Pentagon to Merge Next-Gen Binoculars With Soldiers’ Brains
May 3rd, 2007If you think that the ultimate goal for this project is a set of “Star Wars”-style binoculars, you’ve got another thing coming. Of course, we can’t leave it up to the Wired reporter to connect the dots.
The article asks, “Why all the rush?”
Three years ago, I wrote:
The ultimate goal is to replace front line soldiers (the shooters) with robots. Humans will be used as middleware to overcome the temporary limitations of artificial intelligence and machine vision in these early systems. For example, a human operator can interpret standard video information and provide guidance for the robot via remote control. The goal, however, is fully autonomous robot soldiers.
And ASAP!
The project described below appears to be related to a target acquisition and identification system; one of the holy grails of the killer robot industrial complex known as neuroscience in more polite circles. (If this sounds nuts to you, simply visit any neuroscience department in any U.S. university and follow the money. I was so shocked by what I found, I wanted to make a documentary film about it. I can’t do that now, but I hope someone else does!)
When companies outsource staff, the bosses who run the thing will sometimes try to get the employees—who are about to be fired—to train their replacements. Artificial intelligence hasn’t lived up to the hype. Everyone knows it. And that’s where the wet work comes in: Living brain tissue hooked to electrode arrays; neuro implants; endless numbers of tortured animals. etc. Record everything. Develop, “advanced statistical algorithms.” Mimic the cognitive functions of living organisms in hardware and software and then attach a gun to it. That’s it. That’s THE goal. (I’ve worked for these criminals in the past, I’m sorry to have to admit.)
Oh well, if your Terminator Robot file folder is already full, go a head and put this one with your Men-Who-Stare-At-Goats materials.
Via: Wired:
U.S. Special Forces may soon have a strange and powerful new weapon in their arsenal: a pair of high-tech binoculars 10 times more powerful than anything available today, augmented by an alerting system that literally taps the wearer’s prefrontal cortex to warn of furtive threats detected by the soldier’s subconscious.
In a new effort dubbed “Luke’s Binoculars” — after the high-tech binoculars Luke Skywalker uses in Star Wars — the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is setting out to create its own version of this science-fiction hardware. And while the Pentagon’s R&D arm often focuses on technologies 20 years out, this new effort is dramatically different — Darpa says it expects to have prototypes in the hands of soldiers in three years.
The agency claims no scientific breakthrough is needed on the project — formally called the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System. Instead, Darpa hopes to integrate technologies that have been simmering in laboratories for years, ranging from flat-field, wide-angle optics, to the use of advanced electroencephalograms, or EEGs, to rapidly recognize brainwave signatures.
In March, Darpa held a meeting in Arlington, Virginia, for scientists and defense contractors who might participate in the project. According to the presentations from the meeting, the agency wants the binoculars to have a range of 1,000 to 10,000 meters, compared to the current generation, which can see out only 300 to 1,000 meters. Darpa also wants the binoculars to provide a 120-degree field of view and be able to spot moving vehicles as far as 10 kilometers away.
The most far-reaching component of the binocs has nothing to do with the optics: it’s Darpa’s aspirations to integrate EEG electrodes that monitor the wearer’s neural signals, cueing soldiers to recognize targets faster than the unaided brain could on its own. The idea is that EEG can spot “neural signatures” for target detection before the conscious mind becomes aware of a potential threat or target.
Darpa’s ambitions are grounded in solid research, says Dennis McBride, president of the Potomac Institute and an expert in the field. “This is all about target recognition and pattern recognition,” says McBride, who previously worked for the Navy as an experimental psychologist and has consulted for Darpa. “It turns out that humans in particular have evolved over these many millions of years with a prominent prefrontal cortex.”
That prefrontal cortex, he explains, allows the brain to pick up patterns quickly, but it also exercises a powerful impulse control, inhibiting false alarms. EEG would essentially allow the binoculars to bypass this inhibitory reaction and signal the wearer to a potential threat. In other words, like Spiderman’s “spider sense,” a soldier could be alerted to danger that his or her brain had sensed, but not yet had time to process.
