Transhumanist Salvation or Judgment Day?

By Lou Cabron
June 30th, 2009

We're starting to brush up against real robots, real nanotech, and maybe even the first real artificial intelligence. But will emerging technologies destroy humankind — or will humankind be saved by an emerging transhumanism?

And which answer is more liberating?

If anybody knows, it's R.U. Sirius. The former editor in chief at Mondo 2000 (and a Timothy Leary expert) has teamed up with "Better Humans LLC." They're producing a new transhumanist magazine called h+. (And R.U. is also one of the head monkeys at 10 Zen Monkeys.) But can he answer this ultimate question? Terminator Salvation played with questions about where technology ends and humanity begins.

But what will we do when we're confronting the same questions in real life?

10 Zen Monkeys: Isn't this whole idea of real transhumanism kind of scary?

RU SIRIUS: Everything's scary. Human beings weren't born to be wild so much as we were born to be scared, starting on a savanna in Africa as hunter-gatherers watching out for lions and tigers and bears (oh my... Okay, maybe just lions), subjected to the random cruelties of a Darwinian planet. I would say that the transhumanist project is probably an attempt to use human ingenuity to make living in this situation as not scary as possible, and in some theories, to actually change the situation, to create a post-Darwinian era.

Of course, that — in itself — is scary. Our favorite narratives — our favorite movies and stories and comics tend to involve humans being altered by our own technologies to dramatically bad ends. Most of those stories are silly in the particular, but the broader fear of unintended consequences or the use of advanced technologies by intentionally destructive people isn't silly.

For instance, we explored the very rapid development of robotic technologies for warfare during the web site's Terminator Week. That's viscerally scary. Logically it can also mean less civilian casualties, less harm to soldiers, and so on. And on the other hand, it can also mean less hesitation to use violence against others, or a possibly objectionable system of total control in which revolution is permanently rendered impossible. And on the other hand... I can do the "on the one hand and on the other hand" until the Singularity or at least until the Mayan apocalypse of 2012.

But seriously, what really scares the crap out of me is that we might notmake radical technological problem-solving breakthroughs — that we might stop, or that the technologies might fall short of their promises. What scares me is the idea of a 6 billion-strong species finding itself with diminishing hopes, resource scarcities, insoluble deadly pandemics, and global depression based on the delusions of abstract capital flow resulting in increases in violence and suffering and territoriality and xenophobia.

10Z: But how does transhumanism resolve these problems? How does a bunch of rich people living longer solve any of this?

RU: Let's take this one at a time. The technological paradigm that has grown out of transhumanist or radical technological progressive circles that I'm most fond of is NBIC. Nano-Bio-Info-Cogno. The promise of nanotechnology — which has become much more tangible just in the last few months (thanks to developments we recently covered on our site) — is basic control over the structure of matter. This should eventually solve most of our scarcity problems, with the possible exception of physical space. (And there are ways we might deal with that, but I'm trying to keep it short.)

Nanotechnology, of course, has enormous potentials in terms of health as does biotechnology. People can find these details just about anywhere so I won't go into it. Anyway, sickness is perhaps our greatest source of misery and our greatest resource sink... particularly if you contrast sickness not just with the absence of disease but with the possibilities of maintaining a high level of vitality.

Then... information technology allows us to organize the data for distributed problem solving and — to a great degree — democratizes it. (More eyes and more brains on the problem, working with and through more intelligent machines.) IT is at the heart of all the breakthroughs and potential breakthroughs in nano and bio — and all this is leaving aside the further out projections of hyper-intelligent AIs.

You know, getting back to what's scary, I agree with Vernor Vinge that the greatest existential threat is still nuclear warfare. But next in line is the possibility of a major plague... a rapidly spreading pandemic. And already we can see that the tools for dealing with that come down to intelligent systems and biotech. There's biotech medical solutions using intelligent systems married to global mapping and communications and organized distribution. Human behavior has a role too, of course... but not as much as romantics might wish.

Eminent Cancer Scientist Found Dead in His Car with Toxic Chemicals

April 25th, 2009

There’s not much information right now.

Via: Perthshire Advertiser:

A SCIENTIST researching ways to help raise cancer survival rates was found dead in Blairgowrie this week.

Dr Thomas Friedberg, a notable member of the medical research team at Dundee University, was found dead in his car on Wednesday evening, close to the family’s Blairgowrie home on Emma Terrace.

But the police officers and ambulance staff who first arrived at the scene had to be taken to hospital after a number of unidentified substances found in Dr Friedberg’s car and home prompted a chemical scare.

