Yemen’s steady slide toward failed-state status in recent years means that it, like nearby Somalia, will probably demand concerted and multifaceted US engagement for years to come. More than Special Forces and missile strikes are needed.”

While declaring that “US ground troops are not needed, for now, in Yemen or Somalia,” the newspaper suggested that such forces may well be required in the future. It declared, “in those countries, as in Afghanistan, a strategy limited to counterterrorism will not eliminate the threat.”

Once again, as in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq, American imperialism is preparing a military bloodbath in an impoverished country, using a terrorist attack—in this case a failed attempt—as the pretext. According to reports by the UN and Yemeni government statistics, some 35 percent of the adult population of the country is unemployed. Yemen is the poorest of the Arab countries, has exhausted its very limited oil export capacity, and now faces severe water shortages.

But Yemen possesses, like Afghanistan and Iraq, a highly strategic geographic location, adjacent to Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, and the Red Sea, controlling access to the Suez Canal. Yemen also borders on the Gulf of Aden, the shipping route for much of the oil leaving the Persian Gulf.

US military forces are already deployed across the strait of Bab el Mandeb in Djibouti, the former French Somaliland, which remains a virtual French colony. Djibouti hosts thousands of French and US troops who could quickly move into Yemen if so ordered by Paris and Washington. A large US and NATO war fleet patrols shipping lanes through the Gulf of Aden and south along the Indian Ocean coast of Somalia.

 

Summary of Facts: Flight 253 Event

Examiner
January 2, 2009

The US government who lied for wars in other resource-rich countries are lying about what happened on Delta Flight 253 with an alleged underwear/crotch bomber. Below is a summary of facts reported at this time, along with a 4-minute news interview from Webster Tarpley, followed by an extensive interview of Mr. Tarpley by Alex Jones.:

Before the flight to the US:

    * Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab traveled to Yemen to meet with “terrorists.” However, his mother also lives in Yemen, which could also explain the visit.

    * The alleged terrorists in Yemen had been in Guantanamo Prison. They were released without trial by the Bush Administration even though they were reported as among the most dangerous detainees.

    * The government of Yemen reports that Islamic terrorists there have been arrested who have proven ties to Israeli intelligence.

    * Abdulmutallab’s father, though we are told is a retired “Nigerian banker,” ran their defense industry in close cooperation with Israeli Intelligence (Mossad).

    * Abdulmutallab’s father warned US embassy officials of his son’s dangerous behavior; this is corroborated with other US intelligence of warning.

    * Abdulmutallab’s visa to the US was never withdrawn, though he was on a “terrorist watchlist.” This would make his trip impossible unless protocol was ignored.

    * Flying from Nigeria, Abdulmutallab entered the Netherlands without passing through customs; impossible to do without assistance from an intelligence agency.

    * At the Amsterdam airport, Abdulmutallab was assisted by a man appearing to be Indian, who claimed Abdulmutallab was a Sudanese refugee with no passport (he would not have been allowed to enter the EU without a passport through customs). This man and whoever authorized boarding without a passport are huge stories we haven’t heard. Where is the airport videos of this?

    * Airport security in Amsterdam is contracted to an Israeli company with the most sophisticated technologies who had developed the concept of security profiling.

During the flight to the US:

    * Witnesses reported a man standing ten rows behind Abdulmutallab stand and use his camcorder to film the incident before it began. This important testimony was not pursued to discover the identity and role of this seemingly complicit person.

    * Witnesses report Abdulmutallab was oddly vacant and calm; typical of a programmed

    “Manchurian Candidate.” This might explain the behavior of the person filming: a “handler” who gave the code for Abdulmutallab to perform an act. Manchurian Candidates are now acknowledged historical fact. Research this if you are unfamiliar with the disclosed history.

After the flight:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq2gz0Zr0jQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv8sSHphscg

 



Terrorist Allowed on Plane Without Passport

EPIC FAIL: Terrorist Allowed on Plane Without a Passport AND He Was on a Terrorist Database!

