Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
The U.S. military's quest to weaponize culture | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
For those anthropologists who don't judge the vitality of our discipline solely in terms of revenue streams, the Pentagon's new interest in culture is worrying. So far the Pentagon has announced two major initiatives to mobilize anthropological knowledge for war. The first is the Human Terrain Team system, to which Gates allocated $40 million in September 2007. The Pentagon plans 26 Human Terrain Teams--one for each combat brigade in Iraq and Afghanistan. The five-person teams include three military personnel. Each team also includes an anthropologist--or another social scientist--who will wear a military uniform and receive weapons training. Described as doing "armed social work" by David Kilcullen, an Australian expert in counterinsurgency who advises Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq, the teams elicit information from villagers for Pentagon databases and provide cultural orientation to U.S. military leaders.
The U.S. military's quest to weaponize culture Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
The U.S. military's quest to weaponize culture Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Intellect and Emotions
Intellect and Emotions
by Simonne Liberty
EMOTIONAL EDUCATION
Our education system has built a mental image of what education is suppose to entail. Reading, writing and arithmetic has expanded to high tech skills. Academic intelligence has become a major concern in our modern society. Education in our system is viewed as the most important goal for success. Without education a person is lead to believe that all they can face is failure.
This type of view and attitude by the educational leaders of our country puts a band-aid on problems that need to be addressed in order for education to work. There are few two parent, stable and secure families in our society. Most families are plagued by dysfunctional relationships. Alcohol, drug abuse, physical and sexual abuse. Moral break-downs, child neglect and abuse. Single parent homes, and latch key kids. Fear of fatal disease (aids), poverty, homelessness, and hunger. When all these dysfunctional problems affect the majority of children in our society today, how can their educational skills be considered a FIRST PRIORITY in seeking goals for the future?
EMOTIONAL EDUCATION needs to be taught in schools along with academic education, for children to heal as they learn. Children who have to deal with heavy emotional problems at home, can not turn off the emotions when they walk through the front door of the school. High grade point averages and high IQ's are not going to benefit children who are inflicted with deep emotional problems, that are not dealt with.
Domestic violence, sexual and physical abuse, and a high crime rate will continue to escalate among bright and intelligent students who show potential to excel in academic skills, if they are left to fend with emotional struggles that they don't know how to handle. Children will react and respond to the actions that are done to them at home. They may be able to put aside the emotional stress during the school hours, and they may even get by without detection.
A high school diploma or college degree will not heal the hidden wounds that can't heal without treatment. Earning a decent salary for academic achievement may appear to be a sign of success. But when the fears of the past are deeply rooted, they can easily erupt or resurface unexpectedly, or in expected ways. Serial killers often are intelligent human beings who have been twisted emotionally into dangerous monsters. Often the root of problems go way back into a past where emotional problems were never faced, or taken care of. The emotional dysfunction erupts into an evil end.
Many people who physically or sexually abuse their own children or spouces, also may exibit high academic skills. Again, a high IQ is NOT a garantee that the hidden problems of the past will vanish and take care of themselves. The cycle will continue until emotional education is taught and the cycle is broken.
Moral values and concern for others, is not a priority taught in the basic academic program. The issue of "loving one another," is put on the back burner to teach that we live in a COMPETITIVE WORLD. We are taught that everyone has to fight for themselves. That type of reasoning is not going to solve humanistic problems in the world.
Often the need to learn about emotional education drives people to seek this kind of teaching, by religious means. Sometimes religion helps, and other times it only adds to the guilt and shame a person already suffers with. Often a person only becomes more confused, and continues the cycle of shame under the protection of religion. Religion can become a cover for them to live a double life. It is not uncommon. Religion alone is not the answer for all who see relief from the deep dark secrets they were never able to deal with in the past.
The average academic subjects of Math, English, History ect. do not touch a childs "FEELINGS". Feelings are more a part of living than knowing all the answers on an academic exam. When emotions are put aside and neglected, to teach programmed lessons, often those who succeed will be emotionless in dealing with life issues.
Copyright © 2002-2009 Helium, Inc. All rights reserved.
by Simonne Liberty
EMOTIONAL EDUCATION
Our education system has built a mental image of what education is suppose to entail. Reading, writing and arithmetic has expanded to high tech skills. Academic intelligence has become a major concern in our modern society. Education in our system is viewed as the most important goal for success. Without education a person is lead to believe that all they can face is failure.
