statism watch

Aaron Dykes, infowars.com
July 15, 2008

In a response to PNAC associate Robert Kagan, former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has suggested that a ‘compelling crisis’ such as Pearl Harbor or 9/11 may help bolster America’s stature in the world, which, Wolfowitz clearly hints, has been damaged by the Bush administration:

“America’s future leadership role may depend even more on how threatening the world appears. Historically, that leadership role has often emerged out of a compelling crisis: Pearl Harbour, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran hostage crisis, Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, or the attacks of 9/11.

Such a role would imply even more U.S. troops around the world and the need to maintain and even expand the state of crisis. In other words, it would be a continuation of the so-called ‘Wolfowitz Doctrine,’ a military-first approach to world dominance where the U.S. would function unilaterally as a pre-emptive security arm for world conflicts. However, despite Wolfowitz’s pre-war boast that Iraqis would “greet us as liberators,” the phony WMDs episode has likely soured public support for such pre-emptive action.

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Wolfowitz essentially gleans from Kagan that the solution to this problem of American fatigue could be a fresh crisis– which Wolfowitz indicates, would renew support and legitimize the U.S. presence around the world. Shockingly, Wolfowitz closely parallels recently unveiled comments Rumsfeld made that essentially welcome another terror attack. Indeed, both former Department of Defense heads show little patience for 9/11’s waning power to generate public support for the War on Terror.

WOLFOWITZ: “Paradoxically, the relative security which Americans have enjoyed since 2001 makes it easier to doubt the necessity of shouldering the burden of leadership. One hopes it will not take another calamity to convince us of the need for a vigilant foreign policy.”

RUMSFELD: “This President’s pretty much a victim of success. We haven’t had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it’s not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same thing’s in Europe, there’s a low threat perception. The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack. And when that happens, then everyone gets energized for another [inaudible] and it’s a shame we don’t have the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats”

These statements are, without coincidence, very similar to what has become a strongly controversial quote in a PNAC– Project for a New American Century– September 2000 publication titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses“:

“Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor“

PNAC has now been sufficiently exposed as the intellectual blueprint behind the Bush administration– the likes of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, all founding members, are now infamous to world leaders and informed dissidents everywhere as the architects of the fraudulent and now odorous wars against Terrorism, Afghanistan and most of all Iraq. This campaign of wars was justified almost exclusively by 9/11, which the Bush administration readily exploited and carefully manipulated, along with a handful of other lies (i.e. WMD).

Full Story | See Also: McCain adviser says terrorist attack would boost campaign | Rumsfeld to Pentagon Media Analysts: America Needs another Attack

Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian
July 15, 2008

Barack Obama yesterday pledged to increase US troops in Afghanistan by a third if he becomes president, sending 10,000 more to reinforce the 33,000 already there.

He was speaking after the US lost nine soldiers at the weekend in the deadliest attack on its forces in the country since 2005.

Obama has promised, soon after becoming president in January, to begin scaling back the 156,000 US troops in Iraq and Kuwait, and to shift the focus to Afghanistan.

He is to fill out his plans in a foreign policy speech in Washington today ahead of his first visit to Iraq and Afghanistan since he launched his presidential bid early last year.

…

In a separate comment on the campaign trail, Obama said the killings on Sunday reinforced the need to switch resources from Iraq to Afghanistan.

“I continue to believe that we’re under-resourced in Afghanistan,” he said. “That is the real centre for terrorist activity that we have to deal with and deal with aggressively.”

As well as visiting Iraq and Afghanistan, he is to go to Germany, France and Britain and call on Germany and France, in particular, to increase their involvement in Afghanistan.

His Republican rival, John McCain, is also to discuss Afghanistan this week. Randy Scheunemann, a senior McCain foreign policy adviser, noted yesterday that Obama had voted in the senate last year against increased resources for US troops in Afghanistan.

