Category Archives: Transhuman News

from the consummate-professionals dept

Confidential informants are only as trustworthy as their law enforcement handlers. The FBI isn't the only agency to have problems with handling confidential human sources (CHSs), but it's one of the more notorious, thanks to its botched handling of James "Whitey" Bulger.

This questionable legacy lives on, as the FBI's Inspector General reports. "Whitey" Bulger is name-checked early on in the report [PDF], setting an appropriately cautionary tone for the rest of the document.

The FBI loves its CHSs. Without them, it can't radicalize random people into arrestable would-be terrorists. Without the assistance of criminals, it apparently can't go after other criminals. While a certain amount of criminal activity is necessary to maintain cover, the FBI doesn't appear to be keeping close tabs on its informants, which isn't going to minimize collateral criminal damage during investigations.

The FBI spends $42 million a year paying CHSs but doesn't seem to care whether that money is being wisely spent. The actual number of informants the FBI employs is redacted, but the IG notes that 20% of these are "long-term," having been used by the FBI for at least five years.

The longevity of CHSs is a concern that the FBI doesn't seem to be concerned about. The longer the FBI uses the same informants, the greater the risk they'll be exposed. But beyond that, there's the problem of familiarity. Every five years, CHSs are supposed to be assigned new handlers in order to prevent agents from becoming too close to their charges. The FBI isn't doing this. In fact, the FBI doesn't appear to track length of service with any accuracy, which means the agency potentially has more "Whitey" Bulgers on its hands: criminals whose close relationship with a single handler allows them to engage in far more criminal activity than guidelines (and human decency) would allow.

According to this report, the FBI's inability to properly track CHSs has led to a backlog of required "enhanced reviews" -- the validation process put in place to ensure proper handling of long-term informants. To make matters worse, the FBI unilaterally decided to remove "long-term" as a potential risk factor for CHSs, allowing these problematic informant-handler relationships to fly under the radar.

The few people performing CHS validations are further restricted by FBI policy. It's almost as though the FBI has decided that what it doesn't know can't hurt it. The limitations prevent reviewers from accessing anything more than one year of files, denies them access to other helpful FBI databases, and discourages them from providing recommendations or drawing conclusions from the limited info they can actually access.

The FBI also has problems with automation. The system does not automatically flag CHSs when they hit the five-year mark. This has to be done manually by the informant's handler. Without this feature, handlers and reviewers are left in the dark about CHS longevity, which further hinders the review process and adds to the backlog the FBI will never catch up to at its current review pace.

The FBI knows this is a problem but continues not to care.

Although the FBI has considered improvements to address the shortcomings, it has not taken corrective action by implementing an automated mechanism in Delta.

This refusal to fix this issue has lead to further failures up the line. Handlers with long-term CHSs are supposed to obtain approval from Special Agents in Charge (SAC) for continued handling of these informants. Since the system doesn't flag long-term informants, SACs are not automatically notified and CHSs continued to be handled by the same agents in direct violation of FBI policy.

The problem becomes exponential once FBI field offices are factored in. CHSs in use at field offices are subject to the same review, but review personnel at FBI HQ appear to believe they are there to grease the wheels, not act as oversight.

Several FBI officials suggested to us that there is a risk that field offices may avoid the selection of certain CHSs for validation review because the field offices may wish to continue using those CHSs despite the presence of particular risk factors. In fact, one of these officials told us that the field offices may be sending "softballs," meaning field offices may be sending CHSs lacking any significant risk factors.

It's not just the field offices. The FBI is actively avoiding documenting negative information about CHSs to subvert the justice system. It's just that simple.

[O]ne Intelligence Analyst told us that he was permitted to recommend a CHS receive a polygraph or operational test to the handling agent by phone by not permitted to document the recommendation in the CHS's validation report. Additionally, multiple FBI officials told us that they believe that field offices do not want negative information documented in a CHS file due to criminal discovery concerns and concerns about the CHS's ability to testify. For example, one FBI official told us that some U.S. Attorney's offices will not use a CHS at trial if there is negative documentation in the CHS's file.

The Inspector General obviously recommends the FBI stop doing this sort of stuff but it's obviously already entrenched in the FBI's culture. Officials recognize field offices are harboring shady CHSs but have done almost nothing about it.

Then there's the infosec part. Confidentiality is key to the handling of confidential human sources. But FBI agents don't appear to care that they're putting their sources at risk by carelessly handling communications. Since no policy specifically forbids the use of government equipment to contact CHSs, many agents simply use their FBI-issued phones. The use of electronic communication methods is discouraged, but simply telling people they shouldn't do something is rarely an effective deterrent.