This type of view and attitude by the educational leaders of our country puts a band-aid on problems that need to be addressed in order for education to work. There are few two parent, stable and secure families in our society. Most families are plagued by dysfunctional relationships. Alcohol, drug abuse, physical and sexual abuse. Moral break-downs, child neglect and abuse. Single parent homes, and latch key kids. Fear of fatal disease (aids), poverty, homelessness, and hunger. When all these dysfunctional problems affect the majority of children in our society today, how can their educational skills be considered a FIRST PRIORITY in seeking goals for the future?
EMOTIONAL EDUCATION needs to be taught in schools along with academic education, for children to heal as they learn. Children who have to deal with heavy emotional problems at home, can not turn off the emotions when they walk through the front door of the school. High grade point averages and high IQ's are not going to benefit children who are inflicted with deep emotional problems, that are not dealt with.
Domestic violence, sexual and physical abuse, and a high crime rate will continue to escalate among bright and intelligent students who show potential to excel in academic skills, if they are left to fend with emotional struggles that they don't know how to handle. Children will react and respond to the actions that are done to them at home. They may be able to put aside the emotional stress during the school hours, and they may even get by without detection.
A high school diploma or college degree will not heal the hidden wounds that can't heal without treatment. Earning a decent salary for academic achievement may appear to be a sign of success. But when the fears of the past are deeply rooted, they can easily erupt or resurface unexpectedly, or in expected ways. Serial killers often are intelligent human beings who have been twisted emotionally into dangerous monsters. Often the root of problems go way back into a past where emotional problems were never faced, or taken care of. The emotional dysfunction erupts into an evil end.
Many people who physically or sexually abuse their own children or spouces, also may exibit high academic skills. Again, a high IQ is NOT a garantee that the hidden problems of the past will vanish and take care of themselves. The cycle will continue until emotional education is taught and the cycle is broken.
Moral values and concern for others, is not a priority taught in the basic academic program. The issue of "loving one another," is put on the back burner to teach that we live in a COMPETITIVE WORLD. We are taught that everyone has to fight for themselves. That type of reasoning is not going to solve humanistic problems in the world.
Often the need to learn about emotional education drives people to seek this kind of teaching, by religious means. Sometimes religion helps, and other times it only adds to the guilt and shame a person already suffers with. Often a person only becomes more confused, and continues the cycle of shame under the protection of religion. Religion can become a cover for them to live a double life. It is not uncommon. Religion alone is not the answer for all who see relief from the deep dark secrets they were never able to deal with in the past.
The average academic subjects of Math, English, History ect. do not touch a childs "FEELINGS". Feelings are more a part of living than knowing all the answers on an academic exam. When emotions are put aside and neglected, to teach programmed lessons, often those who succeed will be emotionless in dealing with life issues.
Copyright © 2002-2009 Helium, Inc. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Saving Private Jessica - The New York Times
Saving Private Jessica
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: Friday, June 20, 2003
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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkI've been roaming Iraq, turning over rocks in my unstinting effort to help the Bush administration find those weapons of mass destruction. No luck yet.
But I did find something related, here in the city where it seems (contrary to early Pentagon leaks) that Pfc. Jessica Lynch did not mow down Iraqis until her ammo ran out, was not shot and apparently was not plucked from behind enemy lines by U.S. commandos braving a firefight. It looks as if the first accounts of the rescue were embellished, like the imminent threat from W.M.D., and like wartime pronouncements about an uprising in Basra and imminent defections of generals. There's a pattern: we were misled.
None of this is to put down Private Lynch, whom her Iraqi doctors described as courageous and funny in the face of unrelenting pain; they said that she told Abdul Hadi, a hospital worker who had befriended her, not to take risks for her because he was needed by his 17 children. Ms. Lynch is still a hero in my book, and it was unnecessary for officials to try to turn her into a Hollywood caricature. As a citizen, I deeply resent my government trying to spin me like a Ping-Pong ball.
Staff members of Nasiriya's main hospital told me, as they have told other reporters, how surprised they were when military officers brought an American woman by ambulance. Private Lynch was unconscious, with broken legs, a head wound and other injuries, apparently sustained in a vehicle accident during a firefight.