Full Story | See Also: Afghan war finally grabs U.S. attention | Canadians could be defending Afghan gas pipeline | Report: U.S. Gave Green Light For Taliban Prison Attack | Don’t look, don’t tell, troops told in response to Afghani child abuse | Canada sets up new military spy unit | Bid to Block Afghan Detainee Inquiry Slammed | Truth or Terrorism? The Real Story Behind Five Years of High Alerts | Demise Of Al-Qaeda Leader Championed For Second Time | New Bin Laden Video: 100% Forgery | What Ottawa doesn’t want you to know: Government was told detainees faced ‘extrajudicial executions, disappearances, torture and detention without trial’

CBC News
Tuesday July 15, 2008

A teenage Omar Khadr sobs uncontrollably as Canadian spy agents question him at the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in a brief video excerpt released via the internet early Tuesday morning.

The 10-minute video is of poor quality and the voices are often inaudible, as it was never intended to be viewed by the public. But it shows the Toronto-born Khadr, 16 at the time, being interviewed by Canadian Security Intelligence Service officials over several days in late February 2003.

The excerpt is from five formerly classified DVDs consisting of 7½ hours of questioning that took place six months after Khadr was captured following a 2002 firefight in Afghanistan.

The tapes, made public under a court order obtained by Khadr’s lawyers, offer a rare glimpse of interrogations of Guantanamo detainees and of Khadr.

Khadr, now 21, has been held at the military prison for the past six years.

The U.S. Defence Department granted special permission to CSIS and Canada’s Foreign Affairs Ministry to question Khadr after he was brought to Guantanamo Bay, where he is still being held on charges he killed a U.S. soldier during a firefight in Afghanistan.

Shows interrogator wounds

At one point during one of the interviews, Khadr raises his orange prison-issued shirt to show wounds that he says he sustained during the firefight.

He complains that he can’t move his arms and hasn’t received proper medical attention.

“I’m not a doctor, but I think you’re getting good medical care,” the interrogator responds. As with all the agents in the video, his face is blacked out to protect his identity.

Khadr cries, “I lost my eyes. I lost my feet. Everything!” in reference to how the firefight in Afghanistan affected his vision.

“No, you still have your eyes and your feet are still at the end of your legs, you know,” a man says.

When the agent accuses Khadr of crying to avoid interrogation, Khadr tells the agent between gasping sobs, “You don’t care about me.”

As Khadr continues crying, the agent calls for a break.

…

Michel Juneau-Katsuya, a former CSIS agent, told CBC News that the unprecedented release of the interrogation tapes is likely to put a damper on Canada’s relationship with the U.S. — at least in the short term.

“Anybody can logically sort of assume that the Americans will be a little bit more cautious about what they give to us or in the context they give it to us, the Canadian authorities,” he said Monday.

In May, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that branches of the Canadian government had to hand over key evidence against Khadr to his legal team to allow a full defence of the charges against him, which include accusations by the U.S. that he spied for and provided material support to terrorists.

Watch the CBC News Report:

Full Story | See Also: Canada’s top court orders partial access to Khadr transcripts | Canada losing moral standing over treatment of Omar Khadr: Dallaire | Khadr Defence chips away at military prosecution

Richard Brennan, Toronto Star
July 15, 2008

Terror suspect Khawaja wrote that it was unacceptable to do nothing, trial hears

OTTAWA–Momin Khawaja said in a 2003 email that he couldn’t stand by and watch “blood-thirsty” imperialists attack Afghanistan and other Muslim countries while he held down a cushy 9-to-5 job.

“There is no excuse deep down, just reaping the benefits of life in the West,” wrote Khawaja, who was arrested four years ago and is now on trial in Ontario Superior Court on seven terrorism-related charges, including allegedly funding known terrorists and building a device to be used to explode a 600-kilogram fertilizer bomb in a failed attack on London.

