Body Worlds plans cadaver show dedicated to sex

 

German anatomist Gunther von Hagens and his wife Angelina Whalley (L) pose in front of a plastinated human body during the media preview of the Koerperwelten (‘Body Worlds’) exhibition in Zurich September 10, 2009. The exhibition by von Hagens, famous for his Body Worlds shows of plastinated human bodies, runs from September 11 to February 28, 2010. Reuters

“We have discussed whether it is proper to show homosexuality and in what way. This is a very delicate subject.”

Reuters | Sep 11, 2009

By Jason Rhodes

ZURICH (Reuters) – German anatomists plan a new show dedicated solely to dead bodies having sex as part of the Body Worlds exhibitions.

Gunther von Hagens and his wife Angelina Whalley show corpses prepared using a technique invented by von Hagens called “plastination,” that removes water from specimens and preserves them with silicon rubber or epoxy resin.

“It’s not my intention to show certain sexual poses. My goal is really to show the anatomy and the function,” Body Worlds creative director Whalley told Reuters in an interview, adding the sex exhibition may open next year.

Body Worlds exhibitions, visited by 27 million people across the world, have been criticized for presenting entire corpses, stripped of skin to reveal the muscles and organs underneath, in lifelike and often theatrical positions.

Von Hagens has already triggered uproar with a new exhibit which shows just two copulating corpses.

German politicians called the current “Cycle of Life” show charting conception to old age “revolting” and “unacceptable” when it showed in Berlin earlier this year because it included copulating cadavers.

The way a plastinate is exhibited can vary from country to country to reflect local sensibilities. A vote of local employees decided that one of the copulating female cadavers should wear fewer clothes in Zurich than was the case in Berlin.

“Switzerland is the first country that already said from the outset that we could show whatever we wanted,” said von Hagens.

“Zurich is ready … but it’s maybe not so easy in every other town,” he said. “We have discussed whether it is proper to show homosexuality and in what way. This is a very delicate subject.”

Von Hagens and Whalley said they both intended to donate their bodies for plastination, but would not leave instructions about how to display them, dismissing this as vanity.

“I find it a great opportunity to give something to others by donating my body, namely self-awareness,” said Whalley.

Von Hagens said he and some other body donors even saw plastination as an alternative to burial or cremation, giving them more certainty about would happen to their bodies after death.

“Cremation for me is hell,” he said.

No sex for dead bodies at Singapore’s Body Worlds show

A visitor looks at plastinated human specimens in love-making posture during the media preview of the Koerperwelten (‘Body Worlds’) exhibition in Zurich September 10, 2009. REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann

The exhibitions, visited by some 28 million people around the world, have been criticized by some people as unacceptable, with German politicians taking special offence at “The Cycle of Life” exhibit which opened in Berlin earlier this year because it included copulating cadavers.

Reuters | Oct 30, 2009

By Rina Ota

SINGAPORE (Reuters Life!) – A controversial exhibition charting life from conception to old age using cadavers has come to Singapore this week — but without the copulating corpses that caused an uproar in Germany.

Body Worlds’ “The Cycle of Life” exhibition is one of several around the world that show skinless corpses with muscles and organs revealed, in life-like, often theatrical positions.

The specimens are from people who have agreed to donate their bodies for educational purposes.

The exhibitions, visited by some 28 million people around the world, have been criticized by some people as unacceptable, with German politicians taking special offence at “The Cycle of Life” exhibit which opened in Berlin earlier this year because it included copulating cadavers.

These corpses, however, are not on display in conservative Singapore. What’s on show is a flat cross-section of two copulating bodies that only shows their internal organs.

“Sensational display of sexual activity does not go with our theme,” Chew Tuan Chiong, chief executive of the Singapore Science Center which is hosting the exhibit, told Reuters.

“It is for educational and science study, and there is not much controversy for using real human body specimens in this exhibition for us,” he said, adding that several schools had brought students to see the exhibition.

