Pentagon Sets Up a 'Violence Stock Market'

[Ivo Skoric]

This Administration simply does not cease to surprise us with its 
insensitivities. It does seem recently, though, that people's 
representatives are waking up. Bush is simply pounded by 
unwanted legislation passed by landslide bi-partisan votes (like the 
prescription drugs...). I guess, in old Rome they'd stab him on the 
floor of the Senate by now, given the extensive damage he did to 
the Empire, but here and now, that would be deemed too cruel, so 
they are just going to extinguish the burning Bush slowly by 
legislation contrary to his wishes, that he won't be able to veto, 
because of its overwhelming support, so by November 2004 there 
will be just a little charcoal left in the White House.

>From October 1, 2003, we are going to be able to literally trade in 
death - unless two honorable congressmen don't get this stopped. 
One would think that this is set up as some college project - but 
no, this is actually a project of the US military! To offer a public 
trading plece for futures of Middle Eastern countries. Geee - why 
didn't they come up with that idea before they commenced 
Operation Iraqi Freedom? I'd invest a thousand bucks buying the 
prediction that they are going to stuck themselves right into a 
sandtrap there, that they won't be able to govern the country once 
they occupy it, and that they won't be able to draw a drop of oil 
from there, living in their protected compounds, and exposed to the 
organized guerilla insurgency against them. By now I might have 
earned enough for a downpayment on a house.

So, secretly, I am loosing moral compass, too. Of course, I 
understand that this PAM is wrong. But, hell, there is money out 
there to be made wagering against the idiotic decisions of this 
Administration!!!

ivo

------- Forwarded message follows -------
Date sent:      	Tue, 29 Jul 2003 12:58:54 -0400
To:             	CERJ at igc.org
From:           	CERJ at igc.org
Subject:        	Pentagon Sets Up a 'Violence Stock Market'

Shades of the coordinated 'insider trading' dumping of airline stocks
in the hours just before the incidents of September 11, 2001, 
witness
John Poindexter's latest attempt to foist his stupidity off upon the
people of the USA and the rest of the world:  The 'privatization' and
'globalization' of institutionalized chaos!

OK folks, put on your 'what's wrong with this picture' thinking caps
-- this one is really a challenge ... NOT!

Legitimizing and institutionalizing the trafficking in violence and
human misery for profit seems to be the only thing that government
does these days ...

This one is really beyond the pale ... Falling very much in the
category of 'Stranger than Fiction', it is just now coming to the
public's attention that the Pentagon, the seat of the
military-industrial complex in the USA -- is moving to formalize its
historic pattern of conflicts of interest and pandering to the rich
corporate elite and the military-industrial complex by setting up a
new, formal 'futures market' based upon the prediction of violent
events worldwide!

This news must truly boggle any discerning mind!  It's living proof
that the policy-makers who are working for all of the US people in
Washington, DC have gone insane; have crossed over the brink into a
mode of government that abandons all moral responsibility; that is in
total denial of its own potential for creating chaos.

Funny ... I just got done laboring with a CERJer off-the-list on a
question something like 'What if someone assassinated Bush ... they
would have to take out Cheney too."  This person carefully qualified
that they were not advocating this, but I still said I would not
seriously discuss any such proposition on the list, no matter how
theoretical, academic or non-threatening the discussion might be.

Little did I know that not only are there people discussing the
possibility of assassinating public figures, overturning governments,
and terrorist attacks in countries around the world every single day
...    there are substantial numbers of people IN THE US GOVERNMENT
who are FORMALIZING a system of BETTING on the probability and
incidence of such events FOR PROFIT.

This is so very much like -- on a moral par with -- the late 1990s
scandal at California's Corcoran Prison wherein inmates were paired
and thrust into fenced-in enclosures for gladiatorial cock-fights to
the death, with small, select audiences invited, and with guards and
others betting on the outcomes.  It is the same kind of crime against
humanity -- injustice of the same ilk -- it is proof positive that the
US government has not only lost whatever moral compass it ever had --
it has fallen apart at the seams.

At a time when we are called to manifest our own humanity and reach
for the stars, there are those among us who would have all of us
descend to the depths of depravity, below the level of animalism, and
seek to make profits off our misery.  And they are not only in
government here and there -- they CONTROL our government.