“I was not content with the idea of a 9-to-5 life where you just put on a smiley face and pretend you can’t do anything, change anything, while the muslim (sic) world is in flames,” the now 29-year-old computer programmer said in an Aug. 8, 2003, email to his former Pakistani fiancée.

Almost 200 pages of emails, most of them related to the courtship between Khawaja and Zeba Khan, 23, were released to the public yesterday. Khawaja worked for the Department of Foreign Affairs as a software developer.

Khawaja wrote that to do nothing was to “watch the West’s dominance, blood-thirsty imperialism, and the Ummah’s (Muslim world’s) oppression. It’s just like Bush said … you are either on their side or our side.”

As the email contact with Khan grew in regularity, so did rhetoric about his hatred for the West, and in particular the United States.

Khan was also highly critical of the West’s way of life.

The Crown has presented evidence to show that Khawaja went to an Al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan near the Afghan border in 2003, visited London to meet with known terrorists and acted as a courier for Al Qaeda, and that he was constructing an electronic device – dubbed the Hi-Fi Digimonster – to be used to set off a detonator, when his parents’ Orleans home was raided by RCMP on March 29, 2004.

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The trial heard last week that Khawaja arranged for thousands of dollars to be supplied to Omar Khyam, leader of a failed Al Qaeda London bomb plot and one of five co-conspirators sentenced to life in prison.

Khawaja also said in the October email the terrorist attack on the United States was a “proper and honourable way” of conducting economic jihad.

“Because of Sept. 11, the Airline industry is dead, travel and tourism is dead, the U.S. dollar is dead, (and) the U.S. economy is practically in a state of recession. Trillions of dollars in lost revenue, thousands of businesses bankrupt, and the negative impact continues till this day.”

Khan is expected to testify through a video link from Dubai tomorrow.

Khawaja broke off the engagement on Christmas Day 2003.

Full Story | See Also: Informant ‘never discussed’ fertilizer bomb plot with accused in Ottawa ‘terror trial’ | Trial of Canadian charged in UK fertilizer bomb plot gets underway | FBI Informant in British terror trial given immunity, proceedings raise question of what MI5 knew about 2005 London bombings | Five guilty in UK bomb plot | Terror accused refuses to discuss links to Pakistan secret service, family threatened | London terror plotter was ‘hardened’ in ISI camp | Fertiliser claim in terror trial | Terror informant names plotters | British ‘Terror Suspects’ Were in Contact With MI5 | Eight held in British anti-terror raids | US Allowed Taliban, Al-Qaeda Airlift Evacuation

Lara Farrar, CNN
July 15, 2008

LONDON, England (CNN) — A group of experts from around the world will hold a first of its kind conference Thursday on global catastrophic risks.

They will discuss what should be done to prevent these risks from becoming realities that could lead to the end of human life on Earth as we know it.

Speakers at the four-day event at Oxford University in Britain will talk about topics including nuclear terrorism and what to do if a large asteroid were to be on a collision course with our planet.

On the final day of the Global Catastrophic Risk Conference, experts will focus on what could be the unintended consequences of new technologies, such as superintelligent machines that, if ill-conceived, might cause the demise of Homo sapiens.

“Any entity which is radically smarter than human beings would also be very powerful,” said Dr. Nick Bostrom, director of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, host of the symposium. “If we get something wrong, you could imagine the consequences would involve the extinction of the human species.”

Bostrom is a philosopher and a leading thinker of transhumanism, a movement that advocates not only the study of the potential threats and promises that future technologies could pose to human life but also the ways in which emergent technologies could be used to make the very act of living better.

“We want to preserve the best of what it is to be human and maybe even amplify that,” Bostrom said.

Transhumanists, according to Bostrom, anticipate an era in which biotechnology, molecular nanotechnologies, artificial intelligence and other new types of cognitive tools will be used to amplify our intellectual capacity, improve our physical capabilities and even enhance our emotional well-being.

The end result would be a new form of “posthuman” life with beings that possess qualities and skills so exceedingly advanced they no longer can be classified simply as humans.