Body Worlds’ founders, Gunther von Hagens and his wife Angelina Whalley, prepare the bodies using a technique invented by von Hagens called plastination in which water is removed from specimens and they are preserved with silicon rubber or resin.

In Singapore, nearly 200 human specimens are on display, including single organs and preserved animals. The exhibition runs until March 2010.

Swiss crackdown on ’suicide tourism’

Swiss crackdown on ’suicide tourism’ could spell end of Dignitas clinic

London Times | Oct 29, 2009

by Roger Boyes

Switzerland announced plans yesterday to crack down on “suicide tourism”, signalling that it might close the Dignitas clinic that has helped hundreds of terminally ill people to take their lives.

The plans — in the form of two draft Bills that will be offered for public debate — are likely to set off a rush of patients from Britain and elsewhere in Europe since Switzerland has become the main destination for those seeking assisted suicide.

Eveline Widmer-Schlumpf, the Justice Minister, said that two options would be presented to parliament. Either clinics such as Dignitas and Exit, which deals chiefly with Swiss patients, will have to accept much stricter regulation or they will be closed down.

The tightening of the rules would require patients to present two medical opinions declaring their disease incurable, that death is expected within months and that they have made their decision of sound mind and fully aware of their options.

These guidelines, said the minister, appeal to common sense. And even in the most controversial clinic, Dignitas, these rules are already broadly adhered to. But critics have accused Dignitas of widening its criteria. Some patients are not terminally ill and at least a few would-be suicides are suffering from clinical depression.

The plan is thus to slow down the process and make it a more considered, and carefully policed, decision.

“It won’t be possible in future for someone to cross the border and commit suicide a few days later with the help of an organisation,” Ms Widmer-Schlumpf said. She did not stipulate how long the waiting period should last because that would be decided on each case individually. But the assisted suicide clinics are financially dependent on large numbers of patients passing relatively quickly through the system. So far Dignitas has benefited from the liberal rules in the canton of Zürich.

If the law goes through — the deliberation period lasts until March and the restrictions could come in soon afterwards — the federal Swiss state will have to take over the policing from regional authorities. Doctors’ recommendations will be controlled and those who prescribe fatal drugs observed more closely. The draft law will also ban any attempt to charge more than basic expenses for assisted suicide.

Ludwig Minelli, the founder of Dignitas, described the proposals as “outdated and patronising”. He has always argued that restricting assisted suicide will not cut the numbers but mean more people end their lives violently.

“By cutting off assisted suicide for chronically or psychologically ill people who are capable of informed choice the Government will promote lonely suicides on train tracks,” he said.

Whether the Swiss Government decides on tighter regulation or a ban, Mr Minelli will feel the squeeze. An outright ban would mean a complete rethink of suicide laws across Europe. The existence of the Swiss clinics has allowed other countries to resist liberalising their own laws. Mr Minelli has talked of setting up in Germany, but the legal obstacles are high there, too.

At the root of the Swiss Government’s initiative is a fear that the cheerful Heidi-and-cowbells image is being tarnished by suicide tourists. About 400 turned to clinics for help in committing suicide in 2007, 132 of them from abroad. Even so, it is a big step for the Swiss authorities, who are reluctant to regulate over the heads of their autonomous cantons.

At least 119 Britons are known to have ended their lives at Dignitas. Up to 800 more are members of the organisation, the first step to dying there at some time in the future.

Rock rages against the torture machine

The list of music used included death metal band Deicide’s F..k Your God

Air Force lieutenant colonel Dan Kuehl, who teaches psychological operations to the US military, invoked the Old Testament use of loud music. “Joshua’s army used horns to strike fear into the hearts of the people of Jericho.”

The Australian | Oct 24, 2009

by Tim Reid

A COALITION of musicians including Pearl Jam and REM. has backed a formal demand to be told if their songs have been used to torture detainees in Guantanamo Bay and Iraq.

