Terrorism is the price of empire. If we do not wish to pay it, we must give up the empire.

--Patrick Buchanan

Ron Paul's Iraq Strategy: “Just leave.”

Outsourcing Intelligence: How Bush Gets His National Intelligence From Private Companies

Over the past six years, a quiet revolution has occurred in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing to corporations and away from the long-established practice of keeping operations in US government hands, with only select outsourcing of certain jobs to independently contracted experts. Key functions of intelligence agencies are now run by private corporations. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) revealed in May that 70 percent of the intelligence budget goes to contractors.

For all practical purposes, effective control of the NSA is with private corporations, which run its support and management functions. As the Washington Post's Walter Pincus reported last year, more than 70 percent of the staff of the Pentagon's newest intelligence unit, CIFA (Counterintelligence Field Activity), is made up of corporate contractors.

Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) lawyers revealed at a conference in May that contractors make up 51 percent of the staff in DIA offices. At the CIA, the situation is similar. Between 50 and 60 percent of the workforce of the CIA's most important directorate, the National Clandestine Service (NCS), responsible for the gathering of human intelligence, is composed of employees of for-profit corporations.

Under Mr Putin, Russia is sliding into fascism, with state control of the economy, media, politics and society becoming increasingly heavy-handed.

If the founding fathers were alive today, I am sure that they would be bloggers. Thomas Paine for sure. A blogger named Enlightened Despot has two blogs worthy of your attention, Thomas Jefferson Speaks and Alexander Hamilton Speaks, consisting of quotations from the writings of the great men. A sample:

Alexander Hamilton:

"As riches increase and accumulate in a few hands; as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard.”

"The rich must be made to pay for their luxuries; which is the only proper way of taking their superior wealth.”


Thomas Jefferson:

"And the day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter."

Return from Spookyville

On June 2 I posted a piece called A short trip to Spookyville , concerning the incredible allegations of Dr. Sue Arrigo M.D., allegedly an "ex- CIA physician with high level access".

Briefly, she maintained that HIV/Aids was deliberately unleashed on the world and that there is a vaccine which has been kept secret. She also described running secret missions for Dick Cheney and to have twice treated Osama bin Laden after 9/11. My post was picked up by several conspiracy sites.

It's not that I wasn't skeptical of her claims. In fact I wrote: "Just because someone has an M.D. after her name does not mean that she may not be suffering from mental illness. "

One thing that did intrigue me, however, was that her sister Maria Arrigo, Ph.D., described herself in a paper as "a social psychologist studying intelligence ethics and as daughter of an undercover intelligence officer."

As it turns out Sue Arrigo has another sister, Linda Gail Arrigo, Ph.D. in Sociology, who left a comment on my original post stating in part:

I am sorry to say that my sister Sue Ann Arrigo has periodic episodes of paranoid schizophrenia, and this has been over a period of ten years at least. It is amazing how her wild stories have proliferated all over the web.

I have since exchanged a few emails with Linda Arrigo. She writes:

I believe that my sister Sue Ann has been having periodic bouts of paranoid schizophrenia since about 15 years ago. She is convinced that our father was both a member of the CIA and the Mafia, and that he inducted her at a young age into intelligence activities, and that she has been under mind control since then, and subject to frequent kidnapping and threats by agents, wherever she is in the world. However, she has no material or historical evidence of this other than her later memories and physical symptoms, as she reported recently for supposedly being kidnapped in Ireland in early June 2007. I talked by telephone with my mother who was with her right afterwards and accompanied her to the doctor and the police, and my mother now believes Sue Ann is subject to hallucinations.

Our father, born 1914, served 20 years in the U.S. military, about 1941-61, in Europe, the Pentagon, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. His work was logistics, not intelligence. I lived with him in Taiwan 1963-68; my sisters had virtually no contact with him after 1962. He is senile now, in San Francisco, and I sorted through most of his papers during the last few summers. He is not a pleasant personality, but I am certain he had no such CIA contacts or capacity.

If any consistent check were made on Sue Ann's schooling and employment for the last 30 years, it would be obvious that her current allegations of service as a CIA medic are pure fantasy, even if well-informed by public knowledge of current issues in U.S. government behavior.

