04.10.12
Posted in Crazy Weapons, Culture of Lickspittle, Decline and Fall, War On Terror at 2:09 pm by George Smith
Everyday, someone somewhere spreads rubbish in an effort to get you to think the reality in the robot novels and short stories of Isaac Asimov are just years away.
Often they come from the military. Along with the military robot research stories come emphases that projects are all for good Samaritan work — like wanting fire-fighters, this rather odd at a time when state governments have fired workers that do these essential jobs. Due to economic collapse.
From MSNBC:
Uncle Sam wants you to make a military robot capable of walking on two legs, handling power tools and even driving vehicles. Luckily, the U.S. military’s new robotics challenge aims to save lives rather than hunt down human warriors …
[Yeah, luckily.]
The $2 million challenge by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency appeared in an official online solicitation Tuesday. DARPA wants a humanoid robot to replace humans doing dangerous work in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, industrial accidents or natural disasters … the U.S. Navy already has plans to build its own robotic firefighter capable of doing humanoid tasks such as climbing ladders and throwing extinguisher grenades.
The proof of the bullshit is in the pudding. Two million dollars in challenge money. Consider the cost of Predator drones.
Consider the cost of the MOP, the giant bomb developed to destroy nuclear research facilities in Iran:
The Government anticipated receiving approximately $11.5M of FY04-07 funds for this program. The Government expected TO 1 costs would not exceed $500K, TO 2 costs would not exceed $3M, and TO 3 would not exceed $8M. It was anticipated that an IDIQ contract would be awarded with a maximum ceiling of $20M since it was impossible to accurately estimate all requirements during the five year period of performance. This funding profile was an estimate only and is not a promise of funding, as all funding is subject to changes/availability and Government discretion. It was desired that contract expenditures be managed and billed so as to maximize FY05 expenditure of FY04 and FY05 funding.
This was funding in the open. In reality, the government spends much more:
It weighs as much as the bell in Big Ben; it’s capable of plunging through 60 feet of reinforced concrete and has the most ridiculously sexual name imaginable for a deadly weapon – but the Massive Ordnance Penetrator is THE bomb, says the Pentagon.
Talk of beefing the bomb up with a hardened case and further advancements has been ongoing since the Air Force took delivery of it in September 2011. But Bloomberg reported that, in response to “an urgent request??? from the Pentagon, immediate approval was given to shift $81.6 million to the so-called MOP program.
The urgency is not explained – but it can be speculated that the Pentagon does not want to mop up a potential mess if (or when) it goes to war with Iran. So they’re putting a rush on something that can easily destroy things like underground labs, or secret nuclear facilities.
Two million puts life-saving clean-up after terrorist attack robots as posh hobby/corporate welfare money for relatively small business and/or vanity projects.
We know where the priorities are.
See here.
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03.27.12
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks, War On Terror at 8:50 am by George Smith
Soligenix, the old Alliance for Biosecurity firm that occasionally appears on the blog, published a statement on its activities in the year 2011 today.
A number of things stick out.
First, the company’s profit this year resulted all from a “non-refundable” cash payment, licensing purchase by a firm that must now consider itself extremely unlucky, Sigma-Tau Pharmaceuticals.
“The increase in revenues was a result of a $5.0 million non-refundable license fee from Sigma-Tau Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Sigma-Tau) in connection with the expansion of Soligenix’s existing North American commercialization rights to orBec …” reads the Soligenix statement.
“Christopher J. Schaber, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of Soligenix stated, ‘In 2011 we saw the unfortunate stoppage of our Phase 3 trial of orBec …’ ” it reads further on.
Oof, Sigma-Tau Pharmaceuticals! They bought busted goods and there’s no warranty.
[We] have restructured the organization by decreasing headcount with a continued focus on cash management and research …” continues the Soligenix report.
The firm has also moved onward with research on development of anti-radiation sickness medicine.
Sadly, this is not good news for dogs.
“On February 21, 2012, the Company announced further promising results from its continuing preclinical study of SGX202 (oral BDP) in a canine gastrointestinal acute radiation syndrome (GI ARS) model,” states the Soligenix missive. “The new study results indicate that dogs treated with SGX202 starting 24 hours after exposure to lethal doses of total body irradiation (TBI -1.61%, news) demonstrated statistically significant (p=0.04) improvement in survival when compared to control dogs …”
Grim reading. Particularly when considering the firm’s track record of unparalleled and glorious success.