Many former prisoners have claimed they were blasted with excruciatingly loud music for months on end – a tactic banned under the UN Convention Against Torture but not yet from the US Army Field Manual.

The musicians spoke out yesterday as a Freedom of Information request was lodged by the US campaign group No More Guantanamos, a legal move backed by the British human rights group Reprieve, which has been campaigning against “music torture” for more than a year.

According to evidence gained by human rights organisations, the list of music used included songs ranging from death metal band Deicide’s F..k Your God, Sesame Street tunes, and the song most frequently blasted at inmates, I Love You by the children’s TV character Barney the Purple Dinosaur.

Former detainees have said the tactic was one of the worst and most painful used against them. The National Security Archive, a freedom of information organisation helping the musicians, said the playlist also featured cuts from AC/DC, Britney Spears, the Bee Gees, and Marilyn Manson.

Archive executive director Thomas Blanton said: “At Guantanamo the US government turned a jukebox into an instrument of torture. The musicians and the public have the right to know how an expression of popular culture was transformed into an interrogation technique.”

Tom Morello, guitarist with the band Rage Against the Machine – whose song Killing in the Name of was also used – said: “The fact that music I helped create was used as a tactic against humanity sickens me.”

The musicians’ campaign comes as the Obama administration has been forced to concede that the President’s pledge to shut Guantanamo by January will fail. His bold promise to close the prison within a year of coming to office has run into myriad political and logistical problems, including fierce opposition at home to the transportation of detainees to US prisons and a reluctance by Western allies to receive many of the remaining inmates. Congress is refusing to fund the closure of the facility, which still holds about 220 prisoners.

After the September 11 attacks and the war on terror it appears the use of loud music first became common inside Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, scene of the infamous inmate abuse photographs.

Haj Ali, the hooded man in one of the most notorious pictures, told of being stripped and forced to listen to a looped version of David Gray’s Babylon at a volume so loud that he said he thought his head “would explode”. Metallica’s Enter Sandman was often used in Guantanamo Bay, while Queen’s We Are the Champions was a favourite among US guards at Camp Cropper in Iraq. One Iraqi talked of being taken to an unidentified location and blasted with music in a building referred to as “the disco”.

In one case interrogators allegedly played music to “stress” Mohamedou Ould Slahi, a citizen of Mauritania, who has been at Guantanamo for more than seven years, because he believed music was forbidden.

Slahi said he was questioned over a 10-day period in July 2003 by an interrogator called “Mr X” while being “exposed to variable lighting patterns” and repeated playing of a song called Let the Bodies Hit the Floor by the band Drowning Pool.

Last year, retired US air force lieutenant colonel Dan Kuehl, who teaches psychological operations to the US military, invoked the Old Testament use of loud music. “Joshua’s army used horns to strike fear into the hearts of the people of Jericho,” he told the St Petersburg Times in Florida. “His men might not have been able to break down literal walls with their trumpets but the noise eroded the enemy’s courage.”

Tiffany Evans: ‘Rihanna & Others In Music Industry Are Satanists’

In the official picture for the “Russian Roulette” single, Rihanna is not only wrapped in barbed wire naked, but she is also wearing an open eye-patch over her one eye that happens to be the alleged Illuminati Freemason Eye of Horus symbol she loves to show off.

Tiffany Evans Claims Rihanna & Others Satanists; Slams “Russian Roulette;” Rihanna’s Devilish History

People Magazine Daily | Oct 23, 2009

By Editorial Staff

Diary of a Mad Black Woman actress and singer Tiffany Evans insinuated on her Twitter account yesterday that Rihanna worships the Devil as a Satanist and called her new song “Russian Roulette” irresponsible for its glamorization of suicide.

The 17-year-old “Star Search” winner wrote: “Russian Roulette= Suicidal Rate gon sky rocket!

