The Metamorphosis: Scandal, Ignorance & A Bottomless Pit of Self-Justification...

"Scandal is our growth industry. Revelation of wrongdoing leads not to definitive investigation, punishment, and expiation but to more scandal. Permanent scandal. Frozen scandal. The weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist. The torture of detainees who remain forever detained. The firing of prosecutors which is forever investigated. These and other frozen scandals metastasize, ramify, self-replicate, clogging the cable news shows and the blogosphere and the bookstores. The titillating story that never ends, the pundit gabfest that never ceases, the gift that never stops giving: what is indestructible, irresolvable, unexpiatable is too valuable not to be made into a source of profit.

Scandal, unpurged and unresolved, transcends political reality to become commercial fact.

We remember, many of us, a different time. However cynically we look to our political past, it is there that we find our political Eden: Vietnam and its domestic denouement, Watergate—the climax of a different time of scandal that ended a war and brought down a president. In retrospect those events unfold with the clear logic of utopian dream.

1. Revelation: intrepid journalists exposing the gaudy, interlocking crimes of the Nixon administration.

2. Investigation: not just by the press—for that was but precursor, the necessary condition—but by Congress and the courts. Investigation, that is, by the polity, working through its institutions to construct a story of grim truth that citizens can in common accept.

3. Expiation: the handing down of sentences, the politicians in shackles led off to jail, the orgy of public repentance. The exorcism of shame, the purging of the political system, and the return to a state, however imperfect, of societal grace.

It is a myth, of course, but a lovely one. It relies on images of power, the press, and the people that fit our collective longing—for justice, for heroism, and for ultimate goodness residing in a people who, once alerted to wrongdoing, insist on its rectification. The obstacle to this natural self-cleansing of our political life can only be the people's ignorance. For if they know, and the corruption and scandals persist—well, how can the people be good? No, what must be missing then—so the myth implies—is clarity, revelation. What is missing is the gatekeepers of our ignorance whose duty it is to draw the curtain back from scandal and show the people everything, thereby starting the polity on the road to inexorable justice.

Information is all. Information, together with the people's natural sense of the good and the right, leads to expiation and society's inevitable cleansing.

Scandals, the more complicated and richer the plotlines the better, have above all to endure. Scandals provide the fodder for on-air confrontation, the verbal slash and parry—which is what television, a terrible medium for conveying information of any complexity, does best, and does most cheaply. Scandals provide subplots and minor characters and spin-offs. They offer, to the post-Watergate, high-profile, well-coiffed, colleague-of-the-powerful journalist hero of today—could anything be further from the deeply irreverent working stiff cracking wise in Howard Hawks's "His Girl Friday" - the true venue for the highest practice of his art, the television studio.

That art relies on, or anyway thrives on, scandal. Scandal denotes success. Scandal shows he is doing his job. Scandal means pay dirt. And scandal represents that media-age dream, the perpetual story. Scandal can be rehashed, debated, photographed, from initial leak, to perp walk, to hearing, to trial, to appeal.

Scandal offers an endless stream of what the business is after all supposed to be about: news. As in: what is new.

Scandal brings the heart-pumping, breath-gulping surge of stop-the-presses excitement, letting us know that into our fallen world the Gods of Great Events have finally come down from on high to intervene. Scandal represents movement, the audible cracking of the ice. And yet it is all an illusion, for beneath the rapidly moving train of gaudily hyped "breaking news," beneath all the grave and breathless stand-ups before the inevitable pillars of public buildings, beneath the swirling, gyrating phantasmagoria of scandal lies a kind of dystopian stasis.

Everything changes and nothing does.

It is not information, it is politics. If we have learned anything this past decade it is that "the people," that vaunted repository of public good—"the people always find out"—the people are willing and able to live with quite a lot. They read, watch television, grunt a pox on all their houses, and turn back to their dinners. Thanks to the efficiency of our age of scandal we now know as never before what the public is willing to live with. "Now you have shown independence, commendable independence," Barack Obama said to John McCain in the third debate, "on some key issues—torture, for example." Torture has metamorphosed, these past few years, from an execrable war crime to a "key issue." From something forbidden by international treaty and condemned by domestic law to...something to be debated. Something one can stand on either side of.

Something we can live with.

What notes on scandal could be complete without mention of the presiding master-scandal of our age, The War. One uses capitals to denote not a set of discrete events—a set of particular people being cut down or blown apart by particular violent actions at particular times—but a state of mind. Threat becomes not only a political shield but what is in the end much more dangerous: a source of bottomless self-justification. What is dangerous is not only that our leaders have endlessly maintained that they are right but that they believe they are. George Bush, as he declared to the world in a proudly emphatic phrase, had been reborn as a "war president."