A full-scale cordon was established around the Emma Road area while Tayside Police along with the fire and rescue service, forensic experts and chemists worked to establish the type of chemicals found.

Dr Friedberg (59) worked in the Biomedical Research Institute, part of the School of Medicine at the University where staff have described him as warm, kind and well-loved part of the team.

Professor Martin Pippard, Dean of the School of Medicine at the University of Dundee, said: “We are deeply saddened by news of Dr Thomas Friedberg’s death.

“Dr Friedberg was an eminent scientist in his field who had made many important contributions in the field of cancer research, particularly in drug development and toxicology.

“He was a much respected and loved colleague of many in the School of Medicine and across the University.

“Our thoughts at this time are with his family,” the Dean added.

And colleague Professor Roland Wolf, Director of the Biomedical Research Institute, added: “Thomas was a warm, kind and much-loved member of the Biomedical Research Institute.

“He made an exceptional contribution to the research programme of the institute and will be greatly missed.”

Dr Thomas Friedberg had been researching ways to improve anti-cancer therapy, identifying people with an increased risk of the disease and methods to prevent it.

The area in Blairgowrie close to where Dr Friedberg’s body was found remained cordoned off until the chemicals were identified.

All the emergency staff taken to Ninewells Hospital amid the chemical scare were checked over and released without the need for treatment.

Police established there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding Dr Friedberg’s death and, as with all sudden deaths, a report will be submitted to the Procurator Fiscal.

Something Wicked this Way Comes (Contrived Bird Flu 'Pandemic')

by A. True Ott, PhD
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/ottsomethingwicked20mar09.shtml
March 20, 2009

Something Wicked this Way Comes (Contrived Bird Flu 'Pandemic') by A. True Ott (Mar. 20, 2009)

Yesterday, March 19, 2009, a most amazing article appeared in the Seguin, Texas Gazette-Enterprise newspaper. (http://www.seguingazette.com/story.lasso?ewcd=7067c6003405a409) This is an amazingly chilling article for a number of reasons.

1. For the first time, an American county is organizing a mock response drill to prepare health care workers, police, and "volunteers" for the coming, "inevitable" pandemic. 

2. The article completely ignores historical facts, and subscribes to the extremely flawed notion mindlessly parroted by the United Nations that killer "pandemics" are "acts of nature" that occur regularly in 100-year cycles. FACT: The 1918 Spanish Flu Killer Pandemic had its origins in pathogenic-virus-contaminated typhus fever VACCINES that were injected into the veins of naive service personnel deployed during WW I.

FACT: Any "modern" pandemic will be started in exactly the same manner --- (i.e. contaminated VACCINES) in one way or another.

FACT: There was no "killer pandemic" that killed millions back in 1818, and no "killer pandemic" in 1718, etc. These lies and falsehoods MUST be corrected in order to understand the REAL AGENDA. 

3. The article utilizes three tried and tested tools of propaganda - FEAR-MONGERING, FALSE PRIDE, and CALLS FOR CITIZENSHIP. It begins by creating a scenario that most people deeply fear --- billions of dead around the world, with a full one-third of the United States people in grave peril. It then portrays the chaos that would likely paralyze the MASS VACCINATION CREWS -- with vehicle "lines" extending for hundreds, if not thousands of miles! Furthermore, this article follows the Illuminati Master's play book to the letter by skillfully utilizing PRS (Problem-Reaction-Solution) programming --- i.e. they create the Problem, manipulate the public's Reaction, thereby forcing individuals into their prescribed Solution (which is clearly MASS GENOCIDE just as Henry Kissinger, Zbignew Breszinski, et. al. prescribed in their Tri-lateralist publication titled "Project 2000"). How very convenient that our benevolent federal government has already prepared a "Strategic National Stockpile" of untested, untried, potentially lethal human-kidney-cell-based "Vaccines" manufactured in China (in 2005, China's defense minister, Chi Haotian declared China would "clean-up America all at once" by using a potent, new "biological weapon") which have been "hidden in up to 2 dozen 'secret' locations" since 2008. The article then calls for patriotic, civic-minded volunteers to sign up and help promulgate this insidious agenda, promising them that they would be repaid by being "the first in line" to receive the saving vaccines. 

4. Certain parts of the article contain clear Illuminati/Masonic symbolism. For instance, the article talks about "Five Points of Dispensing" or PODs. In satanically-inspired secret-society rituals (Grand Dragon Albert Pike wrote in "Morals and Dogma" that the "light-bearer" of the Masons and Mormons evoked by the "Five Points" was none other than "Lucifer, Son of the Morning") practiced by Mormons, Masons, and others, initiates utilize something called "The Five Points of Fellowship" whereby they receive direct communication from certain, mystical inter-dimensional entities by means of touching five parts of the body to form the inverted five-pointed star, aka the PENTAGRAM. See http://www.exmormon.org/boards/honestboard/messages/3224.html as well as the official Masonic "Grand Lodge of Texas" explanation athttp://www.themasonictrowel.com/Articles/degrees/degree_3rd_files/the_five_points_of_fellowship_gltx.htm.