“You gotta watch what u say. Because there are a lot of weak people in the world. They are susceptible to anything so anything you say or do some people actually do listen. So make sure its nothing bad. Its okay to be deep,but not murder deep.

Related

Rihanna, Justin Timberlake to Sing Anti-Terrorism Anthems

Prodigy Says Jay-Z Sides With The ‘Evil Illuminati’

“Man! I really wish I could tell you guys what the industry really is and what stars are apart of destroying this world. The stars who worship satan,and those who have killed to get the respect they have now. You’d be verrrry surprise. Some of your favorite people pretend to worship God but they only do that to save face. Or seem innocent.

“Satan was head of music in heaven. He uses influential people…to help influence the world. Think about that. Once u make a certain amount of money. Just know that that’s when they ask u to join. To get in you have accept the beast, worship. Once you join they assist u with ur career.make u huge.only if u agree and obey to destroy Gods word.and his children.

“Ppl listen and pay attention. Its a war going on right now between Good and Evil. Evil will rule this world for a min. The people that have this power are the people that RULE the whole world. I’m done I won’t say anymore before I get in trouble.

“Being in this industry for many years, I’ve come to realize artist and labels need to be held accountable for their actions. I strongly feel that artists, whether they like it or not, are role models and should act as such. I am opposed to the freedom of speech or artistic expression, but there are certain rules to be followed.”

Article Continues Here

________
Rihanna – Russian Roulette

“Just pull the trigger…”

Hip Hop and the Occult: secret message in Rihanna song Umbrella Part 1

Hip Hop and the Occult: secret message in Rihanna song Umbrella Part 13

Obama science chief: Abortion can save planet

AP Photo: J. Scott Applewhite

John Holdren’s textbook says forced sterilization may become necessary

WorldNetDaily | Sep 21, 2009

By Jerome R. Corsi

Despite the claims of some media watchdogs, President Obama’s science czar contended in a textbook he co-authored that involuntary birth-control measures, including forced sterilization, may be necessary and morally acceptable under certain conditions, such as widespread famine brought about by “climate change.”

John Holdren argued in the 1970s college textbook obtained by WND, “Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment,” that, “Compulsory control of family size is an unpalatable idea, but the alternatives may be much more horrifying.”

The book, last revised in a 1977 edition, was co-authored with Malthusian population alarmist Paul R. Ehrlich and Ehrlich’s wife, Anne.

The authors also advocated abortion as an acceptable form of population control and proposed that the best survival strategy for a pregnant woman is to abort her baby.

“When performed today under appropriate medical circumstances by a qualified physician … abortion is much safer than a full-term pregnancy,” Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote.

To support the argument, the authors noted the death rate in the U.S. for legal abortion in the first trimester was then less than two in 100,000, increasing to 12 per 100,000 in the second-trimester, “still only half the maternal death rate for childbirth.”

“Ecoscience,” the once popular college textbook, now has become rare, with the only copy currently available on Amazon.com offered for $649.

The scarcity of the politically explosive text is reminiscent of the controversial anti-war book John Kerry co-authored in 1971 with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a volume that reached price heights during the Democratic senator’s 2004 presidential run and is even today selling on Amazon.com in the rare hardcover edition for $199.

Instead of publishing a new edition now that Holdren has risen to the position of White House science czar, Holdren and his White House supporters have tried to distance him from the views expressed in the book, arguing it is now more than three decades old.

Moreover, a statement released by the White House argued that while the textbook discussed compulsory methods of population control, including forced abortion and sterilization, the Ehrlichs and Holdren never advocated involuntary birth control but preferred milder, voluntary population control measures.

In a Sept. 9 item by Media Matters asserting Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity falsely claimed Holdren advocated compulsory population control, the left-leaning media watchdog insisted Holdren merely “discusses ‘compulsory control of family size’ including abortion and sterilization as a possible consequence for countries whose expanding birth rates are not curbed by ‘milder methods.”

