The quantum singularity

Larry Hardesty, MIT News

At the Association for Computing Machinery’s 43rd Symposium on Theory of Computing in June, associate professor of computer science Scott Aaronson and his graduate student Alex Arkhipov will present a paper describing an experiment that, if it worked, would offer strong evidence that quantum computers can do things that classical computers can’t. Although building the experimental apparatus would be difficult, it shouldn’t be as difficult as building a fully functional quantum computer.

If the experiment works, “it has the potential to take us past what I would like to call the 'quantum singularity,' where we do the first thing quantumly that we can’t do on a classical computer,” says Terry Rudolph, an advanced research fellow with Imperial College London’s Quantum Optics and Laser Science, who was not involved in the research.

Aaronson and Arkhipov's proposal is a variation on an experiment conducted by physicists at the University of Rochester in 1987, which relied on a device called a beam splitter, which takes an incoming beam of light and splits it into two beams traveling in different directions. The Rochester researchers demonstrated that if two identical light particles — photons — reach the beam splitter at exactly the same time, they will both go either right or left; they won’t take different paths. It’s another of the weird quantum behaviors of fundamental particles that defy our physical intuitions.

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~ See also: Quantum Perspective On The Non-Existence Of Light ~

Musical Innerlube: Puscifer

The CIA, Narcotics & Underworld: Doug Valentine Interview

By Suzan Mazur, Scoop

Several years ago, when I was trying to make the distinction between Lewis Lapham, the Editor of Harper's Magazine -- whose roots are in an old San Francisco banking family -- and Lewis Lapham, the Central Intelligence Agency's man, I was directed to author Doug Valentine by Lou Wolf of Covert Action Quarterly, who described Valentine as one of the most knowledgeable people on the CIA.

Valentine told me the two Laphams were not the same man. I was relieved. But in the next breath he said that Tony Lapham, Harper's Editor Lewis Lapham's brother, had been both a covert CIA agent and General Counsel to the CIA, appointed in 1976 by then Director of Central Intelligence, George H.W. Bush. I was again concerned.

[ ... ]

Suzan Mazur: What do you suppose the New York Times is up to with the Weiner book? Why is a reporter from one of the most important commercial newspapers, sticking it to the CIA by exposing the CIA’s 60 years of horrific failure, with monarchs and dictators on the payroll (King Hussein of Jordan for 20 years, Mobutu, etc.), when as you note in your richly informative book on the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, “Establishment privateers run the secret government”?

Doug Valentine: Most of what Weiner writes about the CIA is already known. It’s a history book with a bias, not an expose, at least not for the Vietnam generation. He doesn’t even really get into the current Bush administration. He gives us a predictable treatment of William Casey and the Contras, when there was an incredible revival of the CIA under Casey.

Suzan Mazur: Weiner plays up the fact that long-time CIA counterintelligence chief, James Angleton, was constantly spilling the beans to Kim Philby during their frequent liquid lunches – Philby, a British agent who turned out to be a spy for the Soviet Union.

Doug Valentine: Angleton was key to understanding the CIA. Weiner hasn’t detailed Angleton’s relationship with the underworld through the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. He hasn’t gotten past CIA 101.

Angleton had his own mysterious agenda, counterintelligence, seeking out enemy agents inside the CIA. He had liaison to the Mafia through Charles Siragusa, a Federal Bureau of Narcotics agent – and Mario Brod, a labor lawyer from Connecticut and New York, who as an Army counterintelligence officer had worked with Angleton at OSS – Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA.

As I say in the book, James Angleton alone possessed the coveted Israeli account. His loyalty was to the Director of Central Intelligence, Allen Dulles – then Richard Helms, who was chief of Clandestine Services and later DCI. Director William Colby was his enemy.

Through Angleton’s relationships with Italian royalty, Tibor Rosenbaum [Mossad agent], Charlie Siragusa [FBN agent], Hank Manfredi [FBN], and Mario Brod, he was certainly aware of Meyer Lansky’s central role as the Mafia’s banker in the Caribbean - where Lansky’s mob associate from Las Vegas, Moe Dalitz, opened an account at Castle Bank - as well as in Mexico, where Angleton’s friend, Winston M. Scott, was station chief, and certainly kept tabs on Lansky’s associate, former Mexican president Miguel Aleman. As ever, Angleton and Lansky were the dark stars of the intelligence and financial aspects of international drug smuggling. Alan Block devotes some pages to this in his book, Masters of Paradise.

Angleton thought William Colby might be a mole. Angleton exposed the divisions within the CIA after 1966, the Colby vs. Helms factions. He also represented the literary sensibility the CIA once had, where finding secrets was like teasing the meaning out of a poem. Now we have sledgehammer spies.

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The Invisible Wall

Living the myth in Greece

The Military Mafia

Army’s Mafia Abuse of Pvt. Bradley Manning by Ray McGovern

When the report leaked to the press, Taguba found himself treated like a disloyal capo who had talked out of school about the Family business.

Rather than thank Taguba for upholding the honor of the U.S. Army, the Bush administration singled out this hard-working, low-key general for retribution and forced retirement.

In an interview with New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh, Taguba described a chilling conversation he had with Gen. John Abizaid, head of Central Command, a few weeks after Taguba’s report became public.

As the two men sat in the back of Abizaid’s Mercedes sedan in Kuwait, Abizaid quietly told Taguba, "You and your report will be investigated."

"I’d been in the Army 32 years by then," Taguba told Hersh, "and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia."


Similarities Between the U.S. Military and the Mafia by Ian G. Anderson

As Smedley Butler concluded, the military might give mafia leaders lessons on how to oppress in the name of profits:

I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.


Armed Forces: The Military Mafia, TIME

Military lore is replete with tales of slick operators who fast-talk their way past obtuse superiors, navigate bureaucratic absurdities and come out winners. Sergeant Bilko of TV and Milo Minderbinder of Catch-22 are winked at as engaging barracks rogues, and most Americans only chuckle when told, as one Pentagon official said last week, that "everyone has his own racket in the Army."

Suddenly the humor has turned black. Scandal involving hundreds of thousands of dollars, tainting both Army brass and noncoms, has shaken a Pentagon already under attack from every side. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations is digging into corruption in Army noncommissioned officers' clubs in the U.S., Germany and Viet Nam. The key figures implicated have held two of the Army's most respected positions. One is Sergeant Major William O. Wooldridge, 46, once the top enlisted man in the Army. He has been accused of running a "Little Mafia" of senior sergeants that systematically bilked service clubs. The other is retired Major General Carl C. Turner, 56, the Army's former provost marshal general, or head military policeman, who later served as chief U.S. marshal in the Justice Department. Turner, according to testimony, quashed an investigation of Wooldridge and also sold Army firearms for personal profit.

Secret Accounts. Last week congressional investigators delineated an empire of larceny, kickbacks, assumed names and secret accounts in foreign banks that was allegedly run by Wooldridge and four fellow topkicks. The sergeants, some of whom were custodians of servicemen's clubs, were said to have skimmed $350,000 a year from club slot machines in Germany and used the money to set up their own company, Maredem, Ltd., to sell supplies at inflated prices to clubs in Viet Nam. Maredem's partners, who somehow managed to get transfers as a group, became custodians of the clubs in Viet Nam. Thus they, allegedly, sold goods to themselves. In 1968 alone, Wooldridge was said to have made $34,454 from Maredem, the others $44,574 each.