Soligenix, formerly DOR BioPharma, is a company that pretty much exists because of the war on terror. Post anthrax, funding for bioterror defense took off.
Soligenix acquired licensing for the development, testing and manufacture of a vaccine for ricin from a researcher who had come up with it as a result of her work looking at the poison from the standpoint of a potential use in cancer treatment.
However, while a totally go-go industry through the middle of the decade, some funding for bioterror defense has now fallen by the wayside, due to the the economic crash of 2008, resulting austerity, and disinterest. Most of the companies in the old Alliance for Biosecurity have languished, producing nothing.
A huge bioterror defense research and vaccine facility planned for the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center championed by Tara O’Toole, old leader of biodefense lobbying (now at DHS) wound up canceled. UPMC’s bioterror defense program seems to have other troubles, too.
The ricin vaccine, although still the subject of some press releases, is — for practical purposes — orphaned for now.
Work on anthrax remains protected. However, the dirty tricks competition between the companies fighting over the taxpayer’s money has virtually guaranteed it produces nothing, corporate welfare for one or two stagnant firms.
Earlier this year, DD blog posted on Soligenix’s efforts to prop up its stock price after news of cancellation of trials for one of its potential products rendered it virtually worthless.
Stock slump: Bioterror defense company Soligenix falls on hard times.
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03.26.12
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, War On Terror at 1:01 pm by George Smith
Today Secrecy Blog posted a copy of the Army’s Military Intelligence Bulletin, this particular edition devoted to th Human Terrain System.
The Human Terrain System “is a U.S. Army program to conduct social and cultural studies in support of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan,” writes Steve Aftergood. “The Bulletin provides theoretical and practical accounts from HTS personnel in the field.”
For instance, one of the accounts from the new bulletin contains an interesting if unintentionally hilarious account of some US information operations in Iraq:
With adolescents growing up in the recent decade, the word “sick” refers to something that is “crazy, cool, insane.” To people living in the US 10 to 30 years ago, the word “sick” had a different definition — “afflicted with ill health or disease, ailing” or “mentally, morally or emotionally deranged, corrupt, or unsound: a sick mind.” Now consider the development of an IO campaign to discredit a group of insurgents: “Those people are sick.” The American who lived in the US 10 to 30 years ago would understand this to mean that the group is mentally deranged or morally corrupt. However, an American adolescent today would interpret this to mean that the group is really cool and hip. Rather than being an abstract issue, this problem actually negatively impacted US IO in Iraq on numerous occasions. In the summer of 2010 an IO campaign was pursued to portray several individuals and insurgent groups as criminals. Unfortunately, the Arabic language used presented these people in more of a “Robin Hood” fashion and may have assisted in recruitment.
In other words, if you speak in the language of a duffer or military stodge, it may not communicate quite what one thinks to a younger generation in a different country.
In another section of the bulletin HTS researchers present numerous colored maps of Afghanistan.
Maps can be quite helpful in understanding where you are. And sometimes not so much, depending on circumstances.
For these maps, a red area denoted where locals were very unlikely to report IEDs to authorities. A yellow are was explained to mean the locals were “somewhat unlikely” to report IEDs to authorities.
But what if one is on the boundary between a red and a yellow or moving from one to the other? Which level of “unlikely” should be assumed?
And how much ‘likely” is in the “likely” in green areas where the color is said to signify the locals are “likely” to report IEDs?
One can see the conundrums that might arise in the determination and weighing of a variety of “likely” stories, so to speak.
Secrecy Blog’s post on Military Intelligence and the Human Terrain System magazine is here.
As an exercise, it is left to DD blog readers to determine the precise meaning of the word “sick” in the title of today’s post.
Locals in this area perhaps thought not likely to report IEDs.
