I only visit for the toons and this one has the lot.
Love it.

I detect a burr under the saddlecloth. This plan has one small problem.

When Adam was turfed out of the Garden, cherubim and a flaming sword were installed at the entrance, to keep him away from the Tree of Life.  I reckon modern Iraqis would nod to the Mesopotamian origins of this powerful myth.

Now, George has decided to capture a diminishing resource, the basis for his petrochemical dominance. He needs the oil, to guarantee his tanks and planes are the last ones moving. Drilling into an ocean of inflammable stuff, so he can wreak vengeance of fire on those who resist him. Surfing on the lake of fire, as a prelude to his assault on the gates to paradise.

Someone else got in first - "Vengeance is Mine". George has a real problem, apart from cultivating a gang of Liars. My money is on the cherubim.

Hi Gus,

I am hoping you can point me in the direction of an article I read somewhere on this site in the last few days that describes the kit of the future soldier. I can not find the article and am unable to remember the title.  As your Superwarriors is obviously  inspired by or a continuation of the article your assistance will be greatly appreciated.

The name of the comment is The dismounted war-fighter. It is a blog by "Gus" collected from various available serious data including DARPA...

I accidently delete the blog... here it is This is not science fiction... By 2025 The ordinary US soldier will be an extraordinary powerful pawn in incredibly swift war games. Developments are on the way to * have non reflective uniforms adapt to average color of surrounding environment. * light fire light-weight armor incorporated in resilient isothermal uniform with bullet proof vest improved to deflect heavy gun fire. * New goggles that carry topological information and accurate 3D position of enemy and friendly troopers in relation to direct vision of environment, using new localized sophisticated radar/laser sensors and a computerized analysis from stationary airship above battlefield. Mapped information also incorporated * specialized powerful miniature radar unit that reads cave and tunnel environments giving 3D imaging of position of all features, including enemy in complete darkness and around corners up to 300 yards in all investigated direction of labyrinth... * Multi purpose gun with: rapid fire with choice of small exploding depleted uranium or ordinary bullets. powerful taser to immobilize enemy without a kill, for prospective interrogation or in case of doubtful enemy status (children, women, all non combatants) powerful eyepiece that has a small monitor that give the reconstructed virtual position of hidden enemy as well as real time vision in darkness or full light, without conflicting with goggle vision. Several rounds of powerful mid range small grenades. Coded information to stop the use of gun by unauthorized personnel Infrared shielding once firing is stopped to limit enemy ability to detect origin of fire * recycled breathing, filtered apparatus for uncertain environments where biological agents could be present * special tube for high-energy super concentrate food supply and liquid, including an increasing dosage of specialized drugs to maintain full alertness of the combatant at all times for at least 24 hours up to 36 hours. * relayed monitoring to give the commanders a status on the condition (physical and mental) and position of any specific dismount warfighter at all time. * variable coded frequency miniaturized intermittent all-way radio to limits capture of signals by enemies * GPS and GPS-less immediate response incorporated positioning devices * silent pop up command sequences from commanding officer appearing in goggle * purposeful intent developed through specific brainwashing techniques that do not remove ability to reason about the strategy to devise on the spot, but removes the possible guilt involved with a kill. It is understood that any opposing combatant in ordinary flannel suit, or kaftan, and equipped with old fashioned guns will be dealt with clinically... minimizing suffering and cognition of death. Have a nice day...

The last Alfred Deakin Innovation Lectures 2005 (ABC) raised the question of oil and war and dimissed it... see blog to this effect... One cartoon on the site shows the renoo-able energy strategy for the US... and the other one the dismount warfighter... (DARPA) The known supply of oil are likely to run out within 35 years, if consumption does not increase above the present 80 million barrels of oil per day. The rate of usage predicted by 2025 is 125 million barrel per day. If this is to be calculated as a linear increase, the average consumption will be more than 100 million barrels per day leading to a run out of oil within the next 28 years... Even if new oil fields are found, they won't be in sufficient quantity to sustain growing energy demand. By 2035, our energy supply will be in massive crisis... By then too the global temperatures have an 80 per cent chance of being around 3 degree higher than what they are today... I won't be around then but many of you and our kids will be there... (Due to many imponderables, the next plateau of temperature stability can only be estimated between 6 and 12 degree higher than today's...) Unless the whole world community achieves a massive reduction in energy expenditure without loss of lives and a rigorous flat population growth, the next few years from 2015 are going to be very topsy-turvy. The US are logistically placing themselves to consume more that the rest of the world combined. By then, 340 million Americans will hold 6.9 billion people to ransom with their armies. in which the dismounted warfighter (termed by DARPA) will have a swift efficiency to control any rebellions, revolution and insurgency stemming from the ever dwindling supplies, anywhere around the world.

Many thanks Gus. I really appreaciate you taking the time to repost The dismounted warfighter.

Packin' Heat

From the BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4745543.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4124558.stm

Worrying trends [extract]

A lot of Iraq veterans are hearing that diagnosis these days.

A study at the US Army's Walter Reed hospital in Washington, DC, found that up to 17% of Iraq veterans - about one in six - suffered depression, anxiety or PTSD.

I've heard the same miserable stories time and again and I don't know what to say - he doesn't want to be consoled " Kathy, Veteran's girlfriend

About 425,000 US troops have served in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003, meaning some 70,000 could be experiencing psychological trauma.

Some early indicators are worrying.

The divorce rate among US army officers has tripled in the past three years.

The National Coalition for Homeless Veterans says that in 2004 its affiliates helped 67 veterans of Iraq or Afghanistan - only a year or two into those conflicts.

That set off alarm bells at the charity, since experts say it took traumatised Vietnam veterans an average 12-15 years to end up in shelters.

"Homeless service providers are deeply concerned about the inevitable rising tide of combat veterans who will soon be requesting their support," the coalition warned.

The number of veterans coming home from Iraq, it added, "is unlike anything the nation has experienced since the end of the Vietnam war".

GusNews

The number of dead US soldiers in Iraq approaches 2000 and the number of physically wounded is now counted in tens of thousand. In the mean time as Richard Tonkins points out (US firm wins Australian ship contract) we are giving away the key of our weaponry to US command... Incredible stuff but true. The Chinese are astute in stopping Taiwan acquiring the same Ageis system...

But then there is little help from government once traumatised soldiers are discharged...

From the BBC

US cancels 'mini-nukes' programme

The US has abandoned controversial plans to develop a nuclear "bunker-buster" warhead, a key Republican senator has said.

Sen Pete Domenici said funding for the bombs - part of the Energy Department's 2006 budget - had been dropped.

He said research would now focus on conventional penetrating weapons.

The warhead had been the focus of intense debate in Congress, with opponents arguing against the US developing new nuclear arms.

An administration official, speaking on condition on anonymity, confirmed the move to the Associated Press news agency.

I can believe that, and that there were WMDs in Iraq, and Usamah and Saddam were buddies, etc etc.

Who's taken over from Judith Miller, as chief useful newsmaking tool? 

Some good news!... I hesitated to put quotes around that before posting it. I have not heard to the contrary nor so far found any article that tells us that "yes this particular program is extinguished but another one is started under a different name with more secretive licence to develop bunker buster nuke-ish and fully nuked devices... " Yes T.G. we need to keep a "close open eye" on this one too...

From What does FEMA have against voting?
[...] Bowing to pressure from a united Democratic front, a small group of members of his own party, the religious community, and the labor movement, President Bush announced today he would reverse the decision he made in September to remove wage protections for construction workers in the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina. [...]
[...] Yep. Keep your eye on them at all times. [...]

Ted Rall on Journalism.

From Iran's President Says Israel Must Be 'Wiped Off the Map'

[...] "I think it reconfirms what we have been saying about the regime in Iran," the White House press secretary, Scott McClellan, told reporters in Washington. according to The A.P. "It underscores the concerns we have about Iran's nuclear intentions." [...]

Reason enough to jump to Red Alert.

Mr McClelland was speaking in his native Klingonese. He is also fluent in Persian, so readers of NYT don't require the inconvenience of their own private interpretation of Mr Ahmadinejad's words.

In fact, in keeping with all pronouncements from the Burning Bush of truth and knowledge, it wasn't necessary to hear any words, at all. Lip syncing is enough.

Boffins against the bomb: US nuke policy rethink prompts physicist protest
Almost 500 physicists in the US have signed a petition protesting a proposed change in government policy that would allow the US to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear countries. The proposed change in policy was reported in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. [...]

[extract from the petition]
This dangerous policy change ignores the fact that nuclear weapons are on a completely different scale than other WMD's and conventional weapons. Using a nuclear weapon pre-emptively and against a non-nuclear adversary crosses a line, blurring the sharp distinction that exists between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons, and heightens the probability of future use of nuclear weapons by others. The underlying principle of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is that in exchange for other countries forgoing the development of nuclear weapons, the nuclear weapon states will pursue nuclear disarmament. Instead, this new U.S. policy conveys a clear message to the 182 non-nuclear weapon states that the United States is moving strongly away from disarmament, and is in fact prepared to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear adversaries. It provides a strong incentive for countries to abandon the NPT and pursue nuclear weapons themselves and dramatically increases the risk of nuclear proliferation, and ultimately the risk that regional conflicts will explode into all-out nuclear war, with the potential to destroy our civilization.

 

Writer to SMH (letters, Oct 31st) thought he heard "... George Bush ... refer to the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as "Ah'm a dinnerjacket"."

Problem solved. From No longer lost in translation:

An increasingly globalized world became even smaller on Thursday when Carnegie Mellon University and German scientists unveiled technology that makes it possible to speak one language, yet be understood in another.[...]

The technology should provide many more opportunities to jump for the gun, when Persian, or any non-English language, is spoken.

The subject is being dealt with at Slashdot, in Can Your Mouth Become Multilingual?.

Will we ever know?

From Aljazeera

US 'used' chemical weapon in Falluja
Tuesday 08 November 2005, 21:57 Makka Time, 18:57 GMT
Italian state television has aired a documentary alleging that the US used white phosphorous shells in a massive and indiscriminate way against civilians during the November 2004 offensive in Falluja.
The report on Tuesday said the shells were not used to illuminate enemy fighters at night, as the US government has said, but against civilians, and that it burned their flesh "to the bone".
The documentary by RaiNews24, the all-news channel of RAI state television, quoted ex-marine Jeff Englehart as saying he saw the bodies of burnt children and women after the bombardments.
"Burned bodies. Burned children and burned women. White phosphorous kills indiscriminately. It is a cloud that, within ... 150m of impact, will disperse and will burn every human being or animal."
There have been several allegations that the US used outlawed weapons, such as napalm, in the Falluja offensive. On 9 November 2004, the Pentagon denied that any chemical weapons, including napalm, were used in the offensive.

"The city was sealed off and families left; so basically only the resisting fighters were inside the city. They were mostly denied admission into hospitals, so we could not verify the information from the medical fraternity, but yes everybody was saying that burnt bodies were scattered on Falluja's streets."
On its website, the US government has said it used phosphorous shells "very sparingly in Falluja, for illumination purposes". It noted that phosphorous shells were not outlawed.
"They were fired into the air to illuminate enemy positions at night, not at enemy fighters," the government statement said. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman on Tuesday said white phosphorus was a conventional weapon. He said he did not know if the US army used it in Falluja in 2004

From the Washington Post

Don't Politicize Our Soldiers
By Geoffrey C. Lambert
Saturday, April 1, 2006; Page A17

The Associated Press reported recently that a trailside memorial to an American soldier killed in Afghanistan had been vandalized. The memorial to Sgt. 1st Class Daniel Petithory, adjacent to the Ashuwillticook Trail in Cheshire, Mass., was defaced with the words "Oil," "Bush," "Christian Crusade" and other phrases.

