cia

The failed feline spies

dr. dolittle — Fri, 04 Aug 2017 10:25:08 +0000

The failed feline spies

Wow. This is a very interesting bit of history on how the CIA tried to use cats as spies. But as any cat owner knows, cats do not always do what you want them to do when you want them to do it.

Source:

YouTube

dr. dolittle Fri, 08/04/2017 - 06:25

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Life Science

Cat

cia

feline

spy

Vaccination and other matters of trust

lborkowski — Thu, 22 May 2014 10:48:54 +0000

Vaccination and other matters of trust

by Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA

As an editor of the Journal of Public Health Policy, I have been following developments where public health intersects with the activities and policies of espionage agencies. New happenings appear regularly.

First there was the Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) creation of a special immunization campaign in Pakistan, where the only purpose of the program was to collect material containing DNA that stuck on the needles used to deliver hepatitis vaccine. The Agency hoped to find Osama Bin Laden. We published an editorial that predicted the terrible damage that would follow: set backs in polio vaccination, just as it was nearing effective eradication of the disease.

The CIA appeared to be oblivious to the damage they might do to immunization efforts, but this is unlikely. In the 1990s, when I ran the US National Vaccine Program, immunization programs were becoming a keystone in improving health around the world. The CIA recognized the value of controlling disease as part of US national security, and posted this observation on the Agency website. So in 2010, it is more likely that the CIA knowingly traded the lives of dozens of vaccinators in Pakistan and put thousands of unvaccinated children around the world in harm’s way to kill one terrorist. People all over the world were allowed to confirm their worst suspicions, that vaccination programs were part of a CIA plot. Trust, absolutely needed in public health, was surely a victim of CIA subterfuge. We must hope that the US government officials responsible for the vaccination ruse will end up in the docket in The Hague at the International Criminal Court.

Then came the National Security Agency revelations. Again trust became the central issue as James R. Clapper, Jr. explained that testimony he gave to the US Senate about collecting private data on millions of American citizens, was the “least untruthful” way to answer the Senate’s questions. We editorialized, “Least Untruthful, a new standard?”

Have things come full circle? Just this week, almost two years after our first editorial, the CIA announced that it had decided several months ago to abandon the use of vaccination programs for espionage. The White House made its announcement last week via a letter sent to the deans of 12 schools of public health. More than 16 months earlier, after my post here on The Pump Handle, the deans wrote to President Obama about the sham vaccination and its dire consequences to goals of disease eradication.

Here in France, I got a call from Jason Beaubien at National Public Radio. (By the way, this is exactly the kind of international call that the National Intelligence Agency may record: Americans talking to other Americans abroad.) As I told Beaubien, the CIA's not exclusively responsible for the problems we have in getting children vaccinated, but it certainly didn't make anything easier. Without trust, a vaccination program fails.

As I thought about this string of developments, I found it hard to imagine that if the Agency were doing so intentionally, the CIA could not have invented a more damaging assault on the trust on which public health relies.

With the US Director of National Intelligence apologizing for lying to the Senate, calling his testimony “least untruthful”, is there any reason that either Americans or the rest of the world should trust anything that the CIA says? And as we have asserted before, public trust is the central element of all public health programs.

Anthony Robbins, MD, MPA is co-Editor of the Journal of Public Health Policy.

lborkowski Thu, 05/22/2014 - 06:48

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Thank you for posting this. This is an important story that has received scant attention in the U.S.

It's a shame that there is not more outrage. Maybe since it is because it was the Obama administration who committed these crimes that people are reluctant to condemn them.

"We must hope that the US government officials responsible for the vaccination ruse will end up in the docket in The Hague at the International Criminal Court."

We can hope. But somehow I doubt this will happen.

Oh, please, tell me half my friends are not accidental cult members

gregladen — Sun, 11 Aug 2013 15:39:24 +0000

Oh, please, tell me half my friends are not accidental cult members

I do not have an unquestioned respect for Edwared Snowden or those other guys who swore an oath of secrecy in service of their government and then stole piles of secrets and gave them away. I'm also not especially impressed with the uncritical crush so many people have on them for doing what they did. We've discussed this before in relation to State Department cables. While so many others seemed to assume that all State Department cables were evil secrets that must see the light of day, I was thinking of a number of probable State Department cables that I have reason to believe might exist that had no reason to see the light of day but where their publication would be damaging. I gave specific, meaningful examples, and these criticisms never addressed directly by anyone. All I got were stern looks, or worse, because I was not in the Cult of Wikileaks.

The following is a bit more nuanced for many people to get, so if you are already really mad at me for what I just said just stop reading and leave the room. OK, thanks, bye.

I do not like Big Brother and I object to many of the activities that the government probably engages in. If some of those activities are revealed because of Bradley Manning or Edward Snowden's actions, and something positive is done about that, then I'll be very glad. I'll be very glad for Wikileaks, Bradley Manning, and Edward Snowden.

Yes, I can hold those two seemingly different thoughts and feelings at the same time.

Having said both of those things, I'm feeling good that I never jumped on the bandwagon, treating Edward Snowden like he was some sexy speaker at a skeptical convention I just met in a bar who has slipped me a Mickey. If, that is, and I'm having a hard time believing that this is the case but it may well be, the following report from Voice of Russia is true:

Edward Snowden predicts catastrophic and 'inevitable solar tsunami'

Edward Snowden, a former CIA agent, has predicted that series of solar flares is set to occur in September of 2013, killing hundreds of millions of people.

The documents collected by Snowden offer proof that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) learned about the existing threat 14 years ago.

Ever since the world’s governments have been working secretly ..., to be well prepared for what could be termed as “Solar Apocalypse”.

...Snowden said that the government has been working hard to be well prepared for September’s catastrophic solar flares, which can be fraught with fatal consequences, as scientists said – they can lead to the death of mankind.

The Central Intelligence Agency learned about the existing threat as long ago as 1999, but according to the government’s decision, this information was immediately made secret.

The documents collected by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) said how terrible the solar flares’ results will be: two months will be needed for mankind to become non-existent.

...

Snowden said FEMA and the National Disaster Reduction Center of China have been taking steps for 14 years in light of the findings of Project Stargate.