…
For example, another key aspect of the binoculars will detect threats using neuromorphic engineering, the science of using hardware and software to mimic biological systems. Paul Hasler, a Georgia Institute of Technology professor who specializes in this area and attended the Darpa workshop, describes, for example, an effort to use neural computation to “emulate the brain’s visual cortex” — creating sensors that, like the brain, can scan across a wide field of view and “figure out what’s interesting to look at.”
Soldiers Must Clear All Blog Entries and Personal Emails Through Military Censors
May 3rd, 2007I don’t see anything about restrictions on the hordes of .mil PSYOP trolls who show up to spread bullshit in comments…
Hmm.
Via: Wired:
The U.S. Army has ordered soldiers to stop posting to blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, without first clearing the content with a superior officer, Wired News has learned. The directive, issued April 19, is the sharpest restriction on troops’ online activities since the start of the Iraq war. And it could mean the end of military blogs, observers say.
Military officials have been wrestling for years with how to handle troops who publish blogs. Officers have weighed the need for wartime discretion against the opportunities for the public to personally connect with some of the most effective advocates for the operations in Afghanistan and Iraq — the troops themselves. The secret-keepers have generally won the argument, and the once-permissive atmosphere has slowly grown more tightly regulated. Soldier-bloggers have dropped offline as a result.
The new rules (.pdf) obtained by Wired News require a commander be consulted before every blog update.
Hedging Disaster
May 3rd, 2007Via: Boston Globe:
As hedge fund and private-equity operators try ever harder in the face of more competition to produce exorbitant returns, they do ever-riskier and more conflict-laden deals. This trend increases the damage to the economy, the extremes of inequality, and the risks to the system.
When Long Term Capital Management — a hedge fund specializing in currency speculation — went broke in the late 1990s, it had borrowed so much money from so many Wall Street banks that the Federal Reserve had to organize a rescue lest the fund take down several banks with it. It would be much harder for the Fed to mount a similar rescue today. And with thousands of hedge funds managing an estimated $1.7 trillion , many making highly speculative bets with borrowed money, a shift to higher interest rates could trigger an old fashioned financial panic.
Beyond the risk of a crash, hedge funds and private equity operators are driving the wrong brand of capitalism. Theirs is a capitalism of windfall returns for financial engineers, and less security and income for workaday Americans. Hedge fund capitalism also signals that real entrepreneurship — patiently nurturing a new idea and building a company of managers and employees — is for suckers.
Research Credit: PD
Man Ran Bank from Washington Home, IRS Not Pleased
May 2nd, 2007Woh! Do as we say, not as we do!
And, like I wrote in the post from earlier today, if you thought online anonymity was a tough nut to crack, try keeping your financial life private.
Via: Yahoo / AP:
A man operated a “warehouse bank” out of his suburban home, taking at least $28 million from people around the country who wanted a discrete bank account, according to court documents.
An IRS investigator said Robert Arant had hundreds of customers, many of whom apparently used his bank, Olympic Business Systems LLC, to conceal assets for the purpose of evading taxes.
On his now-defunct Web site, Arant advertised his services to those “who would rather not deal directly with the banking system,” court records said.
Arant took customers’ money — promising to keep their identities private — and pooled it in six accounts at Bank of America, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo Bank, IRS agent Susan Killingsworth said in court papers.
Arant would pay the customers’ bills from those commercial bank accounts, charging about $75 a year in fees for the service, plus fees for wire transfers and for initial account set-up, court record said. For $30, customers could buy debit cards to access their money more easily; otherwise, they could access it by check, money order or wire transfer, she said.
Reached by phone at his home Tuesday, Arant said he intended to represent himself in court, but declined to comment further.
“I’m not where I need to be as far as responding to the IRS at this point,” he said.
Chickens Now Raised on Tainted Pet Food, FDA Says Don’t Worry
May 2nd, 2007UPDATE: And Pork Too
What to do with all that tainted pet food that was killing animals around the U.S.? Make chicken feed out of it, of course! Yummy!
Via: CNN:
More farms across the United States will likely be affected by animal feed tainted with recalled pet food, federal health officials said Tuesday, after an investigation of Indiana chicken farms found the contaminated feed in more than three dozen facilities that raise poultry for human consumption.