5. I submit the specific DAY (May 2) of the planned Texas "response drill" is also significant. In witchcraft and other pagan/satanic cult circles, May 1, aka Beltane, is a very sacred day, parallelling Samhain (Halloween) as a day where "the spirits of the dead" can be readily summoned and accessed according to organized witchcraft covens. Beltane is the Black Sabbat where the male Phallus organ is worshipped, as well as incorporating a purifying process whereby human bodies are "cleansed" by means of repeatedly "going through the fire". FIRE is the Satanist/Illuminist/WICCAN cleansing tool. Lucifer, (according to his disciples such as Pike and Aleistar Crowley), seeks to "cleanse the earth" by fire. See http://www.highvalley.org/beltane-ritual.html I submit that FEMA and the CDC plan to use crematoriums to dispose of the millions of Pandemic Flu casualties fulfills this infernal agenda.

In the past few years, KBR [formerly Kellogg, Brown, & Root] , a subsidiary of Dick Cheney's Halliburton, have been building and expanding mass concentration campswith crematorium facilities attached. http://www.apfn.org/apfn/camps.htm What is their purpose? What massive national catastrophe would cause government agencies such fear and loathing to make them declare martial law and imprison civilians in "forced quarantine" camps? An international "pandemic" makes perfect sense --- and would CLEANSE INFERIOR "Goyim" or Kissinger's "Useless Eaters" by means of millions of burned corpses that have "passed through the cleansing fires". Moreover, the nation's police chiefs and law enforcement officers are preparing for just such a "quarantine" event. See article in Police Chief Magazine:http://policechiefmagazine.org/magazine/index.cfm?fuseaction=display_arch&article_id=807&issue_id=22006#Top


Something VERY WICKED INDEED, is surely coming this way.

Combine these five points, and what do you see? A Truly Bloody Mess! 


A. True Ott, PhD

---

http://www.seguingazette.com/story.lasso?ewcd=7067c6003405a409

County plans to deal with unthinkable

By Ron Maloney
The Gazette-Enterprise

Published March 19, 2009

SEGUIN — Around the world, up to two billion people have died — depending upon whose count one uses — and in the United States alone deaths could total one third of the population.

Somewhere in the federal government, the decision is made and secret medical stockpiles stored at secret locations are loaded into aircraft and, within 12 hours, moved to wherever they are most likely to be able to stop a pandemic that threatens mankind.

Local officials have 36 hours to treat their entire population — in Guadalupe County that would be 115,000 people.

A massive call-up of volunteers that, in this county alone would take 1,000 medical professionals and lay people is required to prepare and operate five Points of Dispensing (PODs) at which the life-saving medications can be distributed.

It may sound like the plot of a sci-fi thriller — but it’s what would happen if the 1918 Spanish Flu that decimated the world happened today.

Guadalupe County emergency management and their counterparts around the country are preparing for just such a scenario because in the history of humankind it happens once every 100 years or so — and the time is coming for the next one.

Were it to happen tomorrow, though, local officials would fail in the effort because they lack the local volunteers needed to try to stop the outbreak.

Guadalupe County Emergency Management Coordinator Dan Kinsey and his volunteer coordinator, Kay Hays, are speaking to local large employers and service clubs, seeking to compile a list of volunteers who can help. Wednesday they made presentations to a pair of organizations, including the Seguin Kiwanis Club.

Kinsey, who is responsible for coordinating the county’s response in times of natural or man-made disasters, made a presentation on the “Strategic National Stockpile” — those medical supplies the government has hidden in up to two dozen locations — and what the scenario would be like if part of it was distributed in Guadalupe County.

Kinsey and Hays are preparing for a May 2 dress rehearsal of a pandemic disaster at the Navarro ISD. Volunteers will set up and operate a “drive through” POD in which they will take a practice run at registering, screening and pretending to inoculate 100 volunteers so they can identify whatever problems might come up and prepare to meet them.

The same procedures with minor changes would apply to any similar emergency, such as an outbreak of smallpox or an anthrax or ricin attack, Kinsey said.

The challenges are daunting ones when one considers the kind of response that would be required in Guadalupe County alone.