FEMA’s own documents, provided by Snowden, lay out how the organization plans to round up tens of millions of the poorest Americans for housing at secure locations “to better facilitate feeding and provision of consumer goods.”

“...‘the killshot’ will shutter most of the world’s electrical systems,” said Snowden.

...

WAIT WAIT IT'S A FAKE ... I interrupt this blog post to report that two guys on the internet have proven that this story is a FAKE. Here is what they say, quoted at MSN:

"The Internet is ablaze with yet another baseless conspiracy theory that only serves to distract from real cover-ups and issues of genuine significance — the hoax that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden recently warned of a 'solar flare killshot' set to wipe out hundreds of millions of people in September," Paul Joseph Watson of Infowars and PrisonPlanet.com complains in an article outlining why it's a hoax.

He pointed out, for example, that readers readily would figure out it was fictitious if they went to Internet Chronicle's "about" section, which states the web site "is not of this earth.

Of course, I got the story from the Voice of Russia web site, not some fake web site. That, itself, is an interesting story.

This being a fake or not is really hardly the point. A gazillion people will believe it anyway, so we might as well carry on....

Humanity is about to pay a most dire price for its technological dependence.

That price, said Snowden, proved a leading factor in his decision to come forward to the press – about both the global Holocaust to ensue, as well as NSA analysts’ power, on the slightest whim, to listen to the phone calls of any person on earth. Mankind has the right to know what it will expect in the future, no matter how dreadful it will be.

I wonder what he thinks about contrails?

There's a video that goes along with this on the Voice of Russia web page. And no, it is not the Onion.

If Edward Snowden really was thinking this was true, and if he really did act in a way that could get him executed to save humanity from .... well, from not knowing why it is destroyed, in September, by a solar apocalypse ... then he is an unhinged conspiracy theorist and we should probably not trust much else of what he said.

Or, perhaps, the Russian Intelligence Agency ... you know, the one with the name nobody can remember but it used to be the KGB ... has simply made this story up to make Snowden look like a crazy person. If so, then it is possible that they did this as part of a deal with the CIA-NSA in order to discredit Snowden. If that is the case, then there must be something else that is part of the deal, some Russian Agents that are going to be released in exchange for this help. Or, perhaps, the CIA intents to help the Russians in a False Flag Operation to discredit Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Something involving pipelines and vodka and a secret base underneath a fake island in the Aleutians. Yeah, that's what it is. It's a False Flag Operation. It must be.

Or, maybe there really is going to be ....

... a Kill Shot....

For now, I'm going with this story being fake.

gregladen Sun, 08/11/2013 - 11:39

Tags

Snowden is not the story. The abrogation of the fourth amendement is the story. Of course the solar flare crapola is disinformation.

--bks

Agreed. To the extent that whatever you said or imply is true, of course.

OK Solar Flare!!! WOW! like that never happened before!
The internet goes down! Ya? So? I don't NEED the infernal-net, it is just handy.
So electricity goes down? Got generator, fireplace, grill, oil lamps, Can do OK for a few weeks.
It's amazing how NOTHING gone done in the 1800's and everyone suffered for the lack of electricity.
But is this real? The Bad Astronomer has not mentioned anything so not worried.
About Snowden and the others? I'm not a fan because I do not know the details but I understand. Yes they took oaths, well so did I but the implied part of the oath is that it concerned LEGAL - Constitutional activities. I did not take the oath to coverup the illegal activities of power crazed a-holes. I do not believe in secrets just cuz, ie don't say anything about 'him' being a crook because it might cause a panic or hurt our image- BS - want me to honor your image and efforts? BE HONEST!!

"This must be disinformation" should be your first thought reading this (solar flares), the last (con trails), and the next (TBA) report of conspiracy theory clap-trap attributed to Edward Snowden.

The US national security apparatus will have two goals here. One, make this "all about Ed", which requires little effort thanks to the vapid and self-serving corporate media, and two, destroy any trust people have in what Snowden has to say, it's not like they will actually read the documents. Getting people to put "the NSA has all your emails" in the same mental compartment as "the CIA wants to kill you with solar flares" goes a long way towards that second goal.

Now, I have no special knowledge to indicate these two "Ed is a nut" stories were planted or even just promoted with that intention, but only a fool would think it is a ludicrous possibility. IMO.

So, wait.

The real reason Snowden violated the terms of his security clearance and oath was because of the central end-of-the-world plot theme of "Knowing"?

Sad.

Right on!, and if I may indulge in religious language here, Amen to that! I am so (expletive!) sick of the Uncritical Cult of Wikileaks and its various spawn, that I could just throw up. Particularly since so many of the cultists also use GMail, Google Voice, smartphones, and Facebook, each of which is a surveillance system with a degree of depth that NSA could only hope to achieve. The overt hypocrisy is nauseating.

One of the reforms that is badly needed, is a law that provides an absolute right for persons with clearances to make disclosures to appropriately cleared members of relevant committees in the House and Senate, with zero consequences to themselves. There may already be whistleblower laws but apparently they are not adequate to the task and need to be strengthened.

Representatives and Senators already have the ability to make public disclosures without consequence to themselves. Let us not forget a particularly egregious example of this, when Senator Orrin Hatch said, in the mid 1990s, "why are we paying good money to eavesdrop on the satellite phone of a guy named Bin Laden who lives in a cave?" Needless to say, Bin Laden quickly ditched his satphone, and the rest is history. But the point this illustrates, is that a Representative or Senator, having met with some future Snowden-equivalent, could choose to make public disclosures (more cautiously than Hatch did!) that were sufficient to get the ball rolling on reforms. All of this without celebrity status for leakers, without indiscriminate data-dumps that really do cause harm, and without the media-frenzy digressions that interfere with the real issues at hand.

As for solar flairs (and chemtrails;-), it's clear that the Russian "news" item is sheer horse manure: they didn't even get the name of the agency correct. This would be obvious to Americans but not necessarily obvious to Russians, which supports the conclusion that it's for domestic consumption. But let's not forget that Russia is the heartland of conspiracy theory: after decades of dictatorship (a habit that apparently dies hard), there is a strong tendency in the culture to believe any outlandish crazy thing that's branded as a disclosure about secret government goings-on.

