“What is at stake is more than one small country [Iraq], it is a big idea, a New World Order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause …”

- President George H.W. Bush, in a speech on September 11th, 1991

Obama Hails Bush Sr’s ‘Excellent Job’ in First Gulf War

Highway of death

George Bush New World Order

Says masses should be indoctrinated to stop having children in order that the human race can die out and save the planet

Infowars | May 12, 2008

By Steve Watson

An environmental group says it’s sole purpose is to recruit volunteers and educate enough people to eventually realize that the human race needs to completely die out in order that the planet can survive.

The Voluntary Human Extinction Movement (VHEMT) says humans need to stop breeding and voluntarily progress our own slow demise in order that plants, animals and fragile ecosystems can survive.

The group’s motto is “May we live long and die out”. Their website explains their commitment to a long term goal of convincing the population of Earth that it has no future…

Full Story

Associated Press | May 11, 2008

By KEVIN FREKING

WASHINGTON - Families claiming that a mercury-based preservative in vaccines triggers autism will challenge mainstream medicine Monday as they take their case to a federal court.

They seek vindication and financial redress from a government fund that helps people injured by shots.

Two 10-year-old boys from Portland, Ore., will serve as the test cases that determine whether the children and their families should be compensated. Attorneys for the boys will attempt to show the boys were happy, healthy and developing normally. But, after being exposed to vaccines with thimerosal, they began to regress and show symptoms of autism.

Thimerosal has been removed in recent years from standard childhood vaccines, except the flu shot. In 2004, a committee with the Institute of Medicine concluded there was no credible evidence that vaccines containing thimerosal caused autism.

Overall, nearly 4,900 families have filed claims with the U.S. Court of Claims alleging that vaccines caused autism and other neurological problems in their children. Lawyers for the families will present three different theories of how vaccines caused autism.

The case beginning Monday focuses on the second of those theories: that thimerosal-containing vaccines alone cause autism. Lawyers for the petitioning families said they will present evidence that injections with thimerosal deposit a form of mercury in the brain. That mercury excites certain brain cells that stay chronically activated trying to get rid of the intrusion.

“In some kids, there’s enough of it that it sets off this chronic neuroinflammatory pattern that can lead to regressive autism,” said attorney Mike Williams.

In the end, the families’ attorneys hope to convince a special master of the U.S. Court of Claims that thimerosal belongs on the list of causes for the inflammation that leads to regressive autism.

To win, the attorneys for the two boys, William Mead and Jordan King, will have to show that it”s more likely than not that the vaccine actually caused the injury.

Many members of the medical community are skeptical of the families’ claims. They worry that the claims about the dangers of vaccines could cause some people to forgo vaccines that prevent illness.

“I think that what’s so endearing to me about the anti-vaccine people is they’re perfectly willing to go from one hypothesis to the next without a backward glance,” said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

Autism is a developmental disability that typically appears during the first three years of life and affects a person’s ability to communicate and interact with others. Dr. Andrew Gerber, a psychiatrists, said that medical experts don’t have a comprehensive understanding of what causes autism, but they do know there is a strong hereditary component.

Toxins from the environment could play a role, but currently, data does not support that they do, Gerber said.

Arguments are scheduled to go on throughout the month. A final decision could take several more months to occur. Claims that are successful would result in compensation taking into account lost earnings after age 18 and up to $250,000 for pain and suffering.

The families or the federal government can also appeal the decision of the special master to the Court of Federal Claims or to a federal appeals court.

While there have been about 5,000 claims relating to autism, there have been fewer than 3,000 claims for all other vaccines.

Queen Elizabeth I & Francis Walsingham

Red Ice |May 5, 2008

By Michael Howard

It is not really surprising that historically occultism and espionage have often been strange bedfellows. The black art of espionage is about obtaining secret information and witches, psychics and astrologers have always claimed to be able to predict the future and know about things hidden from ordinary people.

Gathering intelligence is carried out under a cloak of secrecy and occultists are adept at keeping their activities concealed from sight. Like secret agents they also use codes, symbols and cryptograms to hide information from outsiders. Occultists and intelligence officers are similar in many ways, as both inhabit a shadowy underworld of secrets, deception and disinformation. It is therefore not unusual that often these two professions have shared the same members.