Dan Petithory was one of my soldiers. He was an Army Green Beret and was killed on Dec. 5, 2001, north of Kandahar as he and his A-Team were closing in on the home of al-Qaeda and the Taliban leadership.

I attended Dan's funeral in Cheshire along with Sens. Edward M. Kennedy and John Kerry, as well as the archbishop of Chicago and other generals and government dignitaries, who honored Daniel and his family with their presence. Kerry gave the eulogy and moved us to tears, acknowledging that this war was one that we had no choice but to fight. Toward the end of the Mass we shook hands, giving the sign of peace. We then turned to Dan's wonderful parents, brother and sister to try to somehow alleviate their pain and suffering.

Gus commiserate: When Geoffrey C. Lambert says "Don't Politicize Our Soldiers," I agree with him On the level that individuals lives are sacred, except that soldiers ARE the combatant arm of POLITICS. WAR IS politics. Unable to separate. It is a sad day when "Army" officers and soldiers forget this obvious FACT. Wherever they fight, under oath or flag, they are linked to the processes that take them to battlefields where they kill people on behalf of POLITICAL decisions by masters... That their monuments and tombs be vandalized is a pity yet still part of the COUNTER-POLITICS expression of anger against bad political decisions...

Unfortunately, more and more, in the media, the current representation of democracy is that of the cartoon at the top of this line of blog... Armed soldier(s), in full fighting gear, protecting a something or rather that has nothing to do with democracy but with power... I suppose it's no different from the past, except we are told ad nauseam about our democratic values, etc... values that are totally distorted and undermined by the behavior and the policies of the trustees of our ideals, the governments.

Governments lie, perform abominable acts like torture... they create wars — all of this concoction done on our behalf...

I suppose it's a bit like going to butchers... We rely on the abattoirs to do the slaughter and we buy our steaks neatly prepackaged on nicely lit shelves at the supermarket but would we go and kill an animal ourselves?An animal that looks at us with the desire to live? I think we would think a bit more about what we we do.

I don't remember who said "politics is like sausage making and you don't want to see how it's done."... So we let the sausage artists do the ugly politics for us... but may we say that the sausage making has been getting a lot uglier in recent times. Too much sawdust and saturated rancid fat, too much blood on the walls and no substance...

The Solomons' troubles is a case in point in which there is mismanagement of a difficult situation on all sides... I was surprised that the first installment of troops sent there a few years ago was received with open arms and I have been waiting for the next development that we're seeing now... The tensions created by many dynamics of basic desires, enflamed by poverty being exposed to the illusion of untamed richness on various media will inevitably led to discontent and a deep feeling of being short changed.

Imagine for a few seconds now, that Australia has government troubles, rioting and dissenting... Would the import of troops from the US, China or Russia to manage the chaos improve the situation? Simply no... We'd be horrified! We'd be fighting like insurgents...

The longer foreign troops stay in Iraq or wherever, including the Solomons, the more violent reaction these troops can create... and they become part of the next problem, not part of the solution.

Violence caught us by surprise: Keelty

By David Humphries
April 21, 2006
THE Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Mick Keelty, has admitted that the Honiara violence caught his police by surprise.

"We thought things were under much more control. Clearly… it did catch us by surprise. That's always an element of risk in any police operation," he said.

But the claim by the Solomon Islands parliamentary Speaker, Peter Kenilorea, that Australian police aggravated the violence by firing tear gas at protesters in Honiara during rioting on Tuesday and Wednesday was incorrect, he said.

Read more at the SMH

-----------------------

As mentioned in my earlier blog, Gus is not surprised about the violence in the Solomons, but Gus is quite annoyed with our Police Whatever who, obviously by his remark leading the article in the SMH, has no understanding of social constructs and only seems to know a society from the point of view of "law and order" using policing with sticks of various sizes.

Mick, In all societies we are creating differences of potential, most of which are managed by education, continuum of traditions and other factors such as family connections. Policing is of course part of the equation, but it only applies to a rather small section of the community as most of us are already following general peace line via ethics learned though either religion, social codes, having made silly mistakes or personal acceptance of others.

Mick, for the youth, things can be slightly different. There is more potential in youths to attempt the stupid and the dangerous and this is why we send kids (18 and over) to war (kids as young as 12 were used too). The excitement, the discipline drills, the mateships — all tactics to make sure they are programmed to perform at best on the field, except in one department: think for themselves about the awful reality of what they are doing —killing people. Once they reach a certain age (25, that's when we're scientifically-accepted as a fully fledged thinking adult) they start to ask questions... They either go up the ladder, accepting the structure of the discipline in the chain of command or leave the force...

But Mick this blog is not about that questionable aspect of murdering other people in the names of blatant political porkies. it is about the difference of potential, illusory or real, that people perceive. Jo Blow is much richer than you and there are no pathway for you to get out of poverty. Not even an illusion of it... Just a constant display of media outlets on how some other people live it so rich, through various schemes to get there, and all you have is three bananas and a machete, with no more prospects than to acquire two more bananas... Well, the rest is predictable...

Mick, One of the most insidious basic instinct in our societies is envy. My dad used to tell me to work and earn enough money to survive but never earn so much as to induce envy in other people. He was right. For a society to function well as a cohesive group, despite a few skirmishes from time to time, a range of position has to be accepted with a reasonable value for that position.

In our social constructs, in Australia and other Western countries, some people can get away with values way beyond what seemed to be reasonable because most other people already have enough to survive "comfortably". We also work the carrot of competition to the max, creating an illusion that all of us can succeed to this outrageous level... So we carry on dreaming, but as said before we are "comfortable". We are well programmed to react in the range of this rich attractor without demolishing anything, that we reach our Peter Principle level and then ease off happy to be where we are...

But when the relative numbers of "poor" versus the numbers of "comfortable" become larger than a critical point, trouble is looming on the horizon. If you were unable to see that coming, Mick, then your eyes were closed, be it for a brief moment... The youths are being given dreams that are unachievable in present circumstances while the achievable dreams have been destroyed... Even older people become part of revolt.

Mick, what we need is finding better dreams (aspirations) that are achievable in the context of a particular social construct... With "enforced", media-induced or secretly applied globalisation (images of wealth and structures of wealth which are alien to a particular environment of social constructs), we are destroying all this without replacement of proper aspirations for most people, plus we are offering a heavier stick as things get slightly out of hand. The stick as a solution is soon becoming part of the next problem...

The Solomon Islands parliamentary Speaker, Peter Kenilorea, saying that Australian police aggravated the violence by firing tear gas at protesters, is correct... He knows his people's tormented aspirations better than you do. May be you could learn...

And this also apply to the sending of young aussies to life imprisoment and death by firing squad in Indonesia... Kids (until the proven age of 25) can do stupid things and serious stupid things at that, deserving serious punishment but they do not deserve a life sentence or a bullet for it. They are redeemable but can never be.

Not nearly as surprised as I was, Gus, by Gerard Henderson's latest - Popular line is not Liberal with the truth

POLITICAL spin is constantly in the news. But the messages generated by spin do not usually last very long. ...

And Gerard should know, as chief apologist for the Tories. Maybe he wants to replace Scott McLellan?

Or, maybe Gerard is just miffed that Paul Kelly reigns as chief useful nuz tool for Fox.

From the ABC

Downer raises corruption claims with Solomons PM
By Pacific correspondent Sean Dorney and wires

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says corruption is a major problem in the Solomon Islands and he has told the new Prime Minister his government must make it a thing of the past.

New Prime Minister Snyder Rini has denied corruption is a major problem.

After a 40-minute meeting with Mr Rini, Mr Downer told a news conference they had had a long discussion about corruption.

"There is no doubt that corruption has been a major problem in this country over a long period of time," he said.

"I made the point that it's very important that what you may call the political class in Solomon Islands builds the confidence of the people of Solomon Islands that they themselves are free of corruption."
read more at the ABC

--------------

Gus believes the AWB capers was not raised by the Solomonese?

 

Yes Gus .....

Foreign Minister, Alexander
Downer says that corruption “has been a major problem in the Solomon Islands
over a long period of time” & he has told the new Prime Minister, Snyder
Rini, that his government must make it a thing of the past. 

"I made the point that it's
very important that what you may call the political class in Solomon Islands
builds the confidence of the people of Solomon Islands & that they
themselves are free of corruption."

In response, Prime Minister Rini said that he had “heard nuffink, seen nuffink
& knew nuffink” about corruption in the Solomons. Prime Minister Rini made
his comments after issuing a brief announcement confirming several new senior
government appointments. 

As part of a sweeping reform
package initiated by the Solomon’s new Prime Minister, that will allow the
nation to benefit from the fullest possible exposure to aussie values, Mr Rini
confirmed that Robert Gerard had been appointed as Commissioner of Taxation
& Tax Havens for the island nation, whilst Steve Vizard has been appointed
Chairman of the Solomon’s single desk stock exchange.

Prime Minister Rini also
confirmed that former AWB Chairman, Trevor Flugge, had been appointed as a
special advisor, to assist his government in its negotiations to establish a
new free trade agreement between the Solomons & Australia. The Prime
Minister refused to comment on rumours that Mr Flugge is to receive a small
government stipend of A$2 million a day for his efforts.  

And, in another action filled
day in our nation’s capital …..  

Prime Minister, John Howard,
refused to confirm rumours that Terence Cole had declined his request to chair
a judicial inquiry into the government’s “hyperbole-for-facts program”, given
that everyone already knew what the outcome would be. 

AFP Commissioner, Mick Keelty,
said that the Solomons was a well known haven for international terrorists
& that the AFP would be directly involved in assisting the new Solomons
government to eradicate this threat for “a loooong time”. 

Mr Keelty rejected comparisons of
the Honiara riots with those held at Cronulla, but confirmed that photographs
of the 3,000 suspects would be published in a bumper issue of the Solomon Star
tomorrow, in the hope that someone would be able to identify them.  

And finally, Attorney-General,
Philip Ruddock, has denied that there have been repeated calls for Prime
Minister Howard, Foreign Affairs Minister, Alexander Downer, & Trade
Minister, Mark Vaile, to be charged with sedition, after bringing the
government into disrepute at the Cole Inquiry. 

Mr Ruddock said that the sedition
provisions of his government’s anti-terror laws were never intended to apply to
ordinary politicians, just special Australians.

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has spoken of the tragic loss of the first digger to die in Iraq, but says it will still be "quite some time" before the Australian troops are brought home.

Mr Downer has expressed his sympathies to the family of an as yet unnamed Australian soldier serving in Baghdad who died after accidentally shooting himself in the head while cleaning his weapon.

Describing it as a tragic accident, he said Australian troops would remain in Iraq until local security forces were able to take control of terrorist groups and protect the Iraqi population.

"It's still pretty tough in Iraq, the terrorists are very determined to try to destroy this new emerging democracy," Mr Downer told the Seven Network.

--------------------

Gus thinks our Minister for Foreign Objects and Soup Kitchens is a bit naive or has ulterior secret motives...