In addition, the central CHS database is on a shared site that grants access to personnel not involved with handling human sources. This increases the risk to CHSs by eliminating the "confidentiality" of the arrangement. The only thing mitigating this increased risk is the fact that the database is riddled with errors and incomplete information. Incompetence might save the day as CHS files improperly accessed may not contain enough accurate information to expose a confidential source. Win-win, I guess.

That the FBI concurs with all of the OIG's recommendations is hardly heartening. Included in this review are recommendations issued by the OIG six years ago in response to CHS handling issues that occurred in 2006. To date, the FBI has only implemented five of the eleven recommendations from the 2013 report.

It's a mess. And it's a mess the FBI continues to make worse. The underlying problem appears to be the FBI's unwillingness to cut loose informants who might be a liability. The only effort that gets made in these situations is to find some way to work around an already-very permissive system to ensure agents can retain the CHSs. A system that fails to flag risk factors or periodic review periods is the kind of system that allows the FBI to engage in business as usual with just enough plausible deniability to avoid the few accountability tripwires built into the system.

Filed Under: fbi, informants

See the rest here:
Surprising No One, The FBI's Watchdog Says The Agency Is Handling Its Informants Improperly - Techdirt

The Meat Question: Animals, Humans, and the Deep History of Food

A book by Josh Berson

In the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Aunt Voula, played by Andrea Martin, learns that her nieces fiance is a vegetarian. She says, He dont eat no meat?WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE DONT EAT NO MEAT? Oh, thats OK, thats OK, I make lamb!

Its funnyor is it? For those of us who eschew consuming animals and their byproducts, its hard to understand why most people today still enjoy eating flesh, seeing meat as something rather than someone. In The Meat Question: Animals, Humans, and the Deep History of Food, Josh Berson digs deep, literally, going back to the earliest times of human existence to find out when and how and why our relationship with animals as food began. The book considers three questions: 1) Did meat make us human? 2) Is growing affluence the cause of increased meat consumption? and 3) Will we see the end of meat?

As a vegan for 31 years and vegetarian for even longer, I rejoice with every new study or book published on the devasting impact that eating animals has on our health, quality of life and longevity. With hundreds and hundreds of scientific references, surely, I think, people will reduce or eliminate their meat consumption in order to reduce their risk of chronic disease. So many people have shared their stories in films, books and websites on how they reversed their heart disease or diabetes, achieved a normal weight, and regained their lives, by discovering a healthy, plant-based diet.

And yet, the consumption of animal flesh and animal byproducts continues to rise. The world population is projected to reach 9.6 billion by 2050 and people will be devouring more meat than ever before. There is no longer enough land mass on Earth to allow livestock to graze freely before slaughter. Today, the CAFO (concentrated animal feeding operation, AKA the factory farm) is the answer, but for the individual animals being raised in a CAFO for food, it is hell on earth.

What about the environment? As stinking lagoons of untreated livestock excrement are piled higher and deeper, surely we would realize our folly of raising tens of billions of animals for food. But no, it seems no amount of air and water pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, rainforest destruction, aquifer depletion, soil exhaustion, species extinction, etc. can curtail our desire for consuming flesh.

Click here to read long excerpts from The Meat Question at Google Books.

I have waited for decades for the discussion on climate change to heat up, for it to be considered for regulation in government policy and for it to headline mainstream news on a regular basis. Are we there yet? The late Robert Goodland, lead environmental adviser at the World Bank Group, wrote passionately and profusely about climate change and how we could all, simply and easily, prevent our demise by choosing plants instead of animals for food. Mitigating global warming by changing our diet was his plea, because it would buy us time to transition our factories and modes of transportation to sustainable energy sources.

Was his message heard? Do we have the capacity to hear this message?

Berson acknowledges the devastating impact on health, environment and animals due to meat consumption very briefly, early in his books prologue. He writes as if we all know this information already, no need to elaborate in detailalthough he does paint the nightmarish image of current reality, transporting cattle from Australia to China by air! We use all our best inventions, concentrating cattle into airplanes to satisfy the gluttonous desire for flesh while making a nice profit. Is no thought made of the reckless use of energy resources or abundant release of greenhouse gas emissions in this scenario? We have created our own little shop of horrors at home on Earth, responding to the escalating cry, Feed Me!

Are we who we areare we humanbecause we eat meat? To address the first question, Berson presents to us a dry and academic history of humankind. This is not easy reading. As we travel to periods 1 million to 5 million years ago, the text is riddled with archeological terms that even an above-average reader would not be familiar with. It takes patience to comprehend it all, moving back and forth through ancient and unfamiliar times.