The ‘father of the British Secret Service’ was the Elizabethan lawyer, politician, diplomat and spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham. He was a Protestant and as a young man during the bloody reign of the Catholic Queen Mary was forced to flee abroad to escape persecution. While in exile, Walsingham learnt Italian and French and became acquainted with the work of the famous Venetian Secret Service that used its spying skills for trade and commerce under the cloak of diplomacy.

When Queen Elizabeth I was crowned Francis Walsingham returned to England. He was appointed as a secretary to the English ambassador to the French court in Paris and also worked as a secret agent reporting back the intelligence he gleaned to Queen Elizabeth’s Secretary of State, Sir William Cecil, later Lord Burghley. Between 1568 and 1570 Walsingham, who had become a Member of Parliament, worked in England in domestic counter-espionage exposing Catholic plots against the monarchy.

In 1570 Walsingham was appointed as the new ambassador to France. He proceeded to set up his own network of undercover agents in France, Italy, Spain and the Low Countries. The late Cecil Williamson, who worked for British Intelligence during World War II and later ran a witchcraft museum, told this writer that Walsingham often used witches as spies.

The Mysterious Dr Dee

One of the famous occultists he is known to have recruited was Queen Elizabeth’s court astrologer and the magical architect of the British Empire, the Welsh magician Dr John Dee. Walsingham was involved in the machinations for the proposed marriage of the Duc d’Anjou and Elizabeth. At the spy master’s personal recommendation, the queen dispatched Dee to France with orders to report back on the progress of the marriage negotiations. The magus travelled to the Duchy of Lorraine and drew up the birth charts of both the Duc and his brother, who was also regarded as a possible husband for the English monarch. Dr Dee, probably influenced by Walsingham, diplomatically reported back to London that the stars suggested a political alliance would be far wiser than matrimony and the queen took his advice.

In 1573 Sir Francis returned to London and became a privy councillor. This placed him at the heart of government and he proceeded to set up what amounted to the first organised foreign espionage service to operate from England. In 1566 he had put in place a pan-European network of spies extending as far to the east as Turkey and Russia, where Dr Dee reported on the goings-on at the Tsar’s court. This network mostly gathered intelligence on the military activities of the Spanish, who were England’s primary enemies at this time. Walsingham was also responsible for foiling the Catholic plot whose exposure led to the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots. Using Dr Dee’s psychic powers, he was apparently able to discover that the plotters were passing secret messages to the imprisoned Scottish queen hidden in bottles of wine.

While travelling in Europe in 1562, Dr Dee had come across a book written by Abbot Trimethus of Spanhiem (1462-1516). This was a guide to writing ciphers and secret codes for magical purposes and Dee informed Sir William Cecil about his discovery. On his return to England Dr Dee adapted the abbot’s cryptography and gave it to Sir Francis Walsingham for use by his secret agents. He also passed on the political and military intelligence he had acquired during his travels across Europe. It has been alleged that Dee used the famous Enochian magical alphabet as a code to disguise this information. If he had been arrested his captors would not have understood it and dismissed it as nonsense.

In 1587 Dee even claimed he had received a spirit message from one of his angelic contacts concerning a threat to the English Fleet. The message said that a group of disguised Frenchmen working for the Spaniards was secretly visiting the Forest of Dean. The forest was the centre for English ship-building and the French agents planned to bribe disloyal foresters to burn it down. Dr Dee sent his supernatural intelligence to Walsingham and the saboteurs, who were masquerading as squatters, were arrested.

Information supplied to Sir Francis Walsingham from his European spy network convinced him that a Spanish armada would be launched against England in 1588. He asked Dee to use his knowledge of astrology to calculate the weather prospects for an invasion. The magus told him there would an impending disaster in Europe caused by a devastating storm. When news of this prophecy was leaked and reached Spain, naval recruitment fell and there were desertions of sailors from the Spanish Fleet. In Lisbon an astrologer who repeated the prediction was charged with spreading false information. In an act of psychological warfare, Dr Dee also informed Emperor Rudolf of Bohemia (the modern Czech Republic) and King Stephen of Poland that the predicted storm would “cause the fall of a mighty empire.” Rudolf, who was an occultist and Dee’s patron when he stayed in Bohemia, passed on the warning to the Spanish ambassador.