''She was nearly dead,'' recalled Saad Abdulrazak, the deputy hospital director, who received her.
The Iraqi doctors were enchanted by this blonde warrior, who as she recovered spent her time alternately crying and joking. I don't know how much to credit the Iraqis' claims that they gave her the best room in the hospital, that they went to the market to buy orange juice for her with their own money, that they brought clothes so that she would have something to wear. But they didn't minimize Iraqi brutality. Indeed, they told of an execution of a handcuffed American male. (I've put a fuller account of this execution and of Ms. Lynch's saga at nytimes.com/kristofresponds.)
The hospital staff also said that on the night of March 27, military officials prepared to kill Ms. Lynch by putting her in an ambulance and blowing it up with its occupants -- blaming the atrocity on the Americans. The ambulance drivers balked at that idea. Eventually, the plan was changed so that a military officer would shoot Ms. Lynch and burn the ambulance. So Sabah Khazal, an ambulance driver, loaded her in the vehicle and drove off with a military officer assigned to execute her.
''I asked him not to shoot Jessica,'' Mr. Khazal said, ''and he was afraid of God and didn't kill her.'' Instead, the executioner ran away and deserted the army, and Mr. Khazal said that he then thought about delivering Ms. Lynch to an American checkpoint. But there were firefights on the streets, so he returned to the hospital. (Ms. Lynch apparently never knew how close she had come to execution.)
By the morning of March 31, all of the Iraqi military at the hospital had fled. The hospital staff members said that they then told Ms. Lynch they would take her to the Americans the next day. That same night, the American special forces arrived.
''I met the Americans at the hospital entrance,'' said Dr. Hussein Salih, adding that Mr. Abdulrazak then led the Americans to Private Lynch. The staff members all said that there was no resistance, and that they welcomed the Americans.
Is this account the truth? I don't know, but every time I voiced skepticism, the doctors and staff all insisted: ''Go ask Jessica! She'll tell you.'' The U.S. military has refused to make Private Lynch available, although that may be out of respect for her privacy; in any case, she is said to have no memory of her capture.
My guess is that ''Saving Private Lynch'' was a complex tale vastly oversimplified by officials, partly because of genuine ambiguities and partly because they wanted a good story to build political support for the war -- a repetition of the exaggerations over W.M.D. We weren't quite lied to, but facts were subordinated to politics, and truth was treated as an endlessly stretchable fabric.
The Iraqis misused our prisoners for their propaganda purposes, and it hurts to find out that some American officials were misusing Private Lynch the same way.
E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com
Saving Private Jessica - The New York Times
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: Friday, June 20, 2003
Sign in to Recommend
Sign In to E-Mail
Reprints
ShareClose
LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkI've been roaming Iraq, turning over rocks in my unstinting effort to help the Bush administration find those weapons of mass destruction. No luck yet.
But I did find something related, here in the city where it seems (contrary to early Pentagon leaks) that Pfc. Jessica Lynch did not mow down Iraqis until her ammo ran out, was not shot and apparently was not plucked from behind enemy lines by U.S. commandos braving a firefight. It looks as if the first accounts of the rescue were embellished, like the imminent threat from W.M.D., and like wartime pronouncements about an uprising in Basra and imminent defections of generals. There's a pattern: we were misled.
None of this is to put down Private Lynch, whom her Iraqi doctors described as courageous and funny in the face of unrelenting pain; they said that she told Abdul Hadi, a hospital worker who had befriended her, not to take risks for her because he was needed by his 17 children. Ms. Lynch is still a hero in my book, and it was unnecessary for officials to try to turn her into a Hollywood caricature. As a citizen, I deeply resent my government trying to spin me like a Ping-Pong ball.
Staff members of Nasiriya's main hospital told me, as they have told other reporters, how surprised they were when military officers brought an American woman by ambulance. Private Lynch was unconscious, with broken legs, a head wound and other injuries, apparently sustained in a vehicle accident during a firefight.
''She was nearly dead,'' recalled Saad Abdulrazak, the deputy hospital director, who received her.
