I’m always happy when people from the
Third World do well in the USA. But then there are those disturbing moments,
like the time I learnt what my beautiful Ethiopian flatmate, who fed me ingera
and had a lovely laugh, was doing in Brown University’s engineering
laboratories. One day she told me she was designing a bullet that could go
through bulletproof material.
Granted, to be doing research in your
early twenties is a triumph—but at what cost, I often thought. As I get more
immersed in Buddhist philosophy, and the “Do No Harm” secular counterpart of
the Dharmic “Don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie” continues to resonate in my
head, it is clear that the right livelihood is as important as one’s career
triumphs or the salary one draws in one’s job.
So when I read about Arati Prabhakar, it
was with a mixture of scepticism and unease. Aarati is Obama’s handpicked chief
of DARPA, the US’s defence research agency. A profile at WIRED magazine gives
her background-she’s a techie and a geek with a Silicon Valley background, not
a defence head honcho. It looks like President Obama wanted to turn the talent
and the money from the geek world into the defence world. Also the “double
benefit” of hiring a woman and a minority is well documented-and especially in
the defence sector, its a smart move because it could mute criticism.
The only problem, of course, that
DARPA’s projects are hardly transparent to the public. The poster girl is
pretty but the dark sides of the DARPA world is not.
Ms. Prabhakar is asking for a raise in
the budget of DARPA for 2015. Amongst
others, she says:
By seeking out scalable approaches for
dynamically controlling the electromagnetic spectrum or distributed cooperative
efforts to achieving air dominance, DARPA can help reduce the cost of future
systems.
The above from defence.gov, DARPA’s Role
to ‘Change What’s Possible,’ Director Says, By Claudette Roulo of the American
Forces Press Service.
So the Americans want to control the
electromagnetic spectrum. Why, we should ask. And we should ask this seriously,
because there’s a lot of things that can be done with the electromagnetic
spectrum that may not yet be known to the public yet. Including methods of
torture invisible and undetectable to the human eye.
And this seems to be paired with (Below
quote from same article):
Prabhakar said DARPA also looks for
research areas that are "bubbling." One of those areas is biology,
she said, which is beginning to intersect with engineering.
"In that research, we're seeing the
seeds of technological surprise," the director noted.
So what exactly is DARPA up to? Does
the US Congress know? I doubt they’ve
asked, or even if they have, I doubt
they have gotten a honest answer. And even if they have, I doubt this
information is in the public domain. It is entirely possible, however, that
these enthusiastic, proactive gentlemen and ladies have already started to
implement their new found scientific marvels onto people without their consent
or knowledge.
In fact, looking at the US’s punitive regime
of punishment to selected minorities, and selected targets thought to be
“enemies,” it is highly likely that agencies of this sort have already started
to experiment with new technologies for the purpose of control and repression.
The international world needs to step up and investigate what is going on in
these laboratories. Ban Ki Moon shaking hands with Obama is not going to
override the fact the international community is responsible for finding out
what is going on in these laboratories of darkness.
The American defence empire has operated
outside of moral or ethical guidelines since its inception. It doesn’t follow
any international or human rights norms except its own-which in many cases is
non-existent. Anything goes, as long as it can be defended for national defence
purposes.
This has worked fine, for as long as
there’s the required trillions to fund such activities. Apparently there’s also
a nice market for these goodies to
autocratic regimes like Saudi Arabia, which just bought 45 billion in
defence technology from the USA this year. Slavery continues unabated in Saudi
and the Gulf-labor is cheap and dead bodies easily disposed of. But now it
appears the USA’s trillions are coming under greater scrutiny. As is the bond
program which gave the US unlimited largesse to run up massive debts to fund
indiscriminate attacks on sovereign countries worldwide.
Can we rely on European leaders and
others to come through in this crucial moment? Are they asking the right
questions and connecting the right dots? Or will they let this let it slide
past, leading us into another century of violence, torture, wars and sinister
scientific usage?
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