The Food and Drug Administration said it expects farms in other states will report they received the tainted pet food and predicted that the number of plants that received contaminated feed could reach into the hundreds.
Recalled pet food containing tainted Chinese wheat gluten was found in chicken feed in 38 Indiana farms, the FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Monday, but no chicken recall has been issued because the likelihood of getting sick from eating chicken fed the contaminated product is very low, FDA officials said.
No human illnesses related to the minimally tainted poultry feed have been reported, according to the agencies.
Blueprint for Dictatorship
May 2nd, 2007Via: Antiwar:
America is headed for a military dictatorship – and recent legislation makes this all but inevitable. Last September, Congress passed the Defense Authorization Act, which empowered the president to declare martial law with very little provocation, namely in the aftermath of a “terrorist attack or incident.” Having determined that “the execution of the laws” is hampered by the “incident,” the president can unilaterally impose martial law – without the consent of Congress, which need only be informed of the event “as soon as practicable.” The only condition attached instructs the president to report to Congress after 14 days, and every 14 days thereafter.
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Oh, you mean that’s not so good? Just wait until the Democrats get their hands on all that power: then you’ll see the real collapse of the movement to preserve civil liberties in America.
…
Under the terms of this legislation, who defines a terrorist “incident”? The president. Who defines an “unlawful combination”? The president. Who determines that a “conspiracy” is in progress, one that threatens national security and domestic order? The president of these United States – which are to be united, in our darkest future, by a superpresident who can outlaw the opposition with the stroke of a pen and is more a military leader than the chief executive of an ostensible republic.
High-Traffic Colluding Tor Routers in Washington, D.C., and the Ugly Truth About Online Anonymity
May 2nd, 20072013 Update
How Unique – and Trackable – Is Your Browser?
Software Can Identify You from Your Browsing Habits
Linguistics Identifies Anonymous Users
—End Update—
With the U.S. Government trying to shut down websites and stealing gold, I feel the need to discuss communications security, surveillance and anonymity as the U.S. collapses further into overt fascism.
I need to get this off my chest, once and for all, because people, who don’t know much about computers, are being bombarded with nonsense, and they’re bombarding me with nonsense as a result. I want a single post that goes all the way, and this is it.
“Have you heard about Tor?” I am routinely asked via clear text email.
Yes, I know about Tor, but we need to take a much closer look at what remaining anonymous online really requires.
First of all, since this is a long post, I don’t want to waste your time. If you’re a computer expert or network engineer, etc. you will already know this stuff. If, however, you’re a casual computer user who doesn’t know much about the underlying principles of information systems, this will be way over your head. If you’re a casual computer user who is thinking about anonymity online, this article might be useful for letting you know some more about what you don’t know.
A lot of times, ignorant people refer to things they don’t understand as “tinfoil.” (The gatekeeper Left loves this term.) What follows, however, is so far out that it seems like tinfoil even to me. But then again, I haven’t been targeted by a death squad for my activities online, like some people are in many countries around the world. So, is it tinfoil? For you, maybe. For people struggling against repressive regimes, maybe not.
When I use the term “tinfoil” below, I’m not making fun of you, I’m making fun of myself, and the roles I’ve had to play in corporate IT departments. You don’t know tinfoil unless you’ve worked in a corporate IT department. Corporate IT is a technocratic pyramid built on paranoia, surveillance and fiefdoms of specialized knowledge and privileges (rights and permissions). Since all modern fascist organizations are essentially the same, I hope that my grim experiences within these organizations will help you understand more about the nature of the dire situation that we’re all facing.
If you think that you’re thinking outside of the box, my main purpose in writing this is to inform you that there are actually boxes within boxes, and that if you plan on engaging an opponent as powerful as the American Corporate State (or any other maniac fascist regime), it’s not going to be easy. I don’t know how many boxes within boxes there are. What I do know is that the U.S. Department of Defense built the underlying technologies that make the Internet possible. They built “this” world.
So, you want to be anonymous in a world that was thought up by the U.S. Department of Defense?