-- John Wilmerding

P.S.:  On the other hand, we peace activists, muckrakers,
scandal-mongers, etc., have to give thanks that these idiots are
making our job so much easier!  I don't have to stoop to writing
parodies and satires when there's junk like this in the world of
facts! _ _ _ _ _ _ _

http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/ap20030728_1880.html

Pentagon's Futures Market Plan Condemned
Senators Condemn Pentagon Futures Market
That Would Let Investors Bet on Assassinations, Terrorism

[Photo credit and caption: Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., left, and Sen.
Ron Wyden, D-Ore., appear at a news conference on Capitol Hill Monday,
July 28, 2003, to call on the Pentagon to end a program aimed at
predicting possible terrorist events.  The Pentagon is setting up a
commodity-market style trading system in which investors would be able
to bet on political and economic events in the Middle East --
including the likelihood of assassinations and terrorist attacks. 
Dorgan and Wyden said Monday they want the project stopped before
investors begin registering this week. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook)]

Washington -- July 28 -- The Pentagon is setting up a stock-market
style system in which investors would bet on terror attacks,
assassinations and other events in the Middle East. Defense officials
hope to gain intelligence and useful predictions while investors who
guessed right would win profits.

Two Democratic senators demanded Monday the project be stopped before
investors begin registering this week. "The idea of a federal betting
parlor on atrocities and terrorism is ridiculous and it's grotesque,"
Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said.

The Pentagon office overseeing the program, called the Policy Analysis
Market, said it was part of a research effort "to investigate the
broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks."  It
said there would be a re-evaluation before more money was committed.

The market would work this way.  Investors would buy and sell futures
contracts essentially a series of predictions about what they believe
might happen in the Mideast.  Holder of a futures contract that came
true would collect the proceeds of investors who put money into the
market but predicted wrong.

A graphic on the market's Web page showed hypothetical futures
contracts in which investors could trade on the likelihood that
Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordanian
King Abdullah II would be overthrown.

Although the Web site described the Policy Analysis Market as "a
market in the future of the Middle East," the graphic also included
the possibility of a North Korea missile attack.

That graphic was apparently removed from the Web site hours after the
news conference in which Wyden and fellow Democratic Sen. Byron Dorgan
of North Dakota criticizing the market.

Dorgan described it as useless, offensive and "unbelievably stupid".

"Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that
people could go in ... and bet on the assassination of an American
political figure, or the overthrow of this institution or that
institution?" he said.

According to its Web site, the Policy Analysis Market would be a joint
program of the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency,
known as DARPA, and two private companies: Net Exchange, a market
technologies company, and the Economist Intelligence Unit, the
business information arm of the publisher of The Economist magazine.

DARPA has received strong criticism from Congress for its Terrorism
Information Awareness program, a computerized surveillance program
that has raised privacy concerns.  Wyden said the Policy Analysis
Market is under retired Adm. John Poindexter, the head of the
Terrorism Information Awareness program and, in the 1980s, a key
figure in the Iran-Contra scandal.

In its statement Monday, DARPA said that markets offer efficient,
effective and timely methods for collecting "dispersed and even hidden
information.  Futures markets have proven themselves to be good at
predicting such things as elections results; they are often better
than expert opinions."

The description of the market on its Web site makes it appear similar
to a computer-based commodities market.  Contracts would be available
based on economic health, civil stability, military disposition and
U.S. economic and military involvement in Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel,
Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Turkey.

Contracts would also be available on "global economic and conflict
indicators" and specific events: for example, U.S. recognition of a
Palestinian state.

Traders who believe an event will occur can buy a futures contract. 
Those who believe the event is unlikely can try to sell a contract. 
The Web site does not address how much money investors would be likely
to put into the market but says analysts would be motivated by the
"prospect of profit and at pain of loss" to make accurate predictions.

Registration would begin this Friday, with trading beginning October
1.  The market would initially be limited to 1,000 traders, increasing
to at least 10,000 by January 1.

The Web site says government agencies will not be allowed to
participate and will not have access to the identities or funds of
traders. [Yeah, right! -- JW]

The market is a project of a DARPA division called FutureMAP, or
"Futures Markets Applied to Prediction."  FutureMAP is trying to
develop programs that would allow the Defense Department to use market
forces to predict future events, according to its Web site.

"The rapid reaction of markets to knowledge held by only a few
participants may provide an early warning system to avoid surprise,"
it said.

It said the markets must offer "compensation that is ethically and
legally satisfactory to all sectors involved, while remaining
attractive enough to ensure full and continuous participation of
individual parties."

Dorgan and Wyden released a letter to Poindexter calling for an
immediate end to the program.  They noted a May 20 report to lawmakers
that cited the possibility of using market forces to predict whether
terrorists would attack Israel with biological weapons.

"Surely such a threat should be met with intelligence gathering of the
highest quality not by putting the question to individuals betting on
an Internet Web site," they said.

Wyden said $600,000 has been spent on the program so far and the
Pentagon plans to spend an additional $149,000 this year.  The
Pentagon has requested $3 million for the program for next year and $5
million for the following year.

Wyden said the Senate version of next year's defense spending bill
would cut off money for the program, but the House version would fund
it.  The two versions will have to be reconciled.

On the Net:

The "Policy Analysis Market"

http://www.policyanalysismarket.org

DARPA's FutureMap Web site:

http://www.darpa.mil/iao/FutureMap.htm

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