There are enough real victims of U.S. military and intelligence actions; it is not surprising, perhaps, that victims of schizophrenia like my sister should feed on these accounts.

Given the incredible allegations of Dr. Sue Arrigo, the complete lack of supporting evidence, and this statement by her sister, I see no reason to give any credence to her claims. I wish her well.

Apparently just mentioning Ron Paul on your website will, like, quadruple your traffic. Give it a try! OK.

Update: mentioning Ron Paul on my website did not quadruple my statistics. Two or three people stopped by after googling "Ron Paul". Please come again. But let's try this:

Ron Paul raped Lindsey Lohan!

Update 2: OK this seems to have given me a bump in my statistics, and I didn't even spell Lindsay Lohan's name right. Mostly, however, this is because blogger Joseph Cannon put a link to this blog at Reddit. I would reciprocate but Joseph is looking to reduce the number of visitors to his blog, looking for quality rather than quantity (go figure). Welcome people who googled "Ron Paul" and "Lindsay Lohan". You people who were googling "rape"(you know who you are) can go just go away.

"We have to be connected to Israel to enjoy the second coming."

--Congressman Tom Delay

Al Qaeda's safe haven in northwestern Pakistan is largely inaccessible to outside forces and unlikely to be eliminated soon by the U.S. or Pakistani military, top intelligence officials said on Wednesday.

Guy Banister and UFOs

FBI Special Agent W G Banister examines Fu-Go that fell in Kalispell, Montana on December 11, 1944.

BUTTE, Mont, July 11 - AP - FBI Agent W. G. Banister said an object which appeared to be a "flying disk" was found early today at Twin Falls, Ida. , and turned over to federal authorities there.

From the Project Blue Book Files

Guy Banister's Grave

(Note the Masonic logo.)

UFO sightings bring town to a standstill

CIA Bin Laden Chief: Next Attack ‘Bigger Than 9/11'

If al-Qaida does launch an attack inside the U.S., as the U.S. government suggests, "it will be much bigger than 9/11."

This prediction of a nightmarish terror attack comes from Michael Scheuer, the retired CIA veteran who headed the agency's secret unit dedicated to capturing Osama bin Laden.

Milwaukee Election Records Indicate Apparent Forgery,
Ballot Box Stuffing in 2004 Presidential Election

The unfolding of events over the past 7 years and the recent emergence of certain key facts point to the prospect of an ominous conclusion: before the summer is up, America will be brought under martial law with George W. Bush and Dick Cheney at the helm.

So says Elliot D. Cohen, Ph.D., who has written a book The Last Days of Democracy. I think he's wrong. I hope he's wrong.

A total of 71% of Americans say they disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president according to the latest survey from the American Research Group.

Among all Americans, 25% approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president and 71% disapprove. When it comes to Bush's handling of the economy, 23% approve and 73% disapprove.

The American ambassador in Baghdad, Ryan C. Crocker, has asked the Bush administration to take the unusual step of granting immigrant visas to all Iraqis employed by the U.S. government in Iraq because of growing concern that they will quit and flee the country if they cannot be assured eventual safe passage to the United States.

Washington Post via Mike

John Conyers: "What are we waiting for? Let's take these two guys out!"

The BBC's Flawed RFK Story by Jefferson Morley and David Talbot

On November 20, 2006 -- the day that would have been Robert Kennedy's eighty-first birthday -- the BBC program Newsnight aired a startling report alleging that three CIA operatives were caught on camera at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on the night of Kennedy's assassination. The story suggested that they were involved in his killing. The BBC broadcast, produced by filmmaker Shane O'Sullivan, identified the three CIA operatives as George Joannides, David Morales and Gordon Campbell. All three were known to have worked for the Agency in Miami in the early 1960s when the White House ordered up a massive, not-so-secret effort to overthrow Fidel Castro's communist government in Cuba.

The report was wholly mistaken.

Did a decorated CIA officer run a covert action operation involving Lee Harvey Oswald three months before the assassination of President John F. Kennedy?

Morley v. CIA, now pending in federal appeals court, seeks to answer this question.