Most computer users don’t have what it takes, in terms of technical skills, or discipline, to pull it off. I’m sorry if that sounds harsh, but it’s absolutely true. I’m not claiming to be any kind of expert at all. If knowledge of computers and networks represented all the grains of sand on a beach, I’d say that I was familiar with about 5 of those grains of sand. I would like to hear from people who know more than me about any flaws in this information.
A long time ago, as a sort of theoretical challenge to myself, I tried to define a reliable protocol for remaining anonymous online. Why? Ask any nerd, “Why?” and the nerd will usually respond: “Why not?” If the nerd is unusually honest, he or she might respond, “Because I can’t help it.” So, somewhere between, “Why not?” and “Because I couldn’t help it,” I set out on this quest.
As you might already know, I studied information warfare in college and I did several years of time in corporate IT environments. I knew about the types of surveillance and control that are possible at the client, server and network levels.
I looked at the challenge as all IT people look at all IT related challenges: Assume the absolute worst.
I went even further with this. I made irrationally negative assumptions.
I assumed that everything I did online was compromised. I assumed the worst tinfoil nightmares about commercial operating systems. I assumed that my ISP was a subsidiary of the NSA, etc.
Got the idea?
Let’s look at each level in a bit more detail (in no particular order):
Servers: Potential Honeypots
Many technologies that amateur anonymity fetishists are attracted to are actually designed to harvest information. Put yourself in the shoes of the NSA. If you wanted a concentrated haul of the most interesting information what would you do?
You would establish a honeypot: a service (free or paid) that purported to provide an anonymous web browsing/email capability. Who knows what people might get up to if they thought nobody was looking? That, of course, is the idea with honeypots.
If you’re relying on a proxy server, how will you know that it’s not simply recording your entire session for examination by acreages of the Homeland’s supercomputers that are running advanced statistical Magic 8 Ball algorithms? Because the company or individual providing your proxy service says that they don’t keep logs? HA
Am I saying that all proxies are run by the NSA. No. Am I saying that some number of them are. I’d bet my life on it. How many of them are run by governments? I don’t know. Unless you know which governments are running which proxies, you must assume that all of them are compromised.
In reality, the NSA would probably be the least of your worries when using a proxy server or open base station.
Nerds with too much time on their hands get up to all kinds nonsense. Do they set up anonymous proxy servers and open base stations just to see what people do with them? Yes. Do criminals do it to find out personal information about you? Yes.
So even if the proxy or base station you’re on isn’t run by the NSA, who is running it? And why?
Maybe you’re eLitE and use several proxies. You can probably assume that the proxies aren’t colluding directly, but what about the networks? Which leads us to the next level…
Networks: If You Feel Like You’re Being Watched, It’s Because You Are
The network providers are keeping end to end records of every session. The question is: Are the network providers colluding with the U.S. Government? Since you can’t assume that they’re not, you must assume that they are. I would assume that the U.S. Government has end to end coverage of every IP session that starts and ends on U.S. networks. With corporate collusion and off the shelf hardware and software, this isn’t a stretch at all. For non U.S. networks, the NSA gets in with multi billion dollar tools like the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter, and who knows what else…
There are dozens of off the shelf products that you would swear were designed for use by intelligence agencies, but they’re routinely peddled to—and used by—corporations. If corporations have and use these surveillance capabilities, what are the intelligence agencies running on the service providers’ networks? I’ll be buggered if I know, but I know it’s not good. That recent ATT/NSA thing is just a tiny/trivial tip of the iceberg.
Clients: NSA Side Projects?
Microsoft and Apple sought assistance from the U.S. National Security Agency.
Evil Corporations Working with the NSA + Closed Source Binaries = Not Good.
What is that thing actually doing? I don’t know. Thank you. That’s all I need to know.
Countermeasures
Access the Internet Using an Open Wireless Network, Preferably from Great Distance
In terms of a threat assessment, for our purposes, I see the networks as posing the biggest problem.
People write to me all the time raving about the dreaded Google cookie. HA. “We must use scroogle!” for freedom and safety, etc.
