Satire: London Bomb ‘Not Scary Enough’, Brown Tells MI5
June 30th, 2007I can’t take this nonsense seriously. A total piss take represents best analysis I’ve seen so far:
Via: The Daily Mash:
PRIME Minister Gordon Brown has dismissed the latest London bomb scare as “feeble” and “unlikely to frighten the public”.
Mr Brown is understood to be disappointed with MI5’s effort, describing it as “half-arsed and transparent”.
A source close to Brown said: “The PM wanted to start things off by scaring the absolute, holy shit out of people.
“A badly driven Merc with a couple of gas bottles in the back does not cut the mustard.
“We asked for Arabic literature on the passenger seat, a map of Whitehall with big red crosses on it and a huge controlled explosion on live television. Someone will be getting their backside felt for this.”
The source added: “We’re trying to introduce ID cards, imprisonment without trial and swingeing restrictions on freedom of speech.
“We wouldn’t be able to force through new parking regulations on the back of this pile of arse.”
Police say they are looking for “a man” in connection with the incident in London’s Haymarket.
A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: “Our investigations are currently centred on a man. If you see a man you should react with complete terror and run screaming into the nearest busy shop or pub.”
Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation
June 30th, 2007Simulex Inc.’s Synthetic Environments for Analysis and Simulation system is almost certainly how the priests of the technocracy are now maintaining “normal” operations.
The system allows for terra scale datasets with granularity of results down to one node (individual). It has a physics engine for tracking any number of people (or other elements) in virtual cities or spaces. It can correlate any amount of social, economic, political, environmental or other data with the behavior of groups or individuals on the ground. The U.S. Government, and some of the most powerful corporations on the planet are using the SEAS system.
There’s really no way to know how many ways this system is already being used against us. I tried to think about it for a few minutes and it’s mind boggling. “How isn’t it being used?” is probably a more interesting question. If the Architect was interested in tools that could help him more effectively run the Matrix, he’d have Simulex reps on the phone ASAP.
I thought about some of the high level but simple studies They could run to, for example, evaluate the overall effectiveness of the various control mechanisms most people have to contend with on a daily basis.
A status quo indicator could be easily devised that would show how effectively “normal” operations were being maintained. All They would need to do is track the time most people spend commuting to and from work, the amount of time spent at work, some guestimate about the time spent in front of television and computer screens at home and a final guestimate about the time spent on recreational activities outside of the home (live sporting events, movies, etc.). Plot those components as a single moving average. That’s it. If the line is sloping up, Their power is increasing. If the line is sloping down, Their power is decreasing. If the line is going sideways, Their power is staying the same.
Think about how powerful of an indicator that would be.
And that would be a boneheaded child’s exercise for the SEAS system.
The really weird and disturbing aspect of this is the level of granularity that it provides to the system operators. They admit that the system is designed to run simulations on a 1 to 1 basis. That is, it can simulate activities not just with some aggregate model based on limited samples, but with ALL nodes simultaneously in a population with terra scale data sets. Meaning, the focus could be on tracking and simulating the activities of any individual in the system.
If you’re like me, this is the point at which you will start to experience a vague feeling of foreboding because all of this seems somehow familiar, somehow related to something I’ve written about on Cryptogon recently…
In NSA, AT&T and the NarusInsight Intercept Suite, I wrote:
Are They building electronic dossiers on as many of us as they can? I don’t know, but it sure looks that way.
We must assume that they are using the full spectrum of surveillance information to try to PREDICT HOW EACH OF US IS LIKELY TO BEHAVE ON A DAY TO DAY BASIS. Where we go. Which routes we take. What we buy. Etc. All of these things can be broken down into a kind of moving average that wiggles around between an upper band and a lower band, kind of like a standard deviation from a mean. Stay within the bands, and the Magic 8 Ball probably won’t bother to flag your profile for closer analysis by some genius at the Terrorist Screening Center.
Obviously, most of us aren’t worth the attention of a human analyst, and they know it. Most of the sheep just go with the flock. They do what they’re told, shop at WalMart, pay their taxes, go to church, the end. More educated sheep read Business Week or the New York Times, etc. Within a fairly wide range of activities, it’s no more complicated, for the vast majority of the people out there, than the way pool balls behave as they bounce around the table and each other.
This is a key point, so I’m going to emphasize it:
These systems would excel at finding the artifacts, the outliers, the people who haven’t internalized the programming, but continue to act “normal.”
It would identify the thought criminals.
Recently, Michael Chertoff, the head of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, mentioned “clean skin” terrorists. These are people who appear “normal” in society, but are secretly plotting the next big terrorist event. How do you find the “clean skin” terrorists? Well, according to Chertoff, the U.S. Department of Magic-8 Ball Theories, Studies and Predictions requires every foreign traveler’s email address and credit card information. It didn’t occur to me before, but They already have this information—and much more—for Americans.
