This lays bare the depths of total insanity in the collective minds of the so-called civilized world. The powerful spend Billions to research and design a robotic killing machine with a heart, with morals; a robot incapable of war crimes, as if war itself wasn’t a crime against humanity. As if killing men for oil isn’t a crime. As if butchering men, women and children for their land’s natural resources isn’t a crime. As if imperial expansion is moral. Man deludes himself into believing an inherent morality exists in wars of conquest as long as the Geneva Conventions are not violated. We live in a world where the sane are locked up or roaming the streets homeless, and the insane run the government.
Tim Shipman for The Telegraph writes: the US Army and Navy have both hired experts in the ethics of building machines to prevent the creation of an amoral Terminator-style killing machine that murders indiscriminately. By 2010 the US will have invested $4 billion in a research programme into “autonomous systems”, the military jargon for robots, on the basis that they would not succumb to fear or the desire for vengeance that afflicts frontline soldiers. A British robotics expert has been recruited by the US Navy to advise them on building robots that do not violate the Geneva Conventions.
Colin Allen, a scientific philosopher at Indiana University’s has just published a book summarising his views entitled Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong.
He told The Daily Telegraph: “The question they want answered is whether we can build automated weapons that would conform to the laws of war. Can we use ethical theory to help design these machines?” Pentagon chiefs are concerned by studies of combat stress in Iraq that show high proportions of frontline troops supporting torture and retribution against enemy combatants. Ronald Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech university, who is working on software for the US Army has written a report which concludes robots, while not “perfectly ethical in the battlefield” can “perform more ethically than human soldiers.” More
MSNBC reports the U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials. The long-planned shift in the Defense Department’s role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said. There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military’s role in domestic law enforcement. More
Alex Spillius with The Telegraph writes: Computer hackers suspected of working from Russia successfully penetrated Pentagon computer systems in one of the most severe cyber attacks on US military networks. The electronic attack was so serious that Adm Michael Mullen, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, briefed President George W Bush and Robert Gates, the defence secretary. Defence officials told the Los Angeles Times that the attack struck computers within the US Central Command, which oversees Iraq and Afghanistan, and involved malicious software - known as “malware” - that permeates a network.
“This one was significant, this one got our attention,” said an official, speaking anonymously. Officials did not disclose the extent of the damage and would not elaborate on the reasons for believing the assault originated in Russia. The Pentagon and other US government departments face repeated cyber attacks, especially from Russia and China, either from individuals or indirectly from those countries’ governments. Within the past 18 months Russia has been accused of orchestrating major electronic attacks on neighbours Estonia and Georgia.
After blocking YouTube from overseas bases last year, the Defense Department has launched TroopTube, as an authorized alternative. It is, the site says:
…”the new online video site designed to help military families connect and keep in touch while miles apart. The site is designed for easy use, so you can quickly upload videos and share the simple joys of each day with each other, either privately or with the whole world.”
Bob Chapman International Forecaster
The coming depression is going to be terrible. The US owes foreigners over $3 trillion, has over $10 trillion in short-term debt and over $100 trillion in long-term debt. We need $3 billion a day from foreigners just to stay afloat. We cannot compete with foreign countries without re-erecting trade barriers on goods and services.
We talk about gold and silver being the only financial salvation of our age. It is and will continue to be because America and most of the countries are broke and there is no way they can recover. They are buried in debt and will try desperately to bail themselves out via inflation, which they know will not work. Eventually the bottom will fall out and they know it. That is why they have to have another war, a major one. They desperately need another distraction. That creates the opportunity for profit, people control, a draft, population destruction, avoidance of revolution and the repudiation of debt due to this terrible war that, of course, our enemies started.