It is a fact that in 1588 a great storm did scatter the ships of the Spanish Armada in the English Channel and aided the English victory. This metrological event was popularly credited to a magical ritual performed by the buccaneer Sir Francis Drake on the cliffs at Plymouth. Superstitious people believed Drake was a wizard and sold his soul to the Devil in exchange for success over the Spanish. It is claimed that he also organised several covens of witches to work magically to raise the storm and prevent the invasion. Meanwhile, as a result of scrying in his shewstone or crystal, Dr Dee saw a symbolic vision of a castle with its drawbridge drawn up (England) and the image of the elemental king of fire. As a result he urged the Navy to employ fire-ships against the Armada and they did so with good results.

After Sir Francis Walsingham’s death in 1590, and the ascension to the English throne of the Scottish king James, Dr John Dee fell into royal disfavour. The new king had an unhealthy obsession with witchcraft and his early reign was dominated by this preoccupation. It led him to employ the Secret Service in his own personal vendetta against suspected witches. James I ordered its agents to hunt down alleged practitioners of witchcraft and expose their alleged plots against the monarchy. One of those involved was the Earl of Bothwell, accused of high treason for organising a coven of Scottish witches to work magic against the king in an attempt to seize the throne. To assist his secret agents in their new witch-hunting activities, King James persuaded Parliament in 1604 to pass a new and stronger Witchcraft Act to deal with the problem. The Bill was rushed through and it was made law within three months.

Full Article Here

March of the titans: Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles roll through the square

Daily Mail | May 9, 2008

Kremlin’s blast from the past: Awesome display of military power in Red Square for Russia’s new leader

By EDWARD LUCAS

It was a chilling sight from a different age.

Yet we should be deeply alarmed about the politicians who command them, greeted with the traditional chants of “Ura! Ura!” (Hurrah! Hurrah!) by the 8,000 troops who goose-stepped through the ceremony, which marks Stalin’s victory in the Second World War.

There they stood on their podium, the great leader, Vladimir Putin, and the new president, Dmitri Medvedev.

Master and his pupil: Putin, centre, and Medvedev, right

Mr Putin, now prime minister, is credited with rescuing Russia from chaos and poverty, while Medvedev will supposedly add the ingredients of freedom and the rule of law.

So those hurrahs from the Russian troops - known as the Red Army until 1946 - in Red Square yesterday are echoed by the Kremlin’s supporters abroad too, who maintain the country is on the verge of a golden age.

But keep the cork in the shampanskoye (Russia’s sickly tank-fermented version of champagne).

The grim military parade reflects the Kremlin’s increasingly ruthless approach to politics - and the direct threat it poses to to Georgia, a plucky western ally on Russia’s southern flank.

Even if Mr Medvedev wants to change the style of Kremlin rule, and dares to try, how will the brooding steely figure of the prime minister, his political mentor and the darling of public opinion, react?

Mr Putin has said that no big changes in Russia’s policies at home and abroad should be expected.

He has come close to humiliating Mr Medvedev over the tiniest perceived differences of opinion. It is his hands that will stay on the levers of power.

Never has the gap between deeds and words seemed bigger. Mr Putin claims to have stepped down out of respect for the Russian constitution, which allows only two successive terms.

Yet he remains the most powerful person in the country.

Mr Medvedev, a diminutive lawyer with - unusually for the Kremlin - no background in the military or espionage, talks about freedom and the rule of law, which Mr Putin and his ex-KGB pals have trampled into the ground.

Make no mistake: Mr Medvedev’s job is to put a presentable face on the sinister regime that runs Russia.

He may criticise, rightly, Russia’s colossal corruption, shambolic public services, crumbling infrastructure, soaring inflation, grotesque abuses of power, sprawling bureaucracy, and overweening state intervention in the economy. But that does not mean he can or will do much about them.