When I mention that their ISP is, most likely, keeping every URL that they visit in a database, at a minimum, and that NSA boxes are probably analyzing every FORM tagged submission, well, that’s a hard lesson for people. Go ahead, use scroogle. Maybe the people running it aren’t evil. So what. Scroogle might make you feel good, but it has nothing to do with security or anonymity, not when you consider the capabilities of the enemy on the network.
Give any 14 year old hacker access to the right network switch and, unless you know what you’re doing, he or she will use a packet sniffer to find out what you had for breakfast. Now, the difference between most 14 year old hackers and the NSA is that the pimply faced kids don’t have physical access to the network that would allow them to conduct man in the middle surveillance on you. The NSA does. Again, that NSA/ATT thing is fly fart level. That’s nothing. That’s just the piece of the program that got outed.
You need a false flag connection to the Internet. In other words, access the Internet via someone else’s open wireless router, preferably from great distance. Lots of organizations, businesses and individuals provide free, wireless Internet access; on purpose, believe it or not. Ideally, you would use a cantenna or a high performance parabolic antenna to authoritatively distance yourself from any surveillance cameras that are likely saturating your local coffee shop or other business that provides free Internet access. Hitting the base station from hundreds of meters away would be nice.
If you were to carry the paranoia to an extreme level, you would assume that They would show up at your access point and use direction finding equipment to spot your physical location. “Tinfoil!” you say? Keychain WiFi access point finders have had crude DF capabilities for years. Then you have civilian grade WiFi network engineering stuff like the Yellow Jacket. Direction finding is as old as the hills and trivial to do. If you do happen to attract the wrong kind of attention on an anonymous base station, pinpointing your location would be a simple matter.
Solution? If you are playing this game as if your life is on the line, don’t use the same open base station twice. Hey, this post is going out to those of you who send me the paranoid emails. You wanted to know, I’m telling you! I mean, it would suck to look toward your friendly anonymous WiFi provider with a pair of binoculars and see a guy in a suit looking back at you. Hint: if you see a van with several antennas arranged in some geometric pattern on the roof, that would not be a positive development. But that was 1980s era technology, the last time I dabbled with DF gear with a buddy of mine. Here’s a nice little integrated soup to nuts solution that is probably more like what They would be using.
Surf Away: Just Don’t Do Anything That You Normally Do Online
All of the stuff that you do with your “normal” online persona, you know, online banking, checking email, discussion groups, etc: You can’t do any of that. The second you associate a user profile on a server with your behavior, you’re back to square one. The Matrix has you. You would have to create what the intelligence business calls a “legend” for your new anonymous online life. You may only access this persona using these extreme communications security protocols. Obviously, you can’t create an agent X persona via your anonymous connection and then log into some site using that profile on your home cable modem connection. To borrow another bit of jargon from the people who do this for real, full time, you must practice “compartmentalization.”
If you actually attract the wrong kind of attention on a server, OR a network, with your agent X persona, if you haven’t f@#$%& up in some way, all roads will lead back to the open base station.
“After connecting through the open WiFi network, should I also use an anonymous proxy?”
I would assume that even if the proxy is clean, and there is no way to know that it is, They will have that thing covered on the network, end to end. Physical disassociation from the access point is the best proxy.
Client Side
Never write anything to disk. Oh, you weren’t planning on using your Windows or MacOS laptop with all of those closed source binaries whirring away, were you? Man, I don’t know where you got your tinfoil hat, but that thing is obviously defective.
You will have to learn about Live CD distributions of Linux.
You boot that thing. Do your business. Turn off the computer. Nothing is written to the hard disk.
“But I need to save my work?”
If you want to save your work, the easiest way of routinely handling encrypted workflow is to use an encrypted volume and a tool that only decrypts your data on the fly, in RAM. The best tool I know of for handling encrypted volumes is TrueCrypt. Hint: Use cascading encryption algorithms. [UPDATE: Is TrueCrypt a Honeypot?] Do They have some technology, in an underground hanger at Area 51, that’s capable of breaking one of those cascading crypto schemes? I don’t know. I doubt it, but anything is possible when infinite budgets are involved.
Hey, man, you wanted to save your work, right? That’s the score when you’ve got half a role of Reynolds Wrap® Aluminum Foil around your head.