I'm inclined to believe (Ockham) that the Russian article was purely the result of some editor's desire for sensationalism combined with an absence of even basic fact-checking. But in the absence of certainty about its intent, we can observe its impact. I'm inclined to believe that the impact will also be minimal. September will come and go without apocalypse, and the media will find some new source of cheap thrills.

If there's any PRISM inmates out there who are forcing themselves to read most of the internet tripe and trying to pass it off as "intelligence"... I just want to say, "Hi; hope you're not too bored and the pay is good" ;-)

While I don't count myself as blindly uncritical of WikiLeaks and I agree with Greg that not all diplomatic secrets need to be, nor should be, exposed, I think it is pretty laughable to criticize Snowden for "violating the terms of his security clearance".

And only in America could the exposure of a massive government surveillance state be met with tongue clucks about how he should have just told the government...

The story is most likely made up by the Russian media, perhaps from a basis that CIA has a real (and justified) concern what will happen if we get hit by a major flare, but there is also a possibility that there are people in CIA who really believe that stuff. Remember "The men who stare at goats". Strange things can happen in secret organizations where there are no outsiders who can tell them "That's just crazy!".

@ #8
"I think it is pretty laughable to criticize Snowden for “violating the terms of his security clearance”. Why? Are you a member of the cult? Or one of those who think 9/11 was an inside job by a zionist conspiracy in the govmint? Some things may be over classified but there are things that could damage the security of the US if disclosed. That is why the "terms of his security clearance" is not a laughing matter. The Brits during WWII made stuff up and attributed it to real living, but unknowing, British citizens in order to mislead the Germans. Mr.Snowden, if there, might have determined that doing such things was wrong and the world should know what was going on. If so he would have sunk the D-day invasion.

Are you a member of the cult?
um...okay..?

Or one of those who think 9/11 was an inside job by a zionist conspiracy in the govmint?

Yeah, that's what I meant! Don't know how it came out as what I wrote....thanks for clarifying!

The issue of destructive solar flares is something I know a bit about. There are multiple issues at work here.

The idea that a solar flare comparable to the Carrington event of 1859 could seriously cripple the electric grid is something that people in the business are taking seriously. Governments are or should be making contingency plans for such an event, though not necessarily along the lines of what is being attributed to Snowden here. Contra L. Long above, this is a serious issue, because unlike in the 1800s, we have come to depend on electricity for everyday life, and most of our backup plans involve at least some nearby areas having electricity even as some areas are still off line. That includes generators, BTW: you probably have at most a few days of fuel on hand, and without electricity you can't pump replacement fuel.

The tell is the claim that people know, and have known for years, that the event is coming in September. Our solar flare models are not that good. We can watch sunspot groups, and predict which ones are capable of producing large flares. (Though not as large as Carrington's; we have not seen a comparable event since then.) I don't think we can predict exactly when the flare will go off. When it does, we on Earth will have between one and three days of warning if it's coming our way (not all flares produce effects on Earth).

Bottom line, as Greg says in the OP, is that either Snowden is a conspiracy nut, or somebody planted this story to discredit Snowden.

One thing that puzzles me about this case is why no heads (other than Snowden's) have been rolling at Booz Allen Hamilton, the contractor which employed him. Whatever your opinions of Snowden, it is clear that whoever hired the guy screwed up--the hiring process is supposed to weed out the sort of person who would do what Snowden did. And making the boss look bad is normally an unforgivable sin in the business world.

"The tell is the claim that people know, and have known for years, that the event is coming in September."

Exactly. This is one of those really interesting issues .... the frequency of very severe events is low enough that people can mix up likelihood and consequences.

Also, just to add some interest to the story: My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong, Eric) is that a solar flare has multiple components, with the photons reaching us first and more or less harmlessly. The solar storm that causes disruption is a physical, matter-involved phenomenon of a plasma cloud projected at high speed from the sun, but no where near the speed of light. The plasma cloud interacts with the earth days after the photons, which is why we can see it coming.

The part that causes trouble is the magnetic energy in the plasma cloud, and you can't measure the magnetic energy in advance of its arrival (apparently) so we don't know until the cloud hits how bad it will be. There was a baddish solar flair some time last year or early this year, IIRC that blasted us with a big bad cloud but the cloud ended up being low in magnetic energy.

Is that more or less right? I've been hoping to ask Neil de Grasse Tyson about this next time I interview him, because it is in his area of speciality. But you can have a shot at it now if you like!

Interesting point about Booz Allen.

@makeinu also these sci fi stories

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inconstant_Moon

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0660824/

Greg @13: You have the basics right. The orientation of the magnetic field in the cloud also matters: if it is opposite to the direction of the Earth's magnetic field near the front of the magnetosphere, the energy transfer is more efficient than if it were oblique or in the same direction. This is due to what is called reconnection: if two sets of oppositely directed magnetic field lines are in close proximity, they can change their topology such that they become interconnected with each other, and plasma can move from one side to the other (charged particles can easily move along magnetic field lines but only with difficulty be transported across magnetic field lines). But apart from that, yes, the strength of the magnetic field in the cloud matters more than the density of the cloud. And it is the cloud that would do most of the damage, in terms of electromagnetic effects. An astronaut unlucky enough to be outside when the flare went off could get fried by energetic particles moving just under the speed of light, but not enough of those particles would get through our magnetic field and atmosphere to do much damage to most people on the ground. (It is a problem in polar regions due to the geometry of the magnetic field, so certain long-haul flights will take less efficient routes further from the pole if a particularly nasty sunspot group happens to be aimed right at us.)

If you had warning, you could disconnect things. It is my understanding that big things like transformers would only be damaged if they are connected to long power lines. If you disconnected a transformer and shorted the leads together, it would just sit there through a Carrington-type event.

The problem would likely be due to lawyers going crazy over the certain losses from turning off the power grid from the projected damages from not turning the grid off if a Carrington-type event was going to hit us.

I wonder how fast we could disconnect everything.