A system that has proved so hugely lucrative to the hard men in the Kremlin is not going to disappear over night, if at all. Mr Medvedev’s “hurrah chorus” say that the ruthless tycoon-bureaucrats of the Putin regime will be pensioned off.

They will either accept their “severance packages” of a few billion dollars or they can join Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil baron who was once Russia’s richest man, in his prison cell near the Chinese border.

But for this to happen, Mr Medvedev will have to turn on his own.

Nothing in his eight years in senior positions at Gazprom, Russia’s biggest company, suggests he will do so. For a start, the firm epitomises the overlap between business and politics that he claims to despise.

It would be better named ‘Kremlin Inc (Gas Division)’ for its unwavering support of Russian diplomacy.

Nor is there any sign that Mr Medvedev will change Russia’s prickly relations with the west, and its bullying of former captive nations.

Earlier this year he described the U.S. as a “financial terrorist” for seeking to impose its accounting standards on the rest of the world.

Mr Medvedev has called the British Council, sponsor of folk dancers and well-meaning culture vultures, a nest of spies.

His supporters stress he likes rock music and yoga. He has a glamorous and devoutly religious wife. Such clues are spun into an illusory blanket of good intentions.

But those who have met Mr Medvedev speak of a pedantic, chippy figure, a nervous nitpicker ill at ease with the limelight.

He may change. Mr Putin did. I remember how he emerged into public view in 1999, looking more like Dobby the house elf from Harry Potter than a world leader.

Many thought the third-rate spy with a taste for gutter slang would last months, not years.

How wrong they were. It is now Mr Putin who dominates Russian politics. The clan of his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, is history.

So are the “oligarchs”, the overmighty tycoons who once ruled the political roost. Some are in exile. Others have kow-towed to the Kremlin, gaining even greater riches in return for obedience.

Under Mr Putin, elections have become a sham, dissent criminalised, the legal system part of the Kremlin, and assassination a tool of foreign policy.

Many blame the Kremlin for the poisoning in London of Alexander Litvinenko, who fled to Britain after uncovering what he termed murderous corruption in the FSB, the KGB’s successor.

Since then Russia’s relations with Britain have been in a deep freeze, thawed only by the recent “football diplomacy” in which both countries have relaxed visa regulations for each other’s fans.

Changing Russia’s increasingly hard-edged foreign policy stance would be a formidable undertaking for Mr Medvedev.

And why bother? The current policy is working well. The Russian people delight in the stability and high living standards that the Putin era has brought - in contrast to the poverty and uncertainty of the 1990s.

Many Russians are pleased too that their country is respected (or at least feared) by its neighbours.

A muzzled, sycophantic media means that the country’s real problems, and the corrupt, threadbare record of the Putin years, receives little scrutiny.

Nor is there much to worry about abroad. The bullying of Georgia has brought only ineffectual bleats of protest from the EU and NATO.

Germany’s cosy ties with Russia have created a Trojan Horse in the heart of the west’s two main alliances.

Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy and Nicolas Sarkozy’s France adopt the same stance: accepting the riches of trade with Russia, while ignoring the political cost.

The U.S. and Britain are too distracted by Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yet Lithuania, one of the smallest and poorest countries in Europe, is bravely challenging the consensus, insisting that the EU toughens its stance before starting talks with the Kremlin.

Its neighbour Latvia is scraping together some symbolic diplomatic support for Georgia.

Every new man in the Kremlin enjoys a honeymoon with the west. And in each case that is followed by bitter disillusion: Mikhail Gorbachev caved in to hardliners and proved ineffective; Yeltsin succumbed to alcohol and the corruption of his cronies; Mr Putin turned into a menacing autocrat.

How long before we learn our lesson?

People carry signs with photographs of Cuba’s retired leader Fidel Castro and his brother President Raul Castro during the May Day parade at Havana’s Revolution Square May 1, 2008.

ASSOCIATED PRESS | Apr 29, 2008

By Anita Snow

HAVANA – President Raul Castro is shoring up Cuba’s one-party rule after an unexpectedly smooth leadership change from his brother Fidel, announcing a Communist Party congress that should cement the move to a more institutionalized power structure.

