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Spy Flies and Presidential Insect Slayings
by Robert Lamb | June 17, 2009
Yesterday, fellow-science blogger Sarah Dowdey issued a challenge: If she tried to blog about trees all week and I tried to blog about bugs, which of us would get sick of it first? This scientific game of chicken continues today as she blogs about an African bagpipe forest and I discuss the U.S. government’s plans for the nation’s insects.
Yes, we all saw the above video of President Obama killing a fly on national television, but might he have also just squished a high-level government agent? According to Katie Drummond over at Wired’s Danger Room blog, the Pentagon is giving serious consideration to fitting insect larvae with chemical weapon-sniffing gadgetry.
Coming on the heels of a 2005 attempt to train landmine-hunting honeybees, these federal insects would not only detect the presence of dangerous chemicals, but relay the information to other cyborg insects in the vicinity.
Is forcing insects to carry out government surveillance evil or just weird and creepy? Either way, I suppose it beats using pigeons, squirrels and cats.
Beware suspicious buzzes at HowStuffWorks.com:
How Barack Obama Works
How Houseflies Work
How Spy Flies Will Work
Are Animals Spying for the CIA?
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Serean says:
Yes, I read and also saw the video on Public TV (PBS) – long long time ago how the KGB used this cat (yes a CAT) with a transmitter implanted and carried by the agent while conversations happened.
Also, a “strategically” straying cat did come meowing and then adopted by a US embassy personal who did not know that this cat carried a transmitter under the skin.Why do people spy on others?
I have no desire to spy in our short and shared life on this wonderful green mother earth. We are all children of the first apes. Let us be good to each other.
Divide and conquer has NEVER worked. It has always backfired and Machiavelli is a stupid devil who is also a great fool with VERY short sighted skewed concepts about the world and a greedy fool.
One more, why should William & Harry be in the news? Just because they are the grand kids of the biggest villains of this CENTURY? The British Royal Family is the cause of all WARS now & ironically the devil kids are training to be War Mongers in Stealth Fighters? The evil continues…. until the end of the world…BUT so does good which is ALWAYS there in many other people who are of HARD working class.
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