This allows as well for a further grab for power - the Nazification of our country. This will be accompanied by massive inflation, which as they say in the controlled media, that it’s already baked into the cake. Those in dollar denominated debt particularly in treasury and Agency debt will get clobbered. A triple AAA rating, which in this coming year will be lowered, is a trap for investors. Soon real interest rates will rise and that means lower bond prices. Growth will not be maintained and depression will eventually consume the world economy. More
Pakistan Daily RAND Corporation Lobbies The Pentagon To Start New War To Save U.S. Economy
According to reports out of top Chinese mainstream news outlets, the RAND Corporation recently presented a shocking proposal to the Pentagon in which it lobbied for a war to be started with a major foreign power in an attempt to stimulate the American economy and prevent a recession. A fierce debate has now ensued in China about who that foreign power may be, with China itself as well as Russia and even Japan suspected to be the targets of aggression.
The reports cite French media news sources as having uncovered the proposal, in which RAND suggested that the $700 billion dollars that has been earmarked to bailout Wall Street and failing banks instead be used to finance a new war which would in turn re-invigorate the flagging stock markets. The RAND Corporation is a notoriously powerful NGO with deep ties to the U.S. military-industrial complex as well as interlocking connections with the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations.
“In remarks made over the weekend in Seattle, Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Biden warned that Barack Obama, if elected president, would be compelled to take deeply unpopular actions in both domestic and foreign policy within months of taking office. More
“…Biden forecast a major international crisis in the first six months of an Obama administration. He compared Obama to John F. Kennedy, the last senator to be elected president. ‘It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy,’ Biden said. “The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Watch. We’re going to have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.” –Patrick Martin
New Scientist
The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to provide a “Multi-Robot Pursuit System” that will let packs of robots “search for and detect a non-cooperative human”.
One thing that really bugs defence chiefs is having their troops diverted from other duties to control robots. So having a pack of them controlled by one person makes logistical sense. But I’m concerned about where this technology will end up.
Given that iRobot last year struck a deal with Taser International to mount stun weapons on its military robots, how long before we see packs of droids hunting down pesky demonstrators with paralysing weapons? Or could the packs even be lethally armed? I asked two experts on automated weapons what they thought - click the continue reading link to read what they said.
Both were concerned that packs of robots would be entrusted with tasks - and weapons - they were not up to handling without making wrong decisions.
Steve Wright of Leeds Metropolitan University is an expert on police and military technologies, and last year correctly predicted this pack-hunting mode of operation would happen. “The giveaway here is the phrase ‘a non-cooperative human subject’,” he told me:
“What we have here are the beginnings of something designed to enable robots to hunt down humans like a pack of dogs. Once the software is perfected we can reasonably anticipate that they will become autonomous and become armed.
We can also expect such systems to be equipped with human detection and tracking devices including sensors which detect human breath and the radio waves associated with a human heart beat. These are technologies already developed.”
Another commentator often in the news for his views on military robot autonomy is Noel Sharkey, an AI and robotics engineer at the University of Sheffield. He says he can understand why the military want such technology, but also worries it will be used irresponsibly.
“This is a clear step towards one of the main goals of the US Army’s Future Combat Systems project, which aims to make a single soldier the nexus for a large scale robot attack. Independently, ground and aerial robots have been tested together and once the bits are joined, there will be a robot force under command of a single soldier with potentially dire consequences for innocents around the corner.”
David DeBatto
If the United States attacks Iran either this summer or this fall, the American people had better be prepared for a shock that may perhaps be even greater to the national psyche (and economy) than 9/11. First of all, there will be significant U.S. casualties in the initial invasion. American jets will be shot down and the American pilots who are not killed will be taken prisoner - including female pilots. Iranian Yakhonts 26, Sunburn 22 and Exocet missiles will seek out and strike U.S. naval battle groups bottled up in the narrow waters of the Persian Gulf with very deadly results. American sailors will be killed and U.S. ships will be badly damaged and perhaps sunk. We may even witness the first attack on an American Aircraft carrier since World War II.
Israel (who had thus far stayed out of the fray by letting the U.S. military do the heavy lifting) is attacked by Hezbollah in a coordinated and large scale effort. Widespread and grisly casualties effectively paralyze the nation, a notion once thought impossible. Iran’s newest ally in the region, Syria, then unleashes a barrage of over 200 Scud B, C and D missiles at Israel, each armed with VX gas. Since all of Israel is within range of these Russian built weapons, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and virtually all major civilian centers and several military bases are struck, often with a result of massive casualties.