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
December 27, 2009

A passenger who boarded Northwest Airlines Flight 253 in Amsterdam with attempted plane bomber Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab says the would-be terrorist had no passport and was aided by a sharp-dressed man who claimed Mutallab was a Sudanese refugee, just one of a plethora of startling inconsistencies surrounding an incident that has led to ramped up security and increased levels of harassment in airports.

Every single fact that has come to light since the attempted bombing on Christmas Day directly indicates that the bomber was deliberately allowed to board the plane and that his attack would have succeeded if not for the alert and brave reactions of the passengers and flight crew.

According to Kurt Haskell, an attorney with the Haskell Law Firm in Taylor, Michigan, “He and his wife were sitting on the ground near their boarding gate in Amsterdam, which is when they saw Mutallab approach the gate with an unidentified man.”

Mutallab was a poorly dressed, young looking individual, but he was accompanied by a man in an expensive suit, Haskell told MLive.com.

“He says the suited man asked ticket agents whether Mutallab could board without a passport. “The guy said, ‘He’s from Sudan and we do this all the time.’”

Although Mutallab is Nigerian, Haskell said the well-dressed man portrayed him as a desperate Sudanese refugee in an attempt to elicit sympathy and as a way of bypassing his lack of documents.

“The ticket agent referred Mutallab and his companion to her manager down the hall, and Haskell didn’t see Mutallab again until after he allegedly tried to detonate an explosive on the plane,” states the report.

Crucially, Haskell said that after the plane landed he saw another man being taken into custody by the FBI along with Mutallab. However, the FBI later said that Mutallab was the only individual taken into custody.

Were the feds retrieving their own agent, the sharp dressed man who ensured that Mutallab boarded the plane despite his overwhelmingly suspicious circumstances?

Mutallab was a known security threat who was on the terror watch list. He is barred from entering Britain after being refused a new visa due to applying for a fake university course. Separate reports said that he did hold a valid visa, which begs the question, how can someone on a terror watch list be allowed to fly?

“On the one hand, it seems he’s been on the terror watch list but not on the no-fly list,” he said. “That doesn’t square because the American Department for Homeland Security has pretty stringent data-mining capability. I don’t understand how he had a valid visa if he was known on the terror watch list,” Dr Magnus Ranstorp of the Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies told the London Independent.

It has also been revealed that Mutallab’s father contacted U.S. intelligence officials a month ago and warned them that his son was a threat, but nothing was done.

The bomber’s father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, was a a former minister and chairman of First Bank in Nigeria. The bomber does not fit the image of a disgruntled, rag-tag terrorist. His considerable wealth allowed him to live in luxury at an imposing London mansion.

As a result of the failed attack, new security directives have been introduced for anyone traveling into America. Intense body and hand-luggage searches and sniffer dogs have been beefed up at departure gates and passengers have been ordered not to stand during the final hour of the flight and are not allowed access to any of their hand luggage during the final hour.

There can be little doubt that whatever the nature of this incident, it will be exploited to the maximum in order to further tighten the stranglehold of police state security measures that are increasingly finding their way out of the airport and into our everyday lives. Homeland Security proposals to use a mandatory shock bracelet that will be fitted to all travelers will now move closer to implementation, as will the increased global rollout of x-ray scanning machines that produce naked images of passengers.

However, if you’re a suspicious looking man on a terror watch list with no passport carrying explosives, you should breeze through security with no questions asked, just be sure to have a sharp-dressed man with you at all times.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBzwxbBMVug

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzKAbwnermM

 

Bathroom Visits Now Considered Potential Terrorism

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
December 28, 2009

As a result of the highly suspicious incident on Christmas Day where a Nigerian man on a terror watchlist with no passport and explosive materials was allowed to board Delta Flight 253, suffocating security paranoia has been implemented to the point where bathroom visits are now considered potential terrorism.