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03.11.12
Posted in Bombing Paupers, War On Terror at 12:26 pm by George Smith
“US drones bombed suspected Al-Qaeda arms caches in a hilly region in Yemen’s restive southern province of Abyan on Sunday, witnesses told AFP,” reads the news piece. “Six missiles targeted the suspected weapons hideouts in Jabal Khanfar, a hill overlooking the Abyan town of Jaar, which is controlled by Al-Qaeda militants …”
Note Djibouti, a country of less worth than the annual Rose Parade and bowl game in Pasadena, where the natural resources are some sheep, goats and oxen, to the left. We ‘own’ it, a great base for bombing the paupers. The French used to, for the training of the French Foreign Legion.
Do you feel safer because we blew up something on the above maps? Is my freedom to write what I think being preserved because something and some people were destroyed in a place called Jaar? Is the American middle class being saved?
Discuss. Naw, just joking.
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01.31.12
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Permanent Fail, War On Terror at 10:39 am by George Smith
Readers will recall the absurd public relations program launched a month or so ago, one designed to increase tourism and therefore spur economic growth and jobs in the hospitality industry.
You see, it’s recognized we have a bad rep. Lotsa people don’t wanna come here anymore. They don’t dig being run through the anti-terrorism infrastructure.
So the public makeover was sold as a rebranding — visit the United States of Awesome Possibilities.
From a newspaper, as mentioned here in November:
Say hello to “the United States of Awesome Possibilities??? as it looks to visitors from abroad to help lift it out of the economic doldrums.
By soft-pedaling patriotism, the newly-formed US national tourism board tasked with getting more tourists — and their money — onto US soil is reinventing the nation as a hip new land of diversity and possibilities.
“We’re rebranding America for the first time,??? said Jim Evans, chief executive of the Corporation for Travel Promotion, ahead of the World Travel Market that opened Monday in London.
“Over the last 10 or 12 years, people have seen America as unwelcoming as we’ve focused on security …
Today from the wires, two young Englishes, refused entry at Los Angeles International because of exuberant Twitter tweets reported on the national anti-terror tip and squealer network.
From the wire:
A pair of U.K. tourists were arrested after landing in Los Angeles on terror charges after joking on Twitter they were going to ‘destroy America’ and ‘dig up Marilyn Monroe.’
Leigh Van Bryan, 26, was detained last Monday after landing in Los Angeles with his friend, 24-year-old Emily Bunting, according to the British Daily Mail.
Bryan was flagged as a potential threat after tweeting this message about his upcoming trip to Hollywood “@MelissaxWalton free this week for a quick gossip/prep before I go and destroy America? x???
Bryan and Bunting told officials the term “destroy??? was British slang for “party.??? Despite the explanation, they were held on suspicion of planning to commit crimes and their passports were confiscated, the Daily Mail reported.
Bryan was also questioned about another tweet quoting the animated show, “Family Guy:??? “3 weeks today, we’re totally in LA p****** people off on Hollywood Blvd and digging Marilyn Monroe up!???
Bryan’s luggage was searched for spades and shovels as a result.
General Electric’s Jeff Immelt, he of the no-tax paying corporate multi-national, recommended boosting tourism, not terrorism, as a way of increasing employment:
Boost jobs in travel and tourism. This industry is one of America’s largest employers, but the U.S. has lost significant market share. By making it easier to visit the U.S. through improved visa processes, we can win back market share in travel and tourism and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
But as head of Obama’s expired jobs advisory council Immelt was nothing if not an odious fellow, unmoored from all reality except his own private Idaho.
Apparently homeland security and the TSA never got the memo and sent the Englishes home as undesirables.
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01.30.12
Posted in Decline and Fall, Phlogiston, War On Terror at 2:45 pm by George Smith
The deluxe version comes with a year’s supply of injectable anabolic steroids in an on-board mini-fridge. Six gunports provide extra-clear fields of on-demand retaliatory fire.
Wha? Even local shires with no significant history of violent crime or threat try to get into the act. The Los Angeles Times informs today that South Pasadena, generally known for its population of swells, tree-lined streets and swank/genteel bungalow homes has acquired an urban combat vehicle for one dollar, sold off by Burbank, which is trading up on homeland security bucks.
You have to see the piece to believe it.
It’s here.
Reads the newspaper:
These days a dollar can buy a can of soda, a song on iTunes — or, in South Pasadena’s case, an armored vehicle.