The Israeli Air Force orders all three squadrons of their F-16I Sufa fighter/bombers into the air with orders to bomb Tehran and as many military and nuclear bases as they can before they are either shot down or run out of fuel. It is a one way trip for some of these pilots. Their ancient homeland lies in ruins. Many have family that is already dead or dying. They do not wait for permission from Washington, DC or U.S. regional military commanders. The Israeli aircraft are carrying the majority of their country’s nuclear arsenal under their wings. More
ABC News—Senior Pentagon officials are concerned that Israel could carry out an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities before the end of the year, an action that would have enormous security and economic repercussions for the United States and the rest of the world. A senior defense official told ABC News there is an “increasing likelihood” that Israel will carry out such an attack, a move that likely would prompt Iranian retaliation against, not just Israel, but against the United States as well. The official identified two “red lines” that could trigger an Israeli offensive. The first is tied to when Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility produces enough highly enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. According to the latest U.S. and Israeli intelligence assessments, that is likely to happen sometime in 2009, and could happen by the end of this year. More
The Defense Department, the nation’s biggest polluter, is resisting orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up Fort Meade and two other military bases where the EPA says dumped chemicals pose “imminent and substantial” dangers to public health and the environment.
The Pentagon has also declined to sign agreements required by law that cover 12 other military sites on the Superfund list of the most polluted places in the country. The contracts would spell out a remediation plan, set schedules, and allow the EPA to oversee the work and assess penalties if milestones are missed. More
By Ray McGovern
Unlike the attack on Iraq five years ago, to deal with Iran there need be no massing of troops. And, with the propaganda buildup already well under way, there need be little, if any, forewarning before shock and awe and pox – in the form of air and missile attacks – begin. This time it will be largely the Air Force’s show, punctuated by missile and air strikes by the Navy. Israeli-American agreement has now been reached at the highest level; the armed forces planners, plotters and pilots are working out the details.
Emerging from a 90-minute White House meeting with President George W. Bush on June 4, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the two leaders were of one mind: “We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat. I left with a lot less question marks [than] I had entered with regarding the means, the timetable restrictions, and American resoluteness to deal with the problem. George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on that matter before the end of his term in the White House.” More
SueAnn Arrigo is the source. She was a high-level CIA insider. Her title was Special Operations Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). She also established the Remote Viewing Defense protocols for the Pentagon in her capacity as Remote Viewing Advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). It earned her a two-star general rank in the military. She called it a “ploy” so the Pentagon could get more of her time and have her attend monthly Joint Chiefs of Staff meetings. Only high-level types are invited, and she was there from October 2003 to July 2004.
Part of her job involved intelligence gathering on Iraq and Afghanistan - until August 2004 when she refused to spread propaganda about a non-existant Iranian nuclear weapons program and left. She followed in the footsteps of others at CIA who resigned for reasons of conscience and became critics - most notably Ray McGovern, Ralph McGehee, and Phil Agee.
On May 16, 2008, Arrigo sent extensive government corruption and cover-up information to Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee - in 12 separate cases. This article covers four of them or about one-third of what Congress got. The 12 are explosive and revealing but just the tip of the iceberg: More
WASHINGTON - Pentagon officials firmly opposed Vice President Dick Cheney’s proposal to strike Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps bases last summer by insisting that the administration make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former Bush administration official.
J. Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defense Department officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal.
McClatchy newspapers reported last August that Cheney had proposed several weeks earlier “launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iran,” citing two officials involved in Iran policy.