“We will begin to use science and technology not just to manage the world around us but to manage our own human biology as well,” Bostrom said. “The changes will be faster and more profound than the very, very slow changes that would occur over tens of thousands of years as a result of natural selection and biological evolution.”

Bostrom declined to predict an exact time frame when this revolutionary biotechnological metamorphosis might occur. “Maybe it will take eight years or 200 years,” he said. “It is very hard to predict.”

Other experts are already getting ready for what they say could be a radical transformation of the human race in as little as two decades.

“This will happen faster than people realize,” said Dr. Ray Kurzweil, an inventor and futurist who calculates technology trends using what he calls the law of accelerating returns, a mathematical concept that measures the exponential growth of technological evolution.

In the 1980s, Kurzweil predicted that a tiny handheld device would be invented early in the 21st century, allowing blind people to read documents from anywhere at anytime; this year, such a device was publicly unveiled. He also anticipated the explosive growth of the Internet in the 1990s.

Now, Kurzweil is predicting the arrival of something called the Singularity, which he defines in his book on the subject as “the culmination of the merger of our biological thinking and existence with our technology, resulting in a world that is still human but that transcends our biological roots.”

“There will be no distinction, post-Singularity, between human and machine or between physical and virtual reality,” he writes.

Singularity will approach at an accelerating rate as human-created technologies become exponentially smaller and increasingly powerful and as fields such as biology and medicine are understood more and more in terms of information processes that can be simulated with computers.

By the 2030s, Kurzweil said, humans will become more non-biological than biological, capable of uploading our minds onto the Internet, living in various virtual worlds and even avoiding aging and evading death.

In the 2040s, Kurzweil predicts that non-biological intelligence will be billions of times better than the biological intelligence humans have today, possibly rendering our present brains obsolete.

“Our brains are a million times slower than electronics,” Kurzweil said. “We will increasingly become software entities if you go out enough decades.”

This movement towards the merger of man and machine, according to Kurzweil, is already starting to happen and is most visible in the field of biotechnology.

As scientists gain deeper insights into the genetic processes that underlie life, they are able to effectively reprogram human biology through the development of new forms of gene therapies and medications capable of turning on or off enzymes and RNA interference, or gene silencing.

“Biology and health and medicine used to be hit or miss,” Kurzweil sad. “It wasn’t based on any coherent theory about how it works.”

The emerging biotechnology revolution will lead to at least a thousand new drugs that could do anything from slow down the process of aging to reverse the onset of diseases, like heart disease and cancer, Kurzweil said.

By 2020, Kurzweil predicts a second revolution in the area of nanotechnology. According to his calculations, it is already showing signs of exponential growth as scientists begin to test first generation nanobots that can cure Type 1 diabetes in rats or heal spinal cord injuries in mice.

One scientist is developing something called a respirocyte, a robotic red blood cell that, if injected into the bloodstream, would allow humans to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath or sit at the bottom of a swimming pool for hours at a time.

Other researchers are developing nanoparticles that can locate tumors and one day even eradicate them.

And some Parkinson’s patients now have pea-sized computers implanted in their brains that replace neurons destroyed by the disease; new software can be downloaded to the mini computers from outside the human body.

“Nanotechnology will not just be used to reprogram but to transcend biology and go beyond its limitations by merging with non-biological systems,” Kurzweil said. “If we rebuild biological systems with nanotechnology, we can go beyond its limits.”

The final revolution leading to the advent of Singularity will be the creation of artificial intelligence, or superintelligence, which, according to Kurzweil, could be capable of solving many of our biggest threats, like environmental destruction, poverty and disease.

“A more intelligent process will inherently outcompete one that is less intelligent, making intelligence the most powerful force in the universe,” Kurzweil writes.

Yet the invention of so many high-powered technologies and the possibility of merging these new technologies with humans may pose both peril and promise for the future of mankind.