I’ve wondered why my site and thousands of sites like it are allowed to continue to operate…
Simple: More and better targeting data.
They don’t care about me, or what I’m saying.
They’re more interested in who’s paying attention to me, and people like me. Are those numbers increasing, or decreasing? What types of jobs do readers of these sites have? What is their income? What other sites do readers of these sites read? Do the people who read these sites continue to show up to work? (You haven’t been paying attention if you think that They don’t have this information.)
Whether or not you have anything to do with sleeper cells, “clean skin” terrorists, leaderless resistance movements, our outright “let’s shoot the bastards” insurgency movements, the list of usual suspects, I would almost bet my life, is being drawn up through the use of the NarusIntercept Suite systems for collection and the SEAS systems for analysis.
Who gets pulled for what probably depends on how seriously They feel threatened. The point is, these systems can model and assist with the visualization of any imaginable set of circumstances. We don’t know what criteria They’re using, but it is admitted that the terrorist watch list has ballooned to include over half a million individuals.
Do you think these systems have anything to do with the “out of control” expansion of that list?
I do.
This isn’t tinfoil. All I’ve done is make logical connections between two publicly admitted technologies that we know the U.S. Government uses. Look at how hungry that SEAS thing is for data.
Remember Russell Tice, the NSA SIGINT officer who had knowledge of a special access NSA operation that was so disturbing that he tried to tell the U.S. Congress about it?
What was Tice talking about here:
Tice said his information is different from the Terrorist Surveillance Program that Bush acknowledged in December and from news accounts this week that the NSA has been secretly collecting phone call records of millions of Americans. “It’s an angle that you haven’t heard about yet,” he said.
An angle that we haven’t heard about. Since everyone and his dog knows about the mass surveillance, what could that angle be?
More recently, Tice said that the NSA intercepts of civilian traffic is “the tip of the iceberg” and says, again, that there is something else, something we still don’t know about. Here’s part of the interview between Tice and Reason:
REASON: What prompted you to step forward now?
Tice: Well, I’ve known this for a long time and I’ve kept my mouth shut…
REASON: You’re referring to what James Risen calls “The Program,” the NSA wiretaps that have been reported on?
Tice: No, I’m referring to what I need to tell Congress that no one knows yet, which is only tertiarily connected to what you know about now.
Ok, so the outrage that Tice was willing to ruin his life over is only “tertiarily connected” to the operation we already new about.
Tice continues:
In my case, there’s no way the programs I want to talk to Congress about should be public ever, unless maybe in 200 years they want to declassify them. You should never learn about it; no one at the Times should ever learn about these things.
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.
Via: The Register:
Perhaps your real life is so rich you don’t have time for another.
Even so, the US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda.
The DOD is developing a parallel to Planet Earth, with billions of individual “nodes” to reflect every man, woman, and child this side of the dividing line between reality and AR.
Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a “synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information”, according to a concept paper for the project.
“SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP),” the paper reads, so that military leaders can “develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners”.
SWS also replicates financial institutions, utilities, media outlets, and street corner shops. By applying theories of economics and human psychology, its developers believe they can predict how individuals and mobs will respond to various stressors.
SEAS can display regional results for public opinion polls, distribution of retail outlets in urban areas, and the level of unorganization of local economies, which may point to potential areas of civil unrest
Yank a country’s water supply. Stage a military coup. SWS will tell you what happens next.
“The idea is to generate alternative futures with outcomes based on interactions between multiple sides,” said Purdue University professor Alok Chaturvedi, co-author of the SWS concept paper.
Chaturvedi directs Purdue’s laboratories for Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations, or SEAS – the platform underlying SWS. Chaturvedi also makes a commercial version of SEAS available through his company, Simulex, Inc (http://www.simulexinc.com).
SEAS users can visualise the nodes and scenarios in text boxes and graphs, or as icons set against geographical maps.
Corporations can use SEAS to test the market for new products, said Chaturvedi. Simulex lists the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and defense contractor Lockheed Martin among its private sector clients.
The US government appears to be Simulex’s number one customer, however. And Chaturvedi has received millions of dollars in grants from the military and the National Science Foundation to develop SEAS.
Chaturvedi is now pitching SWS to DARPA (http://www.darpa.mil) and discussing it with officials at the US Department of Homeland Security (http://www.dhs.gov), where he said the idea has been well received, despite the thorny privacy issues for US citizens.
…
Alok Chaturvedi wants SWS to match every person on the planet, one-to-one.
Right now, the 62 simulated nations in SEAS depict humans as composites, at a 100-to-1 ratio.
