Category Archives: Technology

Remember, Remember, the 5th of November

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In honor of Guy Fawkes Day I’d like to bring attention to a few intriguing statements from Alan Moore (writer of the graphic novel V for Vendetta) on the connections between his fictions and reality from an interview he did shortly after the start of the Occupy Movement.

Via The Guardian:

I suppose I’ve gotten used to the fact that some of my fictions percolate out into the material world.

…I suppose when I was writing V for Vendetta I would in my secret heart of hearts have thought: wouldn’t it be great if these ideas actually made an impact? So when you start to see that idle fantasy intrude on the regular world… It’s peculiar. It feels like a character I created 30 years ago has somehow escaped the realm of fiction.

…And when you’ve got a sea of V masks, I suppose it makes the protesters appear to be almost a single organism – this “99%” we hear so much about. That in itself is formidable. I can see why the protesters have taken to it. It turns protests into performances.

The mask is very operatic; it creates a sense of romance and drama. I mean, protesting, protest marches, they can be very demanding, very grueling. They can be quite dismal. They’re things that have to be done, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re tremendously enjoyable – whereas actually, they should be.

I think it’s appropriate that this generation of protesters have made their rebellion into something the public at large can engage with more readily than with half-hearted chants, with that traditional, downtrodden sort of British protest. These people look like they’re having a good time. And that sends out a tremendous message.

The reason V’s fictional crusade against the state is ultimately successful is that the state, in V for Vendetta, relies upon a centralised computer network which he has been able to hack. Not an obvious idea in 1981, but it struck me as the sort of thing that might be down the line. This was just something I made up because I thought it would make an interesting adventure story. Thirty years go by and you find yourself living it.

I have no particular connection or claim to what [the protesters] are doing, nor am I suggesting that these people are fans of mine, or of V for Vendetta…So there’s always… Now I didn’t feel responsible, but…at the moment, the demonstrators seem to me to be making clearly moral moves, protesting against the ridiculous state that our banks and corporations and political leaders have brought us to.

…It would probably be better if the authorities accepted this is a new situation, that this is history happening. History is a thing that happens in waves. Generally it is best to go with these waves, not try to make them turn back – the Canute option. I’m hoping that the world’s leaders will realise this.

…Vox populi, Voice of the people. And I think that if the mask stands for anything, in the current context, that is what it stands for. This is the people. That mysterious entity that is evoked so often – this is the people.

Read the full article here: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/nov/27/alan-moore-v-vendetta-mask-protest

Last July Moore was interviewed by Salon.com to talk about his new Kickstarter project, Jimmy’s End, but he also shared the following relevant observations about emerging NSA revelations, the surveillance state and technology:

There seems to be something going on, even from the briefest appraisal of the news, with the amount of events transpiring. This is such a connected world, it’s useless to isolate any part of it as a discrete phenomenon. You can’t really talk about the problems in Syria, because its problems are global. The waves of discontent and outrage — whether in the Arab countries, or in Brazil, or in America and Europe over the degrees to which its citizens are being monitored — are not separate phenomena. They are phenomena of an emergent world, and the existence of the Internet is one of its major drivers. We have got no idea how it’s going to turn out, because the nature of our society is such that if anything can be invented, then we will invent it. Sooner or later, if it is possible.

So the Internet is changing everything, but I wouldn’t yet want to say for good or ill. I suspect, as ever, that it will be an admixture of both. But we are all along for the ride, even those people like me who do not have Internet connections, mobile phones or even functioning televisions. I’m slowly disconnecting myself. Basically, it’s a feeling that if we are going to subject our entire culture to what is an unpredictable experiment, then I’d like to try to remain outside the petri dish. [Laughs] It’s only sensible to have somebody as a control.

To me, one of the biggest surprises of these recent surveillance revelations is how surprised people are. The level of surveillance we’ve had over here for the past 20 years now is ridiculous — and useless, I would add. Eerily enough, the security cameras on every street corner of Britain was instigated by the incoming Blair government in 1997, which was when I decided, back in 1982 or so, to set the first episode of “V for Vendetta,” which had cameras on every street corner. So yeah, we’ve had those for awhile; they’ve proliferated and multiplied for decades. More recently, there have been troops of police who have said that all these things are useful for is alienating the public. [Laughs] They are not actually useful in the prevention of crimes, or even actually apprehending their suspects.

