Friday, August 01, 2003
The Lunatic Fringe of Capitalism
If anyone even suggested publicly the idea of putting a bounty on the head of a Bush Administration official you can bet they'd at least be jailed on felony charges promptly. Yet incredibly, the Bush administration initiated (and then cancelled in the face of immediate opposition) a scheme that would have provided financial incentives for would-be terrorists to assassinate political leaders in the Middle East -- the "Policy Analysis Market," or PAM.
A graphic on PAM's website on Monday displayed several hypothetical futures contracts. Investors could bet on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordan's King Abdullah II overthrown. One less violent investment apparently was suggested -- the U.S. recognizing Palestine as a political entity. Those hypothetical investments were promptly taken off the website, but were archived at ReclaimDemocracy.org/pam.html.
The Pentagon office that devised PAM, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), said PAM arose from research "to investigate the broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks."
PAM proposed to let traders buy and sell futures contracts just like commodities, but the contracts would be speculating on events in the Middle East. These events could have included economic trends, wars, even assassinations and terrorist attacks. Traders believing certain events would occur could buy a futures contract; those thinking the event unlikely could sell theirs. The site had planned to register investors, who supposedly could sign up anonymously this Friday.
"This appears to encourage terrorists to participate, either to profit from their terrorist activities or to bet against them in order to mislead U.S. intelligence authorities," said Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) in a letter to John Poindexter, the director of the Terrorism Information Awareness Program. [...]
While being grilled about the governments's 'terror trading market', Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz described the Pentagon office that came up with the project as "brilliantly imaginative in places where we want them to be imaginative." No word yet on what 9/11 paid out during beta testing.
If anyone even suggested publicly the idea of putting a bounty on the head of a Bush Administration official you can bet they'd at least be jailed on felony charges promptly. Yet incredibly, the Bush administration initiated (and then cancelled in the face of immediate opposition) a scheme that would have provided financial incentives for would-be terrorists to assassinate political leaders in the Middle East -- the "Policy Analysis Market," or PAM.
A graphic on PAM's website on Monday displayed several hypothetical futures contracts. Investors could bet on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordan's King Abdullah II overthrown. One less violent investment apparently was suggested -- the U.S. recognizing Palestine as a political entity. Those hypothetical investments were promptly taken off the website, but were archived at ReclaimDemocracy.org/pam.html.
The Pentagon office that devised PAM, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), said PAM arose from research "to investigate the broadest possible set of new ways to prevent terrorist attacks."
PAM proposed to let traders buy and sell futures contracts just like commodities, but the contracts would be speculating on events in the Middle East. These events could have included economic trends, wars, even assassinations and terrorist attacks. Traders believing certain events would occur could buy a futures contract; those thinking the event unlikely could sell theirs. The site had planned to register investors, who supposedly could sign up anonymously this Friday.
"This appears to encourage terrorists to participate, either to profit from their terrorist activities or to bet against them in order to mislead U.S. intelligence authorities," said Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) in a letter to John Poindexter, the director of the Terrorism Information Awareness Program. [...]
While being grilled about the governments's 'terror trading market', Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz described the Pentagon office that came up with the project as "brilliantly imaginative in places where we want them to be imaginative." No word yet on what 9/11 paid out during beta testing.
themassesareasses© on blogger Friday, August 01, 2003 