Another Nigerian man who became ill and was forced to spend a considerable amount of time in the toilet became the focal point of another terror scare yesterday after pilots aboard Delta 253, the same plane involved in last week’s incident, requested emergency assistance upon landing.

The Joint Terrorism Task Force and Homeland Security descended to investigate the crisis and President Obama was even informed of the deadly security threat prompted by the man having diarrhea.

After hours of media frothing about a second terrorist incident, the truth finally emerged.

“A passenger on today’s Northwest flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit spent an unusually long time in the aircraft lavatory,” Homeland Security press secretary Sara Kuban said in a statement.

“The passenger in question, a Nigerian national, was removed from the flight and interviewed by the F.B.I.; indications at this time are that the individual’s behavior is due to legitimate illness, and no other suspicious behavior or materials have been found.”

And yet this farce represents merely the tip of the iceberg in terms of the intensified harassment and lunacy now being witnessed in airports across the world all in the name of preventing a threat that is in reality less deadly than lightening strikes and peanut allergies, both of which have killed more Americans over the past few decades than terrorism.

If you thought that mothers having to taste their own breast milk and naked body scans was a little over the top, it’s only going to get worse as a result of an incident that has all the hallmarks of a staged event. Body searches, baggage searches and vehicle searches even outside of the airport are now taking place with a wanton disregard for the 4th amendment.

Authorities are too busy shaking down Grandma to really care about how a man who was known to be a security threat, was on a terror watchlist, had no passport and had explosive materials embedded in his clothing was allowed to board a plane, aided by a sharp-dressed man who lied about his circumstances.

Once again, Americans who will willfully endure whatever humiliation they are ordered to undergo are being trained to obey the most ridiculous rules in the airport so that similar measures can eventually become a normal routine on the streets, in shopping malls and any other places of public gathering.

This is all being metered out in the name of protecting the sheeple from a terrorist threat that the government, through its own deliberate actions, manufactured alerts and intelligence failures, has sought to proliferate at every turn.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i_7kv5pMbE

 

Northwest Bomb Plot ‘Oddities’

Legitgov.org
December 28, 2009

In 2008, the ACLU estimated the US ‘No Fly List‘ to have grown to over 1,000,000 names — heck, even Cat Stevens and the late Senator Ted Kennedy were on it — and it continues to expand. But, suspected terrorist Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was curiously able to obtain military-grade high explosives –80 grams of PETN (Gee, where’d he get that?) — managed to escape airport security and detonate his underwear bomb!

In April 2009, American authorities reportedly refused an Air France flight from Paris to Mexico entry into US airspace because a left-wing journalist writing a book on the CIA was on board. Hernando Calvo Ospina, who works for Le Monde Diplomatique and has written on revolutionary movements in Cuba and Colombia, figured on the US authorities’ ‘no-fly list.’ Air France said the April 18 flight was forced to divert to the French Caribbean island of Martinique before continuing its journey (telegraph.co.uk).

Got it? Write a book critical of the CIA — you cannot fly. Carry explosives (allegedly from Yemen) on board when the US is trolling for an excuse to invade and occupy Yemen for its oil — yes you can! The US needs false flags to provide cover for illegal invasions and occupations. The 9/11 terrorist attacks (aka inside job, six ways to Sunday) worked well for the US government; the security-industrial complex made billions and US corporaterrorists were able to negotiate the wholesale theft of Iraq’s oil.

According to CNN, the terror suspect’s father tried to warn authorities. CNN reported: The father of a man suspected in a botched terror attack aboard a Northwest Airlines flight contacted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria recently with concerns his son was planning something, a senior U.S. administration official said Saturday. The father — identified by a family source as Umaru Abdul Mutallab — contacted the U.S. Embassy “a few weeks ago” saying his son, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had “become radicalized,” the senior administration official, who is familiar with the case, told CNN.

And yet, Abdulmutallab was not obliged to undergo any additional airport screening layers, prior to boarding for the last leg of his journey to Detroit.