George Orwell has long since surveyed this ground, most famously in 1984, in his perpetual war between Eastasia, Eurasia, and Oceania, a never-ending, shape-shifting struggle that, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless.... It helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs.

How will history choose to explain a war launched in the cause of ridding the world of weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist? It is a tantalizing question. Will the Iraq War take its place as a historical curiosity, alongside the Guano War of the nineteenth century or the Soccer War of the twentieth? And how interested will our descendants be in the response of our democratic polity: the investigations that, like dinosaurs slowly rousing themselves from the mudhole, ever so slowly got under way and then, after years of lumbering effort—hundreds of hours of testimony, thousands of documents examined—finally discovered...What...?

In the end, there was, alas, no "smoking gun."

-Mark Danner (Excerpt: "Frozen Scandal,"NY Review Of Books, Volume 55, Number 19 · 12.4.2008. Image: Poster for "The Pit And The Pendulum," directed by Roger Corman, 1961).

Non-Cooperative Human Subjects: Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

“The Pentagon is looking for contractors to provide a "Multi-Robot Pursuit System" that will let packs of robots "search for and detect a non-cooperative human".

Original Department of Defense Proposal:

SITIS Topic Details
Program: SBIR
Topic Num: A08-204 (Army)
Title: Multi-Robot Pursuit System
Research & Technical Areas: Ground/Sea Vehicles
Objective: Develop a software and sensor package to enable a team of robots to search for and detect human presence in an indoor environment.

Description: There are many research efforts within robotics in path planning, exploration, and mapping of indoor and outdoor environments. Operator control units are available that allow semi-autonomous map-based control of a team of robots. While the test environments are usually benign, they are slowly becoming longer and more complex. There has also been significant research in the game theory community involving pursuit/evasion scenarios.

This topic seeks to merge these research areas and develop a software/hardware suit that would enable a multi-robot team, together with a human operator, to search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject. The main research task will involve determining the movements of the robot team through the environment to maximize the opportunity to find the subject, while minimizing the chances of missing the subject. If the operator is an active member of the search team, the software should minimize the chance that the operator may encounter the subject. As a simplification, the building layout could be given, although operating in an unknown environment with unknown obstacles is more realistic. The latter case should be studied at least in simulation. The software should maintain awareness of line-of-sight, as well as communication and sensor limits. It will be necessary to determine an appropriate sensor suite that can reliably detect human presence and is suitable for implementation on small robotic platforms. Additionally, the robot may not have the intelligence, sensing, or manipulative power to perform reconnaissance under full autonomy.

For example, the robot may not be able to negotiate all obstacles, determine the course of action when confronted with difficult choices, or have sufficient team members to optimally search. Part of the research will involve determining what role the human operator will play in the search task. The system should flag the operator when assistance is required. Typical robots for this type of activity are expected to weigh less than 100 Kg and the team would have three to five robots.

PHASE I: Develop the system design and determine the required capabilities of the platforms and sensors. Perform initial feasibility experiments, either in simulation or with existing hardware. Documentation of design tradeoffs and feasibility analysis shall be required in the final report.

PHASE II: Implement the software and hardware into a sensor package, integrate the package with a generic mobile robot, and demonstrate the system’s performance in a suitable indoor environment. Deliverables shall include the prototype system and a final report, which shall contain documentation of all activities in this project and a user's guide and technical specifications for the prototype system.

PHASE III: Robots that can intelligently and autonomously search for objects have potential commercialization within search and rescue, fire fighting, reconnaissance, and automated biological, chemical and radiation sensing with mobile platforms.

-DOD Small Business Innovation Research SITIS (dodsbir.net, 2007).

“Given that iRobot last year struck a deal with Taser International to mount stun weapons on its military robots, how long before we see packs of droids hunting down pesky demonstrators with paralyzing weapons? Or could the packs even be lethally armed? I asked two experts on automated weapons what they thought. Both were concerned that packs of robots would be entrusted with tasks - and weapons - they were not up to handling without making wrong decisions.

Steve Wright of Leeds Metropolitan University is an expert on police and military technologies, and last year correctly predicted this pack-hunting mode of operation would happen:

"The giveaway here is the phrase 'a non-cooperative human subject'. What we have here are the beginnings of something designed to enable robots to hunt down humans like a pack of dogs. Once the software is perfected we can reasonably anticipate that they will become autonomous and become armed. We can also expect such systems to be equipped with human detection and tracking devices including sensors which detect human breath and the radio waves associated with a human heart beat. These are technologies already developed."

