By Janet Phelan

The peculiar convergence of technologies which seem on the surface to stand in opposition to each other may, in fact, be working towards a common goal of reinventing life as we know it.

What we are referring to here are technologies which seem to be in the service of creating life and those which are directly implicated in exterminating life.

On the one hand, we see, as in the recent reports of successful artificial manufacture of a rodent embryo, where science is increasingly leveraging towards breaking the God Barrier, in its attempts to create life from non- life. This subtrend, (or is it a primary impetus?) in the life sciences took a major stride forward when the human genome was sequenced back around the turn of the new millennium.

Articles now proliferate on genetic sequencing of diseases as well as on the emerging technologies of gene editing. With the advent of genetic editing tools, such as CRISPR Cas9, the ability of science to reconfigure life, to alter its basic code, became a reality. Even in the face of recent publications stating that CRISPR Cas9 is not the precise tool it was first thought to be, and is in fact more like an axe or shredder than a scalpel, science’s infatuation with gene editing marches on.

However, alongside the impetus to create life we also see a steady acceleration in technologies of death. Mass death. Nowhere in the proliferation of weapons systems is this convergence of technologies more salient than in the existence of gene weapons. Despite protestations by the military that such weapons do not exist, reports detail their deployment against both groups and individuals.

Numerous publications are now reporting that the ubiquitous emanations from WiFi and cell phones and other electromagnetics cause cancer and brain damage. The proliferation of concerns of the harmful effects of 5G only scratch the surface. A new wave of researchers, such as physicist Dr. Katherine Horton, are claiming that electromagnetics have been weaponized and are being deployed against selected US citizens. Horton declares that the deployment of these weapons has far surpassed the testing stage and that these weapons are now being levied for the purpose of “slow kill.”

Scientists have recently decried the development of autonomous robot killers. As reported widely, over 2400 scientists recently signed a statement declaring that they will not participate in the development or manufacture of robots that can identify and attack people without human oversight. No, this is not a science fiction novel or a dystopian “Terminator” fantasy. The technology involved in producing drone killer robots has advanced to the point where Britain, in a telling display of doublespeak, has unveiled its plan to build a pilotless military aircraft at the same point that it insists it will not fund autonomous lethal weapons.

And the US military is already in R and D mode concerning linking soldiers’ brains to a computer interface.

Ostensibly the UN would be the logical locus for international agreements concerning lethal weapons systems. The UN, however, appears to be operating deceptively in this regard. When documents were turned over the Biological Weapons Convention in Geneva concerning the fact that the US had put into place a covert delivery system for biological and chemical weapons delivery, the UN retaliated.

ITHACA is the NGO which lodged this report with the UN. The UN subsequently falsely reported in its documents that ITHACA was a mental institution. In addition, having secured lodging for the duration of the 2016 Biological Weapons Convention through the auspices of the Geneva Quaker Meeting with a high ranking UN official, one Linda Stoddart (formerly heading up the Dag Hammarskjold Library at the UN), the ITHACA representative was suddenly given the boot the day before her damning presentation was scheduled to take place on the UN floor, leaving her potentially stranded in Geneva in winter without lodging.