Also, lest we forget: Three key provisions of the Patriot Act are scheduled to expire 31 December 2009. Hmm. I wonder if post-Abdulmutallab they will get renewed?

Abdulmutallab was thwarted by a quote, unquote vacationing movie producer, Jasper Schuringa, who, within seconds, asserted that he not only tackled the suspect and put him in a headlock but also tried ‘to search his body for any explosives’ (CNN). Unless one was a bona-fide law enforcement professional or a military agent, who on earth would think of searching a man who had just set himself on fire, in a matter of seconds, for more explosives?

The goal is Yemeni oil. Hence the reason for the destabilization and the purported need for the US to stop al-Qaeda (literally, ‘the database’). The Yemeni national security chief has declared that the country is receiving assistance from the US in the crackdown on what he called ‘al-Qaeda operatives’ in southern Yemen (Press TV). Translation: US corporaterrorists want Yemen’s oil and they want it NOW.

Nigerian man was in terror database

Rich and privileged – the gilded life of would-be plane bomber

Foiled Terrorist Bombing in Detroit: An Excuse to Expand the Bogus War On Terror

Men, get ready for physical exams at airport security checkpoints!

Terrorists, Crooks Allowed to Keep FAA Pilot’s Licenses

 



Future Drugs Will Make Troops Want to Fight

Future Drugs Will Make Troops Want to Fight
Potential technologies to picture what someone is thinking, drugs that give soldiers super-human power and awareness, robots controlled with the brain and land-mines that release drugs to incapacitate suspects is in the works.

Wired
August 13, 2008

Drugs that make soldiers want to fight. Robots linked directly to their controllers’ brains. Lie-detecting scans administered to terrorist suspects as they cross U.S. borders.

These are just a few of the military uses imagined for cognitive science — and if it’s not yet certain whether the technologies will work, the military is certainly taking them very seriously.

“It’s way too early to know which — if any — of these technologies is going to be practical,” said Jonathan Moreno, a Center for American Progress bioethicist and author of Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense. “But it’s important for us to get ahead of the curve. Soldiers are always on the cutting edge of new technologies.”

Moreno is part of a National Research Council committee convened by the Department of Defense to evaluate the military potential of brain science. Their report, “Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies,” was released today. It charts a range of cognitive technologies that are potentially powerful — and, perhaps, powerfully troubling.

Here are the report’s main areas of focus:

  • Mind reading. The development of psychological models and neurological imaging has made it possible to see what people are thinking and whether they’re lying. The science is, however, still in its infancy: Challenges remain in accounting for variations between individual brains, and the tendency of our brains to change over time.

    One important application is lie detection — though one hopes that the lesson of traditional lie detectors, predicated on the now-disproven idea that the physiological basis of lying can be separated from processes such as anxiety, has been learned.

    Mind readers could be used to interrogate captured enemies, as well as “terrorist suspects” passing through customs. But does this mean, for example, that travelers placed on the bloated, mistake-laden watchlist would have their minds scanned, just as their computers will be?

    The report notes that “In situations where it is important to win the hearts and minds of the local populace, it would be useful to know if they understand the information being given them.”

  • Cognitive enhancement. Arguably the most developed area of cognitive neuroscience, with drugs already allowing soldiers to stay awake and alert for days at a time, and brain-altering drugs in widespread use among civilians diagnosed with mental and behavioral problems.

    Improved drug delivery systems and improved neurological understanding could make today’s drugs seem rudimentary, giving soldiers a superhuman strength and awareness — but if a drug can be designed to increase an ability, a drug can also be designed to destroy it.

    “It’s also important to develop antidotes and protective agents against various classes of drugs,” says the report. This echoes the motivation of much federal biodefense research, in which designing defenses against potential bioterror agents requires those agents to be made — and that raises the possibility of our own weapons being turned against us, as with the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, which used a military developed strain.