Yes, it's very commendable to try and spread democracy throughout the world like a bit of Vegemite on a toast, but when our (US-UK-Aust governments) technique to do so is like a "blat*-war" with a sledge hammer and a blow torch, things are not going to look pretty on the walls, are they? Violence only attracts violence, Mr Clowner...

Bring the troops home and start some real diplomacy, but then there are "things that batter" somewhere in the kitchen at home...and AWB yellow stickers pinned to your back...

If I believed in God, I would ask him/her to help us get rid of you (and Johnnee in the bargain, hard to know which one first), but then it's up to you to understand the reality of war being a very serious matter, not a Sunday picnic...

but really, the way you do diplomacy, your Sunday picnic is most likely to be invaded by flies, ants and a charging bull.

(*From wikipedia encyclopedia:

Blat is a term which appeared in the Soviet Union to denote the use of informal agreements, Party contacts, or black market deals to achieve results or get ahead. The adverbial usage of the word is po blatu, meaning "by blat".

Because, in the Soviet Union, the Gosplan wasn't able to calculate efficient or even feasible plans, enterprises often had to rely on people with connections, who could then use blat to help fulfill the quotas. Eventually most enterprises came to have a supply expediter - a tolkach - to perform this task.

Accordingly, blatnoy means a man that took some job or enrolled in university using connections, or, sometimes, bribes. In Soviet republics abundancy of blatnoys was taken to such extremes as impossibilty of gaining some post or enrolling at some prestigious majors in universities without proper connections.

The original meaning of the word (adjective or noun) blatnoy is "criminal" or "belonging to criminal subculture" (e.g., "blatnoy language", "blatnoy behavior", "blatnoy outlook").)

Gus note: my rusky is a bit rusty

Of course, before the bloodstains have dried, and before the prints have been lifted from the cartridge case, and well before the results of the inquiry, it's deemed to have been an accident. And, of course, because these highly trained professionals are handling weapons loaded with live ammo every day, according to strict protocols, it will be necessary to have a review of the whole set-up. Like, how many "accidental" discharges happen in any week? That's what we need  to know!

We can't have the supporters-of-the-troops thinking that the appalling situation created by the occupation of Iraq would in any way contribute to the cause of an "accident", can we? And, contrary to Howard's dismissive treatment of other widows, the spin-doctors have got this one well and truly in check. After the C130 flight back home, the flag-draped coffin, the memorials, the little c*&t taking the salute, etc etc, it will be most impolite to question the "accident". 

From Al Jazeera
'Taste' of wars to come

Monday 24 April 2006, 12:23 Makka Time, 9:23 GMT

Military researchers in the United States are trying to create super-warriors by focusing on the tongue.

By routing signals from helmet-mounted cameras, sonar and other equipment through the tongue to the brain, they hope to give elite soldiers superhuman senses similar to owls, snakes and fish.

Researchers at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition hope to turn fiction into reality by giving army rangers 360-degree unobstructed vision at night and allowing Navy Seals to sense sonar in their heads while maintaining normal vision underwater.

The device, known as "Brain Port", was pioneered more than 30 years ago by Dr Paul Bach-y-Rita, a University of Wisconsin neuroscientist.

Superior transmitter

Bach-y-Rita began routing images from a camera through electrodes taped to people's backs, discovering that the tongue was a superior transmitter.

A narrow strip of red plastic connects the Brain Port to the tongue, where 144 microelectrodes transmit information through nerve fibres to the brain.

Navy Seals may soon be able to see through their tongues

Dr Anil Raj, the project's lead scientist, said instead of holding and looking at compasses and bulky hand-held sonar devices, the divers can process the information through their tongues.

----------------------------

Gus thinks this article at Al Jazeera "confirms" what we've known all along (see cartoon "superwarrior" at head of this line of blog). Yes but does the equipment comes in different flavors?

From Al Jazeera

Iraq adviser predicts US withdrawal
Saturday 29 April 2006, 0:58 Makka Time, 21:58 GMT

Muwaffak al-Rubaie, Iraq's national security adviser, said on Friday he expected the roughly 133,000 US servicemen to be cut to less than 100,000 by the end of 2006 and an "overwhelming majority" to have left by the end of 2007 under a US-Iraqi plan for the handover of security.

"We have a road map, a condition-based agreement where, by the end of this year, the number of coalition forces will probably be less than 100,000," he said.

"By the end of next year, the overwhelming majority of coalition forces would have left the country and probably by the middle of 2008 there will be no foreign soldiers in the country."

Al-Rubaie spoke as Iraqi and US forces announced they had killed a senior member of al-Qaeda in Iraq and as fighting in Baquba continued.

read more at Al jazeera

________________

Gus does not want to burst Muwaffak al-Rubaie's bubble but, even if his troops are okay to maintain the peace in his country, there will be at least 40,000 US troops permanently stationed in Iraq under the benevolence of the US administration and plenty more on the fringe, for another 25 years... That's the secret plan...

From the Seattle Times

Pentagon pays United to show in-flight video
By Jason George
Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — United Airlines has begun showing an in-flight video about military glamour jobs that was produced and funded by the Defense Department — a fact passengers do not learn from watching it.

Sandwiched between NBC sitcoms and Discovery Channel previews, "Today's Military," as the 13-minute program is called, highlights five jobs that few members of the armed forces could point to as their own.

While hundreds of thousands of men and women serve overseas, many in dangerous places, the video shows only one soldier beyond U.S. borders: a Hawaii-based Army animal-care specialist doing humanitarian work in Thailand.

Others featured, including an Air Force language instructor and a Navy petty officer who teaches others how to survive ejecting from aircraft, are based in California and Washington.

Also setting the program apart from the usual in-flight fare of ESPN clips and cable news is who foots the bill. The airlines usually pay for the entertainment programs. But the Defense Department is paying United about $36,000 to run its video from April 17 to May 17, said Lt. Bradley Terrill, project officer for "Today's Military."

Read more att the Seatle Times

From Our ABC

Gulpilil to contest weapons charge
The lawyer for the award winning actor David Gulpilil has told the Darwin Magistrate's Court that his client will contest a charge of being armed with an offensive weapon.

The prominent Northern Territorian was arrested in July after allegedly walking down a central Darwin street with a machete.

Police say they were called following a domestic dispute.

During yesterday's brief court appearance, Magistrate David Loadman traded quips with Gulpilil, asking him if he was going to say the machete was a "tooth pick, or perhaps something to be used in a film he was going to make".

Outside the court Mr Gulpilil said his machete was for carving.

A hearing has been set down for January.

-----------------------
Gus: When I was in Africa in the 60s, every second bloke walked down the dried mud-path with a machete... I had one myself — made locally from recycled steel (probably from the springs of a dead Peugeot-203) — tempered, that I always kept sharpened on stones. This instrument was like a ute and a toolbox combined. It allowed us to slash our way through virgin forest, to open coconuts with one blow, to quickly sharpen the points of "fences" stakes — stakes we had to replace often (hungry goats ate them down to the ground during the nights)... and many other uses including chopping down small timber. Easier to carry and use than an axe, machetes were also used by women to trim bamboo shreds and tall dried grasses for weaving...
No-one ever got hurt or was attacked by anybody.
A machete is not a weapon, it's a tool for all seasons for those who live in the bush...

And while you had your back turned away...

---------------
Targeting the pain business

US-based Raytheon is marketing [http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1887256,00.html|microwave weapon systems] that 'fill the gap between shout and shoot'. But who will use them and why, ask Steve Wright and Charles Arthur

Thursday October 5, 2006
The Guardian

Imagine you're at a protest - at a nuclear plant, perhaps, or a military installation. You approach the perimeter fence, carrying your placard. The loudhailers warn you to keep away. But you ignore them; this is a protest, after all. And then it happens. Your skin feels as if it's on fire - a burning, relentless, intense pain as if you were touching a frying pan. You scream and jump back, trying to escape the sudden agony. You scrabble a few metres away and it stops. Then you look closer at the buildings that are the object of your protest. Did it come from there? You approach the fence again and the pain starts again - until you jump back.
That's the sort of scenario envisaged by Raytheon, an Arizona-based defence company. It has developed what it calls a "less-than-lethal directed energy projection system", trademarked Silent Guardian, and says it is "available now and ready for action".

Gus: read the blogs above from the too sad cartoon at the top of this line of blogs...

Attacks in Baghdad Kill 13 U.S. Soldiers in 3 Days
Officials Cite Troops' Increased Exposure in Capital
By Amit R. Paley
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/03/AR2006100300398.html|Washington Post] Staff Writer
Thursday, October 5, 2006; Page A01

BAGHDAD, Oct. 4 -- Thirteen U.S. soldiers have been killed in Baghdad since Monday, the American military reported, registering the highest three-day death toll for U.S. forces in the capital since the start of the war.

Joint Vision 2020 Emphasizes Full-spectrum Dominance

By Jim Garamone
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, June 2, 2000 – "Full-spectrum dominance" is the key term in "Joint Vision 2020," the blueprint DoD will follow in the future.

Joint Vision 2020, released May 30 and signed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Henry Shelton, extends the concept laid out in Joint Vision 2010. Some things will not change. The mission of the U.S. military today and tomorrow is to fight and win the nation's wars. How DoD goes about doing this is 2020's focus.

Full-spectrum dominance means the ability of U.S. forces, operating alone or with allies, to defeat any adversary and control any situation across the range of military operations.

While full-spectrum dominance is the goal, the way to get there is to "invest in and develop new military capabilities." The four capabilities at the heart of full-spectrum dominance are dominant maneuver, precision engagement, focused logistics and full-dimensional protection.

These four capabilities need the full capabilities of the total force. "To build the most effective force for 2020, we must be fully joint: intellectually, operationally, organizationally, doctrinally and technically," the report states.

The report says that new equipment and technological innovation are important, but more important is having trained people who understand and can exploit these new technologies.

The joint force must win over the full range of conflict, be prepared to work with allies and cooperate with other U.S. and international agencies. Adversaries will not stand still. They, too, have access to many cutting-edge developments in information technology.

"We should not expect opponents in 2020 to fight with strictly 'industrial age' tools," the report states. "Our advantage must ... come from leaders, people, doctrine, organizations and training that enable us to take advantage of technology to achieve superior warfighting effectiveness."

see future joint warfare.... and realise ir's not a PlayStation game.

Luckily, the US and Russia...

The US and Russia say they will try to clinch a new strategic arms reduction treaty (Start) by the end of 2009.

"This is of the highest priority to our governments," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, after talks with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov.

In turn, Mr Lavrov described the current Start treaty - due to expire at the end of this year - as "obsolete".

--------------------

see toon at top and don't forget that some of the most relevant comment below it "vanished"... or got truncated by forces unknown...

Written by Chris Floyd   
Surely there is no one who still needs to be apprised of the fact that the New York Times is one of the chief organs of the American Empire, operating in a semi-official fashion to disseminate the intentions and wishes of our rulers. The fact that the paper also publishes some excellent reporting -- and can even, on occasion, assume an adversarial stance against one faction of the elite or another -- in no way undermines its essential function in the imperial power structure. After all, Pravda and Izvestia did the same under the Soviets.

[Of course, the dead hand of state censorship was heavier under the Soviets than in our ultra-modern, low-carb authoritarian system. We prefer witless diversion over outright repression, tasers over bullets, and the eager self-censorship of cozy, coddled media dullards over direct intervention by government functionaries -- although, to be sure, if repression, bullets and direct intervention (along with KGB-style torture, rendition, detention without trial, etc.) are deemed necessary, our elites are more than willing to oblige.]