Here’s the thing: If you’re monitoring every single thing that goes on in a given culture, if you have all the information that is there to be had, then that is the equivalent of having none of it. [Laughs] How are you going to process that amount of information? That’s when you get all these wonderful emerging paradoxes. Recently over here, there was a case where it was suspected that the people who monitor security screens were taking unnecessary toilet breaks and gossiping when they should be watching us. So it was decided that the only sensible thing to do was to put a security camera in the monitor room. [Laughs] This is answering the question that Juvenal asked so succinctly all those years ago: Who watches the watchmen? The answer is more watchmen! And yet more watchmen watch them, and of course it will eventually occur to them to ask: Can those people who are watching the people doing the watching really be trusted? Much better if they were under surveillance.

That’s the level of absurdity these Orwellian solutions bring to our increasingly complex world. George Orwell’s vision was 1947. Yes, the world was more complex than it had been, but nowhere near as complex as it was going to get. We currently have in Northampton — and I think we might be the first to have it — security cameras in some places that actually talk to you. “Pick that cigarette end up! Yes, you!” [Laughs] Which is so much like Patrick McGoohan’s vision for the Village in “The Prisoner,” all those years ago.

…Technology is always a two-edged sword. It will bring in many benefits, but also many disasters. Because of the complexity of our situation, we cannot predict what things will be until they happen. It’s just part of our responsibility as people in the modern world to do our very, very best to deal with them, and think them through, as they occur. While I’m remote from most technology to the point that I’m kind of Amish, I have played a couple of computer games — until I realized I was being bloodied with adrenalin over something that wasn’t real. At the end of a couple of hours of very addictive play, I may have procured the necessary amount of mushrooms to save a princess, but I also wasted hours of my life that I’ll never be able to get back. This is the reason I am not on the Internet. I am aware of its power as a distraction, and I don’t have the time for that.

Despite the constant clamor for attention from the modern world, I do believe we need to procure a psychological space for ourselves. I apparently know some people who try to achieve this by logging off, or going without their Twitter or Facebook for a limited period. Which I suppose is encouraging, although it doesn’t seem that remarkable from my perspective. I think that people need to establish their own psychological territory in face of the encroaching world.

Read the full interview here: http://www.salon.com/2013/07/07/alan_moore_the_revolution_will_be_crowd_funded/

Despite the fact that Moore said he disowned all Hollywood adaptations of his works, in my opinion the quality of his writing can transcend limitations inherent in such attempts, retaining power and resonance even in “watered down” form. Though I was disappointed by the film version of V for Vendetta overall, many who would not have otherwise been exposed to Moore’s work were able to absorb important aspects of his message through it and viral clips such as this:

Chemtrails: A Planetary Catastrophe

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Originally posted at GeoEngineering Watch on September 20, 2013

Planet Earth has been besieged by many and diverse scientific experiments over the past one hundred years. Applied science and technology have seen a literal explosion of top secret and highly classified operations conducted in the atmosphere, throughout the planetary surface, as well as deep within the Earth’s crust. However, none comes close to the degree of round-the-clock damage inflicted on the biosphere as the DARPA-sponsored program of geo-engineering.

Just one component of this secret geo-engineering program is known as chemtrails. For those who have never heard of chemtrails, they are not to be confused with contrails, which are the normal exhaust vapors ejected from jet engines in flight. Here is a photo of numerous chemtrails having just been laid down by special jets equipped to do the job:

Can you imagine that the government has labeled these chemtrails as normal contrail activity?

Geoengineeringwatch.org
(This website is the most definitive on the internet regarding geoengineering, chemtrails, and other related subjects which inform the thesis:
Geo-engineering is systematically pushing the planet past points of no return because of the convergence of several other destructive paradigms.)

Every reader of this article needs to understand that, where it concerns the outright destruction of the human habitat, geo-engineering reigns supreme in it’s potential to render the planet unfit for life … all life — human, animal, and plant. Geo-engineering has so many different facets to it, each of which are extraordinarily harmful to all levels of the Earth’s atmosphere, the entire surface environment, as well as the subterranean geology and oceans of the world.

So dangerous and little understood are the far-reaching repercussions of this geo-engineering assault that those of us who are initiated in this realm wonder if we are literally “one minute to midnight“.

For the reader’s benefit we have included a short photo-documentary so that all doubt will be removed as to the pervasiveness and relentlessness of chemtrail spraying of the skies throughout the world.
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Surely we have made the point by now, and that point is well taken. If not, then one is necessarily compelled to read further.