One thing that puzzles me about this case is why no heads (other than Snowden’s) have been rolling at Booz Allen Hamilton, the contractor which employed him. Whatever your opinions of Snowden, it is clear that whoever hired the guy screwed up–the hiring process is supposed to weed out the sort of person who would do what Snowden did

While heads may roll (have they? How good is our info on this?), I don't think it is a clear cut case of incompetent or even sloppy hiring. If you take Snowden, and also Bradley Manning, at his word, and I don't know why that should not at least be considered, they entered into their positions as young, idealistic patriots, already inside the bubble. Being young, what they saw and learned changed them.

At least from the outside, it looks like pretty text-book whistle blowing. And yes, whistle-blowing involves betraying at least the trust, if not the laws, contracts and oaths, you have promised your employer to uphold. It is a classic utilitarian dilemma.

"Orders are orders" is not an airtight defense for complicity in immoral actions.

If you designed everything with that in mind, you could shut everything down in a few seconds. The power grid we have was not designed with that in mind, so it would take longer.

There are switches and circuit breakers to take power plants on and off line. I think the biggest issue would be coordinating the shut-down and having the decision made to do so in enough time to accomplish it.

You would want to first shed as much load as possible, then break the grid into small pieces, then shut each piece down and ground as much of it as you can.

The weak point would be nuclear power plants. They still need lots of power for cooling and running the control systems. That would have to be generated onsite.

Once the grid is powered down and all the power plants are disconnected, then electrical workers would need to scurry around to all the big transformers and make sure they were physically disconnected, locally shorted and locally grounded.

If you take Snowden, and also Bradley Manning, at his word, and I don’t know why that should not at least be considered, they entered into their positions as young, idealistic patriots, already inside the bubble. Being young, what they saw and learned changed them.

I don't know about Manning, but the reporting I've seen on the Snowden case says that he was already planning to do a document dump of some kind when he took the job with Booz Allen, and allegedly was in contact with Glenn Greenwald (the Grauniad reporter/commentator who broke the story) before starting the job. Which plans he concealed from his prospective employer. Said employer was under contract to the NSA in order to help run a program which, Snowden alleges, was designed to spy on US citizens in the United States without probable cause. Greenwald is a US citizen residing in Brazil, so the laws restricting the collection of US domestic communications traffic without probable cause do not apply to communications between Snowden and Greenwald. (US law seems to be anything goes WRT international communications, and Greenwald's history as a national security gadfly would make him a person of interest to the watchers.) So take your pick: (1) Booz Allen should have known what Snowden was up to, but didn't; (2) they knew what he was up to, and they let him do it anyway (for reasons which may be honorable or otherwise), or (3) Snowden is a sociopathic liar, and should have been weeded out on those grounds. In cases (1) and (3), I would have expected somebody to publicly either fall on his sword or be fired, even if it was a low-level HR flunky, just for the sake of optics. I may be incorrect in assuming that Booz Allen has any aptitude at addressing optics problems.

@daedelus2u: There are steps short of a full shutdown that electricity companies can take, and probably would have to take in a Carrington scenario, because the lead time for those is shorter than for most geomagnetic storms. (Carrington spotted the flare at about 1100 London time; the storm hit about 18 hours later, allowing telegraph operators in the northeastern US to operate on induced ground currents alone that night.)

One of the big issues is that grid interconnections create a very long effective antenna. The eastern US grid interconnection (one of three major grid systems in the US) covers from Maine west to Montana and south to Miami. We're talking 2000 km of antenna. The ~1000 km line between James Bay and Montreal (at particularly susceptible latitudes, and over a terrain of particularly susceptible rock) was enough to cause the March 1989 storm (the biggest of the satellite era, estimated to be about 1/3 the strength of the Carrington event) to bring down the electricity network for the entire province of Quebec. But since then Hydro Quebec has taken steps to harden their transformers, as well as capacitive coupling to ground in order to mitigate the effects of geomagnetically induced currents. Most US operators have not been taking such measures.

"The weak point would be nuclear power plants. They still need lots of power for cooling and running the control systems. That would have to be generated onsite."

So, there is a scenario where a nuke plant shuts partway down just making enough electricity to cool itself, or goes all the way down and uses generators to run the cooling .Then the plasma strikes. This shuts down all the electrical circuitry at the power plant. This means all sensors, control servos, and the cooling system. So the plant heats up and melts down, goes critical, and experiences hydrogen and/or fission-related explosions.

And this happens in all the nuclear power plants in the whole world all at once!!!!!

This is going to make a great movie.

Oh good grief.... I wonder if Snowden really said that, or if it's a fake; Russian media is not reputed for its sterling journalistic ethics, though one might argue whether to place it above or below The Daily Mail. I don't know enough about Russian journalism to say. That said, good grief. Assuming it's legit, then it's just one more notch against my opinion of Snowden and whatever lazy idiot did his clearance investigation.

I mean, if there's a massive, Constitution-defying spying program, that needs to be addressed. But Snowden is definitely an oathbreaker, possibly was intending to break that oath before he even made it, and has rather depressing credentials. He did not plan his escape particularly well, which at least argues against him having been recruited by anybody, or at least anybody competent. (Which is something to be relieved about, I guess.) I'm not too keen on the fact that he abandoned his girlfriend either. And now this.... If he believes this, then he is a grade A kook seriously overinterpreting what he saw at his job.

I mean, this isn't just suggesting the possibility of a Carrington Event for which we are underprepared. No, this is suggesting a specific event, predicted 14 years ago . . . . . . that would not merely disrupt our economy but actually kill most of us. Two months to extinction.

Sorry, that part is just ridiculous. A really really really powerful geomagnetic storm can cripple our power grid and damage our telecommunications networks; this would be devastating to our civilization, but it wouldn't be an extinction event. Assuming the grid can't be repaired within a few months, you'd start seeing starvation related deaths, heat related deaths, cold related deaths. But you wouldn't be seeing a single death due to the solar flare itself, because they are basically harmless to living tissue on Earth. OK, maybe in the higher latitudes a few more people might get cancer. That's about it. It's not like the Sun's going to go nova.