Congressman Hales Boggs was a member of the Warren Commission. In 1972 the twin engine airplane in which Boggs was traveling over a remote section of Alaska disappeared. The plane presumably crashed and was never found.

After Hale's disappearance, Lindy and Hale's brother, a Jesuit priest in New Orleans, were fearful that he had been murdered because of his inside knowledge about the role of the FBI, CIA, and organized crime in events leading up to the Kennedy assassination--knowledge that he had acquired as a member of the Warren Commission and that might also have some relevance to Watergate.

Congresswoman Boggs had expressed her fears to Congressman Bill Hungate as well as to me and Peter Rodino in the strictest confidence.

In 1971 Boggs had made an extraordinary speech on the House floor. The then-majority leader accused the Department of Justice of using "Gestapo-like" police-state tactics that included bugging the offices and homes of members of Congress and other political leaders--and in some cases using illegally obtained information to blackmail public officials.

The unreported truth was that when Boggs made the speech he ws undergoing psychiatric treatment for manic depression, and the CIA and FBI were concerned that his judgement had become sufficiently impaired to endanger national security.

Without Honor: The Impeachment of President Nixon And The Crimes of Camelot by Jerry Zeifman

Larry Flynt Says He’s Found Five Hookers ‘So Far’ Who Had Sex with Sen. Vitter in New Orleans

FLYNT: There’s been about five we’ve been able to track down so far. So you see what happens when you’re a guy like him and you’re not completely honest, see, he didn’t even have to bring that up. And now that he’s brought it up, everybody is all over it, including us.

US says Iraqi rebel head is an invention

IN MARCH, he was declared captured. In May, he was declared killed, and his purported corpse was displayed on state-run TV.

On Wednesday, Omar al-Baghdadi, the supposed leader of an al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Iraq, was declared non-existent by US military officials, who say he is a fictional character created to give an Iraqi face to a foreign-run terrorist group.

WorldNetDaily has been pushing Iraqi cannibalism stories

Report: Al-Qaida bakes little boys

"Perhaps it's urban legend. I have no idea.

More cases of terrorists 'baking' children cited
Researchers say Muslim history includes cooking human victims

Policy Analyst Jeremy Sewall calls such reports "pretty extreme."

You think?

Republican David Vitter claims he only visited one prostitute

Talk about lowering the bar.

Fred Thompson is hesitant to announce his candidacy for President because he is bisexual and is known to frequent male prostitutes.

There is at least one person willing to come forward when/if Fred announces.

So says dweeb, who adds "my sources are personal and first-hand knowledge."

Fox guest claims CIA 'sabotaging our own War on Terror'

Fox News on Tuesday interviewed veteran Pentagon reporter Rowan Scarborough about his "startling allegation" that "elements within the CIA are sabotaging our own War on Terror." Scarborough, a former columnist for the Reverend Sun Myung Moon-owned Washington Times, is the author of Sabotage: America's Enemies Within the CIA, which claims that "CIA bureaucrats are undermining President Bush and the War on Terror through disinformation, incompetence, and outright sabotage."

Angry CIA Operatives Torpedoed Rumsfeld

Dissident U.S. intelligence officers angry at former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld helped a European probe uncover details of secret CIA prisons in Europe, the top investigator said on Tuesday.

"The Americans themselves admitted there were secret prisons, that they abducted people from the streets, that people were handed over to countries like Syria, Yemen, Egypt where they were tortured," he said.

Bradley Ayers: A Soldier's Voice

I believe the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld Iraq War will go down as one of history’s major military blunders, exceeding the Vietnam debacle, and making a mockery of all those in the political-military establishment who swore it would never happen again in the exercise of US foreign policy.

The motives for going to war were fabricated, intelligence was manipulated, and our military leadership was stupidly coerced by a cabal of ideologically conservative, obsessive-compulsive draft dodgers into putting American forces in the no-win, catastrophic situation

.

William Kristol on the Iraq War:

a war in Iraq that has been very difficult, but where -- despite some confusion engendered by an almost meaningless "benchmark" report last week -- we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome.

There's optimism and then there's stupid.

The U.S. military's top general said Monday that the Joint Chiefs of Staff is weighing a range of possible new directions in Iraq, including, if President Bush deems it necessary, an even bigger troop buildup.