Berson explains that our evolutionary history was a result of our diet versatilitybeing able to find and consume a variety of plant and animal-based foods, available in different periods and locations. Berson addresses the tenuous relationship between the consumption of meat and the evolution of human brains:

Where do we get the energy to run our big brains? Over the past twenty-five years, this has been a key question in evolutionary anthropology. For many observers, our expensive brains represent exhibit A in the case for meats role in human evolution. Meat, the argument goes, supported encephalization [the evolution of large brains] [But] the brain cant do much with the energy in meat. The brain relies on glucose as its primary fuel the energy in the lean meat of wild ungulates is mainly in the form of protein. The body has a limited capacity to convert amino acids into sugars. Protein does not represent a sustainable source of energy for the maintenance of nervous tissue.

Berson goes on to explain that energy is not the sole expense of the human brain, which is 50% to 60% lipid by dry mass. DHA (omega-3 docosahexaenoic acid) is vital in supporting the high lipid content of our brains. DHA can be hard to find in human dietsits primary direct source is aquatic foods. It can, however, be synthesized from alpha-linolenic acid (LNA). [C]linical evidence indicates dietary LNA represents a more-than-adequate source of DHA for the growth and maintenance of the central nervous system, Berson writes. Where are the terrestrial dietary sources of alpha-linolenic acid? Its highly concentrated in chloroplast membranes, so leafy green plants represent a strong source, as do mosses, the fatty tissue of herbivores that consume these things, and the usual range of oilseeds, including flax, hemp, and walnuts.

He concludes, Meat may well have played a role in buffering the vagaries of access to a higher-quality diet in early humans. But it wasnt because it was essential to brain development. Nor is meat essential to how we eat in the future.

Later in the book, we arrive in the present day. Here, we can scrutinize our history more carefully as the abundance of evidence improves resolution. Question 2 is addressed: Is growing affluence the cause of increased meat consumption? To balance Western influence dominating the telling of human history, Berson writes, I offer an Asia-Pacific perspective on the modern meat economy. My aim is to nudge the food systems literature away from the North Atlantic and toward those parts of the world whose tastes, expertise, and climate will dominate global patterns of change in diet over the next two or three generations. We learn that affluence alone does not drive the demand for meat. Rather a complicated economic and political system has been created that forces those disempowered, impoverished individuals to choose the convenience of cheap meat because they have no access to affordable alternatives.

Berson writes, Until we recognize that marginalized humans and animals raised under industrial conditions occupy coordinate roles in a single system of economic violence, we will make no progress unworking meats power.

In the epilogue we learn that Berson has been a vegetarian for 25 years and a vegan for 19, except for a handful of exceptions. He admits his original motivation was unclear but over time it was about reducing his footprint: I wanted to limit my claim on the Earths resources to levels that would allow the largest number of people to enjoy the quality of life that I took for granted. He began to question his reasons for being vegan after about a decade, which became the motivation for this book. The dispassionate tone throughout is intentional; Berson desired to present information as objectively as possible, without judgment that might alienate the reader.

Will we ever see the end of meat? The author believes if humanity survives, its possible that few if any animals will be on our plate. After reading The Meat Question, I have a better understanding of why it is not effective to use single issue arguments like health, environment, climate change and animal cruelty to convince people to reduce or eliminate their animal consumption:

To imagine a world in which humans no longer get any part of their subsistence from animals is to imagine a world where the bond of economic necessity, of precariousness, between humans and animals has been succeeded by a bond of mutual regard, among humans and on the part of humans for other living things. This is a more radical vision than that which underlies arguments for the cessation of meat eating on grounds of health, or carbon footprint, or animal sentience.

Berson shows us how to think about eating animals in broader terms. Gambling on food prices with agricultural derivatives and investing in agricultural land acquisitions negatively impact the access to adequate food. Meat consumption is one piece of a complex and violent capitalist system.

There was one question I couldnt help but ask myself while reading The Meat Question: Are humans naturally violent? Berson concludes with this question as well, asking whether human beings are fundamentally cruel, condemned to reduce one another to lumps of meat. He acknowledges that if we dont want to accept systemic violence as our reality, a divergence will be required, in diet among other things, as radical as any we have experienced before.