Lol! Like the CIA knows jack shit about solar flares, and like anyone can predict them 14 years in advance. Riiiight... Snowden's name attached to this is just a red herring.

I am 62 years old, so I should know better by now, but I am amazed at how thoroughly the discussions around Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden has shifted from the content of their messages to the content of the characters. One other point: when anti-GMO, an anti-science folks use language such as "tools of Big Pharma" or "Frankenfood" I just stop reading. When you use terms like "cult members" and "some sexy speaker at a skeptical convention I just met in a bar who has slipped me a Mickey." I just stop reading.

No, you would not try to keep a nuke plant operating on reduced power in the event of a Carrington-type event. You would shut it down, put all the control rods in, make it sub-critical and generate electricity onsite with generators to run what needed to be run with electricity.

As long as the power lines to the power plant were severed, it might be shielded well enough for diesel generators inside it to continue to operate.

The problem is that some very large transformers have a very long lead time (years), and require the products of large factories (steel sheet of specific composition, copper wire, kapton insulation, potting resins). These large factories in turn require large transformers to supply them with power.

There was a recent (last year or so) decision that required emergency power to do the spent fuel cooling to last for 2 years and the reason cited was a Carrington-type event. I remember suggesting that the cheapest solution would likely be putting everything into dry storage instead of a cooling pool.

Theo51, you must have missed a lot of things in those 62 years if you stop reading as soon as it gets funny. I agree with you about content vs. character, but they are both things that exist, and I happen to be talking about character ... of their supporters, not the men. But, maybe you don't want me to talk about those things. But, you can't tell me not to it turns out!

Daedalus2u, a current generation nuke plant shut down to that level and spent fuel pools still require cooling, right? So this would rely on the power generation system (diesel or whatever) to be shielded and possibly to even be able to be knocked off line and repaired very quickly. (I have a feeling they would do better at the first part and ignore the second part)

Also, I assume none of this is in place now anywhere.

How much heat the spent fuel pools are dissipating depends on when the fuel was replaced. The problem happens if there is a lot of spent fuel present.

They really should get that spent fuel off site and someplace else. You could cool spent fuel with flowing water, as in the open ocean or a river. Not ideal, but better than letting it melt.

The reactor would require pumps for cooling, and there wouldn't be time to remove the fuel. You could have those pumps powered directly by a diesel or a turbine. You would want electricity to monitor everything.

There were several problems that complicated things at Fukishimo. The spent fuel pools went dry, which removed the water that was blocking the radiation. That made the radiation levels at the top of the pools too high for human exposure. The radiation isn't line of sight, it scatters off of thing, even air, so the whole area couldn't be approached.

If they had simply installed piping to allow water to be remotely added to the pools, that would have prevented them from going dry. Once they went dry, the fuel got hot enough for the zirconium to catch on fire and that released the fission products in the spent fuel.

It is not funny. It is didactic and distracting and self-serving to use such language. We need to be sussing out the truth and examining and giving our takes on the actual actions of NSA folks. There are many, many more articles on all NSA activities than the one that you site. You look for slivers of evidence to support your belief. This is called confirmation bias, as you know. I have no investment for or against Mr. Snowden. I just want to learn what the NSA is doing and try to form an opinion and react to that. How are you "funny" comments any different that the frankenfood" commenters? Ha.

Pakistan sees first polio case since vaccination campaign disrupted

lborkowski — Thu, 09 May 2013 11:25:48 +0000

Pakistan sees first polio case since vaccination campaign disrupted

Earlier this week, a UN official told AFP that a child in North Waziristan, Pakistan had contracted polio -- the first reported case since tribesman in North Waziristan stopped authorities from conducted a vaccination campaign in June last year. AFP explains:

The Taliban alleged that the campaign was a cover for espionage.

Efforts to tackle the highly infectious disease have been hampered over the years by local suspicion about vaccines being a plot to sterilise Muslims, particularly in Pakistan's conservative and poorly educated northwest.

"We are worried because this new case comes as an example of a bigger impending outbreak of disease in the region," the WHO official said.

As we've noted before, it's not entirely unreasonable for Pakistanis to think a vaccination campaign might be cover for espionage, because the CIA ran a fake vaccination campaign in Abbottabad, Pakistan in an attempt to get DNA samples showing that members of Osama bin Laden's family were living there. After nine polio vaccinators were killed in Pakistan in December, deans of schools of public health wrote to President Obama denouncing the CIA's ruse and stating:

International public health work builds peace and is one of the most constructive means by which our past, present, and future public health students can pursue a life of fulfillment and service. Please do not allow that outlet of common good to be closed to them because of political and/or security interests that ignore the type of unintended negative public health impacts we are witnessing in Pakistan.

Pakistan is one of only three countries where the polio virus still circulates (Afghanistan and Nigeria are the others). Global eradication of the disease would be a public health triumph, and could save as much as $2 billion a year. Last month, an international group of scientists released a statement declaring their "conviction that the eradication of polio is an urgent and achievable global health priority" and calling on the global community to implement the Global Polio Eradication Initiative's Eradication and Endgame Strategic Plan. At the Global Vaccine Summit held in Abu Dhabi two weeks ago, global leaders pledged financial and political support to the plan and its goal of a lasting polio-free world by 2018.

The new polio case in Pakistan underscores the urgency of the situation, and offers a reminder that new approaches may be necessary now that the CIA's actions have weakened trust in existing vaccination efforts. In the latest issue of the Lancet, Qanta A Ahmed, Sania Nishtar, and Ziad A Memish urge that the Muslim world assume a more active role in the effort to eliminate polio in Pakistan, with Saudi Arabia taking leadership. They write::

Saudi Arabia and its health authorities are uniquely placed to bring about change in Pakistan for two reasons. First, as the site of Mecca and Medina and host to the Hajj, Saudi Arabia wields enormous influence in Muslim Pakistan. Second, Saudi Arabia has experience of introducing new public health recommendations and strengthening public health outreach by legitimising new public health measures with both formal Islamic authority, in the form of fatwas, and informally, through public opinion.