The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months . . .

Britain's most senior generals have issued a blunt warning to Downing Street that the military campaign in Afghanistan is facing a catastrophic failure, a development that could lead to an Islamist government seizing power in neighbouring Pakistan.

The Darksider (aka Dick Cheney):

He is pathologically (but purposefully) secretive; treacherous toward colleagues; coldly manipulative of the callow, lazy, and ignorant President he serves; contemptuous of public opinion; and dismissive not only of international law (a fairly standard attitude for conservatives of his stripe) but also of the very idea that the Constitution and laws of the United States, including laws signed by his nominal superior, can be construed to limit the power of the executive to take any action that can plausibly be classified as part of an endless, endlessly expandable “war on terror.”

From Cannonfire:

Iraqi Prime Minister al-Maliki has announced that U.S. troops can go now -- and yesterday, Iraqi police opened fire on U.S. soldiers.

Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman said on Tuesday that he received the tacit blessing of Europe and the United States for an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

“If we start military operations against Iran alone, then Europe and the US will support us,” Lieberman told Army Radio following a meeting earlier in the week with NATO and European Union officials.

RFK Vs. LBJ

A study completed in late June by the Pentagon's Inspector General concludes that the Department of Defense (DoD) has risked the lives of U.S. troops in Iraq due to malfeasance in awarding and monitoring contracts for badly-needed armored vehicles.

Six years after the Bush administration declared war on al-Qaeda, the terrorist network is gaining strength and has established a safe haven in remote tribal areas of western Pakistan for training and planning attacks, according to a new Bush administration intelligence report to be discussed today at a White House meeting.

The report, a five-page threat assessment compiled by the National Counterterrorism Center, is titled "Al-Qaida Better Positioned to Strike the West," intelligence officials said. It concludes that the group has significantly rebuilt itself despite concerted U.S. attempts to smash the network.

George W. Bush: "The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq are the ones who attacked us on Sept. 11."

British forces have denied rumours that they released a plague of ferocious badgers into the Iraqi city of Basra.

Word spread among the populace that UK troops had introduced strange man-eating, bear-like beasts into the area to sow panic.

So, Republican Senator David Vitter not only likes to play with hookers (and who doesn't?) but he also reportedly likes to wear diapers while doing so.

We're talking about, among other things, Diaper Fetishism. That's right folks, according to a trusted inside source, Vitter was well known among other Canal Street Brothel patrons to like diapers as well as other bizarre "fetishes".

Bush says a pullback will occur 'in a while'

WASHINGTON: Fearful of a Republican rebellion over Iraq that his own aides believe could force him to change course, President George W. Bush said Tuesday that the United States would be able to pull back troops "in a while," but called on Congress to wait until September to debate the future military presence there.

Tony Snow: Not 'the beginning of the end' but 'the beginning of the beginning of the surge'.

CNN News asked Snow, "Is this week going to mark the beginning of the end of the Iraq War?" Snow's response was, "No. It really marks the beginning of the beginning of the surge."

Snow told CNN that the final forces for the surge only got into place two weeks ago. He also downplayed the importance of unmet benchmarks, saying "Benchmarks are not a device for trying to figure out how to get out of Iraq. They're a device for figuring out how to succeed in Iraq."

So we are now at the beginning of the beginning of the end of the war, which will take place "in a while", as soon as we figure out how to succeed in Iraq.

I got an email from Blackwater today:

Blackwater Security Positions Available

· 8 years of Military service with qualifications in one of the following: US Navy SEALS, Army Special Forces or Rangers, Marine Force Recon, Air Force PJ or CCT

· Must have or be eligible for US Government Secret Clearance. Must be a US Citizen!

· Must have a minimum of one year experience in Iraq or Afghanistan

· Must be proficient in small arms and be in excellent physical condition

If you are interested please let me know as "Blackwater Worldwide is offering a $1,000.00 referral fee for a limited time" and I could use the money.

Red alert: Our national security is being outsourced.

In April, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell was poised to publicize a year-long examination of outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies. But the report was inexplicably delayed -- and suddenly classified a national secret. What McConnell doesn't want you to know is that the private spy industry has succeeded where no foreign government has: It has penetrated the CIA and is running the show.