Another commentator often in the news for his views on military robot autonomy is Noel Sharkey, an AI and robotics engineer at the University of Sheffield. He understands why the military wants such technology, but also worries it will be used irresponsibly: "This is a clear step towards one of the main goals of the US Army's Future Combat Systems project, which aims to make a single soldier the nexus for a large scale robot attack. Independently, ground and aerial robots have been tested together and once the bits are joined, there will be a robot force under command of a single soldier with potentially dire consequences for innocents. ...If you have an autonomous robot then it's going to make decisions who to kill, when to kill and where to kill them. The scary thing is that the reason this has to happen is because of mission complexity and also so that when there's a problem with communications you can send a robot in with no communication and it will decide who to kill."

Sharkey also warned that such autonomous weapons could easily be used in the future by law enforcement officials in cites, pointing out that South Korean authorities are already planning to have a fully armed autonomous robot police force in their cities.”

-Steve Watson ( “Pentagon Wants Packs Of Robots To Detect Non-cooperative Humans”, Infowars.net, 9.23.08. DoD Proposal: See Above. -Paul Marks,“Packs of Robots Will Hunt Down Uncooperative Humans,” New Scientist, 10.22.08. Image: Model B-9, Class M-3 General Utility Non-Theorizing Environmental Control Robot. From Irwin Allen's classic 1960s sci-fi television show, "Lost In Space," 9robotbuildersclub.com, 2008).

Consequence Management: Ready To Be Containerized?

“I can’t think of a more noble mission than this. We’ve been all over the world during this time of conflict, but now our mission is to take care of citizens at home ... and depending on where an event occurred, you’re going home to take care of your home town, your loved ones.”
-Col. Roger Cloutier, 1st Brigade Combat Team Commander referring to crowd and traffic control equipment and nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals (aka: US Citizens)., 9.30.08.

A little-noticed story surfaced a couple of weeks ago in the Army Times newspaper about the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Brigade Combat Team. "Beginning Oct. 1 for 12 months," reported Army Times staff writer Gina Cavallaro, "the 1st BCT will be under the day-to-day control of U.S. Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command, as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks."

Disturbingly, she writes that "they may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control" as well.

The force will be called the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive Consequence Management Response Force. Its acronym, CCMRF, is pronounced "sea-smurf." These "sea-smurfs," Cavallaro reports, have "spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq patrolling in full battle rattle," in a combat zone, and now will spend their 20-month "dwell time"-time troops are required to spend to "reset and regenerate after a deployment"-armed and ready to hit the U.S. streets.

The Army Times piece includes a correction stating that the forces would not use nonlethal weaponry domestically. I called Air Force Lt. Col. Jamie Goodpaster, a public-affairs officer for Northern Command. She told me that the overall mission was humanitarian, to save lives and help communities recover from catastrophic events. Nevertheless, the military forces would have weapons on-site, "containerized," she said-that is, stored in containers-including both lethal and so-called nonlethal weapons. They would have mostly wheeled vehicles, but would also, she said, have access to tanks. She said that any decision to use weapons would be made at a higher level, perhaps at the secretary-of-defense level.

Talk of trouble on U.S. streets is omnipresent now, with the juxtaposition of Wall Street and Main Street. The financial crisis we face remains obscure to most people; titans of business and government officials assure us that the financial system is "on the brink," that a massive bailout is necessary, immediately, to prevent a disaster. If the economy does collapse, if people can't go down to the bank to withdraw their savings, or get cash from an ATM, there may be serious "civil unrest," and the "sea-smurfs" may be called upon sooner than we imagine to assist with "crowd control."

That's where the sea-smurfs come in. Officially formed to respond to major disasters, like a nuclear or biological attack, this combat brigade falls under the U.S. Northern Command, a military structure formed on Oct, 1, 2002, to "provide command and control of Department of Defense homeland defense efforts."

Military participation in domestic operations was originally OUTLAWED with the Posse Comitatus Act in 1878. The John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, however, included a section that allowed the president to deploy the armed forces to "restore public order" or to suppress "any insurrection." While a later bill repealed this, President Bush attached a signing statement that HE DID NOT FEEL BOUND BY THE APPEAL.

We are in a time of increasing economic disparity, with the largest gap between rich and poor of any wealthy industrialized country. We are witnessing a crackdown on dissent, most recently with $100 million spent on "security" at the Democratic and Republican national conventions. The massive paramilitary police forces deployed at the RNC in St. Paul, Minn., were complete overkill, discouraging protests and conducting mass arrests (National Guard troops just back from Fallujah were there). The arrest there of almost 50 journalists (myself included) showed a clear escalation in attempting to control the message (akin to the ban on photos of flag-draped coffins of soldiers). There are two ongoing, unpopular wars that are costing lives and hundreds of billions of dollars. Nobel-winning economist Joe Stiglitz estimates that Iraq alone will cost more than $3 trillion.