But despite the glaring transparency of the NYT's stovepiping duties, it is still instructive to watch these operations in action now and then, if only to keep one's bullshit detector in fighting trim. And a story by Thom Shanker highlighted in the Times on Saturday provides an excellent example of this venerable and pernicious process.

The nugget of "news" in the story was unsurprising -- but its implications were no less disturbing for that. Shanker, in the usual cringing courtier mode of our higher media, funnels the usual unexamined, unquestioned spin of  the usual anonymous "senior official" to let the rabble know that the poobahs on the Potomac are gearing up to fight even more wars simultaneously all over the globe. Specifically, what we have is -- as Shanker puts it in the inelegant prose that characterizes most NYT pieces - a "rethink [of] what for more than two decades has been a central premise of American strategy: that the nation need only prepare to fight two major wars at a time."

No, what we need now, says Shanker's Anonymous Militarist, is the ability to fight every damn body every damn where in every damn kind of way. Not just a two-front war, but three-front wars, four-front wars, counterinsurgencies, police actions, nation-building (with the preceding nation-destroying, of course), on and on, all at the same time.

...

-------------------

Read more of Chris Floyd and see the comment just above this one — and of course read all from the top cartoon down...

Engineers in the United States are looking at the possibility of programing ethics into military weapons.

Concerns about the deaths of non-combatants in so-called collateral damage have led robotic engineers to research new technology that could see military devices act ethically during combat and even follow the international rules of war.

Emotions like guilt or a sense of responsibility might also be included in the military software to mitigate the risk to civilians.

Just last month a US air strike on a village in southern Afghanistan killed more than 100 civilians.

It was said to be the single worst aerial attack by US forces since the 2001 invasion began.

It sparked condemnation by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and expressions of regret by the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

But could such incidents be avoided using new technology?

Research published in the latest edition of New Scientist shows it might be possible to limit civilian deaths and other collateral damage by installing special software into military systems, giving the devices a 'moral compass'.

Ron Arkin, a robotics engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has spent the last three years developing software that would see ethics and emotions like guilt installed into lethal military systems.

"These systems can ultimately do better than human soldiers in a battlefield," he said.

-------------------------

war is love gone wrong...

An international debate is needed on the use of autonomous military robots, a leading academic has said.

Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield said that a push toward more robotic technology used in warfare would put civilian life at grave risk.

Technology capable of distinguishing friend from foe reliably was at least 50 years away, he added.

However, he said that for the first time, US forces mentioned resolving such ethical concerns in their plans.

"Robots that can decide where to kill, who to kill and when to kill is high on all the military agendas," Professor Sharkey said at a meeting in London.

"The problem is that this is all based on artificial intelligence, and the military have a strange view of artificial intelligence based on science fiction."

----------------------

This line of comments explore the superwarrior and the robots that can replace the humans in wars. At present even the robots are still driven by humans, some humans being half the globe away, operating from their lounge rooms. Cameras and communications have made leaps and bound. Army personnel responsible for these robots can bomb a Jihadist camp in Pakistan, while having lunch. But mistakes can be made and identification may not be as clear as a bell as "terrorists" do not carry a label on their foreheads. There is a bit of hit and miss and also some disinformation coming from people on the ground — those locals who feed information to the US Army, for money.

Thus we are back to square one, despite the most sophisticated bizos. Solid information about the targets is the key to success. But there are petty disputes between locals and other parameters such as translation that can hamper real understanding. Thus as the munching soldier in his comfy chair at home might have to decide: they're running away, they have guns (could be sticks for the goats), blast 'em!...

American troops have shot and wounded an Iraqi man who hurled a slipper at a military convoy in the former insurgent stronghold of Falluja. A joint patrol of US and Iraqi troops is believed to have mistaken the flying shoe for a grenade.

A statement from the US military said that during a patrol on Wednesday an "object" was thrown at the troops, who then fired "in self-defence, wounding the attacker".

US troops gave the man, Ahmed al-Jumaili, first aid before he was taken to hospital by Iraqi police. He was in a stable condition after being treated for a chest wound and two bullet grazes.

The incident came just a day after the release from prison of Muntazer al-Zaidi, the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at George Bush.

Jumaili, a 30-year-old mechanic, said he threw his leather slipper in a knee-jerk reaction. "When I saw Americans patrolling the streets of Falluja I lost my temper, I don't want to see them in Falluja," he told the Associated Press news agency. "Troops have withdrawn from cities, so why they still patrolling here in Falluja?"

------------------

Even from my far far away position I can make a distinction between a slipper and a grenade... But tempers are on edge and fingers are on triggers... And as the man points out: What are the Yankees doing in Falluja? See toon at top...

From the Independent

Soldiers, sailors and airmen returning from the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq have been hitting the bottle in a dangerous fashion but have not suffered the tidal wave of mental problems that was predicted, researchers report today.

The British military appears to have avoided the heavy toll that the conflicts have exacted on their American counterparts, where rates of post-traumatic stress disorder in returning troops have soared.

One in seven UK military personnel deployed to the two countries were drinking heavily – at harmful levels – after returning, at rates 22 per cent higher than among those who remained at home. Alcohol is banned in war zones but is plentiful in overseas bases.

However, rates of post-traumatic stress disorder were low among British troops, affecting only 4 per cent overall. Despite fears that the length of the war in Iraq – from 2003-09, it was longer than the Second World War – and the intensity of the fighting in Afghanistan would have devastating effects on the minds of troops, it has not turned out as some predicted.

Alcohol misuse, which is mostly ignored by the military, is now a bigger problem than post-traumatic stress disorder itself, the researchers from King's College London said.

---------------------------

see toon at top and read comments below it...

VC hero tells of car crash suicide bid

 

Guilt-racked Victoria Cross winner Johnson Beharry told today how he tried to kill himself by driving into a lamppost at 100mph.

He said he hoped the car smash would "be my end" after being tormented by depression and nightmares from his time in Iraq.

L/Cpl Beharry, 30 - who was awarded Britain's highest military honour for twice saving colleagues while under fire - told The Sun: "Sometimes you just can't get away from the things you have seen."

Describing his crash, he said he stormed out of his house after an early-morning bust-up with his partner.

The soldier, of 1st Battalion, Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment, drove off in his Lexus sports car and said he reached 100mph as he raced down a street in south-east London.

"I picked a lamppost which seemed to be next to a slightly raised section of pavement and drove straight for it," he told The Sun. "I looked at the road and there was nobody."

As world military powers look to develop the biggest, baddest weapons, Russia's armed forces are toying with an alternative: inflatable missiles, tanks and planes.

Rusbal, a private Moscow-based company, makes inflatable S-300 missiles, T-80 and T-72 tanks, and Su-27 and MiG-31 fighter jets — all life-sized and, it says, extremely difficult to distinguish from the real thing when viewed by radar or satellite.

In an armed conflict, enemy pilots cannot discern immediately that the military equipment they are about to attack is fake, "and time is money," said Rusbal's marketing director, Viktor Talanov, whose father founded the company in 1993.

Further confusing the foe, the tanks, planes and missiles are built to appear authentic on thermal imagers, Talanov said in an interview.

The realism of the inflatables has attracted considerable interest not only from the military, which reportedly deployed test versions of the blow-up tanks during the 2008 conflict with Georgia, but also from Iran and other Middle Eastern countries, Talanov said.

The only differences between a real and inflatable tank are price and weight.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/inflatable-weapons-enjoys-high-demand/416711.html

-------------------

Gus: apparently these planes come with a blow-up adult-only naked female pilot bonus. The army you have when you don't have an army... see toon at top and comments below it..

 

Last Defense at Troubled Reactors: 50 Japanese Workers

By KEITH BRADSHER and HIROKO TABUCHI

A small crew of technicians, braving radiation and fire, became the only people remaining at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station on Tuesday — and perhaps Japan’s last chance of preventing a broader nuclear catastrophe.

They crawl through labyrinths of equipment in utter darkness pierced only by their flashlights, listening for periodic explosions as hydrogen gas escaping from crippled reactors ignites on contact with air.

They breathe through uncomfortable respirators or carry heavy oxygen tanks on their backs. They wear white, full-body jumpsuits with snug-fitting hoods that provide scant protection from the invisible radiation sleeting through their bodies.

They are the faceless 50, the unnamed operators who stayed behind. They have volunteered, or been assigned, to pump seawater on dangerously exposed nuclear fuel, already thought to be partly melting and spewing radioactive material, to prevent full meltdowns that could throw thousands of tons of radioactive dust high into the air and imperil millions of their compatriots.

They struggled on Tuesday and Wednesday to keep hundreds of gallons of seawater a minute flowing through temporary fire pumps into the three stricken reactors, Nos. 1, 2 and 3. Among the many problems they faced was what appeared to be yet another fire at the plant.

The workers are being asked to make escalating — and perhaps existential — sacrifices that so far are being only implicitly acknowledged: Japan’s Health Ministry said Tuesday it was raising the legal limit on the amount of radiation to which each worker could be exposed, to 250 millisieverts from 100 millisieverts, five times the maximum exposure permitted for American nuclear plant workers.

The change means that workers can now remain on site longer, the ministry said. “It would be unthinkable to raise it further than that, considering the health of the workers,” the health minister, Yoko Komiyama, said at a news conference.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/16/world/asia/16workers.html?hp=&pagewant...      

 

'Super soldiers': The quest for the ultimate human killing machine

Guilt, tiredness, stress, shock – can specialised drugs help to mute the qualities that make soldiers human, asks Michael Hanlon?

 

The ancient Spartans believed that battlefield training began at birth. Those who failed the first round of selection, which took place at the ripe old age of 48 hours, were left at the foot of a mountain to die. The survivors would, in years to come, often wonder if these rejects were the lucky ones. Because to harden them up, putative Spartan warriors were subjected to a vigorous regime involving unending physical violence, severe cold, a lack of sleep and constant sexual abuse.

As with the English public schools, which used similar tactics to produce the warriors who carved out the British Empire, the Spartan regime worked; the alumni were the most feared soldiers in the eastern Mediterranean. And ever since then, military chiefs have wondered whether it may be possible to short-cut the long and demanding Spartan regime to produce a soldier who kills without care or remorse, shows no fear, can fight battle after battle without fatigue and generally behave more like a machine than a man.

In the post-war era, the future of fighting was thought to be about tanks and missiles, large impersonal machines that would fight huge battles over the open terrain of Northern Europe. The soldiers would be pressing buttons in a command centre. But despite the advent of drone aircraft, much of 21st-century warfare is turning out to be a drawn-out, messy business, fought on a human scale in the mud and dust of Afghanistan. And fought against a mercurial army of irregulars who melt away into the fields and farms once the skirmish is over. Modern soldiers are not the cannon fodder of before. Highly trained and super fit, each one represents a huge investment by the nation that sends them into battle. A soldier who is too tired to fight effectively, who has gone mad or who is suffering from severe stress is like a broken-down tank, no use to anybody. What if soldiers could be made that did not break down?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/super-soldiers-the-quest-for-the-ultimate-human-killing-machine-6263279.html

 

We have been on the case since the inception of this site... See toon at top and this story near top...

Advances in neuroscience could be used by the military to help make soldiers more deadly on the battlefield. Ian Sample reports.

Soldiers could have their minds plugged directly into weapons systems, undergo brain scans during recruitment and take courses of neural stimulation to boost their learning, if the armed forces embrace the latest developments in neuroscience to hone the performance of their troops.