The Iraqi doctors were enchanted by this blonde warrior, who as she recovered spent her time alternately crying and joking. I don't know how much to credit the Iraqis' claims that they gave her the best room in the hospital, that they went to the market to buy orange juice for her with their own money, that they brought clothes so that she would have something to wear. But they didn't minimize Iraqi brutality. Indeed, they told of an execution of a handcuffed American male. (I've put a fuller account of this execution and of Ms. Lynch's saga at nytimes.com/kristofresponds.)
The hospital staff also said that on the night of March 27, military officials prepared to kill Ms. Lynch by putting her in an ambulance and blowing it up with its occupants -- blaming the atrocity on the Americans. The ambulance drivers balked at that idea. Eventually, the plan was changed so that a military officer would shoot Ms. Lynch and burn the ambulance. So Sabah Khazal, an ambulance driver, loaded her in the vehicle and drove off with a military officer assigned to execute her.
''I asked him not to shoot Jessica,'' Mr. Khazal said, ''and he was afraid of God and didn't kill her.'' Instead, the executioner ran away and deserted the army, and Mr. Khazal said that he then thought about delivering Ms. Lynch to an American checkpoint. But there were firefights on the streets, so he returned to the hospital. (Ms. Lynch apparently never knew how close she had come to execution.)
By the morning of March 31, all of the Iraqi military at the hospital had fled. The hospital staff members said that they then told Ms. Lynch they would take her to the Americans the next day. That same night, the American special forces arrived.
''I met the Americans at the hospital entrance,'' said Dr. Hussein Salih, adding that Mr. Abdulrazak then led the Americans to Private Lynch. The staff members all said that there was no resistance, and that they welcomed the Americans.
Is this account the truth? I don't know, but every time I voiced skepticism, the doctors and staff all insisted: ''Go ask Jessica! She'll tell you.'' The U.S. military has refused to make Private Lynch available, although that may be out of respect for her privacy; in any case, she is said to have no memory of her capture.
My guess is that ''Saving Private Lynch'' was a complex tale vastly oversimplified by officials, partly because of genuine ambiguities and partly because they wanted a good story to build political support for the war -- a repetition of the exaggerations over W.M.D. We weren't quite lied to, but facts were subordinated to politics, and truth was treated as an endlessly stretchable fabric.
The Iraqis misused our prisoners for their propaganda purposes, and it hurts to find out that some American officials were misusing Private Lynch the same way.
E-mail: nicholas@nytimes.com
Saving Private Jessica - The New York Times
Mind-Controlled Zombie Slaves - Uncle Sam Wants Your Brain
Uncle Sam Wants Your Brain
Drugs that make soldiers want to fight. Robots linked directly to their controllers’ brains. Lie-detecting scans administered to terrorist suspects as they cross U.S. borders.
These are just a few of the military uses imagined for cognitive science — and if it’s not yet certain whether the technologies will work, the military is certainly taking them very seriously.
"It’s way too early to know which — if any — of these technologies is going to be practical," said Jonathan Moreno, a Center for American Progress bioethicist and author of Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense. "But it’s important for us to get ahead of the curve. Soldiers are always on the cutting edge of new technologies."
Moreno is part of a National Research Council committee convened by the Department of Defense to evaluate the military potential of brain science. Their report, "Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies," was released today. It charts a range of cognitive technologies that are potentially powerful — and, perhaps, powerfully troubling.
Here are the report’s main areas of focus:
Mind reading. The development of psychological models and neurological imaging has made it possible to see what people are thinking and whether they’re lying. The science is, however, still in its infancy: Challenges remain in accounting for variations between individual brains, and the tendency of our brains to change over time. One important application is lie detection — though one hopes that the lesson of traditional lie detectors, predicated on the now-disproven idea that the physiological basis of lying can be separated from processes such as anxiety, has been learned.
Mind readers could be used to interrogate captured enemies, as well as"terrorist suspects" passing through customs. But does this mean, for example, that travelers placed on the bloated, mistake-laden watchlist would have their minds scanned, just as their computers will be? The report notes that "In situations where it is important to win the hearts and minds of the local populace, it would be useful to know if they understand the information being given them."
Cognitive enhancement. Arguably the most developed area of cognitive neuroscience, with drugs already allowing soldiers to stay awake and alert for days at a time, and brain-altering drugs in widespread use among civilians diagnosed with mental and behavioral problems.