Media Matters refers to the St. Petersburg Times’ fact-check website, Politifact.com, which addressed similar claims in July by Fox News host Glenn Beck, who said Holdren’s textbook proposed forced abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water to control population.

“We think a thorough reading shows that these ideas were presented as approaches that had been discussed,” Politifact.com wrote. “They were posed as suggestions or proposals. In fact, the authors make clear that they did not support coercive means of population control. Clearly, nowhere in the book do the authors advocate forced abortions.”

A close reading of “Ecoscience,” however, shows the authors clearly stated their acceptance of abortion as an effective population-control technique.

“An abortion is clearly preferable to adding one more child to an overburdened family or an overburdened society, where the chances that it will realize its potential are slight,” Holdren and the Erhlichs argued on page 760 of the 1977 edition of “Ecoscience.”

“There is little question that legalized abortion can contribute to a reduction in birth rates,” the authors wrote on page 761. “Liberalization of abortion policies in those countries where it is still largely or entirely illegal is therefore justifiable both on humanitarian and health grounds and as an aid to population control.”

Moreover, Holdren and the Ehrlichs indicate that should population growth continue uncontrolled, the consequences of “global warming,” including widespread famine, may make compulsory population control measures necessary.

Holdren and the Ehrlichs concede compulsory population control measures if implemented to prevent disasters resulting from uncontrolled population growth will be distasteful to those with moral objections.

Arguing that voluntary measures of family planning and birth control might not be enough, Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote on page 783 that compulsory birth control methods would need to be implemented when “massive famines, political unrest, or ecological disasters make their initiation imperative.”

In further defining this “disaster exception” in which compulsory methods, including forced abortions and sterilization, might become acceptable, if not necessary, Holdren and the Ehrlichs wrote on the same page: “In such emergencies, whatever measures are economically and technologically expedient will be likeliest to be imposed, regardless of their political or social acceptability.”

Full Story

Abortion Addict Confesses 15 Procedures in 16 Years

Repeat Abortions Baffle Experts, as Author Irene Vilar Explores Her ‘Impossible Motherhood’

ABC | Sep 21, 2009

By SUSAN DONALDSON JAMES

Irene Vilar worries that her self-described “abortion addiction” will be misunderstood, twisted by the pro-life movement to deny women the right to choose.

Her book, “Impossible Motherhood,” which will be released by Other Press on Oct. 6, chronicles her own dark choices: 15 abortions in 16 years, much of it as a married woman.

As press on the book has begun to leak out, Vilar — a literary agent and editor — says she has already sensed “an inkling of hatred.”

Vilar has scheduled only closed-door interviews and will not do a book tour. At the urging of her husband, they have made sure all public property records do not reflect her name, so she cannot be targeted at their home.

“I am worried about my safety and the hate mail,” she told ABCNews.com in a telephone interview as her home-schooled children were at work on a painting project.

“No book like this has ever been written,” she told ABCNews.com. “I just imagine the ‘baby killer’ and I could be a poster child for that kind of fundamentalism. And there are my little kids in all of that.”

Today, at 40, the Latina author has two young children, but her troubled past continues to haunt her well into motherhood.

She grew up in the shadow of her notorious grandmother Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita Lebron, who stormed the Capitol steps with a gun in 1954. Lebron served 25 years in jail for the crime until receiving a pardon from President Carter in 1979.

Her mother committed suicide by throwing herself from a moving car when Vilar was 8 and two of her brothers were heroin addicts.

Mass Sterilization in Puerto Rico

Vilar’s story is set against the backdrop of the American-led mass sterilization program in her native Puerto Rico from 1955 to 1969, a fitting symbol for her struggle with her own reproduction.

By 1974, 37 percent of all Puerto Rican women of childbearing age had been permanently sterilized in that experiment.

“Women tend to repeat behaviors,” Vilar said of herself. Her mother’s forced hysterectomy without hormone treatment at the age of 33, led to depression and a Valium addition.