According to Carpenter, who is now at the Washington Institute on Near East Policy, a strongly pro-Israel think tank, Pentagon officials argued that no decision should be made about the limited airstrike on Iran without a thorough discussion of the sequence of events that would follow an Iranian retaliation against such an attack. Carpenter said the Defense Department officials insisted that the Bush administration had to make “a policy decision about how far the administration would go — what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks.” More
WASHINGTON - Pentagon officials in late 2001 and 2002 concealed from the CIA and other intelligence agencies potentially useful information gleaned from Iranian agents, said a Senate report released Thursday. The Iranians told Pentagon employees about a tunnel complex in Iran used to store weapons and move its personnel covertly out of the country, likely into Afghanistan in the post 9/11 war period, according to the report by the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The Iranians also told of a long-standing relationship with the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and the growth of anti-regime sentiment inside Iran, it said. The new report adds more details to the storied mistrust and lack of cooperation by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld with the CIA in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States. More
WASHINGTON (AP) The Pentagon’s internal watchdog is investigating a government public relations effort that relied on retired military officers to defend the administration’s Iraq war policies. The House this past week passed an amendment to a defense authorization bill calling for reviews by both the inspector general’s office and the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm.
The Pentagon suspended the program last month after The New York Times reported that retired officers who acted as military analysts for major news outlets were given plum access to the Pentagon. The analysts, many of whom had undisclosed ties to military contractors, received regular briefings by then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and a sponsored trip to the Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba. The GAO also said it was reviewing the program and whether it violated policies barring use of government money to spread propaganda in the United States. Read more
Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post
The inspector general for the Defense Department said yesterday that the Pentagon cannot account for almost $15 billion worth of goods and services ranging from trucks, bottled water and mattresses to rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns that were bought from contractors in the Iraq reconstruction effort.
The Pentagon did not have the proper documentation, including receipts, vouchers, signatures, invoices or other paperwork, for $7.8 billion that American and Iraqi contractors were paid for phones, folders, paint, blankets, Nissan trucks, laundry services and other items, according to a 69-page audit released to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Read more
Nick Turse
Alternet
“Liberal Hollywood” is a favorite whipping-boy of right-wingers who suppose the town and its signature industry are ever-at-work undermining the U.S. military. In reality, the military has been deeply involved with the film industry since the Silent Era. Today, however, the ad hoc arrangements of the past have been replaced by a full-scale one-stop shop, occupying a floor of a Los Angeles office building. There, the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and the Department of Defense itself have established entertainment liaison offices to help ensure that Hollywood makes movies the military way.
What they have to trade, especially when it comes to blockbuster films, is access to high-tech, tax-payer funded, otherwise unavailable gear. What they get in return is usually the right to alter or shape scripts to suit their needs. If you want to see the fruits of this relationship in action, all you need to do is head down to your local multiplex. Chances are that Iron Man — the latest military-entertainment masterpiece — is playing on a couple of screens.
Read more
Joshua Frank AlterNet
The nation’s biggest polluter isn’t a corporation. It’s the Pentagon. Every year the Department of Defense churns out more than 750,000 tons of hazardous waste — more than the top three chemical companies combined.
Yet the military remains largely exempt from compliance with most federal and state environmental laws, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Pentagon’s partner in crime, is working hard to keep it that way.
For the past five decades the federal government, defense contractors and the chemical industry have joined forces to block public health protections against perchlorate, a component of rocket fuel that has been shown to effect children’s growth and mental progress by disrupting the function of the thyroid gland which regulates brain development. Read more
EXPOSED: Media ignore Pentagon military analyst scandal
Glenn Greenwald/Salon.com
The Pentagon has posted to its website the roughly 8,000 pages and audio tapes it was forced to provide to the New York Times regarding its “military analyst” program. Anyone who reads through them, as I’ve now done, can only be left with one conclusion (other than being extremely impressed with David Barstow’s work in putting together this story): if this wasn’t an example of an illegal, systematic “domestic propaganda campaign” by the Pentagon, then nothing is. Read more
A reporter asks White House spokeswoman Dana Perino about the Pentagon’s propaganda
On April 20, The New York Times published an expose revealing the Pentagon’s secret program using retired military analysts to “generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance.” Since that time, the media have been disappointingly silent on the story and their roles in the Pentagon’s program. Read more
In a new blow to the Bush administration’s troubled military commission system, a military judge has disqualified a Pentagon general who has been centrally involved in overseeing Guantánamo war crimes tribunals from any role in the first case headed for trial. The judge said the general was too closely aligned with the prosecution, raising questions about whether he could carry out his role with the required neutrality and objectivity. Read more
The Pentagon is setting up a global network of foreign-language news websites, including an Arabic site for Iraqis, and hiring local journalists to write current events stories and other content that promote U.S. interests and counter insurgent messages. The news sites are part of a Pentagon initiative to expand “Information Operations” on the Internet. Neither the initiative nor the Iraqi site, www.Mawtani.com, has been disclosed publicly. At first glance, Mawtani.com looks like a conventional news website. Only the “about” link at the bottom of the site takes readers to a page that discloses the Pentagon sponsorship.