Improved drug delivery systems and improved neurological understanding could make today’s drugs seem rudimentary, giving soldiers a superhuman strength and awareness — but if a drug can be designed to increase an ability, a drug can also be designed to destroy it.
"It’s also important to develop antidotes and protective agents against various classes of drugs," says the report. This echoes the motivation of much federal biodefense research, in which designing defenses against potential bioterror agents requires those agents to be made — and that raises the possibility of our own weapons being turned against us, as with the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, which used a military developed strain.
Mind control. Largely pharmaceutical, for the moment, and a natural outgrowth of cognitive enhancement approaches and mind-reading insight: If we can alter the brain, why not control it? One potential use involves making soldiers want to fight. Conversely,"How can we disrupt the enemy’s motivation to fight? [...] How can we make people trust us more? What if we could help the brain to remove fear or pain? Is there a way to make the enemy obey our commands?"
Brain-Machine Interfaces. The report focuses on direct brain-to-machine systems (rather than, for example, systems that are controlled by visual movements, which are already in limited use by paraplegics.) Among these are robotic prostheses that replace or extend body parts; cognitive and sensory prostheses, which make it possible to think and to perceive in entirely new ways; and robotic or software assistants, which would do the same thing, but from a distance.
Many questions surrounding the safety of current brain-machine interfaces: The union of metal and flesh only lasts so long before things break down. But assuming those can be overcome, questions of plasticity arise: What happens when a soldier leaves the service? How might their brains be reshaped by their experience?
Like Moreno said, it’s too early to say what will work. The report documents in great detail the practical obstacles to these aims — not least the failure of reductionist neuroscientific models, in which a few firing neurons can be easily mapped to a psychological state, and brains can be analyzed in one-map-fits-all fashion.
But given the rapid progress of cognitive science, it’s foolish to assume that obstacles won’t be overcome. Hugh Gusterson, a George Mason University anthropologist and critic of the military’s sponsorship of social science research, says their attempt to crack the cultural code is unlikely to work –"but my sense with neuroscience," he said, "is a far more realistic ambition."
Gusterson is deeply pessimistic about military neuroscience, which will not be limited to the United States.
"I think most reasonable people, if they imagine a world in which all sides have figured out how to control brains, they’d rather not go there," he said. "Most rational human beings would believe that if we could have a world where nobody does military neuroscience, we’ll all be better off. But for some people in the Pentagon, it’s too delicious to ignore."
Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies [National Academies Press]
Image: University of Western Florida
Note: The NRC committee is formally known as the Committee on Military and Intelligence Methodology for EmergentNeurophysiological and Cognitive/Neural Science Research in the NextTwo Decades. In the future, cognitive technologies will apparently obviate the need for snappy, easily-acronymed titles.
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim’s Twitter and Del.icio.us feeds; Wired Science on Facebook.
Tags: Cognition, Human 2.0, Military
Drugs that make soldiers want to fight. Robots linked directly to their controllers’ brains. Lie-detecting scans administered to terrorist suspects as they cross U.S. borders.
These are just a few of the military uses imagined for cognitive science — and if it’s not yet certain whether the technologies will work, the military is certainly taking them very seriously.
"It’s way too early to know which — if any — of these technologies is going to be practical," said Jonathan Moreno, a Center for American Progress bioethicist and author of Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense. "But it’s important for us to get ahead of the curve. Soldiers are always on the cutting edge of new technologies."
Moreno is part of a National Research Council committee convened by the Department of Defense to evaluate the military potential of brain science. Their report, "Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies," was released today. It charts a range of cognitive technologies that are potentially powerful — and, perhaps, powerfully troubling.
Here are the report’s main areas of focus:
Mind reading. The development of psychological models and neurological imaging has made it possible to see what people are thinking and whether they’re lying. The science is, however, still in its infancy: Challenges remain in accounting for variations between individual brains, and the tendency of our brains to change over time. One important application is lie detection — though one hopes that the lesson of traditional lie detectors, predicated on the now-disproven idea that the physiological basis of lying can be separated from processes such as anxiety, has been learned.
Mind readers could be used to interrogate captured enemies, as well as"terrorist suspects" passing through customs. But does this mean, for example, that travelers placed on the bloated, mistake-laden watchlist would have their minds scanned, just as their computers will be? The report notes that "In situations where it is important to win the hearts and minds of the local populace, it would be useful to know if they understand the information being given them."