Vilar attended boarding school in New Hampshire and was just 15 when she left for Syracuse University, where she fell in love and later married her first husband, a tyrannical 50-year-old professor.

With a predilection for young women, he bragged that his relationships had never lasted more than five years and that having children killed sexual desire.

She says their emotionally dependent relationship was riddled with shame, self-mutilation and several suicide attempts.

Full Story

‘Dr. Death’ Nitschke Sells Euthanasia to China Before TV Show

Nitschke said he sees enough interest in Hong Kong to start “a contact point” for his company, Exit International

Assisted suicide should be studied in China as the nation, like the U.S., faces a growing medical bill, he says.

Bloomberg | Sep 16, 2009

by Le-Min Lim

For more than a decade, Philip Nitschke says he taught thousands in the Western world how to end their lives “without making a mess of it.” Now, he wants to bring that knowledge to China, where even the talk of death is taboo.

Nitschke, 62, is an Australian who claims to be the first doctor to have administered a legal and lethal injection to someone in 1996 who asked to die. He argues that a person’s rational decision to die should be respected. Vincent Kan of the Samaritan Befrienders of Hong Kong, a non-profit group which counsels the suicidal, calls such self-harm “very wrong.”

“This is a cutting-edge social issue and there are going to be strong feelings on both sides and there is going to be name-calling,” Nitschke says in an interview. He is dubbed “Dr. Death” by some media and pro-life advocates. “I don’t like the name, am sick of it, but it doesn’t matter.”

Of the 10 to 15 e-mails he gets every day from people asking how to kill themselves painlessly, “a growing fraction” are coming from Asia, with one or two from China, he says in an interview. China’s graying population, among the world’s fastest-growing, faces an uncertain future as the nation’s cradle-to- grave welfare network, provided by state-owned companies, all but disintegrated in the last 20 years in the privatization drive. Assisted suicide should be studied in China as the nation, like the U.S., faces a growing medical bill, he says.

At the end of 2008, one in twelve people in China — or 109.6 million — were 65 years old and above; in 2020, it will be one in eight, according to state-run China Daily.

Painless Death

Nitschke, helping to promote “Dignified Departure,” a 13- hour, pay-television program on doctor-assisted suicide in Hong Kong and mainland China, says the region wants “reliable information” on how to die painlessly. The program debuts next month in China on the “Family Health” channel, run by the official China National Radio.

“The Chinese don’t want to talk about death; they think it’s bad luck,” said Robert Chua, 63, chairman of the Health & Lifestyle Broadcast Co., which made the program. “It’s not death, but how we die, that will become an important question for China to think about.”

China’s Ministry of Health didn’t respond to calls asking for comment.

Medical Costs

The top worry among Chinese is of medical costs rising, according to state-run People’s Daily, citing a survey by the official Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released at the end of 2006. Between 1980 and 2005, per-capita disposable income in China rose about 20 times, while health-spending climbed 133 times, the state-run People’s Daily said.

Nitschke said he sees enough interest in Hong Kong to start “a contact point” for his company, Exit International, where members can meet. There were 17.4 suicides for every 100,000 people in Hong Kong in 2005, higher than the global average, the World Health Organization says. On the mainland, suicide kills about 250,000 people a year and is the leading cause of death in the 15-34 age-group, China National Radio reported on its Web site, citing an official.

In Chinese culture, which stresses duty to family, a person mulling suicide because of illness is more likely than his Western counterpart to consult his kin, said Philip Kwong, a pastor and counselor at Echo Valley Evangelistic Association for the Handicaps Ltd.

Nitschke, an atheist, says human life is no more important than an animal’s and deserves no exalted status or special ethical treatment. Humans should have the same rights as their pets to receive lethal injections that end pain, he says.