The younger Castro announced Monday that the party will hold its first congress in a dozen years on a yet-unspecified date in the second half of 2009. Fidel Castro officially still heads the party as first secretary, and the congress is likely to select a new chief, ending his last formal claim to power.

Party congresses historically have been held every five years or so to renew leadership and set major policies.

Castro also announced that officials would commute the death penalty for an unspecified number of common prisoners and he said it was reviewing the cases of two Central Americans on death row for hotel bombings – including one that killed an Italian tourist – as well as a U.S.-based exiled convicted of killing a fisherman during a 1994 commando raid.

Excerpts of his speech to party cadres were aired on state television.

Fidel Castro, 81, has not been seen in public since July 2006, when he underwent emergency intestinal surgery and relinquished power to Raul, five years his junior. He formally stepped down as president in February, but keeps a presence through essays published in state media.

The bearded revolutionary cast a large shadow over the island during his almost half-century in power. His once-high-pitched voice was the soundtrack of daily life as his hours-long speeches emanated from radios and television sets.

Far less charismatic, Raul shuns the public stage Fidel once relished and is moving to replace his brother’s personalized rule with the Communist Party’s collective leadership.

“In these times, and those to come, it will be necessary and decisive to count on political, government, mass, social and youth institutions,” Raul told party leaders. “When difficulties are greater, more order and discipline will be required. For that, it is vital to strengthen institutions.”

The younger Castro also shored up support for his own leadership by naming two military men and a political ally to the party’s select Politiburo. They are Gen. Alvaro Lopez Miera, defense vice minister and chief of staff, Ramiro Valdes Menendez, a revolutionary commander and communications minister, and Salvador Valdes Mesa, secretary-general of the Cuban Workers Union.

The new president spent most of his life as defense minister and he draws much of his support from the island’s armed forces.

Lopez Miera and Valdes Mesa were added to Cuba’s supreme governing body, the Council of State, when Raul Castro assumed the presidency two months ago. Valdes Menendez was already a member.

Raul Castro also announced a further centralization within the party by creating a super-exclusive directing committee of himself and six other men inside the 24-member Politburo. Fidel Castro was not among them.

The president said that the Council of State was reviewing the cases of Salvadorans Ernesto Cruz Leon and Otto Rene Rodriguez Llerena, who say Cuban exiles hired them for a 1997 bombing campaign to scare tourists away from the island.

Also under review is the case of Humberto Eladio Real Suarez of Florida, who was arrested after an October 1994 raid that killed a fisherman.

Cuba halted capital punishment from 2000 until 2003, when three armed men who hijacked a ferry were sent before a firing squad. The executions brought worldwide condemnation, and Raul Castro said capital punishment has not been applied since.

AFP | Apr 29, 2008

KATHMANDU (AFP) — Former rebel Maoists warned Wednesday they will form a new government in Nepal with or without the help of the mainstream political parties they resoundingly defeated in landmark elections.

The ultra-leftists — who waged a bloody guerrilla war for a decade before a peace deal was brokered in 2006 — took twice the number of seats won by their nearest rival in the 601-member body that will chart Nepal’s political future.

“We will lead the government as we are the biggest party,” spokesman Krishna Bahadur Mahara told AFP on the sidelines of a Maoist central committee meeting in Kathmandu.

“If the other parties don’t want to join us in a coalition, we will form the government by ourselves,” Mahara said.

Under the timetable laid out in Nepal’s interim constitution, the first meeting of the body that is set to abolish the world’s last Hindu monarchy in its first session, has to be held before May 26.

Established political parties fared dismally in the elections to the constituent assembly, despite predictions they would win handsomely.

The Maoists took 220 seats, twice as many as the traditionally dominant Nepali Congress (NC), while the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist; CPN UML) won 103.

The Nepali Congress and Communist Party of Nepal are currently holding internal meetings amid deep divisions in their ranks about whether they should join the Maoists in government.

Senior leaders from the Nepali Congress, firm favourites before the shock results, have suggested that the current interim government, led by the architect of the peace process, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, should remain.

Mahara said that those who wanted to retain the status quo were working against the mandate given to the Maoists in the April 10 elections.

“The other parties said they were committed to democracy, but by suggesting they will not join the government and that we should not lead it, they are showing they are not committed to democracy,” Mahara told AFP.