“But I need to send email.”
For our purposes here, I wouldn’t. Email is locked down and heavily surveilled, partially because of the plague of spam, but read on…
I don’t believe in web based email solutions that purport to provide strong encryption and/or anonymity. Who knows what their applets and servers are doing? Not me. And if they rely on SSL, well, that’s ok for buying a book online, but no tinfoiler in his right mind would bet his life on SSL. The Thunderbird/Enigmail/GPG solution is the best way to send and receive VERY secure email that I know of. But will your agent x persona be able to deliver email via SMTP? I wouldn’t count on it. And from which domain? Unless you are very naughty, you shouldn’t be allowed anonymous access to a SMPT server anyway.
You might have to go with a throw-away web based email account and then cut and paste your encrypted messages into that. As a rule, however, never compose a message that you plan on encrypting in a web based form. Some of them use technologies that transmit what you’re typing over the web AS YOU TYPE. This is so you don’t lose what you typed if the session cuts out, but guess what? That’s right, you just blew it.
Use open source tools that are running locally on your system to encrypt and decrypt messages.
An effective way of communicating with someone, outside of email, would be via newsgroup or bulletin board that allows anonymous posting. (Note: If you try it here, I’ll just delete it.) You are, in effect, using the board as a numbers station. You’re not trying to hide the signal. You assume that it will be intercepted. You encrypt your message to the recipient, using his/her public key, and post the ciphertext to the board. The recipient goes on there, copies the message and decrypts it. I first encountered this in the mid 1990s on usenet. Of course, the person on the other end needs to have the same level of discipline and paranoia as you for this to work properly.
Last but not least: Make sure that you spoof your MAC address EVERY time you go online. Funny story: I worked at a place that was locked down to the point that every MAC address was screened at the network level. Say, for example, that someone brought in a personal laptop from home, even though there was no chance of being able to use the network for much (domain sign on was required) the switch would alert a sys admin indicating that an alien device was plugged into the network, along with the jack/cube/desk number.
MAC addresses are unique, and perfect for surveillance purposes. Always spoof your MAC address when you’re running in agent x mode.
Well, that’s pretty much it. (Actually, I’m tired of typing.) I didn’t say it was going to be easy, and you should watch out for people and products that make those claims.
Of course, evil people could use the above techniques to do evil things, and that is the argument that the government will use to convince you to submit to total surveillance of everything you do.
In case you’re curious about how I get online: I use Windows XP on a five year old laptop, from home. While I’m running two firewalls, there’s no onion routing, proxies, live CD operating systems and I don’t bother with spoofing my MAC address. If you use a bank that knows where you live, They know where you live. Since I’m forced to use such a bank, I don’t bother with the rest. The Matrix has me.
If you think being anonymous online is hard, try living without a bank account…. Sorry, being homeless in a city park doesn’t count.
Oh yeah, what about Tor…
HAHA. Imagine my shock.
Via: tin0.de:
A group of 9 Tor routers also functioning overtly or indirectly as Tor exit nodes have been observed colluding on the public Tor network.
…
Due to the sheer amount of traffic apparently passing through this collusion network, consolidation and analysis of exit node traffic is only one of several forms of anonymity attacks made more feasible. Hence these 9 routers appear to pose a significant anonymity threat to users of the public Tor network.
For Gearheads: Read the Comments by Shaunc on This Reddit Thread
Just don’t read them before bed. Creeeeeeeepy.
More: Believe in Tor, Require Fewer Layers of Tinfoil, U.S. Government Not Your Enemy? This Might Do
JFK Murder Plot “Deathbed Confession” Aired On National Radio
May 2nd, 2007Prison Planet is hosting the audio clip that aired.
Via: Prison Planet:
The “deathbed confession” audio tape in which former CIA agent and Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt admits he was approached to be part of a CIA assassination team to kill JFK was aired this weekend – an astounding development that has gone completely ignored by the establishment media.
Saint John Hunt, son of E. Howard Hunt, appeared on the nationally syndicated Coast to Coast Live radio show on Saturday night to discuss the revelations contained in the tape.