Kinsey’s done the math based on the size of the average family, average vehicle occupancy and average vehicle length including space between vehicles of.

Were Guadalupe County to attempt to handle such traffic in one lane in five locations, each line would be 41 miles long, Kinsey said. For San Antonio, the lines would be more than 2,000 miles long — the distance from Calgary, Alberta to San Antonio.

And scenarios using license plate numbers to sort the lines are not viewed as likely to succeed, Kinsey said.

“If I tell you this half of this room is going to get your medication today and that half will get it tomorrow if there’s any left, are you going to wait?” Kinsey asked.

What Kinsey envisions is five “drive-through” PODs operating 24 hours a day until done on 12-hour shifts that will require 100 volunteers for duties as varied as administering medications, filling out paperwork, distributing food or water, providing security or watching the children of other volunteers.

The five PODs would have to be able to accommodate 3,200 people each per hour, and to do that, they would have to be located in areas where the traffic can be controlled without resulting in gridlock — meaning relatively familiar rural areas where traffic might be “contra-flowed” to provide the most efficient access.

NISD is one such location, and at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 2, Kinsey wants to run his drill.

“We’re looking for 1,000 volunteers in all, but we need at least 100 for the May 2 exercise,” Kinsey said. “This is not a big commitment — maybe three or four hours once a year — but it’s definitely a way you can help your community, your county and your country.”

There is another benefit to volunteering in case of a disaster, Kinsey said.

“Volunteers and their families will receive whatever countermeasures are required first,” Kinsey said. “They’ll be needed because our goal is to do the most good we can and we need your help to do it. I’d love to see the Kiwanis or any service club or employer become involved.”

The Guadalupe County Volunteer Organizations Active in Disaster, or VOAD, needs 100 volunteers for a May 2 emergency disaster drill at Navarro ISD. In the long term, 1,000 volunteers are needed. For information, contact volunteer coordinator Kay Hays at (830) 303-9702 or by e-mail at kay.hays(at)co.guadalupe.tx.us

Spraying aerosols into atmosphere may reduce global warming

Washington, Dec 30 (ANI):

Scientists are planning to put aerosols into the atmosphere to chemically unlock the greenhouse effect and allow more of the suns reflected heat to radiate back into space, thus reducing the effects of global warming.

According to a report in Discovery News, the idea has been put forward by David Keith from the University of Calgarys Energy and Environmental Systems Group, and his colleagues.

Scientists are concerned that Earth is growing increasingly warm due to greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere that inhibit the planets ability to radiation heat into space.

Human-related activities, such as burning fossil fuels, are believed to be accelerating the planets accumulation of greenhouse gases, even though naturally occurring phenomena such as volcanic eruptions and fires account for 97 percent of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Even if we stopped emissions instantly today, we still have enough CO2 in the atmosphere that it is possible we would have unacceptable levels of climate risk, said Keith.

While we may be lucky and find climate only warms by a degree or so, we may be unlucky and find it’’s more like five or six (degrees). Were not going to know until weve put enough CO2 to make an irreversible decision, he added.

Keith and colleagues want to investigate putting aerosols, such as sulfur, into the atmosphere to chemically unlock the greenhouse effect and allow more of the suns reflected heat to radiate back into space.

This brings up the question of who would make that decision, said Alan Robock of Rutgers University.

From an engineering standpoint, scientists have looked at a variety of systems to deliver the goods, including high-altitude aircraft, such the militarys KC135 tankers used to refuel fighter jets, balloons, artillery, even a space elevator.

Other options include lacing commercial airlines jet fuel with sulfur-containing particles, though this likely would give rise to a host of new problems, including engine contamination and safety concerns.

No one has actually looked at what would happen if you tried to put these materials into the stratosphere, said Richard Turco, with the Department of Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences at the University of California in Los Angeles.

Scientists disagreed on whether atmospheric seeding to change the climate could be successful on a regional level, or if any initiatives must be globally based to be effective.

They were united, however, in calling for a focused research effort.

Theres very little funded research (about) managing the risks of climate change, Keith said. (ANI)

(original article)

Researchers Have Isolated the Genes that Made the 1918 Flu Pandemic So Deadly, and Spliced Those Genes Into Modern Flu Viruses

December 30th, 2008

Via: Reuters:

Researchers have found out what made the 1918 flu pandemic so deadly — a group of three genes that lets the virus invade the lungs and cause pneumonia.

They mixed samples of the 1918 influenza strain with modern seasonal flu viruses to find the three genes and said their study might help in the development of new flu drugs.

The discovery, published in Tuesday’s issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, could also point to mutations that might turn ordinary flu into a dangerous pandemic strain.

Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin and colleagues at the Universities of Kobe and Tokyo in Japan used ferrets, which develop flu in ways very similar to humans.

Usually flu causes an upper respiratory infection affecting the nose and throat, as well as so-called systemic illness causing fever, muscle aches and weakness.

But some people become seriously ill and develop pneumonia. Sometimes bacteria cause the pneumonia and sometimes flu does it directly.

During pandemics, such as in 1918, a new and more dangerous flu strain emerges.

“The 1918 influenza pandemic was the most devastating outbreak of infectious disease in human history, accounting for about 50 million deaths worldwide,” Kawaoka’s team wrote.

It killed 2.5 percent of victims, compared to fewer than 1 percent during most annual flu epidemics. Autopsies showed many of the victims, often otherwise healthy young adults, died of severe pneumonia.

“We wanted to know why the 1918 flu caused severe pneumonia,” Kawaoka said in a statement.

They painstakingly substituted single genes from the 1918 virus into modern flu viruses and, one after another, they acted like garden-variety flu, infecting only the upper respiratory tract.

But a complex of three genes helped to make the virus live and reproduce deep in the lungs.

The three genes — called PA, PB1, and PB2 — along with a 1918 version of the nucleoprotein or NP gene, made modern seasonal flu kill ferrets in much the same way as the original 1918 flu, Kawaoka’s team found.

Most flu experts agree that a pandemic of influenza will almost certainly strike again. No one knows when or what strain it will be but one big suspect now is the H5N1 avian influenza virus.

H5N1 is circulating among poultry in Asia, Europe and parts of Africa. It rarely affects humans but has killed 247 of the 391 people infected since 2003.

A few mutations would make it into a pandemic strain that could kill millions globally within a few months.

Four licensed drugs can fight flu but the viruses regularly mutate into resistant forms — just as bacteria evolve into forms that evade antibiotics.

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4. Chip Can Detect Bird Flu
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Obama's Team Includes Dangerous Biotech "Yes Men"

Biotech “Yes Men” on Obama’s team threaten to expand the use of dangerous genetically modified (GM) foods in our diets. Instead of giving us change and hope, they may prolong the hypnotic “group think” that has been institutionalized over three previous administrations—where critical analysis was abandoned in favor of irrational devotion to this risky new technology.

Clinton’s agriculture secretary Dan Glickman saw it first hand:

“It was almost immoral to say that [biotechnology] wasn’t good, because it was going to solve the problems of the human race and feed the hungry and clothe the naked. . . . If you’re against it, you’re Luddites, you’re stupid. That, frankly, was the side our government was on. . . . You felt like you were almost an alien, disloyal, by trying to present an open-minded view”

When Glickman dared to question the lax regulations on GM food, he said he “got slapped around a little bit by not only the industry, but also some of the people even in the administration.”

By shutting open-minds and slapping dissent, deceptive myths about genetically modified organisms (GMOs) persist.

• The industry boasts that GMOs reduce herbicide use; USDA data show that the opposite is true.
• We hear that GMOs increase yield and farmer profit; but USDA and independent studies show an average reduction in yield and no improved bottom line for farmers.
• George H. W. Bush fast-tracked GMOs to increase US exports; now the government spends an additional $3-$5 billion per year to prop up prices of the GM crops no one wants.
• Advocates continue to repeat that GMOs are needed to feed the world; now the prestigious International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development has joined a long list of experts who flatly reject GMOs as the answer to hunger.

Food Safety Lies

Of all the myths about GMOs, the most dangerous is that they are safe. This formed the hollow basis of the FDA’s 1992 GMO policy, which stated:

“The agency is not aware of any information showing that foods derived by these new methods differ from other foods in any meaningful or uniform way.”

The sentence is complete fiction. At the time it was written, there was overwhelming consensus among the FDA’s own scientists that GM foods were substantially different, and could create unpredictable, unsafe, and hard-to-detect allergens, toxins, diseases, and nutritional problems. They had urged the political appointees in charge to require long-term safety studies, including human studies, to protect the public.

Their concerns stayed hidden until 1999, when 44,000 pages of internal FDA memos and reports were made public due to a lawsuit. According to public interest attorney Steven Druker, the documents showed how their warnings and “references to the unintended negative effects” of genetic engineering “were progressively deleted from drafts of the policy statement,” in spite of scientists’ protests.

“What has happened to the scientific elements of this document?” wrote FDA microbiologist Louis Pribyl, after reviewing the latest rewrite of the policy. “It will look like and probably be just a political document. . . . It reads very pro-industry, especially in the area of unintended effects.”

(read full report)