Read more
Since The NewYork Times reported on the hidden ties between media military analysts and the Pentagon on April 20, ABC, CBS, and NBC have still not mentioned the report. By contrast, during their April 28 evening news broadcasts, all three networks reported on the Vanity Fair photo of Miley Cyrus.
Read more
Back in February 2002, the BBC reported on Pentagon plans for black propaganda: planting propaganda and misleading stories in the international media. The office set up to disseminate this black propaganda was called the Office of Strategic Influence. In November the same year, Fair.org ran a story about how this revelation (also reported in The New York Times) “was met with outrage, and within a week the Pentagon had closed down the OSI, claiming the negative attention had damaged the office’s reputation so much ‘that it could not operate effectively’”. Fair goes on: “…although Rumsfeld was forced to close the office he had no plans to abandon the work.”
Which brings us to the current story appearing in The New York Times exposing a secret Pentagon campaign to infiltrate the U.S. media with pro-war propaganda.
You can bet propaganda campaigns of this nature continue. Hence the importance of seeking sources from other than mainstream corporate owned media–seek out the little guys, for the bigger the publication, the more likely its information is biased.
Photo by kk# Whether you like or not, The Pentagon occupies your life
Nick Turse Common Dreams
So wake up with Rick and sample a single spring morning as the alarm on his Sony (Department of Defense contractor) clock interrupts his final dream of the night. Donna is already up and dressed in fitness apparel by Danskin (a Pentagon supplier that received more than $780,000 in DoD dollars in 2004 and another $456,000 in 2005) and Hanes Her Way (made by defense contractor and cake seller Sara Lee Corporation, which took in more than $68 million from the DoD in 2006). Committed to a healthy lifestyle, she’s wearing sneakers from (DoD contractor) New Balance and briskly jogging on a treadmill made by (DoD contractor) True Fitness Technology.
Rick drags himself to the bathroom (fixtures by Pentagon contractor Kohler, purchased at defense contractor Home Depot). There, he squeezes the Charmin, brushes with Crest toothpaste, washes his face with Noxzema; then, hopping into the shower, he lathers up with Zest and chooses Donna’s Herbal Essences over Head & Shoulders — The manufacturer of each of these products, Procter & Gamble, is among the top 100 defense contractors and raked in a cool $362,461,808 from the Pentagon in 2006.
Read more
The Pentagon has officially announced the establishment of the Armed Forces Institute of Regenerative Medicine (AFIRM). The institute will study the stem cell technology and the technology to recreate skin, muscle and bone tissue, the official website of the US Department of Defense says. The institute plans to reconstruct whole body parts in the future – fingers, noses, ears etc.The technology and methods of the institute will be used for US military men injured in battles or for those who returned from the service in Iraq and Afghanistan with amputated arms of legs.
Read more
The New York Times has exposed a secret Pentagon campaign to infiltrate the media with pro-war propaganda. The scheme reaches all the way to the Bush White House, where top officials recruited dozens of “military analysts” to spread favorable views of the war via the news. Many of these propaganda pundits didn’t reveal that they were working from Pentagon scripts or lobbying for companies seeking to cash in on major military contracts. This is a violation of every conceivable standard of journalism — and possibly of federal law.
“To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.”
“Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.”
“Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants.”
This is laughable. We’ve been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for how many years now? We’ve listened to these so-called Military Analysts on network news for how long now? And The New York Times is just learning this. And you can’t convince me the networks didn’t know. The term referring to this apparently new concept for the Times is known as the Military-industrial complex and it’s been around for decades.
Read the Times full article here