Hunt said that his father had mailed cassette the tape to him alone in January 2004 and asked that it be released after his death. The tape was originally 20 minutes long but was edited down to four and a half minutes for the Coast to Coast broadcast. Hunt promises that the whole tape will be uploaded soon at his website.
Advertisers Broadcast Messages On Focussed Audio Beams
May 1st, 2007Thoroughly terrifying.
Via: Boston Herald:
Advertisers have a new way to get into your head.
Marketers around the world are using innovative audio technology that sends sound in a narrow beam, just like light, making it possible to direct messages right into consumers’ ears while they shop or sit in waiting rooms.
The audio spotlight device, created by Watertown firm Holosonic Research Labs Inc., has been used to hawk everything from cereals in supermarket aisles to glasses at doctor’s offices. The messages are often quick and targeted — and a little creepy to the uninitiated.
Court TV recently installed the audio spotlight in ceilings of bookstores to promote the network’s new murder-mystery show. A voice, whispering, “Hey, you, can you hear me? Do you ever think about murder?” was beamed toward customers as they browsed the mystery section in several independent bookstores in New York.
For advertisers, the audio spotlight is a way of marketing to consumers, sending tailored messages without disturbing an entire store with loudspeaker announcements such as Kmart’s iconic “Blue Light Special.”
Research Credit: Life After the Oil Crash
The War in Afghanistan is Simply a Big Money Heroin Racket
May 1st, 2007Via: Global Research:
The United Nations has announced that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has soared. There was a 59% increase in areas under opium cultivation in 2006. Production of opium is estimated to have increased by 49% in relation to 2005.
The Western media in chorus blame the Taliban and the warlords. Western officials are said to believe that “the trade is controlled by 25 smugglers including three government ministers.” (Guardian, op. cit).
Yet in a bitter irony, US military presence has served to restore rather than eradicate the drug trade. Opium production has increased 33 fold from 185 tons in 2001 under the Taliban to 6100 tons in 2006. Cultivated areas have increased 21 fold since the 2001 US-led invasion.
What the media reports fail to acknowledge is that the Taliban government was instrumental in 2000-2001 in implementing a successful drug eradication program, with the support and collaboration of the UN.
Implemented in 2000-2001, the Taliban’s drug eradication program led to a 94 percent decline in opium cultivation. In 2001, according to UN figures, opium production had fallen to 185 tons. Immediately following the October 2001 US led invasion, production increased dramatically, regaining its historical levels.
The Vienna based UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that the 2006 harvest will be of the order of 6,100 tonnes, 33 times its production levels in 2001 under the Taliban government (3200 % increase in 5 years).
Cultivation in 2006 reached a record 165,000 hectares compared with 104,000 in 2005 and 7,606 in 2001 under the Taliban.
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The foregoing estimates are consistent with the UN’s assessment concerning the size and magnitude of the global drug trade.
The Afghan trade in opiates (92 percent of total World production of opiates) constitutes a large share of the worldwide annual turnover of narcotics, which was estimated by the United Nations to be of the order of $400-500 billion.
(Douglas Keh, Drug Money in a Changing World, Technical document No. 4, 1998, Vienna UNDCP, p. 4. See also United Nations Drug Control Program, Report of the International Narcotics Control Board for 1999, E/INCB/1999/1 United Nations, Vienna 1999, p. 49-51, and Richard Lapper, UN Fears Growth of Heroin Trade, Financial Times, 24 February 2000).
Based on 2003 figures, drug trafficking constitutes “the third biggest global commodity in cash terms after oil and the arms trade.” (The Independent, 29 February 2004).
Afghanistan and Colombia (together with Bolivia and Peru) constitute the largest drug producing economies in the world, which feed a flourishing criminal economy. These countries are heavily militarized. The drug trade is protected. Amply documented the CIA has played a central role in the development of both the Latin American and Asian drug triangles.
The IMF estimated global money laundering to be between 590 billion and 1.5 trillion dollars a year, representing 2-5 percent of global GDP. (Asian Banker, 15 August 2003).
A large share of global money laundering as estimated by the IMF is linked to the trade in narcotics, one third of which is tied to the Golden Crescent opium triangle.