What exactly is a chemtrail? What are the toxic chemicals they are spraying on us?

“The term chemtrail is a combination of the words “chemical” and “trail,” just as contrail is a contraction of “condensation trail.” The term does not refer to other forms of aerial spraying such as agricultural spraying (‘crop dusting’), cloud seeding, skywriting, or aerial firefighting. The term specifically refers to aerial trails … caused by the systematic high-altitude release of chemical substances not found in ordinary contrails, resulting in the appearance of characteristic sky tracks.

“The chemtrail … trails left by aircraft are chemical or biological agents deliberately sprayed at high altitudes for purposes undisclosed to the general public and directed by various government officials.

“… the existence of chemtrails … phenomena as streams that persist for hours and that, with their criss-cross, grid-like or parallel stripe patterns, eventually blend to form large clouds. Proponents view the presence of visible color spectra in the streams, unusual concentrations of sky tracks in a single area, or lingering tracks left by unmarked or military airplanes flying at atypical altitudes or locations as markers of chemtrails.
– Wikipedia

(You know when Wikipedia provides such an accurate description, superficial though it may be, that there’s much more to this covert op than even the best researchers have been able to determine.)

For a more in depth discussion we will defer to the experts who have scientifically analyzed chemtrails to the greatest extent possible. Their explanation is as good as it gets.
GeoEngineering Watch

As for the chemical components which have been found in their wake, these known toxins can no longer be denied. The following website is a good place to start to answer these two questions.
Geoengineering & Chemtrails: What In The World Are They Spraying? And Why?

Here is a list of chemicals which are routinely disseminated via chemtrail spraying:

“Over the past decade, independent testing of Chemtrails around the country has shown a dangerous, extremely poisonous brew that includes: barium, nano aluminum-coated fiberglass [known as CHAFF], radioactive thorium, cadmium, chromium, nickel, desiccated blood, mold spores, yellow fungal mycotoxins, ethylene dibromide, and polymer fibers. Barium can be compared to the toxicity of arsenic. Barium is known to adversely affect the heart. Aluminum has a history of damaging brain function. Independent researchers and labs continue to show off-the-scale levels of these poisons. A few “anonymous” officials have acknowledged this on-going aerosol spraying.”[1]

We in no way mean to minimize the incessant injury to human health across the planet which occurs through the breathing and ingestion of the chemicals which are contained in chemtrails. What good can possibly come from barium salts or aluminum oxide or vaporized mercury or strontium 90 or uranium 238 being sprayed throughout the skies worldwide? Clearly, the extremely deleterious effects to human health, as well as to all living organisms, is self evident.

However, the purpose of this essay is not to further unveil their agenda with regard to human engineering of the physical organism. Rather, the scope of this article is to lay bare the most profound and fundamental alterations which geo-engineering is producing to the planet and its atmosphere. When these are both permanently altered in ways that are irreversible, the human race is then confronted with an extinction level event (ELE). Ongoing, slow motion, insidious, under the radar, pernicious to living organisms, but nevertheless an ELE.

Geo-engineering is a term which includes highly advanced forms of applied science and technologies, various newfangled chemical agents and synthetic materials, scientific bending of physical reality, as well as an assortment of reverse engineered modalities which are combined to produce specific outcomes. Because of the complexity of this essentially callow experiment, there are an infinite number of permutations which can be executed at any given time or place. Therefore, the number of opportunities for things to go wrong can be intensified exponentially.

Of course, the Butterfly Effect takes on new and dramatic meaning in the context of geo-engineering because nothing ever happens in a vacuum on this blue orb of ours. In fact, the more that the scientific community attempts to engineer weather (e.g. by manipulating hurricane and tornadoes or creating rain clouds) the more the boomerrang effect takes hold.

“A butterfly flaps its wings somewhere and the wind changes, and a warm front hits a cold front off the coast of western Africa and before you know it you’ve got a hurricane closing in. By the time anyone figured out the storm was coming, it was too late to do anything but batten down the hatches and exercise damage control.”
― Karen Marie Moning, Darkfever

For those who have never seen the actual aerosol sprays being ejected from the planes which are specially equipped, here are just a few snapshots. We only wish to make the point that this global chemtrail operation is certainly a ‘little more’ consequential than a butterfly beating its wings in Brazil or Botswana.