Last week the city took delivery of a vehicle known as a Peacekeeper, paying Burbank $1 for the privilege. Burbank originally received the Peacekeeper as surplus from the U.S. Air Force …
The Peacekeeper saw no action during its Burbank years …
“Active shooter training is also a high priority for police officers that are facing a new type of terror threat as was seen in the Mumbai, India, terror attack,” [a South Pasadena city report on the Peacekeeper acquisition] said …
Burbank decided to sell the armored vehicle after it obtained a new BearCat SWAT vehicle in February 2009 through a $275,000 Homeland Security Department grant.
An advert for the Lenco BearCat is here. Grrrrr!
The Peacekeeper is made by arms manufacturer, Textron.
Population of South Pasadena: 25,000
Median home value: $600 — $700,000
Gus’s Barbecue in SouthPas, where I have eaten. Toggle the street view. A fine cigar shop is adjacent to Gus’s on the left.
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Posted in Ricin Kooks, War On Terror at 2:15 pm by George Smith
Sent over in the UK for going to Pakistan, waving a gun, having the wrong name and downloading ricin recipes that don’t work, from the Internet.
The Guardian:
A man who kept a recipe for a deadly poison and documents about how to make bombs has been jailed for two years and three months.
Asim Kausar, 25, from Bolton, Greater Manchester, kept the information on a computer memory stick that contained details about the toxin ricin, assassination and torture techniques and instructions for making improvised explosive devices …
The information came to light only after Kausar’s family suffered a burglary, when Kauser’s father handed the memory stick to police so officers could view CCTV images of the break-in recorded on the device.
Kauser told police he had downloaded the information out of “curiosity and a thirst for knowledge” …
The prosecution accepted the defendant had not disseminated the information and had not put it to any practical use. There was also no evidence to suggest Kausar had any links to terrorists.
Sentencing him, Judge Andrew Gilbart QC said: “I accept that all of this material is available on the internet and can be bought from retailers such as Amazon and I accept some of it is out of date.
“But that makes them no less dangerous or any less useful to a person committing an act of terrorism.”
Riel Karmy-Jones, prosecuting, said the defendant had “scoured the internet” between January 2009 and his arrest last year for information on the mujahideen. The information downloaded ran into thousands of pages …
Police also seized Kauser’s mobile phone, which contained a photograph of him posing with a rifle. The image was believed to have been taken in Pakistan.
Previously — These Documents Get You Jailed
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01.23.12
Posted in Crazy Weapons, Decline and Fall, War On Terror at 10:55 pm by George Smith
In comments from the last post tagged to the Made In China tab Chuck pointed to comprehensive National Science Foundation/National Science Board analyses of trends and statistics in US research and development as compared to the rest of the developed world.
That link is here.
The above plot, just one from many, clearly shows the US national research and development commitment to homeland security and bombing paupers worldwide as a result of the war on terror. It is the only area of research funding not particularly affected by the worldwide economic downturn. Although a leveling is seen in the last two years, the overall level of commitment to finding new applications in bombing and hounding others less fortunate outside national borders remains quite high. (The larger original version, if you don’t know how to use the browser magnifier, is here.)
Non-military research funding from the federal government shows a clear spike associated with Barack Obama’s stimulus package. When the stimulus abated, in comparison to allocations for bombing paupers, spending plunged.
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01.03.12
Posted in Bioterrorism, Ricin Kooks, War On Terror at 1:26 pm by George Smith
Since the war on terror the samizdat literature of America’s neo-Nazi/survivalist extreme right has meant collateral damage in surprising places.
From just before the holidays, an old tale from Maxwell Hutchkinson’s The Poisoner’s Handbook (printed by the defunct American publisher of notoriously repugnant crap, Loompanics) built around a bit of fact about rosary peas, inconvenienced a tourist attraction in Cornwall, England, called the Eden Project. Bad publicity and embarrassment was the immediate symptom, as it always is with anything even remotely connected to America’s special brand of paranoid underground literature on how to strike your enemies down and overthrow the government.
From the Daily Mail newspaper:
An alert has gone out for the recall of thousands of beaded bracelets sold in tourist attractions after it emerged they are made from a highly toxic seed.
