Between the G20 and World Cup, everyone is busy. The economic inconvenience to Torontonians, security costs paid by taxpayers and businesses disruption are the price we paid for 3 days of meeting. This meeting is not changing fate of the world, in fact, I don’t think there is plan, I mean a real one. The economic, environmental, social and geopolitical issues we are dealing with are unprecedented and the world has changed so much that many macro economic theories are not holding up.
The outcome of the meeting? It is a draft document that includes new wording such as "voluntary, member-specific approaches – meaning we all do our own thing for what’s best for us. Not sure why they can’t do a webex and the money can be used to solve some of our social problems, instead of talking about it. What can $1B buy? It is more considering individual country paying for their cost.
And for those peaceful protesters, I feel sorry for them for their voices not getting heard. I also feel sorry when there were thugs mixing in and all they care was breaking windows. Not sure those people know what they want. And for the police, they are dong their job. And it is hard for them to identify who is who in the crowd. May be there needs to be some innovation here.
How about a visual tagging device that can target these thugs or their leaders and use special non-lethal weapons on them? OK what non-lethal weapons? Back in early 70s, Polish writer Stanislaw Lem portrayed a future in which civil disobedience can be controlled with hypothetical mind-altering chemicals dubbed "benignimizers". Lem's fictional work opens with the scary story of a police biochemical attack on protesters. As the environment becomes saturated with hallucinogenic agents, protesters descend into chaos, overcome by delusions and feelings of complacency, self-doubt, and even love. It works better with the right music.
There is a US report currently in public domain that explored the advantages and limitations of Calmatives for non-lethal use, the report revealed a shocking Pentagon program that is researching psychopharmacological weapons. The report concluded that "the development and use of psychopharmacological weapons is achievable and desirable."
The research team, which is based at the Applied Research Laboratory of Penn State University, was assessing weaponization of a number of psychiatric and anesthetic pharmaceuticals as well as "club drugs”. They can be delivered by spraying directly or through other agents.That's a real innovation, weaponization of drugs and music.
Most of the drugs under consideration are basically depressants affecting the central nervous system. Most are synthetic, some are natural. They include opiates (morphine-type drugs) and benzodiazpines, such as Valium (diazepam). Antidepressants are also of great interest to the research team, which is looking for drugs like Prozac (fluoxetine) and Zoloft (sertraline) that are faster acting. Scary thoughts but anything is better than bullets if we pick the right drugs. That’s a new adjacencies for those failed drugs that carry funny side effects to find a second life.
Here’s the funny part, the report points out that pharmaceutical candidates that fail because of excessive side-effects or unattractive side-effects... wonder what kind of scenarios if we spray people with happy drugs while playing John Lennon music loud on the streets. "All we're saying, give peace a chance"
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