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HAARP-generated frequencies being conveyed through chemtrail-laden skies

The rapid proliferation of chemtrail spraying over the past few years has greatly increased the opportunities for frequencies to be disseminated through the ‘new’ atmosphere that is being engineered. These frequencies are set to produce a number of different outcomes, the most significant being to slow down the global warming phenomenon which is currently manifesting everywhere on the planet.

Because of such ill-fated attempts to effectuate such drastic changes in weather patterns that have been established for centuries, we now see drought where rain was once plentiful. And monsoons where there was drought.

For instance there are locations in Northern California and Oregon that have been without rain for six months. The forests in that area are literally dying because of lack of water and their consequent weakening which makes them susceptible to pestilence and disease.

Likewise, there are areas in the Southeast such as Florida and South Georgia which have just seen their first monsoon season in modern history. The meteorological dynamics for both of these radical shifts are directly cause by geo-engineering.  In fact, although it is a very complicated story, and one that is almost unbelievable at times, conclusive evidence has been amassed that supports the ubiquitous damage to the environment caused by chemtrails and geo-engineering.

In our next essay we will lay bare the geo-engineering agenda which has given rise to these climatological anomalies. When evaluated in the aggregate around the globe, it will be understood that weather patterns on Planet Earth will never be the same again. It is for this reason that the Cosmic Convergence Research Group (CCRG) has begun this series on Geo-engineering and Chemtrails.

There is perhaps no greater threat to the sustainability of life on Earth than this issue of geo-engineering. One of the primary reasons is because it remains hidden and denied by the governments of the world. Therefore it continues unabated, and is expanded with every turn of the globe.

Those of us who know and have witnessed its exceptionally destructive results, and have protested, have been faced with fierce resistance. We intend to deeply explore the reasons for this unparalleled obstruction, and reveal how critical it is that humankind terminate this agenda once and for all.

For reasons that will become obvious, the CCRG highly recommends the viewing and distribution of the following two videos:

What in the World Are They Spraying? (Full Length)

Why in the World are They Spraying? (Full Length Documentary)

Conclusion:

How can their possibly be a conclusion to this introductory piece on geo-engineering when we’ve barely scratched the surface?

When glaciers that have survived over millennia are melting at record rates, and the polar icecaps are disintegrating before our eyes, one begins to apprehend the gravity of this matter. Were one to objectively assess the catastrophic weather events over the past ten years, it would become readily apparent that forces are at work that cannot be slowed down. Any attempt to do so will only make matters substantially worse. And so they have.

Because of man’s insistence on playing god with the forces of nature, the normal balance has been irrevocably altered. As the scientific community continues to apply a “pharmaceutical approach” to fix things, it is clear that much worse scenarios are being set in motion. By treating the symptoms of a planetary transformation which must take its course, those governments and corporations responsible have essentially thrown more fuel on the fire. The “fire” of global warming (or global climate change, whichever you prefer) will not be extinguished until Mother Earth has completed a requisite period of renewal and rebirth.

It’s now time for the planetary civilization to participate in, rather than impede, this necessary process of planetary metamorphosis.

Cosmic Convergence Research Group
Submitted: September 11, 2013
cosmicconvergence2012@gmail.com

Endnotes:
[1] “Chemtrails: The Consequences of Toxic Metals and Chemical Aerosols on Human Health” By Dr. Ilya Sandra Perlingieri, Global Research, May 12, 2010

Required Reading:
To fully understand why such a fundamentally flawed geo-engineering paradigm
was even created, the following essay will provide some answers:
Cosmic Convergence Accelerates Epochal Planetary Transformation

Author’s Note:
The key take-away from this essay is that geo-engineering represent perhaps the single greatest threat to the biosphere. Because of its pervasiveness and profundity, geo-engineering has the potential to perpetuate numerous self-destructive feedback loops many of which have already been operative for decades.
Especially when considered in the context of 2013 catastophism, geo-engineering may very well provide the straw that breaks the back of Planet Earth. Why? Because of the convergence of so many other ongoing events and processes – both manmade and naturally occurring on the earth and within the solar system – which present considerable stresses to the planetary living environment.
When the multitude of ecosystems start to collapse around the world, those breaking points become history. Each of them may eventually translate to a point of no return, if they haven’t already. As certain key environmental thresholds are exceeded, humankind is challenged to reverse trends which may no longer be possible to reverse.  Too many detrimental and/or counter-productive trajectories are already pointing northward.
It is in this global context which geo-engineering can produce many awesome, unknown, and irrevocable unintended consequences. It appears to serve as a trigger for much of what has already been thrown out of balance. By working synergistically with other negative feedback loops, geo-engineering can also serve to significantly accentuate various downward spirals of planetary and atmospheric degradation.
That’s precisely why it must be terminated — NOW!