The Eden Project in Cornwall, which sold 2,800 in a year, is one of 36 retailers urging customers to return the red and black wrist charms.
They are made from the Jequirity bean – a deadly seed of the plant abrus precatorious which contains the toxin abrin, a controlled substance under the Terrorism Act.
Rosary peas have been around forever. And despite fear in the US and UK security apparati, they have inconveniently declined to kill anyone in the last decade. Even though they are routinely sold on eBay.
However, because of The Poisoner’s Handbook, rosary peas — and the small amount of abrin inside their very hard shell, have been treated like castor seeds.
In other words: Ahhhhh, danger!
The Daily Mail reported that the Eden Project had been selling the wristlets made of jequirity beans for a year. With no known intoxications.
Now, if readers turn to page 8 in The Poisoner’s Handbook:
The phytotoxin from precatory beans, also known as jequirity beans, is very similar to ricin and and the extraction process listed … may be used for both …
Some years ago, a few very stupid people came up with the idea of using the attractive scarlet and sable beans for rosary beads …
If your target is strongly religious, then these beads can be easily modified to kill.
Obtain, if possible, some acupuncture needles or grind down regular needles as thin as possible while still being strong enough to puncture the jequirity bean coating. Wearing leather gloves, very carefully about a dozen minute holes in each bean on a rosary. When you are finished, spray the string of beads with DMSO … which will dissolve and carry the abrin, and allow to dry.
As the abrin slowly kills your target, an interesting cycle will begin; the worse your target gets, the more he will pray with his rosary beads, which will only make him worse, etc.
These items make wonderful presents for the more religious target.
We’d send one to the Pope, but he already has nineteen hundred years of Christian spoils to adorn himself with.
Marvelous stuff, that.
Keep in mind that the only stupid people here are those who believe anything in Hutchkinson’s book, having secured it or copies of its ‘information’ for edification and/or training. And over the years there have been hundreds, even tens of thousands of such people, many — surprisingly — in government and national security work.
As with ricin, which is listed next in this thin volume, one sees the obsession — carried into the neo-Nazi/survivalist far right — with the idiotic idea that dimethyl sulfoxide can make ricin, and by extension — abrin from rosary peas, into a contact poison.
Which is rubbish.
Hutchkinson’s book was turned into digital copy and distributed in anarchy files on underground bulletin board systems in the US. They were part of what was considered a forbidden lore. In that world, having access to it meant you were special and clever, when — in reality — just the opposite, you were a fucked-up anti-social dullard, was a more accurate assessment.
Later, these files were migrated to the Internet.
In this way Hutchkinson’s poison book, torn into fragments, traveled around the world. Eventually, its poison recipes also found their way into al Qaeda/jihadi documents, just in time for the War on Terror.
If you’re found with recipes from the book in the US, along with a few castor seeds or, perhaps, the makings of a silencer or pipe bomb, they’re part of the evidence that will send you to the pen.
In England, jihadi documents containing items bowdlerized from Hutchkinson’s notes are treated as things deemed likely to be of use in terrorism. As such, they’re considered seditious and, again, if you’re caught in the wrong circumstances or religion, enough to have you imprisoned.
“In Trinidad in the West Indies the brightly coloured seeds are strung into bracelets and worn around the wrist or ankle to ward off jumbies or evil spirits,” reads the Daily Mail newspaper.
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12.30.11
Posted in Crazy Weapons, Extremism, War On Terror at 10:25 am by George Smith
Here’s a kook summary for the end of the year, all brought on by the wide publicizing of Newt Gingrich’s love for electromagnetic pulse doom mythology. I correctly called Gingrich’s bubble about to burst a week ago. His mania for electromagnetic pulse doom stories proved unpalatable, along with many other things, to many.
However, Gingrich will always have the EMPAct America yearly conference at Niagara Falls. (Joke: You’ve won first prize in a travel lottery — a weekend in Niagara Falls! Second prize is a week in Niagara Falls!)
From the wires, on electromagnetic pulses ending civilization, still echoing from the examination of Gingrich’s personal fancy:
Apocalypse 2012 — an obscure author who specializes in the end-times/survivalism fringe market, curses US politicians for not doing enough to save us from a coronal mass ejection.