The general secretary of the Nepali Congress, Bimalendra Nidhi, said the party had yet to decide whether to join the government, but that the Maoists would not be able to go it alone.

“The Maoists can’t form a government unilaterally. It’s true they are the largest party, but they still need to gain the confidence of the other parties,” Nidhi said.

Koirala has called for the mainstream parties and Maoists to start discussions on forming the new government, but formal talks are yet to begin, Mahara said.

The larger parties will have to work with the former rebels but are having difficulty adjusting to their unexpected trouncing, Krishna Jwala Devkota, editor of the Nepalese daily Naya Patrika, told AFP.

“This is a bargaining phase to try and secure respectable positions in government. It’s also a tactic to pressure the Maoists politically,” said Devkota.

“Think of it this way: if the NC or CPN (UML) had emerged as the biggest parties, there would not be any question of who would lead the government,” he said.

The elections were a central plank of the peace deal between the Maoists and mainstream parties.

The peace pact ended the Maoists’ “people’s war,” launched in 1996, which left at least 13,000 people dead and destroyed an already fragile economy.

Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) Chairman Prachanda speaks to an AFP reporter during an interview at his home in Kathmandu, on May 03, 2008. Nepal’s Maoists and mainstream political parties held a first round of talks Friday to set up a new government following the former insurgents’ stunning win in landmark polls, officials said.

AFP | May 6, 2008

KATHMANDU (AFP) — The leader of Nepal’s Maoists, Prachanda, says the victory of his left-wing former rebels in last month’s landmark elections is a sign of the global resurgence of communism.

The former schoolteacher, once branded a “terrorist” and wanted by Interpol, is now vying to be the first president of a republican Nepal, and he says his party’s success at the ballot box is rooted in its communist ideals.

“The revolutionary process is now happening in third world countries, and when it is completed in developing countries, a new wave of socialist revolution will be there in developed countries,” Prachanda said.

“Here in Nepal we are trying our best to develop our ideology according to the changed situation,” the 54-year-old told reporters from AFP and an Italian news magazine.

“Communists all over the world need to understand the new challenges, the new developments of the 21st century.”

The Maoists won 220 seats — more than twice as many as its closest rival, the Nepali Congress — in the April 10 elections for a 601-member body that will rewrite Nepal’s constitution and abolish the monarchy.
“Our victory in the constituent assembly elections will be a big reference point for Maoists all over the world,” said the moustachioed Maoist, whose nom-de-guerre means “the fierce one.”

After living underground for 25 years, Prachanda emerged from the shadows to sign a peace deal in 2006 and end a decade-long revolt that left at least 13,000 people dead and destroyed Nepal’s already fragile economy.

The Maoists are now promising radical change in Nepal, a traditionally conservative country with strict caste, ethnic and gender divisions where around 31 percent of people live on less than a dollar a day.

“We have come to a new understanding that multi-party competition is a must, even in socialism,” said the Maoist leader, whose party displayed portraits of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Zedong at campaign rallies.
“Without having multi-party competition, it is not possible to create a vibrant society.”

The Maoists warned last week that they would form a new government with or without the help of the mainstream political parties with which they signed the 2006 deal — and which they resoundingly defeated in the April elections.

Senior leaders from the Nepali Congress, firm favourites before the shock results, have suggested the current interim administration led by Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala should remain.

But Prachanda has said he has the right to lead the next government.
The Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal are now holding internal meetings amid deep divisions about whether they should join the former rebels.

Under the timetable laid out in Nepal’s interim constitution, the first meeting of the constituent assembly has to be held before May 26.
The Maoists promised voters to bring about “revolutionary” land reform but they have also said they want to attract foreign investment and start to tap the Himalayan country’s massive potential for hydro-electricity.

“We are interested in private investment from inside and outside the country, but the priority of the investment will be decided by the Nepalese and Nepalese government,” Prachanda said.

The Maoist leader said he believes that no matter what follows, his party has secured a place in history.

“I think history should remember our ideology and actions as this is something new for the 21st century,” he said.

“Communism has revived itself from all the old experiences. New ideology, new strategy has been created by the Nepalese Maoists.”