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Monsanto’s Quest For Global Domination Continues

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Earlier this month Monsanto announced their acquisition of big data weather prediction and insurance company The Climate Corporation. According to this article from RT, Monsanto’s chairman and CEO Hugh Grant said that “the Climate Corporation is focused on unlocking new value for the farm through data science… everyone benefits when farmers are able to produce more with fewer resources.”

Whenever a company like Monsanto makes such a big move, it’s always good to pay attention and connect the dots. The Climate Corporation is described in greater detail in this post from The Verge:

Founded by a pair of former Google employees in 2006, The Climate Corporation began life under the moniker of WeatherBill Inc. Siraj Khaliq and David Friedberg put together a complex system for highly detailed weather monitoring, prediction, and analysis, which allowed them to offer a new type of insurance to farmers. Instead of protecting growers against loss, WeatherBill promised to recompense their anticipated profit in the event of a given weather calamity. Thus, if you sign up for the company’s drought protection plan and your fields don’t receive the stipulated amount of rain, you still get the full anticipated profit of a healthy year’s crop.

Sounds like a guaranteed money maker for a company that can accurately predict weather patterns. But what if you can actually control the weather? Geoengineering Watch reported last year that The Gates Foundation is a major source of funding for a plan to release untold tons of sulfate chemicals into the atmosphere. The stated purpose is to reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere, and thus cool the planet to reverse the effects of global warming. But many environmental groups think the idea could have unforeseen harmful consequences and may result in permanent damage to global ecosystems.

A report released by Seattle based Community Alliance for Global Justice released the following information in this report connecting The Gates Foundation and Monsanto:

o Rob Horsch

§ BMGF Senior Program Officer, Agricultural Development Program, since 2006

§ MONSANTO 25 years with Monsanto. Last position held: Vice President of International Development Partnerships

o Florence Wambugu

§ BMGF Science board member of Grand Challenge in Global Health

§ MONSANTO Post-doctoral fellow (1991-94), Monsanto Company Outstanding Performance Award (1992, 1993)

§ BMGF GRANTEE Director and Chief Executive Officer of Gates grantee Africa Harvest Biotech Foundation International. Africa Harvest is heavily funded by Monsanto

o Don Doering

§ BMGF Program Officer, Agricultural Development Program

§ MONSANTO Serves on the advisory boards of the Biotechnology Advisory Council of Monsanto

o Sam Dryden

§ BMGF Director of the Agricultural Development Program

§ MONSANTO He had a brief stint with Monsanto in 2005 when Monsanto bought Emergent Genetics, of which Dryden was Chief Executive. He stayed on for six months after the acquisition, technically working for Monsanto

o Lawrence Kent

§ BMGF Staff, working on BioCassava Plus project

§ MONSANTO Director of international programs at the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, founded and funded by Monsanto

It has also been widely reported by The Guardian and others that The Gates Foundation owns at least 500,000 Monsanto shares valued at around $23m.

Geoengineering Watch reported a few years ago that according to former geoengineer and whistleblower David Keith, a stratospheric geoengineering program called AEROSOL is now considering using aluminum, over 10 megatons per year, instead of sulfur. Could it be a coincidence that, as reported by Farm Wars and others, Monsanto owns and is connected to groups that own patents to seeds resistant to aluminum and other effects of geoengineering?

As an indicator of rising global concern over Monsanto, protesters across the globe marched and demonstrated against the corporation last Saturday. It was the second global March against Monsanto, the first having took place last May with over 2 million participants worldwide.

A message from Dr. Vandana Shiva released to coincide with the march:

 

Fukushima: The Curse That Keeps on Cursing

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Today The Internet Post brought to my attention a series of updates on Fukushima that paints a grim picture of the scope of ongoing radiation hazards (a story which gets relatively little coverage in corporate news outlets).

On this clip from 10/1, thousands of Japanese are reporting recurring nosebleeds while doctors are forced to keep quiet about suspicions of radiation sickness:

Also, today a new radioactive water leak was found at the Fukushima plant and radioactive Bluefin Tuna was caught off the California coast.