  • Mind control. Largely pharmaceutical, for the moment, and a natural outgrowth of cognitive enhancement approaches and mind-reading insight: If we can alter the brain, why not control it?

    One potential use involves making soldiers want to fight. Conversely, “How can we disrupt the enemy’s motivation to fight? […] How can we make people trust us more? What if we could help the brain to remove fear or pain? Is there a way to make the enemy obey our commands?”
  • Brain-Machine Interfaces. The report focuses on direct brain-to-machine systems (rather than, for example, systems that are controlled by visual movements, which are already in limited use by paraplegics.) Among these are robotic prostheses that replace or extend body parts; cognitive and sensory prostheses, which make it possible to think and to perceive in entirely new ways; and robotic or software assistants, which would do the same thing, but from a distance.

    Many questions surrounding the safety of current brain-machine interfaces: The union of metal and flesh only lasts so long before things break down. But assuming those can be overcome, questions of plasticity arise: What happens when a soldier leaves the service? How might their brains be reshaped by their experience?

Like Moreno said, it’s too early to say what will work. The report documents in great detail the practical obstacles to these aims — not least the failure of reductionist neuroscientific models, in which a few firing neurons can be easily mapped to a psychological state, and brains can be analyzed in one-map-fits-all fashion.

But given the rapid progress of cognitive science, it’s foolish to assume that obstacles won’t be overcome. Hugh Gusterson, a George Mason University anthropologist and critic of the military’s sponsorship of social science research, says their attempt to crack the cultural code is unlikely to work — “but my sense with neuroscience,” he said, “is a far more realistic ambition.”

Gusterson is deeply pessimistic about military neuroscience, which will not be limited to the United States.

“I think most reasonable people, if they imagine a world in which all sides have figured out how to control brains, they’d rather not go there,” he said. “Most rational human beings would believe that if we could have a world where nobody does military neuroscience, we’ll all be better off. But for some people in the Pentagon, it’s too delicious to ignore.”

 

Brain will be battlefield of future, warns US intelligence report

The Guardian
August 14, 2008

Rapid advances in neuroscience could have a dramatic impact on national security and the way in which future wars are fought, US intelligence officials have been told.

In a report commissioned by the Defense Intelligence Agency, leading scientists were asked to examine how a greater understanding of the brain over the next 20 years is likely to drive the development of new medicines and technologies.

They found several areas in which progress could have a profound impact, including behaviour-altering drugs, scanners that can interpret a person’s state of mind and devices capable of boosting senses such as hearing and vision.

On the battlefield, bullets may be replaced with “pharmacological land mines” that release drugs to incapacitate soldiers on contact, while scanners and other electronic devices could be developed to identify suspects from their brain activity and even disrupt their ability to tell lies when questioned, the report says.

“The concept of torture could also be altered by products in this market. It is possible that some day there could be a technique developed to extract information from a prisoner that does not have any lasting side effects,” the report states.

The report highlights one electronic technique, called transcranial direct current stimulation, which involves using electrical pulses to interfere with the firing of neurons in the brain and has been shown to delay a person’s ability to tell a lie.

Drugs could also be used to enhance the performance of military personnel. There is already anecdotal evidence of troops using the narcolepsy drug modafinil, and ritalin, which is prescribed for attention deficit disorder, to boost their performance. Future drugs, developed to boost the cognitive faculties of people with dementia, are likely to be used in a similar way, the report adds.

Greater understanding of the brain’s workings is also expected to usher in new devices that link directly to the brain, either to allow operators to control machinery with their minds, such as flying unmanned reconnaissance drones, or to boost their natural senses.

For example, video from a person’s glasses, or audio recorded from a headset, could be processed by a computer to help search for relevant information. “Experiments indicate that the advantages of these devices are such that human operators will be greatly enhanced for things like photo reconnaissance and so on,” Kit Green, who chaired the report committee, said.