The agency’s National Cyber Range for cyberwar simulation would be similar to Star Trek’s holodeck or a Snow Crash-style Metaverse.

InformationWeek | May 8, 2008

By Thomas Claburn

Police officers practice their firearm skills on a shooting range, so why shouldn’t government computer security experts have the same kind of training ground?

In other words, Darpa wants to build something along the lines of The Matrix, Star Trek’s holodeck, or a Snow Crash-style Metaverse to test cyberwar strategies and drill cyberwarriors.

That’s not to say Darpa is aiming for a visually immersive world to entertain people; rather, it wants a place to pit hackers against simulated machines.

Darpa’s interest in such matters reflects a growing U.S. government and military commitment to develop more sophisticated cyberwar capabilities. A major reason for this is that other countries, such as China, are pursuing similar goals.

“The NCR will become a National resource for testing unclassified and classified cyber programs,” Darpa’s announcement explains. “Government and Government-sponsored Test Organizations (TO) authorized to conduct cyber testing will coordinate with the NCR performer for range time and resources. …The NCR will support multiple, simultaneous, segmented tests and testbeds. At the completion of the test the NCR will sanitize and de-allocate the testbed resources, thus absorbing them back into the range.”

The NCR aims to provide the ability to replicate military, government, and commercial IT systems and infrastructure; to monitor and manage events; and to analyze, collect, and present test data.

The NCR should be able to “realistically replicate human behavior and frailties,” to provide “realistic, sophisticated, nation-state quality offensive and defensive opposition forces,” and to “accelerate and decelerate relative test time.”

With any luck, human frailties won’t manifest themselves in the form of a ballooning budget as the NCR takes shape.

Canadian military looking for Iron Man-type suits for overburdened soldiers

Yahoo News | May 5, 2008

By Dean Beeby, The Canadian Press

OTTAWA - Iron Man Canuck may be appearing soon at a theatre near you.

“One of the key challenges faced by soldiers today is the large weight they must carry,” says the notice.

Soldiers have been beasts of burden since the early days of the Roman legions, when the legionaries fighting under Gaius Marius laughingly called themselves Marius’s mules.

Soldiers in the field today regularly tote loads of 45 kilograms, including water, rations and ammunition.

“A soldier carrying a large pack on their back will be limited in terms of speed and endurance. . . . Exoskeletons and other mobility devices may offer alternative solutions to the important problem of reducing load burden for the soldier of tomorrow,” the posting added.

The contract, worth up to $204,000, is to be awarded in June and could include creation of a prototype and demonstration suit. The work is set to run until Jan. 31, 2011.

A spokeswoman for the military said the Dartmouth, N.S., scientific group ordering the research would not comment until after a contract has been awarded.

“They’re . . . in the early stage (and) they don’t really have any details that would be of any value to share,” said Bobbi Jo Bradley. “They’re not sure which direction it will take.”

Exoskeletons and similar body-armour have been the stuff of science fiction for decades and have been under study by the U.S. military since at least the 1960s.

But in early 2001, the U.S. Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency began concentrated work on producing a working version, earmarking US $50 million for the project.

The Pentagon agency eventually awarded a contract to Sarcos, a Salt Lake City, Utah, company now owned by Raytheon, that produced a test version this year - not unlike the Iron Man suit of the blockbuster film that opened last weekend. Known as the XOS Exoskeleton, it uses a single engine and hydraulics to assist movement.

A spokesperson for Sarcos was not immediately available for comment. But an official who’s in charge of the military program said a prototype worked well.

“I sort of felt like The Hulk and I’m a skinny guy,” John Main told a media outlet last fall. “I wore a 100-pound weight on my back and it felt like I was carrying nothing like that amount.”

The Canadian military has struggled for years to find a balance between the high-tech gear that’s rapidly becoming available and the ability of its soldiers to actually carry the equipment in the field.

In recent years, for example, National Defence has ordered research on the neck strain caused by helmets weighed down with night-vision goggles.

Military researchers have set aside as much as $310 million for a so-called “integrated soldier system” that would, for example, connect radios, digital maps, night-vision goggles and range-finding laser binoculars into a single system.

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