At Energy News, they highlighted these excerpts from an interview with Tetsuro Tsutsui, an engineer of industrial tanks such as the ones used in Fukushima:

[…]the latest problem was emblematic of how TEPCO runs the precarious plant. He said it was “unthinkable” to fill tanks up to the top, or build them on a tilted ground without building a level foundation.

“That’s only common sense,” Tsutsui, also a member of a citizens group of experts proposing safety measures for the plant. “But that seems to be the routine at the Fukushima Dai-ichi. I must say these are not accidents. There must be a systematic problem in the way things are run over there.” […]

Podcast News Updates

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There’s been another string of relevant news podcasts in the past few days so it’s time for another roundup post.

Last week Rob Kall of OpEdnews.cominterviewed Peter Ludlow a professor of linguistics and philosophy, on topics including systemic evil, whistleblowers and hacktivism:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/rob-kall-bottom-up-radio-show/id359765013

On Friday, Abby Martin of Breaking the Set did an excellent job deconstructing the corporatocracy on Coast to Coast AM with John Wells:

http://www.mediaroots.org/abby-martin-deconstructs-the-corporatocracy-on-coast-to-coast-am/

On Monday Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report covered a wide range of important topics including an update on the corporate plan for Detroit (an American apartheid), the struggle to raise the minimum wage in Seattle, and Dave Swanson’s (of WarIsACrime.org) analysis of the multitude of lies in Obama’s recent UN speech : Listen to Black Agenda Radio on the Progressive Radio Network, with Glen Ford and Nellie Bailey – Week of 9/30/13.

From Traces of Reality there were two great consecutive shows. On 9/30 host Guillermo Jimenez interviewed Kevin Gallagher, director of Free Barrett Brown.  Brown is the journalist who faces a 105 year sentence, the bulk of which is related to charges associated with pasting a link in a chat room. On the 10/1 episode, Guillermo is joined by Vice President of The Future of Freedom Foundation, Sheldon Richman. They cover topics including the “government shutdown”, the national debt, taxation, private property, the “social contract,” and the fallacy of the “consent of the governed.”:

9/30

10/1

Crossed Cloned Cow Cripples Creator in Korea

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Prof. Park Se-pill of Jeju National University poses with attacker in 2009. Photo: Korea Times file

Prof. Park Se-pill of Jeju National University poses with his attacker in 2009. Photo: Korea Times

Via Slate:

In an event ripped straight of the gothic horror novel Frankenstein, a renowned embryologist was reportedly attacked by one of his cloned creations recently. The beast in this case, though, wasn’t a monster pieced together from the bodies of other animals—no, it was an 800-kilogram, black cow.

“Prof. Park Se-pill at Jeju National University had five of his ribs broken and injured his spine in the Sept. 15 attack,” reports the Korea Times. “Park was video-recording a black cow, which he cloned from species indigenous to Jeju four years ago, and all of a sudden, it charged and attacked him for 15 minutes,” a school official said. The embryologist will need eight weeks of medical treatment for his injuries.

The bovine made headlines in 2009 when Park successfully cloned it using a frozen cell taken from a deceased animal. This means the black cow is, in a sense, a “revival” of the cow that the cell was harvested from. Like a phoenix reborn after it dies—but rather than emerging from ashes, the cow originated from a test-tube.

While Park’s incident is unfortunate, it’s hard not to think of the real life allusions between the attack and Frankenstein. Perhaps if the cow could talk it would have quoted a famous line from the novel in which the monster exclaims to Dr. Frankenstein: “You are my creator, but I am your master—obey!”

Prof. Park is recovering at at Jeju National University and said he wishes to continue his study even if he has to be in a wheelchair. He reported the cow is now in a barn and no special measure will be taken despite the incident. This is some background of Park and his research from the Korea Times article that was cited:

Park has been recognized as one of the world’s leading cloning scientists since 2000 when he successfully took out human stem cell lines from embryos for the third time in history.

In particular, his team developed technologies using frozen eggs for cloning experiments _ the procedure that created the four-year-old cloned cow that gave him global recognition.

Taking advantage of his expertise, Park hoped to become the first scientist to establish stem cell batches from cloned human embryos by 2015 to help cure such degenerative diseases as diabetes and Alzheimer’s.