Cognitive enhancement. Arguably the most developed area of cognitive neuroscience, with drugs already allowing soldiers to stay awake and alert for days at a time, and brain-altering drugs in widespread use among civilians diagnosed with mental and behavioral problems.
Improved drug delivery systems and improved neurological understanding could make today’s drugs seem rudimentary, giving soldiers a superhuman strength and awareness — but if a drug can be designed to increase an ability, a drug can also be designed to destroy it.
"It’s also important to develop antidotes and protective agents against various classes of drugs," says the report. This echoes the motivation of much federal biodefense research, in which designing defenses against potential bioterror agents requires those agents to be made — and that raises the possibility of our own weapons being turned against us, as with the post-9/11 anthrax attacks, which used a military developed strain.
Mind control. Largely pharmaceutical, for the moment, and a natural outgrowth of cognitive enhancement approaches and mind-reading insight: If we can alter the brain, why not control it? One potential use involves making soldiers want to fight. Conversely,"How can we disrupt the enemy’s motivation to fight? [...] How can we make people trust us more? What if we could help the brain to remove fear or pain? Is there a way to make the enemy obey our commands?"
Brain-Machine Interfaces. The report focuses on direct brain-to-machine systems (rather than, for example, systems that are controlled by visual movements, which are already in limited use by paraplegics.) Among these are robotic prostheses that replace or extend body parts; cognitive and sensory prostheses, which make it possible to think and to perceive in entirely new ways; and robotic or software assistants, which would do the same thing, but from a distance.
Many questions surrounding the safety of current brain-machine interfaces: The union of metal and flesh only lasts so long before things break down. But assuming those can be overcome, questions of plasticity arise: What happens when a soldier leaves the service? How might their brains be reshaped by their experience?
Like Moreno said, it’s too early to say what will work. The report documents in great detail the practical obstacles to these aims — not least the failure of reductionist neuroscientific models, in which a few firing neurons can be easily mapped to a psychological state, and brains can be analyzed in one-map-fits-all fashion.
But given the rapid progress of cognitive science, it’s foolish to assume that obstacles won’t be overcome. Hugh Gusterson, a George Mason University anthropologist and critic of the military’s sponsorship of social science research, says their attempt to crack the cultural code is unlikely to work –"but my sense with neuroscience," he said, "is a far more realistic ambition."
Gusterson is deeply pessimistic about military neuroscience, which will not be limited to the United States.
"I think most reasonable people, if they imagine a world in which all sides have figured out how to control brains, they’d rather not go there," he said. "Most rational human beings would believe that if we could have a world where nobody does military neuroscience, we’ll all be better off. But for some people in the Pentagon, it’s too delicious to ignore."
Emerging Cognitive Neuroscience and Related Technologies [National Academies Press]
Image: University of Western Florida
Note: The NRC committee is formally known as the Committee on Military and Intelligence Methodology for EmergentNeurophysiological and Cognitive/Neural Science Research in the NextTwo Decades. In the future, cognitive technologies will apparently obviate the need for snappy, easily-acronymed titles.
WiSci 2.0: Brandon Keim’s Twitter and Del.icio.us feeds; Wired Science on Facebook.
Tags: Cognition, Human 2.0, Military
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Lawyer: FBI Paid Right-Wing Blogger Charged With Threats | Threat Level | Wired.com
A notorious New Jersey hate blogger charged in June with threatening to kill judges and lawmakers was secretly an FBI “agent provocateur” paid to disseminate right-wing rhetoric, his attorney said Wednesday.
Hal Turner, the blogger and radio personality, remains jailed pending charges over his recent online rants, which prosecutors claim amounted to an invitation for someone to kill Connecticut lawmakers and Chicago federal appeals court judges.
But behind the scenes the reformed white supremacist was holding clandestine meetings with FBI agents who taught him how to spew hate “without crossing the line,” according to his lawyer, Michael Orozco.
“Almost everything was at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Orozco said in a 45-minute telephone interview from New Jersey. “Their job was to pick up information on the responses of what he was saying and see where that led them. It was an interesting dynamic on what he was being asked to do.”