Sound Mind

Nitschke says he thinks everyone of sound mind above 50 years old should be allowed to die with the help of a doctor; until recently, he believed that chance should only be given to the terminally ill.

Nitschke says the change of mind came after meeting many people who were “tired of life; they got to a point where death is what they want.” Asked if he would choose an early death if very ill, he says he doesn’t know.

“When people find themselves looking down at their death and mortality, I see people change,” says Nitschke, who speaks with rapid-fire speed, stopping only to gasp for air. “I would imagine I’m going to be one of those people who are demanding we try every available drug to keep me alive.”

Any act by a doctor that directly or indirectly helps a person end his own life qualifies as assisted suicide, according to Dr. Marie-Charlotte Bouesseau, 51, the Geneva-based head of the World Health Organization’s ethics and health department.

Affordable Care

Dr. Cecilia Sepulveda, in charge of WHO’s cancer program, including palliative care, said the organization doesn’t have a position on assisted suicide, but doesn’t support any attempt to “hasten or promote death” because medicine is advanced enough to give the very ill comfortable and affordable care.

Assisted suicide is outlawed in most countries, including Australia, China and Hong Kong. Legalized doctor-assisted suicide for the terminally ill is illegal in most U.S. States.

Nitschke gives information on drug-induced suicide to the 5,000 members of Exit International who pay about A$100 ($83) a year in fees, and through a 300-page, illustrated publication, “The Peaceful Pill Handbook,” that’s banned in Australia and sells online in the U.S. for $75. Nitschke says he doesn’t sell those lethal drugs, and just informs where to get them and how much to take to ensure death.

Debbie Purdy, a British woman with multiple sclerosis who won a landmark suit in July to have the U.K. law on assisted suicide clarified, said she doesn’t back Nitschke’s position on giving the public access to information on drug-induced suicide.

Chua, one of the first overseas TV executives to land broadcast rights in mainland China, says his station has no position on assisted death, though he’s personally for it and would choose it in case of serious illness.

“Whatever position you take,” Chua says, “it’s better to face the issue than sweep it under the carpet.”

Secret US spontaneous human combustion beam tested

Silent deathray in first blast from the skies

Register | Sep 2, 2009

By Lewis Page

American death-tech goliath Boeing has announced a long-delayed in-flight firing for the smaller of its two aeroplane raygun-cannon prototypes, the Advanced Tactical Laser (ATL). The ATL blaster, mounted in a Hercules transport aircraft, apparently “defeated” an unoccupied stationary vehicle.

“This milestone demonstrates that directed energy weapon systems will transform the battlespace and save lives,” said Boeing exec Greg Hyslop. “The ATL team has earned a distinguished place in the history of weapon system development.”

“The bottom line is that ATL works, and works very well,” added corporate raygun honcho Gary Fitzmire.

The ATL is much smaller than Boeing’s headlining laser weapon, the jumbo-jet-mounted Airborne Laser (ABL), intended to blast enemy ICBMs as they soar upward from pad or silo. Rather the ATL is intended to pick off individual ground targets, somewhat in the fashion of existing Hercules-based side-firing AC-130 gunships. Indeed Boeing has referred to the ATL in the past as its “Laser Gunship”.

ATL does resemble the ABL in some important respects, however. Like the bigger weapon, it is a chemically-fuelled laser rather than a solid-state electrically powered one, meaning that it can fire only a limited number of blasts before its sealed, six-ton laser module must be maintained and refuelled with hazardous toxic chemicals.

Just how many shots the ATL can fire before being rearmed is unclear, but hints dropped by Pentagon sources suggest it could be as few as six. This compares poorly with the firepower available aboard a normal AC-130, leading some analysts to wonder what the point of the ATL really is.

Boeing say that it will offer “ultra-precision” and “dramatically reduce collateral damage”, though so far nothing of this sort has really been shown. A 40mm cannon aboard a normal AC-130 could “defeat” a stationary ground vehicle without damaging its surroundings: a .50-cal sniper rifle fired from a helicopter could do the same to a moving one.