Saudi theocrats and public health officials are experienced in effective public health messaging in the diverse Muslim public space. ... Pakistan's Taliban views vaccination programmes as not being Islamic and a western innovation to be repudiated, at the peril of the murder of health workers and the inexorable rise of poliomyelitis. Saudi Arabia's clerics have shown the opposite view through their willing and engaged acceptance of diverse forms of advanced medicine — e.g., the use of alcohol-based hand hygiene agents, and use of porcine medicinal products if no alternative is available.

The authors point out that it's in Saudi Arabia's interest to help eradicate polio in Pakistan, because nearly 200,000 Pakistanis travel to Saudi Arabia annually for the Hajj pilgrimage. (Their piece notes that Saudi Arabia has public-health measures in place to prevent pilgrims bringing polio into the country, including requiring vaccination for visa issuance to pilgrims coming from countries where poliovirus is actively circulating.)

Whatever roles individual countries play, it's crucial that the global community act quickly and decisively to eradicate polio before it can gain a foothold again. And the US intelligence community needs to refrain from imperiling major public health achievements that save millions of lives worldwide, because health is a key component of security.

lborkowski Thu, 05/09/2013 - 07:25

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well, why can't the Pakistanis do it themselves?

Because the people living in rural areas believe its against their religion. It takes time to bring a collective change.

Pakistan's government is certainly very involved in the effort, but needs assistance. Vaccination campaigns are complex and resource-intensive -- they usually involve teams health workers going house-to-house to administer vaccines, which must be kept refrigerated (an aspect that adds to logistical challenges). And in Pakistan, now the vaccination teams need to have security teams accompanying them, too. If the global health community had waited for all countries to fund their own vaccination campaigns instead of providing assistance, poliovirus would still be circulating around the globe.

see here for some background on the anti-polio-vaccine efforts of the Taliban: http://www.brownpundits.com/2013/05/28/polio-workers-continue-to-fall-v…

UN halts Pakistan polio vaccination campaign after eight workers killed in 48 hours

lborkowski — Thu, 20 Dec 2012 15:34:48 +0000

UN halts Pakistan polio vaccination campaign after eight workers killed in 48 hours

Pakistan is one of only three countries where polio is still circulating (Afghanistan and Nigeria are the others), and its eradication efforts have just encountered a horrific setback: Over the course of 48 hours, gunmen shot and killed eight vaccination workers in and around Karachi and Peshawar. The United Nations has pulled off the streets all staff involved in the polio vaccination campaign. Jibran Ahmad reports for Reuters that the government is nonetheless determined to continue immunization efforts:

Karachi police spokesman Imran Shaukat said teams were supposed to tell police of their movements but had not done so.

"There has to be better coordination between the health department and police," he said. "We have decided that we will be more forthcoming and contact polio team heads ourselves."

Minister Khokhar said the drive would resume as soon as security was in place.

"The teams go into every little neighborhood. You can understand that enormous resources are needed if we have to protect each and every team and worker, which we will have to now," he said.

On Wednesday, police said they killed two people and arrested 15 during raids connected to the shootings.

Authorities in the northern Khyber Paktunkhwa province, the capital of which is Peshawar, said they would not accept the U.N.'s recommendation to suspend the campaign.

"If we stopped the campaign it would encourage the forces opposing the polio vaccination," said provincial official Javed Marwat.

But their insistence the campaign continue angered health workers who said their colleagues told officials in Charsadda about threats before Wednesday's shootings. The officials insisted the vaccinations take place anyway.

In the New York Times, Declan Walsh and Donal G. McNeil, Jr. highlight the essential role that women who volunteer as vaccinators play an essential role in anti-polio efforts; unlike men, they can enter private homes in conservative rural areas. They write:

Yet again, Pakistani militants are making a point of attacking women who stand for something larger. In October, it was Malala Yousafzai, a schoolgirl advocate for education who was gunned down by a Pakistani Taliban attacker in the Swat Valley. She was grievously wounded, and the militants vowed they would try again until they had killed her. The result was a tidal wave of public anger that clearly unsettled the Pakistani Taliban.

In singling out the core workers in one of Pakistan’s most crucial public health initiatives, militants seem to have resolved to harden their stance against immunization drives, and declared anew that they consider women to be legitimate targets. Until this week, vaccinators had never been targeted with such violence in such numbers.

Government officials in Peshawar said that they believe a Taliban faction in Mohmand, a tribal area near Peshawar, was behind at least some of the shootings. Still, the Pakistani Taliban have been uncharacteristically silent about the attacks, with no official claims of responsibility. In staying quiet, the militants may be trying to blunt any public backlash like the huge demonstrations over the attack on Ms. Yousafzai.

Female polio workers here are easy targets. They wear no uniforms but are readily recognizable, with clipboards and refrigerated vaccine boxes, walking door to door. They work in pairs — including at least one woman — and are paid just over $2.50 a day. Most days one team can vaccinate 150 to 200 children.

Faced with suspicious or recalcitrant parents, their only weapon is reassurance: a gentle pat on the hand, a shared cup of tea, an offer to seek religious assurances from a pro-vaccine cleric. “The whole program is dependent on them,” said Mr. Shah, in Peshawar. “If they do good work, and talk well to the parents, then they will vaccinate the children.”

At Superbug, Maryn McKenna considers who is striking vaccinators and why:

While no one has yet claimed responsibility, it is widely assumed that the attackers have ties to the Taliban, which has opposed the polio-vaccination campaign as a Western plot and accused vaccinators of working as spies for the CIA.

This is grievous and appalling. Infuriatingly, it was also predictable. Constant readers will remember that, back in 2011, the CIA did use a vaccination campaign as a ruse to attempt to to find Osama bin Laden. The unsuccessful attempt was denounced all over the world for putting the polio campaign at risk, and news sources within Pakistan quickly began reporting that vaccinators were feeling threatened. Adding to the sense of threat, a Taliban commander blocked the campaign in one province last June, a United Nations doctor and his driver were fired on in July, and a vaccinator was executed in October by a man who roared up on a motorbike and dashed away.

... All political events are multi-factorial of course. The Taliban are reflexively opposed to the West, and may have been enraged that the majority of these vaccinators were women, whom they seek to expel from public life. But as a global health reporter, I cannot see how the CIA can escape some responsibility for these deaths, and for the discouragement and confusion that is certain to follow.