In December 2001, in the midst of restricted access to bank accounts due to a financial crisis, respectable, middle-class Argentines rose up, took to the streets, smashed bank windows and ultimately forced the government out of power, despite a massive police crackdown and a failed attempt to control the media. Here in the U.S., with the prospect of a complete failure of our financial system, the people have spoken and do not want an unprecedented act of corporate welfare. We don't know how close the system is to collapse, nor do we know how close the people are to taking to the streets. The creation of an active-duty military force, the sea-smurfs, that could be used to suppress public protest here at home is a very bad sign.

-Amy Goodman & Denis Moynihan ("Invasion of the Sea-Smurfs," TruthDig.com, 10.2.08. Image: Poster Illustration of the "People Scoop" in the classic sci-fi film "Soylent Green," directed by Richard Fleischer, 1973).

The Military Mind MEDUSA: Purification With A Whisper...

"A US company claims it is ready to build a microwave ray gun able to beam sounds directly into people's heads. Bankrolled by the US Military, the device – dubbed MEDUSA (Mob Excess Deterrent Using Silent Audio) – exploits the microwave audio effect, in which short microwave pulses rapidly heat tissue, causing a shockwave inside the skull that can be detected by the ears. A series of pulses can be transmitted to produce recognisable sounds.

The device is aimed for military or crowd-control applications, but may have other uses.

Lev Sadovnik of the Sierra Nevada Corporation in the US is working on the system, having started work on a US NAVY (Small Business Innovation Research or SBIR) contract.

MEDUSA involves a microwave auditory effect "loud" enough to cause discomfort or even incapacitation. Sadovnik says that normal audio safety limits do not apply since the sound does not enter through the eardrums. "The repel effect is a combination of loudness and the irritation factor," he says. "You can’t block it out."

Sadovnik says the device will work thanks to a new reconfigurable antenna developed by colleague Vladimir Manasson. It steers the beam electronically, making it possible to flip from a broad to a narrow beam, or aim at multiple targets simultaneously.

James Lin of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Illinois in Chicago says that MEDUSA is feasible in principle."I would worry about what other health effects it is having," says Lin. "You might see neural damage. There are health risks, he notes. But the biggest issue from the microwave weapon is not the radiation. It's the risk of brain damage from the high-intensity shockwave created by the microwave pulse.

Clearly, much more research is needed on this effect at the sort of power levels that Dr. Sadovnik is proposing. But if it does prove hazardous, that does not mean an end to weapons research in this area: a device that delivered a lethal shockwave inside the target's skull might make an effective death ray.

Dr. Sadovnik also makes the intriguing suggestion that, instead of being used at high power to create an intolerable noise, it might be used at low power to produce a whisper that was TOO QUIET TO PERCEIVE CONSCIOUSLY but might be able to SUBCONSCIOUSLY INFLUENCE SOMEONE. The directional beam could be used for targeted messages, such as in-store promotions. Sadovnik even suggests SUBLIMINAL ADVERTISING (THOUGHT CONTROL, BEAMING INFORMATION THAT IS NOT CONSCIOUSLY HEARD (a notion also spotted on the US Army's Voice-To-Skull web page which was removed after this article's publication)." -David Hambling, (Excerpt: NewScientist.com,7.6. 2008)

MEDUSA SYMBOLISM:

"In Greek mythology, Medusa (Greek: Μέδουσα (Médousa), "guardian, protectress, queen", a sea nymph, was one of three gorgon sisters, and the most beautiful. She was courted by Poseidon, and made love to him in a temple of Athena. Furious, Athena transformed Medusa into a monstrous chthonic beast with snakes instead of hair, whose frightening face could turn onlookers to stone. She was beheaded while sleeping by the hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head as a weapon until giving it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield." -Wikipedia

"Medusa has historically been seen as the archetype of the nasty mother, however she is far more complex. She symbolizes the following:

Sovereign female wisdom. The female mysteries. All the forces of the primordial Great Goddess: The Cycles of Time as past, present and future. The Cycles of Nature as life, death and rebirth. She is universal Creativity and Destruction in eternal Transformation. She is the Guardian of the Thresholds and the Mediatrix between the Realms of heaven, earth and the underworld. She is Mistress of the Beasts. Latent and Active energy.

Connection to the earth. The union of heaven and earth. She destroys in order to recreate balance. She purifies.

She is the ultimate truth of reality, the wholeness beyond duality. She rips away our mortal illusions. Forbidden yet liberating wisdom. The untamable forces of nature. As a young and beautiful woman she is fertility and life. As crone she consumes by devouring all on the earth plane. Through death we must return to the source, the abyss of transformation, the timeless realm. We must yield to her and her terms of mortality. She reflects a culture in harmony with nature."

-Alicia Le Van, (Excerpt: Final Paper-"Women in Antiquity", 5.7.96. Image: Perseus and Medusa. Benenuto Cellini. Bronze, 18 feet high. Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence, Italy, 1545-54.).