Over the past five years (some say almost a decade), there has been a revolution in the intelligence community toward wide-scale outsourcing. Private companies now perform key intelligence-agency functions, to the tune, I'm told, of more than $42 billion a year. Intelligence professionals tell me that more than 50 percent of the National Clandestine Service (NCS) -- the heart, brains and soul of the CIA -- has been outsourced to private firms such as Abraxas, Booz Allen Hamilton, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.

'Time running out for Iran strike'

Predicting that sanctions will ultimately fail to stop Teheran's nuclear program, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, former head of Military Intelligence's Research Division, told The Jerusalem Post on Monday that time to launch an effective military strike against Iran's nuclear installations was running out.

"Between now and November, a lot of things are going to happen, and I believe that by this time next year, the American public’s going to have a very different view of this war, and it will be because, I think, of some unfortunate events, that like we’re seeing unfold in the UK. But I think the American public’s going to have a very different view."

--Rick Santorum

Update: Fred Thompson is bisexual and solicits male prostitutes

(According to Democratic Underground poster Alexander who, after all, has over 1000 posts to his credit.) Alexander adds:

At least one of which will give his version of the gory details to the press if/when Thompson announces.

This sort of thing would deflate both his political career and his "tough guy" image, which is really all he has in either career. He'd be finished if this story made it to the mainstream press.

You think?

The story thus far:

The Andrew Sullivan comment that started it all:

Outside the extremist, activist base, regular GOP voters turn out to be relatively tolerant when it comes to sexual minorities and private sex lives. They're not well represented by their party leaders, as far as policy is concerned. This is good news for Fred Thompson. The man has had a colorful and wide-ranging sex life, as I'm sure we will soon find out.

Wonkette (who used to be a woman) had heard the rumors as well:

Fred Thompson Rumor Watch

Translated: COUGH COUGH GAY COUGH COUGH FRED THOMPSON IS GAY GAY GAY COUGH COUGH

But that’s not all.

Sullivan is not even close to the first person we’ve heard float this particular rumor, not that that says anything as to its truth.

The gay rumors were old news to Susie Madrak of Suburban Guerilla:

Is Fred Thompson on the Downlow?

Lots and lots of rumors. I’ve heard them myself - I’ve even talked to someone who has witnessed some interesting behavior. I noticed when the Washington Post recently profiled him, several of the local commenters reacted along the lines of “I thought he was gay?”

Let me put it this way: I heard about this after he was out of the Senate, and LONG before anyone even dreamed he’d run for President.

Down with Tyranny asked a friend:

I asked a friend of mine who knows all the Republican closet cases in DC-- and he is never wrong-- and his comment: "I have heard that for a while."

Boi from Troi who is one of the gays confirmed the rumors:

I have heard such rumours myself and the only corroborating evidence I have is Senator Thompson’s attendance at a party at Philadelphia gay club Shampoo during the 2000 Republican National Convention. The only other members of Congress present were Jim Kolbe, Mark Foley and David Dreier…who of course is not gay.

This may be a "whispering campaign" started by Thompson's political opponents, and the current blog interest in Thompson's sexual orientation may have been started by Andrew Sullivan (also gay), but apparently a lot of people have heard rumors about this, going back many years. My take on this is that Thompson is likely gay or bisexual (and it really doesn't matter which.)

The Thompson gay rumors are also a test of Buell's Law, stated on this blog before:

"If a prominent male political figure is accused of some sort of sexual misconduct or indiscretion--HE DID IT." (The applicability of Buell's Law to women politicians has not been tested.)

Why Bush gave Scooter Libby a pass:

"I'm not sure Bush had a choice," says one of the advisers. "If he didn't act, it would have caused a fracture with the vice president."

You see, he didn't have a choice. So get off his back.

As a longtime attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been as ashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at this time.

The public record now plainly demonstrates that both the DOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful.

Through my children, three of whom are U.S. Air Force Academy graduates, along with thousands of other military personnel and chaplains, I have learned firsthand of aggressive internal efforts to evangelize our fighting men and women into a narrow branch of Christianity that claims salvation only for the "born-again" few.