The report warns that while the US and other western nations might now consider themselves at the forefront of neuroscience, that is likely to change as other countries ramp up their computing capabilities. Unless security services can monitor progress internationally, they risk “major, even catastrophic, intelligence failures in the years ahead”, the report warns.

“In the intelligence community, there is an extremely small number of people who understand the science and without that it’s going to be impossible to predict surprises. This is a black hole that needs to be filled with light,” Green told the Guardian.

The technologies will one day have applications in counter-terrorism and crime-fighting. The report says brain imaging will not improve sufficiently in the next 20 years to read peoples’ intentions from afar and spot criminals before they act, but it might be good enough to help identify people at a checkpoint or counter who are afraid or anxious.

“We’re not going to be reading minds at a distance, but that doesn’t mean we can’t detect gross changes in anxiety or fear, and then subsequently talk to those individuals to see what’s upsetting them,” Green said.

The development of advanced surveillance techniques, such as cameras that can spot fearful expressions on people’s faces, could lead to some inventive ways to fool them, the report adds, such as Botox injections to relax facial muscles.

Land-mines that release drugs to incapacitate an enemy
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/aug/13/military.neuroscience

Future Wars To Be Fought With Mind Drugs
http://www.roguegovernment.com/news.php?id=11432

 



Reporter Critical Of TSA Put On Terror Watch List

Reporter Critical Of TSA Put On Terror Watch List

Raw Story
July 16, 2008

The post-9/11 airline watch list that is supposed to keep terrorists off of airplanes has swelled to more than 1 million names, including at least one investigative reporter who had been critical of the Transportation Security Agency, which maintains the watch list.

CNN’s Drew Griffin reported on the bloating of the watch list, which an ACLU count pegged at 1,001,308 names Wednesday afternoon. Griffin’s is one of those names, he says.

“Coincidentally, this all began in May, shortly after I began a series of investigative reports critical of the TSA. Eleven flights now since May 19. On different airlines, my name pops up forcing me to go to the counter, show my identification, sometimes the agent has to make a call before I get my ticket,” Griffin reported. “What does the TSA say? Nothing, at least nothing on camera. Over the phone a public affairs worker told me again I’m not on the watch list, and don’t even think that someone in the TSA or anyone else is trying to get even.”

The TSA, which is a part of the Department of Homeland Security, said Griffin’s name wasn’t even on the watch list, and the agency blamed the airlines for the delays the reporter experienced. The airlines, on the other hand, said they were simply following a list provided by TSA.

While it wouldn’t be much of a stretch for plenty of people to believe the TSA would exercise its revenge via watch-list meddling, an agency spokesman insists that just isn’t the case.

“So if there’s any thought or shadow of a thought that TSA somehow put you on a watch list because of your reporting,” spokesman Christopher White said, “it is absolutely fabricated.”

http://youtube.com/watch?v=VJkcgKF4ATc

 



U.S. terrorism watch list tops 1 million

U.S. terrorism watch list tops 1 million

Randall Mikkelsen
Reuters
July 14, 2008

A U.S. watch list of terrorism suspects has passed 1 million records, corresponding to about 400,000 people, and a leading civil rights group said on Monday the number was far too high to be effective.

The Bush administration disagreed and called the list one of the most effective tools implemented after the September 11 hijacked plane attacks — when a federal “no-fly” list contained just 16 people considered threats to aviation.

The American Civil Liberties Union publicized the 1 million milestone with a news conference and release.

It said the watch list was an impediment to millions of travelers and called for changes, including tightening criteria for adding names, giving travelers a right to challenge their inclusion and improving procedures for taking wrongly included names off the list.

“America’s new million-record watch list is a perfect symbol for what’s wrong with this administration’s approach to security: it’s unfair, out-of-control, a waste of resources (and) treats the rights of the innocent as an afterthought,” ACLU technology director Barry Steinhardt said in a release.

Read Full Article Here

British tourists to US face new online ‘green form’ ordeal
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/n..ourists-to-US-face-online-green-form-ordeal.html