Read more here:
The Future of Meat - Truthdig

Scientists at Harvard have reportedly been studying human anatomyfor years. From researching about how to eat healthy to studying what goes on inside our body, they know it all. Recently, they came up with research which discovered the 5 rules an individual should follow to lead a healthy life. The study done by Havard is 30-year long study which gives 5 rules one should compulsorily follow:

Also Read:Healthy Diet: Benefits Of Protein And Fiber In Your Diet

The Lancet stated that 1 in every 5 death globally is associated with a p[oor diet. It is believed that we consume double the recommended amount of processed meat which affects our body causing obesity and other body-related diseases. The Havard T.H Chan School of Public healths study found out that adding enough fruits, nuts, whole grains, fruits and vegetables can lower the risk of heart attack stroke by 20 per cent.

Exercising regularly is something every dietician or nutritionist might suggest. According to the World Health Organization, People who are not active enough have 20-30 per centincreased their risk of death. Experts in this field have advised that a healthy adult should exercise for 150 minutes every week.

Also Read:Eye Health And Eyesight: 5 Best Foods To Include In Your Diet

A good diet and exercising regularly helps you maintain a healthy weight. The United Nations study has found out that around 800 million people around the world are obese and the number has tripled since 2016.

It is recommended to not intake too much of alcohol. The taste of wine has been found to engage the brain than any other human behaviour. The Scripps research institute found that an ingredient in red wine can also help to reduce stress but it should be consumed in moderation, preferably justa glass or two. Nature claimed that a moderate amount of wine can be beneficial and too much alcohol is a health risk.

Also Read:Food Combinations That May Sound Weird And Gross But Taste Delicious

Smoking is injurious to health and every individual is aware of it. If a person quits smoking, within a year of quitting smoking, your risk of heart disease drops by half. After 10 years, the risk of lung cancer falls by 50 per cent, as claimed by the World Health Organization. Giving up smoking also reduces the chance of impotence and infertility among people who wish to be parents. WHO also found that maintaining these healthy habits add 12 years of life for men and 14 for women.

Also Read:Fitness Tips: Indoor Exercises That You Can Do To Stay Healthy And Fit

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30-year-old Harvard study on longevity: Five daily habits to follow for a healthy living - Republic World - Republic World

The Stuart Highway in the Northern Territory is dotted with around 300 termite mounds, dressed as people. They are reminiscent of giant, ochre coloured snowmen in their distinctly human forms of decoration.

These tall, colourful mounds variously sport scarves, caps, singlets, shirts, sunhats, bras, hard hats and even a beer can. They start just below Darwin, near the Noonamah Hotel, and occur all the way down to Kulgara, just north of the South Australian border. This covers around 1,800 kilometres.

The snowmen are an irreverent, larrikin, Northern Territorian phenomenon. But who created them? And what can they teach us about fundamental human behaviours?

Termite mounds occur naturally. They are made of clay, soil, sand and other natural materials, bound together with the saliva of termites. They occur globally and can reach as high as five metres.

In the NT, the first snowmen appeared during the 1970s. More quickly followed. They appear on both public and private land, lining major highways and rural roads and extending into national parks.

Over the years, many people have made these snowmen. Some were made by roadworkers, staying at roadside camps along the highway, with limited access to towns and entertainment but plenty of work clothing. Some were made by the owners of rural and remote properties. Some were made by fisherman traversing to remote fishing locations. Some may have been decorated by tourists.

The manager of the Royal Flying Doctor Service Tourist Facility, Samantha Bennett, is a Territorian born and bred. She says of the mounds:

Sometimes the clothing is changed according to festive calenders. They dont do Halloween, but they definitely do Christmas and Australia Day. They dress them up with flags and high viz clothing, which is cool because you can see them from a distance. Sometimes, they are used to help with directions. They mark the location of a driveway in a remote area or turnoffs to secret fishing spots.

The snowmen are actually snow people men, women and children. Some are arranged in family groups. Gender is marked by clothing. Economic status can be discerned through the use of silk scarves, resort wear or hard hats.

The NT has the highest rate of beer drinking in Australia. Not that long ago, it had the highest rate of alcohol consumption in the world. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, beer cans are held by some snowmen.

The snowmen are part of a wider cultural landscape in the NT. If you go to the Coburg Peninsula and lose one of your thongs, you put the remaining thong on the thong tree: a tree covered top to bottom with old rubber thongs.

Then there is the fence of shame on Andreas Avenue at Dundee Beach, west of Darwin. This is where you put your fishing rod if you have broken it during your trip.

There is material evidence that the snowman tradition has some longevity. In some cases, the clothing is in a dilapidated state. In others, the termites have renewed their building efforts on top of the clothes.

It is unlikely that the snowmen were created by Aboriginal people. As Barunga resident Isaac Pamakal explains: Aboriginal people dont do that, because that might make people sick.