These scenarios are described in a report into the military and law enforcement uses of neuroscience, published today, which also highlights a raft of legal and ethical concerns that innovations in the field may bring.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/take-it-itll-make-you-shoot-better-20120208-1rf9k.html#ixzz1lpwCNbhV

 

British soldiers' uniforms could soon use electrically conducting yarn woven directly into the clothing, replacing cumbersome batteries and cabling.

The "e-textiles" could provide uniforms with a single, central power source.

This would allow soldiers to recharge one battery instead of many and cut the number of cables required in their kit.

Surrey-based Intelligent Textiles showcased the lightweight uniform at an event organised by theCentre for Defence Enterprise (CDE).

The company has patented a number of techniques for weaving complex conductive fabrics.

"We have built-in conductive yarns that then take power and data to where it needs to be," Asha Thompson, director of Intelligent Textiles, told BBC News.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17580666

see toon at top...

 

Jonathan Bartlett lost his legs while fighting as a US army soldier in Iraq. He recovered remarkably well and strove to graduate with a business management degree and then got a job.

Two months ago, however, he shot himself while in the shower, leaving a message to his friends and family saying that he wanted to be forgotten.

While Bartlett is not counted as a casualty of war as he no longer wore the uniform, he joined the same fate as 154 active-duty US troops who committed suicide in the first 155 days of the year alone.

Al Jazeera's Patty Culhane reports from Washington.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2012/06/2012699351194306.html

 

Seven U.S. Navy SEALs punished for disclosing classified data to ‘Medal of Honor’ video game

By David Lerman, Published: November 9 | Updated: Saturday, November 10, 1:49 AM

Nov. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Seven members of a U.S. Navy SEAL team have been punished for disclosing classified information while serving as consultants for a video game, a Pentagon spokesman said yesterday.

The active-duty members of the top-secret special- operations force were given a non-judicial punishment that includes letters of reprimand and forfeiture of half their pay for two months, said Army Lieutenant Colonel James Gregory.

The SEALs disclosed some classified “tactics and procedures” when they participated in the making of a video game called “Medal of Honor Warfighter” in June or July, said a Navy official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the continuing investigation. Four other active-duty SEALs now stationed on the West Coast remain under investigation, the official said.

The seven who received punishments at a Nov. 7 hearing were found in violation of rules against divulging classified material and the misuse of command gear, he said.

A defense official indicated, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss classified matters, that those disciplined were members of the elite Navy counterterrorism force known as SEAL Team Six, which participated in the raid that killed al- Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

“We do not tolerate deviations from the policies that govern who we are and what we do as sailors in the United States Navy,” Rear Admiral Garry Bonelli, deputy commander of Naval Special Warfare Command, said in a statement. “The non-judicial punishment decisions made today send a clear message throughout our force that we are and will be held to a high standard of accountability.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/seven-us-navy-seals-punished-for-disclosing-classified-data/2012/11/09/a9cc7ea8-2a31-11e2-aaa5-ac786110c486_print.html

 

 

9 April 2013 Last updated at 16:25 GMT

 

An anthropomorphic robot designed to replicate the actions of humans and help test chemical protection clothing has been unveiled in the United States.

Petman has been built by the Massachusetts robotics company Boston Dynamics with backing from the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

Tom Bayly reports.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-22083337

 

See toon at top and read articles below it... especially "the dismounted warfighter"

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y1ya-yF35g

 

Lucky the Ruskies are a bit more alert... It was if my memory is correct, I will check it, in 1983, that a nuclear war was about to be launched within 15 minutes, when a Russian officer in charge of the radar array designed to alert Russia was under attack from Yankee missiles, saw it on his screen. The Yanks were attacking Russia. Since he was in charge of pressing the red button without any order from the central government as he should have, since there was only ten minutes before impact, he went through the motions of unleashing the Rusky might. Fortunately, despite orders, a soldier refused to do the final stage of the release. 

A few minutes later it was realise that the radar "had seen" a giant flock of bird or such.

 

Please note that the superwarriors (see article at top) have already been super seeded with drones — big ones and small ones, some as big as a dragonfly...

 

And such incidents were not exclusive to Russia. The Yanks had their own fucups.. and their bad luck is the only thing that saved the planet...

Since the first inception of this column, warfare has improved considerably. Killing is easier from an armchair as proven time and time again by Obama's drones. Drones don't have to be big. Some drones the size of a suitcase can deliver a nasty punch. And the price of those things has tumbled down due to the made in China label. Of course the American drones need their own technology like pin point accuracy GPS and C4. 

A new paper released for the Australian army shows this country is falling behind despite many kids having been raised on space invaders video games...

---------------

 

 

Australia's Defence Force is up to 20 years behind the United States in preparing for a future conflict that will likely involve attacks from swarms of drones from the air and the sea, according to one of the Defence Department's own consultants.

Jai Galliott, a researcher at the University of New South Wales, said future war would also demand sophisticated satellite and cyber strategies to counter attacks on energy and communications infrastructure.

He said the planned purchase of the Joint Strike Fighter jet and new submarines is "last generation".

"By the time we get the new order of subs they will be outdated definitely," said Mr Galliott, who is contracted to the Department of Defence to study the future of war in the Indo-Pacific.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-21/adf-behind-us-in-preparing-for-future-warfare-expert-says/6486732

As my German friend would say: "You Aussies always prepare for war... Why don't you prepare for peace?... You always leave some space on war memorials to add names to... Crazy"

I can't tell him we still need extra glory in our young boots. That's why we spent twice the amount of all the other countries on this planet to commemorate something that was a glorious defeat... We're funny that way... Not me but the government, especially that of Turdy who cannot have enough commemorations of battles in which he would never have gone to, but is eager to reap the glory thereof with a reef in his hand and a goose step to a cenotaph. It's a political bonus though at most time while doing any pronouncements he seems to be munching on a cactus.

 

 

DARPA's budget—at least the declassified part—is roughly US$3 billion annually. The agency has received a similar amount, adjusted for inflation, from the US government since it was created as ARPA in 1958. Its 120 program managers have an unusual degree of authority, initiating and overseeing hundreds of research projects across America and overseas, with the power to start, continue or stop research with little outside intervention.

'Is DARPA to be admired or feared? Does DARPA safeguard democracy, or does it stimulate America's seemingly endless call to war?' Jacobsen asks in her latest book, The Pentagon’s Brain: An Uncensored History of DARPA, America's Top-Secret Military Research Agency.

By poring over declassified documents, and interviewing retired DARPA scientists, captains, colonels, a Nobel laureate and a four-star general, Jacobsen uncovers a story that's not just about technology, but also DARPA's work in the social sciences, psychological warfare and brain control. The agency that invented the internet has also been heavily involved in devising US counterinsurgency policy from Vietnam through to Iraq and Afghanistan, and is preparing for the wars of the future.

'Many of these scientists and engineers who dedicate their lives to national security, the great majority of them, certainly the ones I interviewed, are inherently wise people, with grandchildren—and they also want the world to be well,' Jacobsen tells Late Night Live.

'They don't want a dystopian future of cyborgs fighting cyborgs from underground bunkers. And so the openness that I have found is part of the territory.'

Science fiction writers might set that kind of cyborg warfare in a distant future. But as Jacobsen writes, at any given time, what DARPA scientists are working on—especially in the agency's classified programs—is 10 to 20 years ahead of the technology that's out in the public domain.

read more: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/latenightlive/darpa-double-edged-sword-us-military-industrial-complex/6854474

Read from top...

 

 

Future warfare will see sophisticated combat robots fighting on land, in the air, at sea and in outer space, the head of Russia’s military hi-tech body has said, adding that the days of conventional soldiers on the battlefield are numbered.
“I see a greater robotization [of war], in fact, future warfare will involve operators and machines, not soldiers shooting at each other on the battlefield,” Lieutenant General Andrey Grigoriev, head of the Advanced Research Foundation (ARF) – viewed as Russia’s analogue of DARPA – told RIA Novosti in an interview on Wednesday.

He noted that future warfare will be determined by unmanned combat systems: “It would be powerful robot units fighting on land, in the air, at sea as well as underwater and in outer space.”

Prepare to be Terminated: Russia readies first robot tank, shows off Armata at arms expo

“They would be integrated into large comprehensive reconnaissance-strike systems,” Grigoriev added.

“The soldier would gradually turn into an operator and be removed from the battlefield,” he stressed.

Last October, the United Instrument Manufacturing Corporation (UIMC) said it had developed the Unicum software package, which is capable of powering a group of up to 10 robotic systems. It can distribute ‘roles’ among robots, choose a ‘commander’ of the robotic task force and assign a combat mission to each individual machine.

Humans, however, will still play a role on the battlefield until robotized warfare becomes reality, Grigoriev stressed. While work on Russia’s infantry combat system Ratnik 2 is underway, the AFR is already looking for a next-generation upgrade.

The Legionnaire, a new project, would involve brand-new firearms, communications systems as well as enhanced protection from bullets and shrapnel, allowing an infantryman “to feel comfortable in any environment.”

read more: https://www.rt.com/news/349699-russia-future-combat-robots/

 

read from top...

 

Meanwhile, the usage of BIG ATOMIC DEVICES will make "battlefields" totally useless. Planet "battlefields" will become Planet "Crappy".

"The system is needed to win important seconds on the battlefield and to save the lives of our soldiers," he said.

He recalled that nowadays, military computers can be likened to smartphones and that a person who uses a mobile phone to chat in the street risks being run over a car. "So imagine a soldier in this position who also has a sub-machine gun that needs two hands to hold," according to Lamin.

"The voice control system frees a soldier's hands and eyes during fighting, and he can simultaneously move, shoot, and interact with the computer. Also, he can communicate with the command, send messages and listen to the advice of an advanced automated system as well as receive ciphered voice messages," he said.

Asked about whether his company's voice control system can be compared to Apple's Siri (Speech Interpretation and Recognition Interface) service, Lamin said that it is Siri that can be called the Russian system's analogue.

In short, Siri is trying to translate voice into text, experiences errors 7-30 percent of the time, and then figure out what to do with the text. That is, the system always chooses from a vocabulary of several million words – and is equally bad all the time. Then the system accumulates statistics on a certain user and, applying its assumptions on what the man said, selects the most probable variants, according to Lamin.

"A person never acts in such a way, which is also the case with our system. Our technology uses the context, the environment, and the previous dialogue to predict which general phrases can make sense at the moment. This is also a huge number, but significantly less than a few million," he said.

Lamin recalled that his company was the first to receive the 2001 Best Software Award for its Speereo Voice Organizer for Pocket PC, and that more than three million people installed the system at the time, when he said there were no iPhones.

 

Links has been lost but I think it belongs to Sputnik...

 

In a move presaged by classic science fiction, the Pentagon is developing a neural interface that it hopes will improve US troop capabilities.

The idea that a wearable machine can enhance physical function is increasingly commonplace. While electric abdominal belts advertised on late night infomercials may not be the best way to get a six-pack, high-tech wearable exoskeletons are routinely making the news.

According to US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, the Pentagon is developing the equivalent of an external skeleton for the mind. A headset developed by Halo Neuroscience promises "enhanced human operations" by using "non-invasive electrical stimulation" to improve human learning skills.

The headset was funded by the Defense Innovation Unit (Experimental) [DIUx], an initiative spearheaded by Carter, to improve cooperation between the Pentagon and the Silicon Valley braintrust.