“I think there are grave dangers,” Kurzweil said. “Technology has always been a double-edged sword.”

Source | See Also: Don’t blame right-wing thugs for eugenics — Socialists made it fashionable | Newborn Blood-Storage Law Stirs Fears of DNA Warehouse | Mobile phone inventor dreams of human embeds

Kerry Gillespie, Toronto Star
July 15, 2008

Ontario has made the largest conservation commitment in Canadian history, setting aside at least half the Northern Boreal region – 225,000 square kilometres – for permanent protection from development, Premier Dalton McGuinty announced yesterday.

It’s an area almost the size of the United Kingdom.

“It is, in a word, immense. It’s also unique and precious. It’s home to the largest untouched forest in Canada and the third largest wetland in the world,” McGuinty said.

The announcement is globally significant in the fight against climate change, advocates say. Nearly 100 billion tonnes of carbon are stored in the Northern Boreal region and another 12.5 million tonnes are absorbed each year.

These lands remain, for the most part, untouched by development. But with increasing world demand for resources, it was just a matter of time before mining and logging inched up from the south.

Now, those resource industries will be barred from half the land and have to work with the government and local First Nations communities to create sustainable development plans for the rest, McGuinty said.

Over the next 10 to 15 years, the province will work with scientists and communities to map out the specific lands that are the most valuable as carbon storehouses and for species protection and which lands have the greatest resources and should be developed.

The government will introduce legislation in the fall to reform the outdated mining act so all future mine developments will need approval of local First Nations, which will get a share of the revenues.

“We get to say to our aboriginal communities: if there is some mining exploration here, and you permit that, you get a piece of the action,” McGuinty said, adding that the government would give them a cash down payment this fall.

Full Story | See Also: Get set – the future starts now | Manitoba’s boreal forest touted for UNESCO status |  Today’s suburbs, tomorrow’s slums? | Oil, oil everywhere? Well, just maybe | Road tolls, a bitter pill that works | World has enough oil reserves, says BP boss | Is it time for toll roads?

Christopher Hume, Toronto Star
July 15, 2008

The first thing we need to understand, says Eric Miller, is that the 21st century will be urban.

Recently appointed director of the newly created Cities Centre at the University of Toronto, the prominent civil engineer sees big changes ahead, whether we’re ready or not.

Just eight years after the end of the last century, it’s clear that the word “urban” no longer means quite what it did. Indeed, for the first time in human history, more people now inhabit cities than don’t. Canada is no exception.

“Canadians don’t think of themselves as an urban nation,” Miller notes. “But the fact is that we live in cities. The economic ingenuity of cities is what’s going to lead us into the future.”

But as Miller points out, we have a little governance issue here that we have yet to deal with; namely weak cities, a federal regime apparently unaware of them, and provinces with their own priorities.

“Politically,” Miller continues, “cities in Canada don’t exist, especially at the federal level. As far as I know, this is virtually unique in the world. Throughout the world, federal and national governments invest in cities, but we don’t see that here. All cities in Canada are suffering from lack of federal spending.”

But at the same time, interest in cities has never been greater. The new U of T department is a good example. “I’d like it to be a forum for ideas,” Miller explains, “a safe place to talk about ideas and show people there are alternative ways of doing things. We need to get the debate going, maybe create a climate in which change is possible.”

…

“We built Toronto on cheap oil,” he says. “But the fact is that we’re never going to have cheap oil again. The suburbs aren’t going to be cheap places to live any more.”

Even worse, Miller adds, “the trends are all going in the wrong direction.”

And while cities everywhere else are busy renewing themselves, Miller fears Canadians have grown complacent, taking the nation and cities’ prosperity for granted.

“We need to develop a sense of urgency,” he says. “Toronto is such a rich city, but we’re not marshalling our strengths in an effective way.”

At this point, Miller suggests, the best way to overcome inertia and get some momentum going is simply to pick a project and start.