“He’s a devoted American,” added the lawyer, who claims Turner was paid “tens of thousands of dollars” for his service.
Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman, said in a telephone interview the bureau’s policy is “to neither confirm nor deny whether an individual has an association with the FBI.”
Turner’s alleged 5-year-long bureau stint ended sometime in 2007, Orozco said, the year the mischievous online group, Anonymous, briefly shuttered his site — turnerradionetwork.blogspot.com — with a denial of service attack. At the time, hackers also posted what appeared to be private e-mails between Turner and the FBI.
The e-mails are legitimate, said Orozco. The FBI approached Turner, now 47, in 2002, and he spewed rhetoric about politics, white supremacy, immigration, abortion and other hot-button issues for years in exchange for government cash.
Turner was arrested in June at his apartment in suburban New Jersey.
According to court documents, (.pdf) after a three-judge panel of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit of Appeals upheld a Chicago handgun ban, he blogged that the judges should be “killed.”
“Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges deserve to be killed. Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty. A small price to pay to assure freedom for millions,” he wrote.
A day later he posted addresses, photos, maps and other identifying information about Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer, the authorities said. State charges are also pending in Hartford, Connecticut, where Turner is accused of inciting readers to “take up arms” against state lawmakers.
Though the alleged threats came after his FBI service ended, Orozco said Turner’s relationship with the FBI is relevant to his defense.
“It is not trivial that the very government that trained an individual where the line was is prosecuting him when he has not stepped over the line,” Orozco said.
In addition, he is banking (.pdf) on the First Amendment to save his client’s skin.
“It’s a protected political statement. He opined,” Orozco said. “He said they deserved to be killed. He did not say grab a gun and go out and do what is necessary.”
Lawyer: FBI Paid Right-Wing Blogger Charged With Threats | Threat Level | Wired.com
Hal Turner, the blogger and radio personality, remains jailed pending charges over his recent online rants, which prosecutors claim amounted to an invitation for someone to kill Connecticut lawmakers and Chicago federal appeals court judges.
But behind the scenes the reformed white supremacist was holding clandestine meetings with FBI agents who taught him how to spew hate “without crossing the line,” according to his lawyer, Michael Orozco.
“Almost everything was at the behest of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Orozco said in a 45-minute telephone interview from New Jersey. “Their job was to pick up information on the responses of what he was saying and see where that led them. It was an interesting dynamic on what he was being asked to do.”
“He’s a devoted American,” added the lawyer, who claims Turner was paid “tens of thousands of dollars” for his service.
Bill Carter, an FBI spokesman, said in a telephone interview the bureau’s policy is “to neither confirm nor deny whether an individual has an association with the FBI.”
Turner’s alleged 5-year-long bureau stint ended sometime in 2007, Orozco said, the year the mischievous online group, Anonymous, briefly shuttered his site — turnerradionetwork.blogspot.com — with a denial of service attack. At the time, hackers also posted what appeared to be private e-mails between Turner and the FBI.
The e-mails are legitimate, said Orozco. The FBI approached Turner, now 47, in 2002, and he spewed rhetoric about politics, white supremacy, immigration, abortion and other hot-button issues for years in exchange for government cash.
Turner was arrested in June at his apartment in suburban New Jersey.
According to court documents, (.pdf) after a three-judge panel of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit of Appeals upheld a Chicago handgun ban, he blogged that the judges should be “killed.”
“Let me be the first to say this plainly: These judges deserve to be killed. Their blood will replenish the tree of liberty. A small price to pay to assure freedom for millions,” he wrote.
A day later he posted addresses, photos, maps and other identifying information about Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer, the authorities said. State charges are also pending in Hartford, Connecticut, where Turner is accused of inciting readers to “take up arms” against state lawmakers.
Though the alleged threats came after his FBI service ended, Orozco said Turner’s relationship with the FBI is relevant to his defense.
“It is not trivial that the very government that trained an individual where the line was is prosecuting him when he has not stepped over the line,” Orozco said.
In addition, he is banking (.pdf) on the First Amendment to save his client’s skin.
“It’s a protected political statement. He opined,” Orozco said. “He said they deserved to be killed. He did not say grab a gun and go out and do what is necessary.”
Lawyer: FBI Paid Right-Wing Blogger Charged With Threats | Threat Level | Wired.com
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