Carter spoke in Boston last week during the opening of the first DIUx branch on the East Coast, and introduced high-profile members of the project’s Defense Innovation Advisory Board. These include astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

The project is under the control of Rajiv Shah, a former senior director of strategy at Palo Alto Networks.

http://sputniknews.com/us/20160727/1043690902/pentagon-brain-enhancer.html

Let it be said here that Gus Leonisky has been working on such a device for years. He has devised a special wig that makes him look like Fryderyk Chopin, but has hidden electrodes prodding his brain to make him play the piano like Frederic Chopin.

The concept is simple: The human brain is somewhat resistant to learning (unless one is very young but even them some input are rejected) because it needs to protect itself against false information and also it needs to dismantle and discards some habits in order to learn new things which would be contrary to "beliefs" — or demand a huge investment in memorising. The electrodes are designed to prod the brain "censorship" of input/output and remove inhibitors of action. 

This is not a new idea. This technique is used by repeat of information by brainwashing (used efficiently in terrorism) but it's time consuming and demands dedication. Here with the Electrowig, the process of learning and outputting is instant. No time to "think". Performance is brilliantly executed.

Remove the wig and no skills lingering whatsoever.

 

 

Turns out that the Pentagon appears to be speaking about programs they have sanctioned under DARPA in addition to similar efforts by the British military which have pretty close to nothing to do with Russia.

 

Top American military officials claim that Moscow is working to create “enhanced human operations” technology they say "scares the crap" out of them with the specter of stronger, faster, and more deadly super soldiers on the horizon according to the latest musings from the Pentagon.

 

 

In the bid to develop a superior fighting force, most countries are looking to weapons based around robotics, lasers and exoskeletons to create a real-life Iron Man, but the US military officials, perhaps in a bout of propaganda, suggest that Russia is focused on also augmenting human biology – think more X-Men than Iron Man – in order to create the most deadly fighting force in the world.

"Our adversaries, quite frankly, are pursuing enhanced human operations and it scares the crap out of us," said US Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work.

read more: http://sputniknews.com/russia/20160807/1044016448/russia-putin-bionic-soldiers-pentagon.html

 

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A number of athletes competing at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games have used an unconventional (and still legal) technology, which involves stimulating the brain, to help improve performance in competition.

A San Francisco-based company called Halo Neuroscience is behind the trend, with three American athletes among the first to try the technique, as reported by spectrum.ieee.org.

Transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) is a process that involves athletes wearing a device called a ‘Halo Sport’ on their heads, which channels a small current into the brain.

The Halo Sport has electrodes placed within the headset that deliver a small current into the brain’s motor cortex.

The purpose is to potentially make neurons in the brain receptive and more likely to respond.

Halo chief executive officer Daniel Chao calls the process “neuropriming”, which means the brain’s neurons become more accurate at communicating with muscles and improve physical performance as a result.

The Halo Sport has been designed as a training device, which in turn will help athletes improve performance without the headset’s assistance while competing.

Three US athletes have used tDCS in their training – 400m hurdler Michael Tinsley, sprinter Mike Rodgers and modern pentathlete Samantha Achterberg.

Others to have tried brain stimulation include Hafsatu Kamara, a 100m sprinter from Sierra Leone and Mikel Thomas, a 110m hurdler from Trinidad & Tobago.

Halo’s new technology has also been picked up by US Defense, who are exploring whether brain stimulation could have benefits outside of sport.

Halo Neuroscience have also had involvement with other sports, with the hugely successful NBA basketball team the Golden State Warriors using the company’s technology.

TDCS is the latest in an endless cycle of methods being used by athletes in an effort to improve sporting performance.

The emergence of sports science in the modern era has revolutionized almost every discipline, while performance-enhancing drugs and doping have become prominent in elite sport.

There are currently no rules from the authorities over the use of tDCS and brain stimulation is legal, but it will be interesting to gauge the potential benefits of the technique as it is explored further.

 

read more: https://www.rt.com/sport/354921-us-athletes-using-brain-stimulation/

 

Superjoke?...

 

The US is constantly citing Russia as a "major threat" not only to itself but to its "European allies." Washington has been using this as a pretext for the deployment of additional contingents of NATO troops alongside Russia's borders.

 

However, it seems this is not the only "preventive measure" which is being set up on the Russian frontiers.

Earlier in September, Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reminded that Washington opposes the idea of tightening international control over biological weapons.

During his yearly address to future diplomats at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), Russia's top diplomat said that America's staunch opposition to Russian efforts to create a monitoring mechanism for the execution of the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) indicates that the US may be conducting biological research that is "not entirely peaceful."

Sergei Lavrov then said that Russia is developing a supervisory mechanism for the observance of the BTWC, stressing that most countries support this move while the US actively opposes it.

"It is known that the US has a number of projects in the field of biological research, particularly some joint research programs with our neighboring countries," Lavrov said.

 

© AP PHOTO/ J. SCOTT APPLEWHITECIA Chief: Genome-Editing May Be Used for Biological Warfare

Similar concerns were voiced back in 2015 by Secretary of Russia's Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, who said that the military biological infrastructure overseen by Washington is being set up increasingly closer to Russian borders.

 

Patrushev noted at a Security Council meeting that the number of such facilities has grown alarmingly.

"The number of laboratories which are being controlled and managed by the US has increased twentyfold, many of them have either functioned or currently function on the territories of the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) countries," he said, adding that the US is pouring tens of millions of dollars into military-focused biological weapons.

Also back in 2015, Russia's Foreign Ministry specified that one such facility is the US Richard G. Lugar Public Health Research Center in Tbilisi, which is actually a high level biological research laboratory overseen by the US Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

read more: https://sputniknews.com/world/20160908/1045088663/us-russia-biological-laboratories.html

 

Enhancing a soldier's capacity to fight is nothing new. 

Arguably one of the first forms of enhancement was through improving their diet. The phrase "an army marches on its stomach" goes back at least to Napoleon, and speaks to the belief that being well fed enhances the soldier's chances of winning a battle. 

But recent research has gone well beyond diet to enhance the capabilities of soldiers, like purposefully altering the structure and function of soldiers' digestive system to enable them to digest cellulose, meaning they can use grass as a food.

Perhaps their cognitive capabilities could be substantially altered so they can make more rapid decisions during conflict. 

Or their sensitivity to pain could be diminished, or even the severity and likelihood of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) reduced. 

Or even the direct wiring of prostheses to their brain.

This kind of biological and technological enhancement is often referred to as developing "supersoldiers".

read more:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-01/supersoldiers-and-the-ethics-of-hu...

read from top...

 

The Pentagon’s latest military technology could make warfare feel more like a first person shooter video game. Newly unveiled Tactical Augmented Reality headsets aim to give soldiers “situational awareness,” making it possible to map and locate targets or talk to fellow troops.

During last week’s Pentagon Lab Day in Washington, DC, the Army's Communications Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) and Army Research Lab (ARL) demonstrated the current prototype of their Tactical Augmented Reality (TAR) heads-up display that would give soldiers "situational awareness" on the battlefield. 

read more:

https://www.rt.com/usa/389898-army-augmented-huntr-headset/

We've been on the case for yonks read from top... see: 

The dismounted warfighter

 

 

The Pentagon is developing technology to allow the next generation of soldiers to fire their weapons with their minds.

Researchers at the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) believe the mind-technology relationship that underpins the use of artificial limbs might help human soldiers fire their guns quicker, Breaking Defense reported Thursday. 

 

Indeed, competition may require it. Unmanned aerial vehicles and underwater vessels, not to mention advances in cyber- and electronic warfare, are changing the architecture of the battlespace. Humans will need some help keeping up.

Still, it’s chilling to think about artificial intelligence technologies having the capacity to read our minds. It’s not easy to foresee what might happen if robots used this ability against their human creators.

DoD policy stipulates that in that case of UAVs, for instance, the machine cannot be responsible for killing humans; a remote human controller must press the button to fire Hellfire missiles from MQ-9 Reaper drones. The new technology may be poised to challenge that policy.

read more:

https://sputniknews.com/military/201707211055741450-pentagon-wants-weapo...

 

 

April 11, 2017

According to a July 2016 Department of Defense Inspector General (DODIG) report, $6.5 trillion of Army Spending allocated to the Pentagon have no paper trail and no audit has been made by the Department of Defense (DOD) for the past two decades to resolve this issue. In other words, David Lindorff reported that “the Department of Defense has not been tracking or recording or auditing all of the taxpayer money allocated by Congress — what it was spent on, how well it was spent, or where the money actually ended up. There are enough opportunities here for corruption, bribery, secret funding of ‘black ops’ and illegal activities, and or course for simple waste to march a very large army, navy and air force through. And by the way, things aren’t any better at the Navy, Air Force and Marines.”

Lindorff notes that the Office of Inspector General (OIG) showed the Pentagon money pit goes back to Fiscal Year 1991 “during an annual audit five years before Congress even passed the law requiring all federal agencies to operate using federal accounting standards and to conduct annual audits.” This past year, the Government Accountability Office found out that “unsupported re-adjustments” were being made to the military’s financial statements.

For backstory, Congress passed The Government Accountability Act of 1996 that required annual audit on government department budgets. This bill was passed to resolve the previous accounting mistakes made in 1991. Surprisingly, the DoD is still unable to implement the measures over 20 years later. Looking at the Federal Discretionary Spending of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2015, the DOD was allocated $600 billion of the $1.1 trillion budget. The rest of the budget was split between $70 billion for education, $63 billion for housing and community development, $66 billion for Medicare and Health care, $65 billion for Veterans, $39 million for energy, $26 billion for transportation, and finally $41 billion for International affairs. With the exception of DoD, all the other departments have reported their budgets since the bill was passed.

read more:

http://projectcensored.org/pentagon-money-pit-6-5-trillion-unaccountable...

 

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In the article related to the cartoon at top I mentioned "Developments are on the way to * have non reflective uniforms adapt to average color of surrounding environment". This could have been seen as fanciful. But then:

 

3D texture morphing for camouflage

Some animals, such as cephalopods, use soft tissue to change shape reversibly for camouflage and object manipulation. Pikul et al. used fixed-length fiber mesh embedded in a silicone elastomer to transform a flat object into a 3D structure by inflating membranes (see the Perspective by Laschi). Painted models of rocks and plants were also created that could be morphed to fully blend into their surroundings.

Science, this issue p. 210; see also p. 169

Abstract

Technologies that use stretchable materials are increasingly important, yet we are unable to control how they stretch with much more sophistication than inflating balloons. Nature, however, demonstrates remarkable control of stretchable surfaces; for example, cephalopods can project hierarchical structures from their skin in milliseconds for a wide range of textural camouflage. Inspired by cephalopod muscular morphology, we developed synthetic tissue groupings that allowed programmable transformation of two-dimensional (2D) stretchable surfaces into target 3D shapes. The synthetic tissue groupings consisted of elastomeric membranes embedded with inextensible textile mesh that inflated to within 10% of their target shapes by using a simple fabrication method and modeling approach. These stretchable surfaces transform from flat sheets to 3D textures that imitate natural stone and plant shapes and camouflage into their background environments.

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/358/6360/210
Yep... these fabrics can imitate plant shapes and colours... Snow would be a piece of cake. See toon at top...

But by 2025 wars will be fought by self-driven invisible drones with nerds in bunkers doing the body count for the brasses...