One organisation has achieved a one-to-one level of granularity for its simulations, according to Chaturvedi: the US Army, which is using SEAS to identify potential recruits.
Chaturvedi insists his goal for SWS is to have a depersonalised likeness for each individual, rather than an immediately identifiable duplicate. If your town census records your birthdate, job title, and whether you own a dog, SWS will generate what Chaturvedi calls a “like someone” with the same stats, but not the same name.
Of course, government agencies and corporations can add to SWS whatever personally-identifiable information they choose from their own databases, and for their own purposes.
And with consumers already giving up their personal information regularly to websites such as MySpace and Twitter, it is not a stretch to imagine SWS doing the same thing.
“There may be hooks through which individuals may voluntarily contribute information to SWS,” Chaturvedi said.
Related: Vertical Farming in the Big Apple
New York City: Public Photography May Require Permit and $1 Million Insurance Policy
June 30th, 2007HAHA! Would you like a Statue of Liberty (Made in China) with that?
Via: New York Times:
Some tourists, amateur photographers, even would-be filmmakers hoping to make it big on YouTube could soon be forced to obtain a city permit and $1 million in liability insurance before taking pictures or filming on city property, including sidewalks.
New rules being considered by the Mayor’s Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting would require any group of two or more people who want to use a camera in a single public location for more than a half hour to get a city permit and insurance.
The same requirements would apply to any group of five or more people who plan to use a tripod in a public location for more than 10 minutes, including the time it takes to set up the equipment.
Julianne Cho, assistant commissioner of the film office, said the rules were not intended to apply to families on vacation or amateur filmmakers or photographers.
Nevertheless, the New York Civil Liberties Union says the proposed rules, as strictly interpreted, could have that effect. The group also warns that the rules set the stage for selective and perhaps discriminatory enforcement by police.
“These rules will apply to a huge range of casual photography and filming, including tourists taking snapshots and people making short videos for YouTube,†said Christopher Dunn, the group’s associate legal director.
Mr. Dunn suggested that the city deliberately kept the language vague, and that as a result police would have broad discretion in enforcing the rules. In a letter sent to the film office this week, Mr. Dunn said the proposed rules would potentially apply to tourists in places like Times Square, Rockefeller Center or ground zero, “where people routinely congregate for more than half an hour and photograph or film.â€
The rule could also apply to people waiting in line to enter the Empire State Building or other tourist attractions.
The rules define a “single site†as any area within 100 feet of where filming begins. Under the rules, the two or more people would not actually have to be filming, but could simply be holding an ordinary camera and talking to each other.
CIA’s Four Year Old Mind Control Victim
June 29th, 2007Since when did the corporate media start mentioning the CIA’s trauma induced mind control programs? This information has been around for years, but I’ve never read it in the mainstream press before.
Via: The Australian:
The nature of the experiments, gathered from government documents and testimony in numerous lawsuits brought against the CIA, is shocking, from testing LSD on children to implanting electrodes in victims’ brains to deliberately poisoning people with uranium.
“The CIA bought my services from my grandfather in 1952 starting at the tender age of four,” wrote Carol Rutz of her experiences.
“Over the next 12 years, I was tested, trained, and used in various ways. Electroshock, drugs, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, and other types of trauma were used to make me complain and split my personality (to create multiple personalities for specific tasks). Each alter or personality was created to respond to a post-hypnotic trigger, then perform an act and (I would) not remember it later.
“This Manchurian Candidate program was just one of the operational uses of the mind-control scenario by the CIA.
“Your hard-earned tax dollars supported this.”
United States Court of Appeals Judge Richard Posner: Secret Trials for Terrorists
June 29th, 2007The mask is off the maniac fascist Nazi loving liberals.
This is it. The sum of all fears. Total, overt fascism. A senior federal judge calling for warrantless surveillance and secret trials!
It will be interesting to see how many people will allow themselves to be taken alive, and how many won’t. My guess, based on everything I’ve seen, is that very few will resist, even at the very end.
If this thing could have gotten this far, there’s no reason why it can’t go all the way.
And They know it.
Americans paid for the camps, and, by the looks of things, many are going to spend their last days in them.
Via: The Australian:
A TOP-RANKING US judge has stunned a conference of Australian judges and barristers in Chicago by advocating secret trials for terrorists, more surveillance of Muslim populations across North America and an end to counter-terrorism efforts being “hog-tied” by the US constitution.
Judge Richard Posner, a supposedly liberal-leaning jurist regarded by many as a future US Supreme Court candidate, said traditional concepts of criminal justice were inadequate to deal with the terrorist threat and the US had “over-invested” in them.
His proposed “big brother” solutions flabbergasted delegates at the Australian Bar Association’s biennial conference, where David Hicks’s lawyer, Major Michael Mori, is to be awarded honorary life membership.