Successful eradication of diseases like polio requires massive mobilization of resources, both human and financial. It also requires trust. If someone knocked on your door and asked you to accept a vaccination, would you accept? The level of trust will determine the level of acceptance -- and the CIA's vaccination ruse dealt a severe blow to trust.

lborkowski Thu, 12/20/2012 - 10:34

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A study of climatological research as it pertains to intelligence problems

stoat — Mon, 11 Jul 2011 14:34:18 +0000

A study of climatological research as it pertains to intelligence problems

I first saw this a while back: maybe 2 years ago, but CR reminded me of it recently. As far as I can tell it is genuine; the CIA offer to sell you it, though if you try to buy you get a 404. Why you'd buy it when others have it for free I don't know. I don't seem to have blogged it then; others did but just to push their own tedious ends (yes, its global cooling come again, don't all switch off at once).

There are a couple of things to look at in a report like this. The most interesting is, presumably, what did the CIA think about climate change then. Slightly less interesting, but revealing, is to ask "did the author have a clue?" The answer is no, as the following snippet reveals all by itself:

So: the author didn't have a clue, and neither did any of the reviewers; or worse, the CIA couldn't find any competent reviewers to read it (or perhaps it was Tip-Top Sekret back then, and they couldn't let anyone competent see it; if so, an example of the problems with sekrecy). Anyway, the point is, its wrong. If you're wondering why, the answer is that the major effect is latitude, or as wikipedia rather gawkily puts it, [[Effect of sun angle on climate]]. Clouds and albedo also matter, but don't explain why it is hotter at the equator than the poles. Sun angle does. There is more that I can't be bothered to go through; all in all it reads just a bit garbled.

So let's move onto phase two, which is to work out what the CIA was thinking. The summary is quite explicit, saying:

Not much room for doubt there; and there is more of the same (note, incidentally, that the disaster was going to be in terms of food supply; that appears to have been their major concern). But then again, not much in the way of references. We'll have to hope for more later on in the details bit. Lower down, we start to get some hints of what they have found:

So, this is fair enough: broadly, historical analogues; modelling; theoreticals. But as a summary of the science it is rubbish; just a year later, NAS did much better. More of the report ties itself into knots trying to oppose the "Lamb-ians" against the "Smagorinski-ans" and the "Budyko-ians" and whatever; well, the CIA was in the middle of the cold war and its job was to foster conflict.

A bit later, we start to come to what meat there is:

There are no inline refs, but there is a bibliography, and it is fairly clear that Bryson's sticky fingers are all over this:

There are quite a few pages of this stuff, and I think this is where they have got their summary and conclusions from. That those are inaccurate as an assessment of the then-current opinion (as shown by the section on the San Diego conference) doesn't seem to trouble them.

Conclusion: this report says more about the CIA, and the dangers of a report being hijacked by a small group of people when not put out for proper review, than it does about the state of climatology at the time.

stoat Mon, 07/11/2011 - 10:34

Tags

climate communication

The sun angle might also be considered important for heterogeneous temperatures between day and night. =)

Thank you for this post and the nice contrast with the NAS report. Far better to be able to reference an expert opinion and show contrast to a better contemporaneous report than for me to just assert CIA report is not a very good summary of the science at the time.

[And thanks for reminding me of it. I had a residual unease that I'd never fully read it before -W]

Ah am I banned now? What didn't you like about that comment?

[You'll need to be extra careful to stay on topic and have something valuable to say. Experience suggests that for you, that is effectively a ban -W]

How was that off-topic? I was merely reminding you that I was the one who put you onto that pdf a while back. Additionally, I also pointed out another example of how environmentalists decades ago got it dreadfully wrong - a local example (for me) at that.

Finally, I told you how your own words in this article could easily be applied to the current global warming state-of-affairs when someone in the future looks back at us.

[Yep - you just don't get it. Probably you'd be happier commenting elswhere -W]

I know this is an old post but I cam across it while researching one of Steven Goddard's conspiracy theories;

http://www.real-science.com/arctic-fraud-worse

The link he provides goes to a dead end but I suspect this was at the time of 'global cooling' mania. Goddard's post struck me as suspicious when he said "Thanks to the work of skeptics, two key government documents have been dug up" and the first was the 1990 IPCC report which isn't exactly had to 'dig up' and contains the infamous graph showing the MWP that is trotted out every time Mann's 'Hockey Stick' appears to claim that the MEP is now being hidden.

Anyway, I was wondering if you had any comment of the whole Arctic Fraud thing. The graph used by Goddard from the IPCC report appears on page 224 if that helps.

[Well, since its from SG, you know its drivel. The game is only to find out exactly how. As it turns out Bob Grumbine has the answer. Looking, I see that Kevin O'Neill has posted that link as the last comment at SG's - that seems to have stopped the thread dead as even the bozos there are capable of reaslising -W]

Thanks for that. Kevin has been a guest poster on my own blog so I don't know how I missed it other than I have found most of the comments on Goddard's blog aren't worth the read.

AAA Honors Franz Boas, After Shunning Him While Alive

emjohnson — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 17:34:20 +0000

AAA Honors Franz Boas, After Shunning Him While Alive

On July 9, 1858 the German-American anthropologist Franz Boas was born. To honor the man widely held as the "father of American anthropology" the American Anthropological Association offered a tribute for Boas today on their blog. What conveniently went unmentioned was the fact that the AAA censured Boas in 1918 for revealing that American anthropologists were covertly working as spies for the US government.

As Boas wrote to the editor of The Nation:

The point against which I wish to enter a vigorous protest is that a number of men who follow science as their profession, men whom I refuse to designate any longer as scientists, have prostituted science by using it as a cover for their activities as spies.

Boas was trained as a physicist (in which he eared his PhD from the University of Kiel in 1881) he was particularly interested in the problem of people's subjective experience in an objective world. It was while doing post-doctoral work in geography that Boas encountered the Inuit peoples of Baffin Island in northern Canada and began his career as an anthropologist.