 

 

 

The U.S. Navy (and to be frank, the whole U.S. military) is living in a state of total denial. In the next great powers war, or perhaps even in a conflict with a mid-tier power like Iran, at least one of our aircraft carriers will sink to the bottom of the sea. That means thousands of lives could be lost—and there would be very little we could do to stop it.

We need to get used to a very simple reality: the decades-old age of the aircraft carrier, that great symbol of U.S. power projection, has now passed. We can deny the evidence that is right before our eyes, but innovations in anti-ship missiles over many decades—combined with advanced but short-range carrier-based U.S. fighter aircraft and missile defenses that can be easily defeated—have conspired to doom one of the most powerful weapons ever devised.

If the aircraft carrier is a symbol, an expression of U.S. military dominance stretching from World War II to today, then there’s another symbol that perfectly encapsulates its demise: China’s DF-21D, what many experts describe as a “carrier-killer” ballistic missile.

How the missile works is key to understanding what modern-day U.S. aircraft carriers face. The missile is mobile and can travel anywhere via a truck, making its detection difficult. When launched, the weapon is guided using over-the-horizon radars, new satellite networks, and possibly even drones or commercial vessels being used as scouts. The system also has a maneuverable warhead to help defeat missile-defense systems. When it does find its target, it can descend from the sky and strike at speeds approaching Mach 12. Worst of all, the missile has a range of 1,000 miles. A Pentagon source tells me that Beijing has already deployed “many of them—perhaps in the hundreds,” and is “fully operational and ready for action.”

With one report claiming China could build 1,227 DF-21Ds for every carrier the U.S. military sends to sea, Beijing and other nations will have ample budgetary room to challenge our mighty carriers for decades to come.

read more:

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/face-it-the-mighty-u-s-aircraft-carrier-is-dead/

Read from top... See also:

http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/chinas-carrier-killer-really-threat-the-us-navy-13765

 

As the US AirForce boasts of "domination of space domain", we can only shudder at its plan for the "future" presented in an entertaining video with upbeat music and unashamedly propagandist voice over.

"The Air Force is ready to listen to your ideas on how we continue our technological advantage and meet the national security challenges of 2030 and beyond. Tell us how you will invent the future here: https://www.afresearchlab.com/2030".

 

It seems that the USA will be protected by an invincible DOME, while the US AirForce has a million ways to graphically destroy targets — possibly killing a few cyber people, or over-breeding rabbits, in the process. No blood is spilled, no child is hurt. Here nothing can go wrong, as the "future" is invented to be bright, precise and tasteful like a hospital surgery.

The lies, porkies and fake news of the empire can sleep easy. 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPZpp_Y6Er8

 

Read from top.

The journal Science has published a DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) research study on “Insect Allies” [1]. It appears that the Pentagon has in mind infecting insects with viruses capable of implanting genes in fields of cereals that have arrived at maturity. This would allow the Pentagon to transform normal plants into genetically modified plants.

Researchers at the Max Planck Institute (Germany) and the University of Montpelier (France) consider that this technique could also be used as a weapon to destroy cultures and the propagation of the virus would be unstoppable.

In any event, we would not be able to stop infected insects from spreading the virus. These insects could unpredictably transform plants here or there.

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article203369.html

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From the 100 000 page document published by the former Georgian Minister for National Security, Igor Guiorgadze, it appears that the Gilead Sciences lab at the Richard Lugar Centre, Tbilisi (Georgia) pursued chemical and biological weapons tests for the Pentagon [1].

These experiments, supposed to fight Hepatitis C, have cost the lives of 73 patients, of which at least 49 have been deliberately sacrificed.

General Igor Kirillov is the lead for the biological, chemical and nuclear fight in the Russian Ministry of Defence. He considers that the strains found in the animals that died from the “porcine plague” epidemic in Russia in 2007-18, are identical to those of the Richard Lugar Centre known by the name Georgie-2007.

The “porcine plague” epidemic has spread during the decade from Georgia to China on the one hand and Russia and the Baltic countries on the other. It could therefore originate, intentionally or by chance, from the experiments carried out by Gilead Sciences.

The “porcine plague” epidemic continues to thrive in Belgium. It did not seem to be linked to this phenomenon because of the distance separating Belgium from the contaminated areas. However the Minister of Agriculture of the Belgian region of Valonia, René Collin, has revealed that the Belgian epidemic originates from the military base in Lagland, in the Belgian province of Luxembourg. This is where some of the soldiers that participated in the NATO drills carried out in the Baltic countries, live.

The documents that form part of the study, could also allow a connection to be made between the Gilead Sciences trials and the mosquitos that carry the haemorrhagic fever Crimea-Congo, which is currently spreading in Southern Russia.

Among the documents that Igor Guiorgadze made public features a patent for a drone capable of disseminating infected insects; a discovery that must be linked to the DARPA research studies on how crops are infected [2].

Russia has sought explanations from the United States and, in anticipation that these are not produced or are lacking, is getting ready to go to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW-OIAC).

Translation 
Anoosha Boralessa

 

Read more:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article203370.html

Read from top.

 

Now you are allowed to connect the dots: http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/35599

The US Army is investing millions of dollars in Lockheed Martin Corp’s experimental exoskeleton technology to equip a new generation of “super-soldiers.”

The technology was developed by Lockheed Martin Corp with a license from Canada-based B-TEMIA, Reuters reported. B-Temia was the first company to develop exoskeletons to help people with mobility difficulties to get back on their feet after such medical ailments like multiple sclerosis and severe osteoarthritis.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/military/201811301070263119-usa-army-use-exoskel...

 

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A new weapon installed on Russian warships can make enemy soldiers miss targets by blinding them, while also causing hallucinations and making them want to vomit.

Two Russian frigates were fitted with the new non-lethal dazzler-type weapon, the 5P-42 Filin (eagle-owl), the manufacturer’s representative told RIA Novosti. The weapon is designed to temporarily blind the enemy.

It creates a strobe-like effect that disrupts eyesight, seriously hampering the soldier’s ability to aim at night, Ruselectronics (which produces the weapon) stated.

During testing, volunteers used assault rifles, sniper rifles, and machine guns to shoot targets placed up to 2km away and protected by the device. They all had trouble aiming because they “couldn’t see the target.”

Forty-five percent of the volunteers reported feeling dizzy, nauseous, and disoriented. Twenty percent are said to have experienced hallucinations, described as “a ball of light moving in front of [our] eyes.” The company didn’t specify how many people participated in the tests.

Filin is also capable of “effectively suppressing” night vision tech, laser distance sensors, and even pointing systems for anti-tank missiles from a range of up to 5km, according to the manufacturer.

The ships equipped with the new high-tech stations are the state-of-the-art frigates Admiral Gorshkov and Admiral Kasatonov, both of Russia’s Northern Sea Fleet. Each has two stations. Two more frigates, currently under construction, are also expected to be fitted with the device.

 

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/russia/450489-russian-navy-system-hallucinations/

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Amazing... Such non-lethal weapons were "invented" (dreamed of and garage-engineered) by Gus a few decades ago in his spare time. Why? Because they make war useless and dangerously funny for the attackers... Here, this one is designed to incapacitate soldiers momentarily but in the war of the future, most decision will be made by machines. 

Thus the need to find ways to incapacitate machines as well. There is of course the transmission jamming of devices, but the autonomous machines are still a problem.

Here is a short list of other Gus' invention in this line of war disruption (designed to circumvent the inevitable actions of idiots/imbeciles/derangeds who launch war):

 

— a radiation wavelength that catalyses fuels (heavy oils for ship, kerosene for planes), into water and shit.

— a high speed lighting conducting device that lands on metal ships that then get hit by massive electrical storms that destroy their radars and other electronic devices.

— an electronic signal that makes the self-motivated machines believe they have reached their target when they have barely been launched — and explode just then.

— various infra-sounds that make soldiers in need of going to the loo for about 95 per cent of any campaign.

— a laser-like beam that only resonate with ships and submarines nuclear reactors that make them either turn "too hot" so they have to be shut down, while their battery storage turn to cement — or go completely cold.

— an electronic signal that make soldiers laugh non-stop — so they become useless.

— a microwave signal that make weapon-grade steel turn so hot that no-one can get near or stay inside a tank...

 

— and plenty more... Some of which are so far-fetched that they ACTUALLY WORK...

 

 

Read from top. The alternative of course is to send to prison any geezer who harbour thoughts of going to war. Blair, Bush and John Howard come to mind... See the trilogy...

The Pentagon’s secretive weaponry development office has recruited teams to develop neural interfaces for humans to control war-making machines.

The Department for Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking technologies to connect troops' brains with an unknown range of "military systems," Defense One reported Monday.

If humans can control prosthetic limbs like they do natural ones, and researchers can give deaf people tools to translate their thoughts into tweets, perhaps the notion of controlling a machine solely with the mind is a natural progression. But when that machine has the ability to take a life, the consequences of this technological leap become infinitely more complex — because a machine with artificial intelligence could develop memories of how to kill humans, and act on them.

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/military/201902191072572334-darpa-ai-systems-tro...

 

 

Read from top.

An official with the United States Special Operations Command (SOCOM) confirmed earlier this week that the military has launched field tests for its Lightweight Polyethylene Armor for Extremity Protection - a primary component of the force’s long-awaited “Iron Man” suit.

Though drone technology is on the rise and expected to be a key player in the future of armed combat, “combat evaluation” for brand new body armor with over 44% body coverage is now underway, according to SOCOM spokesman and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Tim Hawkins.

Hawkins explained to Task & Purpose on Wednesday that not only does the Lightweight Polyethylene Armor for Extremity Protection offer more than the 19% of coverage provided by standard infantry armor, but it’s also 25%, or 3 pounds, lighter and offers added defense for the wearer’s shoulders, forearms, groin and obliques.

The armor in question comes as a subsystem of the SOCOM’s longstanding Tactical Assault Light Operator Suit (TALOS) or “Iron Man” project. The suit, which initially looked more like a Master Chief concept sketch from the “Halo” video game franchise, has been in development since 2013 and, as of February, is nowhere near complete.

“When we get the exoskeleton here in a few months, we will have the best exoskeleton in the Department of Defense,” SOCOM Acquisition Executive James Smith said at a National Defense Industrial Association forum earlier this year, as reported by the Army Times. However, he added that the technology required to match the vision of TALOS’ 2013 concept video is currently “out of reach.”

 

 

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/military/201911151077309722-us-military-field-te...

 

 

Read from top.

An arrow to the groin labelled "hygiene" and a headline stating that "a woman is not a scaled-down man" feature in a Department of Defence effort to explain the female form.

 

Key points:

• Defence used the image to distinguish differences between men and women in combat
• It lists hygiene, skull thickness and body temperature as among the differences
• The department says it's trying to improve the equipment supplied to soldiers

 

The ABC has obtained a slide from a Defence presentation depicting a female soldier wearing a combat uniform, smiling while holding a gun.

It lists skull thicknesses and varying hygiene needs as foremost among the distinguishing features that matter when Australian men and women are engaged in the act of defending their nation.

The slide states women's arms and legs have "shorter and smaller bones" which is considered a "mechanical disadvantage", although their "joints are more flexible".

An arrow points to the soldier's hand and notes "women have a higher body surface area to mass ratio" meaning they "can lose heat quicker and at lower outside temperatures".

Highlighting the groin area, the presentation states that females have different hygiene requirements, although doesn't specify them.

It also explains that "female skulls are also smaller and not as thick" as men's. 

The ABC has learnt the Australian Defence Force (ADF) is reviewing the range of equipment supplied to women in uniform, seeking feedback from female personnel and providing regular updates to the top brass. 