“We have to fight terrorism with our strengths, and our strengths evolve around technology, including the technology of surveillance,” said Justice Posner, a prolific legal scholar who sits on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.
“Are there terrorist plots that are at a formative stage among the large US Muslim community of two to three million people? In the 600,000 Canadian Muslim population, are there people planning attacks on the US?
“What we have to do is discover the extent of the terrorist threat to the US. There is a danger, and it demands a rethinking of some of our conventional views on the limits of national security measures.
“We should think of surveillance as preventative, not punitive. We should think of controls that have nothing to do with warrants or traditional criminal justice to prevent abuses.”
Judge Posner said the US temper and culture could not sustain repeated terrorist attacks.
Melbourne QC Tim Tobin said it was a shock to hear such hard and isolationist positions coming from a judge known as a liberal thinker. While he was disturbed by the judge’s proposed crackdown on US and Canadian Muslims, he suspected the sentiment would be welcomed by the Howard Government.
Turley: Avoid Bush’s Executive Privilege Claim by Investigating NSA Program as a Crime
June 29th, 2007Sure.
Via: ThinkProgress:
Yesterday, after years of White House stonewalling, the Senate Judiciary Committee issued subpoenas to the Bush administration for documents related to the warrantless domestic surveillance program.
Today, during a background discussion with reporters, senior Bush administration officials indicated that they would invoke executive privilege in order to deny the NSA documents to Congress, just as they did this morning concerning subpoenas related to the U.S. attorney scandal. “Our response to [the NSA] subpoenas will be the same as our response was before,†said an anonymous official.
But last night on MSNBC’s Countdown, George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley claimed that Congress may be able to “get around the executive privilege in court†by saying “we are investigating a potential crime.†Turley said this was possible because warrantless wiretapping is “a federal crime†that “the president has ordered hundreds of people do.â€
Related: NSA, AT&T and the NarusInsight Intercept Suite
U.S. Family Tries Living Without China
June 29th, 2007I wrote a post about this several years ago, but Sara Bongiorni turned the exercise in to a book.
Via: Reuters:
Lamps, birthday candles, mouse traps and flip-flops. Such is the stuff that binds the modern American family to the global economy, author Sara Bongiorni discovers during a year of boycotting anything made in China.
In “A Year Without ‘Made in China,'” (Wiley, $24.95) Bongiorni tells how she and her family found that such formerly simple acts as finding new shoes, buying a birthday toy and fixing a drawer became ordeals without the Asian giant.
…
As a business journalist in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Bongiorni wrote about international trade for a decade. “I used to see the Commerce Department trade statistics, the billions of dollars, and think it had nothing to do with me,” she said.
The reality was far different.
As the year unfolded, “the boycott made me rethink the distance between China and me. In pushing China out of our lives, I got an eye-popping view of how far China had pushed in,” she wrote.
McDonald’s Goes McOrganic
June 29th, 2007No matter how absurd anyone thinks it will get, the corporations manage to take it further.
Via: Telegraph:
The fast food chain announced yesterday that all the milk used in the teas and coffees it sells in 1,200 outlets in the UK will come from organic British cows from the end of next month.
The move is the latest attempt by the US giant to transform its image. It already sells 500,000 litres of organic milk in its children’s Happy Meals, but yesterday’s announcement is far more significant – equating to 8.6 million litres a year – and will make McDonald’s one of the biggest buyers of organic milk in the country.
Research Credit: MT
White House Asserts Executive Privilege
June 28th, 2007Imagine my shock.
What’s next for this Enemy Collaborator Congress? Bootlicking?
Via: Breitbart / AP:
President Bush, moving toward a constitutional showdown with Congress, asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers’ demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors.
Bush’s attorney told Congress the White House would not turn over subpoenaed documents for former presidential counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor.
In reaction, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy accused the administration of shifting “into Nixonian stonewalling” and revealing “disdain for our system of checks and balances.”
“With respect, it is with much regret that we are forced down this unfortunate path which we sought to avoid by finding grounds for mutual accommodation,” White House counsel Fred Fielding said in a letter to Leahy and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee. “We had hoped this matter could conclude with your committees receiving information in lieu of having to invoke executive privilege. Instead, we are at this conclusion.”
Blood Money and More Blood Money
June 28th, 2007On the one hand, you’ve got a reporter talking about Cheney and his privatized genocide and ripoffs.
Then you’ve got a story about how the U.S. Army has just awarded $150 BILLION worth of contracts for more of the same, except with three corporations, instead of one.
It’s just a nonstop meat grinder of doom on an unimaginable scale. Is there any point in even looking at these stories anymore?