Termite mounds are woven into NT Aboriginal belief systems. In some areas, there is a belief that anyone who knocks over a mound will get diarrhoea. Indeed, powerful Indigenous people have been known to put someones clothes onto a termite mound in order to make that person sick. The intended victim would be identified by the sweat on their clothing (which contains their DNA). (This link between sweat and DNA is an example of Indigenous science, which is increasingly being drawn on.)

However, termite mounds are mostly known, in the NT and around the world, for their medicinal properties. They contain high proportions of kaolin, used for the treatment of gastric-disorders in both traditional and modern pharmacologies.

Francoise Foti has conducted research in two NT Aboriginal communities, Nauiyu Nambiyu (Daly River) and Elliott. She records people consuming small quantities of termite mounds to deal with gastric disorders or after eating certain foods like yams, turtle or goannas. Similarly, termite mound material is sometimes eaten during pregnancy or lactation as it contains iron and calcium.

The urge to humanise inanimate objects is a global phenomenon through both time and space. For thousands of years, humans have had a penchant for making animals and things look like people.

This is most clearly shown in a style of rock art known as therianthropes, which depicts beings that have both human and animal characteristics. It also manifests in depictions of mermaids, centaurs and other mythical creatures.

So while they are special, the snowmen of the NT are not unique. They are simply another example of a human need to reinvent the world in our own image.

Read more:
What the termite mound 'snowmen' of the NT can tell us about human nature - The Conversation AU

MANHATTAN, Kan., Nov. 21, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Libella Gene Therapeutics, LLC("Libella") announces an institutional review board (IRB)-approved pay-to-play clinical trial in Colombia (South America) using gene therapy that aims to treat and ultimately cure aging. This could lead to Libella offering the world's only treatment to cure and reverse aging by 20 years.

Under Libella's pay-to-play model, trial participants will be enrolled in their country of origin after paying$1 million. Participants will travel to Colombia to sign their informed consent and to receive the Libella gene therapy under a strictly controlled hospital environment.

Traditionally, aging has been viewed as a natural process. This view has shifted, and now scientists believe that aging should be seen as a disease. The research in this field has led to the belief that the kingpin of aging in humans is the shortening of our telomeres.

Telomeres are the body's biological clock. Every time a cell divides, telomeres shorten, and our cells become less efficient at dividing again. This is why we age. A significant number of scientific peer-reviewed studies have confirmed this. Some of these studies have shown actual age reversal in every way imaginable simply by lengthening telomeres.

Bill Andrews, Ph.D., Libella's Chief Scientific Officer, has developed a gene therapy that aims to lengthen telomeres. Dr. Andrew's gene therapy delivery system has been demonstrated as safe with minimal adverse reactions in about 200 clinical trials. Dr. Andrews led the research at Geron Corporation over 20 years ago that initially discovered human telomerase and was part of the team that led the initial experiments related to telomerase induction and cancer.

Telomerase gene therapy in mice delays aging and increases longevity. Libella's clinical trial involves a new gene-therapy using a proprietary AAV Reverse (hTERT) Transcriptase enzyme and aims to lengthen telomeres. Libella believes that lengthening telomeres is the key to treating and possibly curing aging.

Libella's clinical trial has been posted at the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM)'s clinicaltrials.gov database. Libella is the world's first and only gene therapy company with a clinical trial posted at clinicaltrials.gov that aims to reverse the condition of aging.

On why they decided to conduct its project outside the United States, Libella's President, Dr. Jeff Mathis, said, "Traditional clinical trials in the U.S. can take years and millions, or even billions,of dollars. The research and techniques that have been proven to work are ready now. We believe we have the scientist, the technology, the physicians, and the lab partners that are necessary to get this trial done faster and at a lower cost in Colombia."

Media Contact:Osvaldo R. Martinez-ClarkPhone: +1 (786) 471-7814Email: ozclark@libellagt.com

Related Files

curing_aging_booklet.pdf

Related Images

william-bill-andrews-ph-d.jpg William (Bill) Andrews, Ph.D. Dr. Bill Andrews is a scientist who has spent his entire life trying to defeat the processes that cause us to age. He has been featured in Popular Science, The Today Show, and numerous documentaries on the topic of life extension including The Immortalists documentary.

Related Links

Dr. Bill Andrews speech at RAADfest 2018 (Sept 21, San Diego, CA)

bioaccess: Libella's CRO partner in Colombia.

SOURCE Libella Gene Therapeutics, LLC

http://www.libellagenetherapeutics.com/

Read more:
Breakthrough Gene Therapy Clinical Trial is the World's First That Aims to Reverse 20 Years of Aging in Humans - PRNewswire