What Park vies to achieve is the same as what former Seoul National University Prof. Hwang Woo-suk claimed to have done in 2004 and 2005 ㅡ his feats later proved to have been falsified.

The Hwang case prompted the government to ban research with fresh human eggs in response to the ethical debate in the aftermath.

Instead, scientists have had to depend on a roundabout way of thawing frozen ova, typically leftovers after artificial insemination.

The government is unlikely to lift the restriction on the use of fresh eggs, which are deemed most suitable for therapeutic cloning research, in the near future.

Against this backdrop, Park and his team relied on their knowhow of the freeze-and-thaw process to extract stem cell lines from cloned human embryos.

Post the Wrong Link, Get 105 Years in Jail

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What kind of link does the government think warrants such punishment? Documents revealing the secrets-sharing relationship between government and private security companies, apparently. That was what Barrett Brown linked to, and was the root cause of his 105 year sentence. Brown is an author and activist journalist best known for his “spokesperson” role for the hacker collective “Anonymous”. He was also a close friend and associate of fellow journalist Michael Hastings, who was working on a story with Brown shortly before his death in a suspicious car explosion. In his last published article, Hastings wrote:

Transparency supporters, whistleblowers, and investigative reporters, especially those writers who have aggressively pursued the connections between the corporate defense industry and federal and local authorities involved in domestic surveillance, have been viciously attacked by the Obama administration and its allies in the FBI and DOJ.

…Barrett Brown, another investigative journalist who has written for Vanity Fair, among others [sic] publications, exposed the connections between the private contracting firm HB Gary (a government contracting firm that, incidentally, proposed a plan to spy on and ruin the reputation of the Guardian’s [Glenn] Greenwald) and who is currently sitting in a Texas prison on trumped up FBI charges regarding his legitimate reportorial inquiry into the political collective known sometimes as Anonymous.

…Perhaps more information will soon be forthcoming.

Christian Stork of WhoWhatWhy wrote a great piece on the connections between Michael Hastings, Barrett Brown, and Edward Snowden here: http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/08/07/connections-between-michael-hastings-edward-snowden-and-barrett-brown-the-war-with-the-security-state/

In 2010, Brown formed his own online collective called Project PM to investigate documents uncovered by Anonymous, Wikileaks and others. Among the documents they analyzed were ones involving the security company Stratfor Global Intelligence revealing close relationships between them, several other security contractors and several agencies of the government (including the NSA).

A recent article by Alfredo Lopez of OpEdNews.com covers the important details about the case and why it matters for all of us who believe in freedom of speech and freedom of information. The following excerpts outline why Barrett Brown’s case may also be of concern for everyone who uses the internet:

To make this personal, do you use links? Or, a less absurd question, are you sure the links you post don’t include criminal information? Today, there are an estimated 4500 federal criminal statutes and that means that, at some point in your life, you’ve probably violated federal law without knowing it. The same is true of the people who posted the material you are linking to. As ridiculous as it may seem, based on the Brown prosecution, you could be charged with a crime without having any involvement in it by linking to material posted by people who have no idea they committed a crime.

For example, here’s the link to the Stratfor files. While it indicates that these linked documents have now been cleansed of credit card information, I can’t be sure of that. Nor do I know that other information the government considers illegal (or may in the future) isn’t in there. I haven’t read all the documents. But based on what prosecutors are saying, if these files do contain information they eventually consider illegal, I could be charged with spreading it.

On the one hand, they attack privacy, which makes the Internet useful for us. Now they’re attacking links, the protocol that makes the Internet…well, the Internet. That’s something we can’t afford to lose

For those who might want to do something about this, there’s a website of people trying to organize a campaign in his support.

Read the entire article here: http://www.opednews.com/articles/When-Posting-a-Website-Lin-by-Alfredo-Lopez-Information_Internet_Internet_Internet-130918-548.html

At Traces of Reality Radio, host Guillermo Jimenez recently interviewed Christian Stork, author of the WhoWhatWhy article about the connections between Hastings, Brown and Snowden. They discuss Brown’s work and how he became a target of the FBI, how Project PM exposed HB Gary and Romas/COIN, the State Department and their use of “persona management software” and social media “sock puppets,” among other topics:

Show link: http://tracesofreality.com/2013/09/17/tor-radio-09172013-christian-stork-on-barrett-brown-project-pm-and-the-hidden-world-of-intelligence-contractors/