It hasn’t escaped notice, however, that neither of those things could strike silently – perhaps from so far off that the carrying aircraft wouldn’t be noticed either – and without leaving any solid evidence of US military presence. Nor have observers failed to note that the US military agency in charge of ATL is the secretive Special Operations Command (SOCOM).

Boeing have evidently had some problems with the ATL – airborne test firings were expected last year, but this success didn’t happen until last Sunday. However it would seem that the system may soon be as ready for frontline use as it will ever be, at least until electric lasers without fuel limitations are weaponised.

In years to come, the secret supertroopers of SOCOM may be able to cause a cell tower to stop working, a vehicle’s fuel tank to suddenly explode, or a single person to inexplicably be incinerated – all completely silently and tracelessly, without anyone knowing they were ever there and not so much as a spent bullet left behind.

Civilian deaths reported after NATO airstrikes kill up to 90 in Afghanistan

NATO says it fired at militants who had hijacked two fuel tankers bound for Western troops. Afghan reports say scores of civilians were siphoning fuel from the trucks at the time.

LA Times | Sep 4, 2009

By M. Karim Faiez and Laura King

Reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan – NATO airstrikes on a pair of hijacked fuel tankers killed as many as 90 people early today, according to Afghan authorities. Western military officials said they were investigating reports that the dead may have included dozens of civilians.

The incident in the northern province of Kunduz threatened to reverse what Western officials had described as a dramatic drop-off in Afghan civilian casualties caused by coalition troops over the last two months.

U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who assumed command of American and other Western forces in Afghanistan in mid-June, had made reducing civilian deaths and injuries accidentally inflicted by coalition troops a centerpiece of his strategy.

The hijacking drama began Thursday night, when suspected Taliban militants commandeered the tanker trucks, which were carrying fuel bound for Western troops. In recent months, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been sending supplies into Afghanistan via its northern neighbor Tajikistan after militants repeatedly attacked supply routes from Pakistan.

After the hijacking, the trucks were tracked by aerial surveillance to a spot near the village of Omar Khel, where they became stuck when the hijackers tried to drive them across a riverbed. The airstrikes came soon after dawn, igniting an enormous fireball.

Western military forces said they believed there were no civilians in the area, a crucial precondition for airstrikes under a new tactical directive issued by McChrystal soon after he assumed command.

But Afghan reports, citing local police, said scores of civilians had descended on the stranded trucks and were siphoning fuel from them when the airstrikes occurred.

NATO said the attack killed “a large number” of insurgents. But later in the day, a military spokesman said the possibility of civilian deaths was also being looked into.

Brig. Gen. Eric Tremblay, a spokesman for NATO’s International Security Assistance Force, said that the airstrikes were “clearly directed at the insurgents” and that the alliance was “deeply concerned for the suffering that this action may have caused to our Afghan friends.”

The pro-Western governor of Kunduz, Mohammad Omar, gave a figure of 90 dead, including a Taliban commander, without specifying whether any of those killed and injured were thought to be civilians.

The Taliban claimed responsibility for the hijacking and blamed Western forces for the deaths. News agencies quoted spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid as saying the trucks were a fair target because they were supplying Western troops.

In Kabul, the capital, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan issued a statement expressing concerns over reports of the possibility of civilian dead and injured.

Most of the foreign forces deployed in Kunduz are Germans, and until recently, it had been one of the quieter corners of the country. The heaviest fighting is concentrated in the south and the east, where the bulk of troops are American and British. Both have been suffering heavy combat losses; the last two months have been the war’s most lethal for American and other Western forces.

President Hamid Karzai, who is locked in a tough reelection fight, dispatched investigators to the scene and said targeting civilians “under no circumstances is acceptable.” Karzai for months had been highly critical of Western battlefield practices that he said led to far too many civilian deaths.