Boas essentially created American anthropology as a science (rather than the gentleman's hobby it had been previously) and is primarily responsible for developing the concept of "cultural relativity" as a way to view non-Western peoples on their terms rather than imposing a European or American value system. He was passionate about the dignity of the people he studied and valued the trust between anthropologist and study population as integral to the discipline. When he discovered, in 1918, that American anthropologists were working as spies during WWI he was outraged and exposed what he viewed to be an outright abuse against science:

As anthropologist David Price wrote in The Nation:

Boas charged that four American anthropologists, whom he did not name, had abused their professional research positions by conducting espionage in Central America during the First World War. . . Anthropologists spying for their country severely betrayed their science and damaged the credibility of all anthropological research, Boas wrote; a scientist who uses his research as a cover for political spying forfeits the right to be classified as a scientist.

The most significant reaction to this letter occurred ten days later at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA), when the association's governing council voted to censure Boas, effectively removing him from the council and pressuring him to resign from the national research council.

As Price goes on to document, this was not the last time the AAA was involved with supporting espionage. During WWII most anthropologists were actively involved in the war effort and, in the post-war period, many continued this support by working directly with the OSS and newly created CIA. In the Church Committee Reports in the early 1960s it was discovered that CIA funding was involved in a third of all government grants for the social sciences. This is a relationship that has largely continued to this day.

As Price relates in his 2008 book Anthropological Intelligence:

Although few anthropologists have seriously examined their discipline's contributions to warfare, for over three decades anthropology's conscience has wrestled with its historical role as colonialism's handmaiden.

Whether it's their involvement in WWII, the Vietnam War, Iraq or as agents working on behalf of multinational corporations, the AAA members need to take seriously Boas' call for mutual trust and the importance of scientific non involvement in political affairs. As Boas concluded in his open letter exposing these practices:

They have not only shaken the belief in the truthfulness of science, but they have also done the greatest possible disservice to scientific inquiry. In consequence of their acts every nation will look with distrust upon the visiting foreign investigator who wants to do honest work, suspecting sinister designs. Such action has raised a new barrier against the development of international friendly cooperation.

The AAA does a disservice to Franz Boas' memory when they hold him up as a pillar of their history but fail to take seriously the values he championed.

emjohnson Thu, 07/09/2009 - 13:34

Tags

Anthropology

History

Politics

American Anthropological Association

cia

Franz Boas

Iraq

multinational corporations

Health care workers and torture

palmd — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 06:35:06 +0000

Health care workers and torture

The Times is reporting that health care workers actively assisted in the torture of CIA detainees overseas. This, as you might imagine, sickens me.

Many of us have seen movies or read spy novels where a doctor stands by as someone is tortured, monitoring their condition and telling the interrogator when they need to back off. It turns out this really happens.

I don't have that much to say about this that isn't obvious, i.e., it's never acceptable for health care workers (HCWs) to participate in activities designed to cause their patients intentional discomfort or injury. That's a no-brainer. But what justifications do health care workers use to allow themselves to participate in these activities?

One obvious one is that they may fear for their own physical safety or that of their families. In that case, no one should render judgment to quickly; this is a powerful inducement. This is probably not the case with American HCWs or those hired by Americans. A related issue is the fear of loss of gainful employment. This doesn't change the "wrongness" of the act, but it does help explain why someone would choose to participate. Economic coercion, whether real or perceived, is a powerful inducement.

Another reason HCWs might participate in unethical activities is a sense of duty. An Army medic, for example, may be ordered to participate, and may feel a duty to his superiors and to his nation. This also does not change the immoral nature of the action, but does present a difficult conflict for an individual HCW to navigate.

The final reason a health care worker may agree to participate is more subtle and more heinous---they may believe they are helping the victim. Their inner dialog may go something like this: "The prisoner will be tortured no matter what I do, so I might as well use my expertise to protect them in any little way I can."

This paternalistic and narcissistic view is nothing more than a way to make yourself feel good about doing a bad thing. The act of dressing a wound does not make up for having inflicted it. A doctor's participation may in fact lead to prolonging torture, allowing interrogators to "push it to the limit".

There is no justification for health care workers participating in torture. None. It is always wrong. It violates the dignity and autonomy of your patient, and allows them to experience more discomfort than they might have without the help of a health care worker. If the CIA wants to torture people that's their problem---health care workers cannot be there to help them turn the screw a little further, or to soothe the conscience of the interrogator. You chose your profession---you must either hold to its ethics or step away from the job.

palmd Wed, 04/08/2009 - 02:35

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Yes, and that's true for health-care professionals everywhere. To me, it is just as basic that Americans shouldn't torture. It is against our laws and our traditions. And there needs to be an accounting for the illegal torture that took place.

you left one out--
the health care workers might believe that the people being tortured are not fully human.

This reminds me of the ethics of using Psychiatrists for military interrogations and the ethics about physicians supervising lethal injection

To me, it is just as basic that Americans shouldn't torture. It is against our laws and our traditions.

Heh! Against our laws, sometimes. Against our traditions? Unfortunately not so much so. I can only hope that the current spate of revelations will coax stricter laws out of a country that too foten believes that it is in the right to torture "bad guys" (to use Bush's term.)

A doctor's participation may in fact lead to prolonging torture, allowing interrogators to "push it to the limit".

Wasn't something like that part of the script in the Milgram experiment, with the man-in-the-white-coat saying he'd accept full responsibility for whatever happened to the test subject?

Another reason HCWs might participate in unethical activities is a sense of duty. An Army medic, for example, may be ordered to participate, and may feel a duty to his superiors and to his nation.

It is my understanding (and I admit that I may have it wrong) that there is a standing order in the US military that forbids members of the military from participating in massacres, torture, and other crimes against humanity. If a member of the military is ordered to do so by his or her superior, s/he is supposed to respond, "I can not follow that order, it is in violation of standing order XX."

Incidentally, your recent posts aren't showing up in your RSS feed.

Wasn't something like that part of the script in the Milgram experiment...

That could perhaps be seen as enabling the torture. The interrogators could convince themselves that the presence of a medic meant that they weren't doing any real harm to their victim.

This post gets a standing ovation!