“If [EMP doom] sounds far fetched, then you haven’t spoken to Lawrence Joseph, a Los Angeles-based writer who has spent much of his life preaching this frighteningly plausible vision of the Apocalypse,” it reads.
“As only politicians can, they dashed the hopes of a healthy civilization,” the man told CTV News.
And with that, let’s move on to Family Security Matters and “A Warning from Russia.”
Written by one of EMPAct America’s lobbyists, the article is distraught over the New York Times piece on Gingrich and EMP doom.
The Russian newspaper, Pravda, has delivered us a warning, one to heed:
[If] the U.S. continues in its attempts to fight terrorists and provide support to our NATO partners, we will “provoke” an EMP attack that will kill many millions, potentially end civilization as we know it, and ultimately result in the loss of our sovereignty. This warning is not the first to have emanated from Russia. One of the most notable was described in testimony before a House Armed Services Committee Hearing held on July 22, 2004—a high-level Russian official (Chairman of the International Affairs Committee) had issued a similar threat to two sitting Congressmen while discussing U.S. involvement in the former Yugoslavia.
The Russians are not alone. An EMP attack against the United States has been written about and discussed openly within China, North Korea, and Iran …
“It is therefore baffling that the New York Times would take an obviously partisan stance to a major threat,” it continues.
Cryptome publishes a notice in the Federal Register on a meeting to be held on January 9 by the Department of Homeland Security’s Advisory Committee. Public comments on threats delivered to the Committee to be published later at regulations.gov.
Summary of the agenda, as published:
Sensitive Threat Briefings against the Homeland.
Briefing on Strategic Implementation Plan to Counter Violent
Extremism Domestically.
Update on Border Security and Evolving Threats.
US Coast Guard, Update on Counterterrorism Efforts Around the
World.
TSA Frequent Travelers Program Operational Update.
Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) Threat–Lessons Learned and Areas of
Vulnerability, and
Evolving Threats in Cyber Security.
Basis for Closure: In accordance with Section 10(d) of the Federal
Advisory Committee Act, it has been determined that the meeting
requires closure as the premature disclosure of the information would
not be in the public interest.
Alert readers will have noticed that DHS threat analysis can be moved by newsmedia subject matter — even when there is no actual threat imminent menace at the root of such stories.
That is, if enough people are talking about electromagnetic pulse doom, even though the net result has been skepticism and damage to a presidential political campaign, homeland security is moved to be briefed on the notional matter.
Also worth consideration: Briefing on Strategic Implementation Plan to Counter Violent Extremism Domestically.
Generally speaking, there was no violent domestic extremism in 2011 unless one counts the Giffords shooting. And Occupy Wall Street is not armed.
In fact, the FBI’s end of year list of top ten terror cases is a paltry one, domestically consisting only a people nabbed in a variety of wanna-be plots uncovered by the loose chatter of those arrested.
At number 2 on the list, the Georgia Ricin Beans gang of pensioners:
Four Georgia men in their 60s and 70s were arrested last month for planning to manufacture the biological toxin ricin and purchasing explosives for use in attacks against American citizens. The defendants are alleged to be part of a fringe militia group.
Coincidentally, and earlier this this month, DD blog has posted extensively on the extremism and heavily armed survivalists associated with the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy.
One these pieces reads:
The script: The US will collapse soon, through an unspecified series of disasters which include (but are not limited to) total electrical grid failure, rampant bioterrorist-spread disease, and the death of money. Only those in the country, on farms with their own fruit trees, vegetable crops, chainsaws for cutting firewood, elevated water supply, and Bible-reading skills will survive. You will have to defend yourself from the hordes fleeing the cities, just like in AMC’s The Walking Dead.
You must view all three Urban Danger teasers to get the full bit. (I jumped on the grenades so you don’t have to.) But watching the one posted, if you can endure it, delivers the general idea. There ain’t no progressives in this bunch. Or children and other young people, it would appear.
This old white Christian paranoid End Times mania is inseparable from the electromagnetic pulse attack story. And the political professional EMP lobby has always nourished it.
These days it’s virtually mainstream due to adoption by significant segments of the country’s dysfunctional and increasingly irrational political class.
Number 2 on the FBI list of top stories/arrests in terrorism/violent extremism.
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