Last month a "Women in Combat" presentation was given to military leaders on the "development of combat equipment, including helmets, boots, body armour and field equipment that are more suitable for female ADF personnel".

A defence spokesperson says the address "also included feedback received from female ADF members, which is being used to inform potential improvements to the equipment supplied to them".

"The document has not been widely distributed and is not accessible to all Australian Defence Force (ADF) members," the spokesperson added.

Bringing women into the military, and keeping them there, remains a big challenge for the ADF although recent figures show the situation is constantly improving.

According to Defence's most recent annual report, the participation rate of women in the permanent ADF reached 18.6 per cent —an increase from 17.9 per cent on the previous year.

The Department says its key focus for improving gender balance is "to ensure we are building Defence's capability and our operational effectiveness".

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-08/defence-learns-the-differences-between-men-and-women/12327470

 

Read from top.

The French armed forces have been given the go-ahead to start research on developing "enhanced soldiers".

A report laid out conditions under which work on implants and other technologies designed to improve battlefield performance should be carried out in the future.

The report stresses that other nations are exploring such possibilities, and that France must keep up.

Defence Minister Florence Parly has emphasised the need to look ahead.

In a speech last week she said France had no immediate plans to develop "invasive" technology for soldiers. "But we must face the facts," she added. "Not everyone shares our scruples and we must be prepared for whatever the future holds."

She said "ways to maintain our operational superiority without turning our backs on our values" must be explored.

• 'Exhilarating' implant turns thoughts to speech
• Brain implants used to fight drug addiction in US

Details of the report by the military ethics committee were released on Tuesday.

"Human beings have long sought ways to increase their physical or cognitive abilities in order to fight wars," it warned. "Possible advances could ultimately lead to capacity enhancements being introduced into soldiers' bodies."

The report mentioned research on implants that could "improve cerebral capacity" or help soldiers tell enemy from ally. These could also allow commanders to locate them or read their vital signs from a distance. 

Drawing clear ethical lines, the document noted, was "therefore essential". It said eugenic or genetic practices should be banned, as well as anything "that could jeopardise the soldier's integration into society or return to civilian life".

In her speech, Ms Parly noted that in civilian fields, work on neural implants for humans was proceeding apace. 

This year Elon Musk unveiled a pig called Gertrude with a coin-sized computer chip in her brain, to demonstrate his ambitious plans to create a working brain-to-machine interface.

 

 

Read more:

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-55243014

 

 

Read from top.

 

I, cyborg: How the UK wants to make its soldiers ‘superhuman’

Shocking UK Ministry of Defence report advocates human augmentation for warfighting purposes

By Keelan Balderson is a UK-based journalist interested in security services, and misuse of state power. Follow his work at @altnewsuk

By Kit Klarenberg, an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions. Follow him on Twitter @KitKlarenberg

 

RT investigative unit The Detail has reviewed the disturbing dimensions of a report on human augmentation recently issued by the UK Ministry of Defence’s Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre. 

Drawn up in conjunction with Germany’s Bundeswehr Office for Defence Planning, the document starts by noting that while “significant thought” has been given to the implications of “advances in life sciences” for “artificial intelligence, automation and robotics,”comparatively little has been dedicated to “what this means from a human perspective.”

The MoD considers this a grave shortcoming, for “our potential adversaries will not be governed by the same ethical and legal considerations that we are,” and are allegedly “already developing human augmentation capabilities.” As such, “establishing advantage in this field” is of paramount urgency.

“Advances in artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomy mean that human processing power, speed of action and endurance are being rapidly outpaced by machines,” the report states. “People are defence’s most valuable asset but also a key vulnerability; people get hungry, tired, scared and confused. Machines on the other hand are incapable of these things…The role of people is being challenged in three key areas: data, complexity and speed…Human augmentation is the missing part of this puzzle.”

The implication of this view of people is that the legal and ethical considerations apparently holding back the MoD’s vital work should be scrapped. People are just too weak to deserve the protections of legal rights preventing the military from implanting tech in their bodies to ‘augment’ them.  

The report proceeds to delve deeply into a wide array of augmentation options, including wearable tech, psychedelic drugs, gene editing and engineering, exoskeletons, sensory augmentation devices, and invasive implants such as “brain interfaces.” Bizarrely, it likens such sinister, sci-fi-reminiscent applications to “augmentation” such as “humans [adorning] themselves with decorative garments to increase their social standing.”

Overwhelmingly too, the focus is on the theoretical positives of augmentation. Even a section noting that, “if not effectively regulated by law, such areas of inconsistency and/or ambiguity create the potential for individual privacy to be breached through what could come to be known as ‘under-skin’ surveillance methods,” is negated mere pages later by a passage seemingly advocating augmenting soldiers “against their will,” on the basis they could be “guilty of disobeying a lawful command” if they refused.

Accordingly, discussion of the hazards inherent in human augmentation is vanishingly rare in the report, beyond brief references to how “bioinformatic data, implants and wearables will create vulnerabilities that could be exploited by malign actors,” the “electromagnetic signature” of devices such as exoskeletons “could be easily detected” on a battlefield, and “implanted technologies” or“data-reliant human augmentation” could be “disrupted at a moment of an adversaries [sic] choosing.”

These prospective pratfalls are fairly severe failings, one might think, particularly given implanted brain-related tech could be hacked into, raising the horrifying prospect of someone’s mind and body being infiltrated and hijacked by sinister external actors.  

Naturally, the MoD does not consider itself to be a “malign actor,” and the report argues such hacking to be a far lesser threat to that of “surrendering influence, prosperity and security” to countries more willing to experiment, invest and innovate in the field.

This cavalier approach extends also to ethical considerations regarding human augmentation. The report characterizes such concerns as “significant but not insurmountable,” on the basis that getting bogged down in trifling moral debates on the topic would result in “the ethics of human augmentation [being] decided for us” by other states. Indeed, “the imperative to use human augmentation may ultimately not be dictated by any explicit ethical argument, but by national interest.”

That is to say, if the MoD simply ignores ethical concerns and limitations, and adopts human augmentation regardless, ethical arguments become a moot point. Quite the vicious circle.

“National regulations dictating the pace and scope of scientific research reflect societal views, particularly in democracies that are more sensitive to public opinion. The future of human augmentation should not, however, be decided by ethicists or public opinion,” the paper ominously states.

The analysis goes even further, demanding that Western governments not only adopt, but optimize their use of human augmentation, stating, “governments will need to develop a clear policy position that maximises the use of human augmentation in support of prosperity, safety and security.”

The Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC) goes so far as to argue augmenting people may in itself be a “moral obligation…particularly in cases where it promotes well-being or protects us from novel threats,” suggesting in fact that augmentation could even “controversially”produce “moral enhancement” of humans and personally “to prevent malicious activity.”

If it looks like a dystopian nightmare, walks like a dystopian nightmare, and quacks like a dystopian nightmare, then it’s probably a report from the MoD.

The DCDC’s entry for the Philip K Dick award furthermore notes approvingly that “ethical perspectives on human augmentation will change and this could happen quickly,” recording how“creating genetically modified humans has been widely considered unacceptable for many years and is formally prohibited in over 40 countries,” but there are welcome indications this stance “is being challenged by the advent of new technologies.” No doubt the British state would also be eager and able to “nudge” citizens into reconsidering their “ethical perspectives” on the matter.

“The impact of legislative changes on moral beliefs is also important, with some evidence suggesting that changes to morality are often caused by legislative changes,” the report observes.“Defence, however, cannot wait for ethics to change before engaging with human augmentation.”

Disquieting stuff indeed, although even more troublingly, a determination to transform soldiers and citizens alike into cyborgs isn’t restricted to Britain. NATO’s ‘Innovation Hub’ throughout 2020 and 2021 published a number of bizarre papers and convened several conferences on the subject of“cognitive warfare” - a doctrine seeking “militarisation of brain science” and answers to the burning question of “how to free humanity from the limitations of the body.”

 

The US-led military alliance aims to achieve dominance in this speculative, sinister sphere by 2040, and in service of the project the Innovation Hub employed a number of “futurists” to forecast scenarios for securing such primacy, and kickstarting “cognitive war.” 

One resultant contribution was a 33-page fableauthored by a French evolutionary biology professor, which imagined how in 2039, autopsies conducted on Chinese soldiers killed in skirmishes with US and Australian troops over Beijing’s Silk Road initiative in Zambia would find the dead were “supra-human,” the product of gene-editing in a lab, which imbued them with superior muscles, night-vision, and “resistance to sleep deprivation, thirst, extreme heat and humidity.” A “cognitive war” was duly declared the next year.

The academic concluded by declaring that the “human mind should be NATO’s next domain of operation.” Deranged doggerel the work may have been, but it was clearly influential – 10 months after publication, then-US Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe accused Beijing of“developing soldiers with biologically enhanced capabilities.” Despite providing no evidence for the bombshell assertion, media outlets the world over eagerly amplified his incendiary remarks without criticism or question.

Clearly then, just as in the Cold War, where bogus claims of Soviet nuclear supremacy prompted a planet-threatening arms race lasting decades, and crazed conspiracy theories about Chinese brainwashing prowess triggered unconscionable experimentation on unwitting human subjects, fear mongering over purported enemy state progress in the field of human augmentation is being used to justify a whole host of immoral policies and practices.

This time round, though, rather than entrenched medical ethics being criminally and covertly circumvented, they’re simply being rewritten to accommodate the national security state’s wanton and egregious excesses. After all, the West must maintain “full-spectrum dominance” in all matters, at all times – even if the threat that’s reportedly being countered is fantastical, farcical, or literally science-fictional.

 

 

 

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US military forces female recruit to shower with transitioning men – senator
A lawmaker has claimed that the young soldier also had to sleep between two males who were transitioning to female

 

 Washington lawmaker has claimed that an 18-year-old female recruit was forced by the US military to shower with biological males who were allegedly in the process of transitioning to women.

The young woman, who was also forced to sleep between two biological males, considered quitting over the issue and declined to speak out publicly for fear of ruining her military career, US Senator Mike Rounds (R-South Dakota) said on Monday in a Fox News interview. The lawmaker added that he was informed of the incident by the attorney general of the South Dakota National Guard.

“She could have basically resigned or stepped away,” Rounds said. “She could have started over again. But nonetheless, it was an extremely uncomfortable position, and I think this is one of the reasons why we’re not meeting our recruitment goals now.” 

Republican lawmakers have claimed that “woke”Pentagon policies -- such as teaching critical race theory and funding sex-change surgeries for transgender troops – have discouraged many young Americans from enlisting. The US Army fell 25% of its recruiting goal last year and forecast a similar shortfall in 2023. The Navy reportedly may fall 10,000 recruits short of its quota of 38,000 enlistments.

In the case cited by Rounds, the female recruit was forced to shower with biological men with their male genitalia exposed. “The respect that this young recruit should have received and the privacy that she should have had, she was deprived of,” the senator said.

Pentagon policy requires troops to use showers and other facilities that align with their “gender marker,” also referred to as their “self-identified gender.” A service member can change his or her gender marker, based on a diagnosis of gender dysphoria by a military doctor.

The US Department of Defense (DOD) has a “sacred obligation” to ensure that all service members, including transgender troops, can serve with “dignity and respect,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday.

 

https://www.rt.com/news/579929-us-military-forces-woman-to-shower-with-men/

 

 

 

 

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