“I think people are tired of hearing us whine about financial problems,” he says. “So let’s just get started on a project. Let’s take that first step. We have to act.”

Despite the lack of leadership from official Toronto, other circles, mostly cultural, have filled the vacuum. The Cities Centre is a good example. True, it’s not the same as a new subway, but perhaps the one will lead to the other.

Full Story | See Also: Today’s suburbs, tomorrow’s slums? | Oil, oil everywhere? Well, just maybe | Road tolls, a bitter pill that works | World has enough oil reserves, says BP boss |  Is it time for toll roads? | Toronto part of ‘transnational mega-region’ | Vancouver to import road tolls from UK | UK proposes national road tolls to cut congestion | Motorists to pay London toll

Linda McQuaig, Toronto Star
July 15, 2008

When Americans want something that lies in another country, the consequences for that other country can be severe.

Even if they don’t actually invade, they put a lot of pressure on lesser countries to behave as they want.

Canada, for instance, hasn’t been invaded by the United States since 1812, but Ottawa has proved highly co-operative with Washington’s desire to have access to our oil. We are America’s Number 1 supplier.

Pressure for Canadian acquiescence in servicing America’s apparently bottomless energy appetite is only going to get more intense, as fresh panic sweeps across America over skyrocketing oil prices and supply insecurity. Oddly, the Bush administration continues to flirt with the idea of making oil supplies even more insecure by launching a military strike against Iran.

All this turns the spotlight ever more on Canada as America’s energy dream, nestled conveniently on top of the homeland, far from the roiling waters of the Persian Gulf.

Typical was a commentary on CNN’s American Morning last week in which business correspondent Ali Velshi gushed about how Alberta’s oil sands have more oil than Saudi Arabia, and most of it goes to the U.S. Velshi said that if daily oil-sands production were to rise from 1.5 million barrels to 4 billion or 5 million barrels, that would amount to “about a third of all the oil that the U.S. imports.”

He noted that this Canadian treasure trove of oil could service U.S. needs for the next 70 years, possibly the next 150.

As American audiences are increasingly titillated by the idea that the oil sands could solve their energy dilemma, the window may be closing on what’s left of Canadian decision-making power over our own energy.

Noticeably absent from the CNN report was any mention of the fact that the oil sands produce extraordinarily large greenhouse gas emissions, and plans to triple current output would be environmentally disastrous.

The future of the oil sands is one of the most important and contentious issues facing Canada, pitting concerns over global warming and the need to meet our international Kyoto obligations against the desire to make huge profits selling oil and to accommodate American interests.

There’s an acute need for some sort of coherent national policy to deal with all this, to avert the looming environmental disaster while minimizing regional divisions and tensions with the United States.

Canada’s policy vacuum only encourages the Americans to assume they can count on Canadian acquiescence to their energy dreams.

Of course, for years Ottawa has stubbornly refused to develop any sort of national energy policy, after Pierre Trudeau’s efforts to increase Canadian energy independence self-sufficiency were soundly defeated by U.S. oil companies and the Alberta government.

(Trudeau also created a publicly owned oil company in 1975, but unfortunately Petro-Canada was privatized in 1991. Imagine if we had the option as consumers today of directing the exorbitant amounts we’re obliged to spend on gas into the public treasury, rather than the coffers of Exxon or Shell.)

Now, with the urgent new realities of global warming, a strong government in Ottawa might have worked up the courage to take another run at developing a national energy policy. Sadly, however, at the helm these days is the Harper government, which clearly won’t do anything that might annoy its base in Alberta or Washington.

Actually, the truth is we do have a national energy policy – it’s just that Canada isn’t the nation that designed it.

Source | See Also: World has enough oil reserves, says BP boss | Beware thirsty Americans, Kennedy tells Canada | Business group sets and gets its agenda | SPP Summit: Guard resources, Ottawa urged | CEOs call for ‘aggressive’ action on climate change