Francis A. Boyle, an international law expert who worked under the first Bush Administration as a bioweapons advisor in the 1980s, has said that he is convinced the October 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people were perpetrated and covered up by criminal elements of the U.S. government. The motive: to foment a police state by killing off and intimidating opposition to post-9/11 legislation such as the USA PATRIOT Act and the later Military Commissions Act.

Hott4Hill: Sung byTaryn Southern

She has a crush on Hillary

Portait of an Assassin: William King Harvey

Lisa Pease on Osama bin Laden

We had pinpointed OBL's location by radio. We could absolutely have picked him up. Several friends of mine in the black ops world have told me repeatedly that we've known were OBL was at all times. A man in Hollywood was approached by a CIA operative to do a documentary of the secret tailing of OBL. So it's not like we can't find him.

And if we weren't picking him up, why? Could it be because ties between his actions and those of our intelligence community might raise disturbing questions about 9/11? An intelligence asset told me of a friend of his that had just come back from handing OBL a wad of cash. "For attacking us, or so he wouldn't attack us again," I asked, but got (predictably) no response.

Was Fred Thompson a White House Mole During Watergate?

Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public. In his all-but-forgotten Watergate memoir, "At That Point in Time," Thompson said he acted with "no authority" in divulging the committee's knowledge of the tapes, which provided the evidence that led to Nixon's resignation. It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson's actions.

"Thompson was a mole for the White House," Armstrong said in an interview. "Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was."

Update: he's also gay.

“I wish the Iranian people well, and only hope their experience with an inept, rigid ideologue president goes better than ours.” --Oliver Stone

Vic Gold, an old friend of the Cheneys, describes him as a “mega-maniacal paranoid”. George Bush, Sr. tells him that "I don’t think too much of the neocons myself.”

President George W. Bush has become dangerously steeped in ideas of Armageddon, the Apocalypse, an imminent war with Satanic forces in the Middle East, and an urgency to construct an American theocracy to fulfill God's end-of-days plan, according to close observers.

Fox News: Dead Airman's Affidavit: Roswell Aliens Were Real

Lt. Walter Haut was the public-relations officer at the base in 1947 and was the man who issued the original and subsequent press releases after the crash on the orders of the base commander, Col. William Blanchard.

Haut died in December 2005, but left a sworn affidavit to be opened only after his death.

Last week, the text was released. It asserts that the weather-balloon claim was a cover story and that the real object had been recovered by the military and stored in a hangar.

He described seeing not just the craft, but alien bodies.

A secret U.S. law enforcement report, prepared for the Department of Homeland Security, warns that al Qaeda is planning a terror "spectacular" this summer, according to a senior official with access to the document.

I'll be under my desk.

Update:

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Monday played down a report al Qaeda was planning a big attack on the United States, saying there was no credible information about an imminent threat.

So, is it safe to come out now?

"The surge is working." --Senator Joseph Liberman

“You might say that, in Iraq, we’ve got the enemy on the run, but for some reason, in Washington, a lot of politicians are on the run to order a retreat by our troops even as they are beginning to succeed.” --Senator Joseph Lieberman

"Senator Joseph Lieberman is a fucking idiot." --me

Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale

Perhaps your real life is so rich you don't have time for another.
Even so, the US Department of Defense (DOD) may already be creating a copy of you in an alternate reality to see how long you can go without food or water, or how you will respond to televised propaganda.

The DOD is developing a parallel to Planet Earth, with billions of individual "nodes" to reflect every man, woman, and child this side of the dividing line between reality and AR.

Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a "synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information", according to a concept paper for the project.

A commercial version of the program underlying SWS is available through Simulex, Inc. It is called "Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations", or SEAS. Simulex's #1 customer is, not suprisingly, the US Government. (Via Cryptogon.)

I do not doubt that the US Government is monitoring all email traffic, the entire web, and probably most of our phone calls as well. All of this data will be tracked and analysed using the most sophisticated artificial intelligence programs available.

We do not have their resources but we do have one thing they lack--real intelligence. They are trying to locate a needle in a haystack and their approach is to keep adding more hay.