WASHINGTON — This was the enemy, served up in the latest chart from the intelligence agencies: 15 Qaeda suspects in Yemen with Western ties. The mug shots and brief biographies resembled a high school yearbook layout. Several were Americans. Two were teenagers, including a girl who looked even younger than her 17 years.

President Obama, overseeing the regular Tuesday counterterrorism meeting of two dozen security officials in the White House Situation Room, took a moment to study the faces. It was Jan. 19, 2010, the end of a first year in office punctuated by terrorist plots and culminating in a brush with catastrophe over Detroit on Christmas Day, a reminder that a successful attack could derail his presidency. Yet he faced adversaries without uniforms, often indistinguishable from the civilians around them.

“How old are these people?” he asked, according to two officials present. “If they are starting to use children,” he said of Al Qaeda, “we are moving into a whole different phase.”

It was not a theoretical question: Mr. Obama has placed himself at the helm of a top secret “nominations” process to designate terrorists for kill or capture, of which the capture part has become largely theoretical. He had vowed to align the fight against Al Qaeda with American values; the chart, introducing people whose deaths he might soon be asked to order, underscored just what a moral and legal conundrum this could be.

Mr. Obama is the liberal law professor who campaigned against the Iraq war and torture, and then insisted on approving every new name on an expanding “kill list,” poring over terrorist suspects’ biographies on what one official calls the macabre “baseball cards” of an unconventional war. When a rare opportunity for a dronestrike at a top terrorist arises — but his family is with him — it is the president who has reserved to himself the final moral calculation.

“He is determined that he will make these decisions about how far and wide these operations will go,” said Thomas E. Donilon, his national security adviser. “His view is that he’s responsible for the position of the United States in the world.” He added, “He’s determined to keep the tether pretty short.”

Nothing else in Mr. Obama’s first term has baffled liberal supporters and confounded conservative critics alike as his aggressive counterterrorism record. His actions have often remained inscrutable, obscured by awkward secrecy rules, polarized political commentary and the president’s own deep reserve.

In interviews with The New York Times, three dozen of his current and former advisers described Mr. Obama’s evolution since taking on the role, without precedent in presidential history, of personally overseeing the shadow war with Al Qaeda.

They describe a paradoxical leader who shunned the legislative deal-making required to close the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, but approves lethal action without hand-wringing. While he was adamant about narrowing the fight and improving relations with the Muslim world, he has followed the metastasizing enemy into new and dangerous lands. When he applies his lawyering skills to counterterrorism, it is usually to enable, not constrain, his ferocious campaign against Al Qaeda — even when it comes to killing an American cleric in Yemen, a decision that Mr. Obama told colleagues was “an easy one.”

His first term has seen private warnings from top officials about a “Whac-A-Mole” approach to counterterrorism; the invention of a new category of aerial attack following complaints of careless targeting; and presidential acquiescence in a formula for counting civilian deaths that some officials think is skewed to produce low numbers.

The administration’s failure to forge a clear detention policy has created the impression among some members of Congress of a take-no-prisoners policy. And Mr. Obama’s ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron P. Munter, has complained to colleagues that theC.I.A.’s strikes drive American policy there, saying “he didn’t realize his main job was to kill people,” a colleague said.......

Kiana Hayeri grew up in Tehran, where the country’s morality police restricted her public behavior. She left in 2005 when she was 17 and moved to Toronto, where she studied photography at Ryerson University.

Ms. Hayeri returned to Iran in 2010 to explore the dual lives of many young women who are expected to behave and dress modestly in public by covering their hair, arms and legs. But behind closed doors, these women act very much like Ms. Hayeri’s Canadian friends — dating, singing, studying ballet and even swimming.

“Everything that is banned by the government is being practiced, but behind closed doors,” said Ms. Hayeri, 24. “I think that my generation is exposed to the West through satellite and Internet so much that they don’t let the restrictions stop them.”

The young women she has photographed come from mostly middle- and upper-middle class religious families, though many of them are not religious themselves. Some of their parents were either relatively lenient or they found a way to dress conservatively when they left home but changed their clothing afterward.

Ms. Hayeri does not claim that her project represents the entirety of Iran. But she said there are many young people in the big cities who yearn for a less constricting public life.

“It’s a whole world that many Americans are unaware of,” she said. “Nowadays, with all this talk about war, sanctions and nuclear weapons, people tend to forget about ordinary people, the actual people who live in Iran, and they only look at the government.”

The religious restrictions on public behavior that were codified into Iranian law after the 1980 revolution are enforced by the morality police. When her subjects were stopped for a rolled-up sleeve or a scarf not covering their hair, they would fix the problem — at least for as long as the officer was in sight.

Kiana HayeriYassi and her friend en route to a gallery’s opening reception. 2011.

Ms. Hayeri herself was stopped and detained last year for wearing thick, black leggings that the morality police found provocative. A family member had to bring her appropriate clothing, and since her close relatives had all left Iran, it took a while to iron out.

Her project’s title, “Your Veil Is A Battleground,” refers not just to the hijab covering — or not covering — their heads in public, but also to the hidden nature of their private lives. It goes beyond the restrictions placed on women in public or their private rebellion. Ms. Hayeri also explores how the women choose to present themselves in public.

In diptych portraits (Slides 15 through 20), Ms. Hayeri photographed her subjects with and without clothes or makeup. She said their choice of material for the hijab and their makeup allows them to have some control over how they present their public persona.

“They use color and fashion to make them stand out from the crowd,” she said. “When they put on the hijab and makeup, they are more powerful.”

The issues are complex. Women are restricted in public, sometimes for wearing too much makeup. But makeup, in a sense, is a veil too, covering a woman’s real appearance.

“Persian culture is all about the image you present of yourself,” she said. “Even if you’re going out for grocery shopping, you put on makeup. So taking that off of your face takes a lot of courage.”

Though she is now a Canadian citizen, Ms. Hayeri said she was raised “in the same world” as her subjects. She said that there are many more younger, liberal, urban Iranians who would like to integrate their public and private lives.

“This is the generation that is trying to push the boundaries in every sense.”

Kiana Hayeri

By Cory Doctorow at 12:48 pm Friday, May 25

(Photo by Philip Miresco)

Quebec is in the throes of mass protests. A prolonged student strike over tuition hikes triggered a law placing broad restrictions on the freedom to protest, and giving the police the power to arbitrarily declare even "approved" protests to be illegal. Over 500 were arrested in a single Montreal protest, after a prolonged and totally unjustifiable kettling incident. Kate McDonnell of the Montreal City Weblog was on that march, and she's graciously written us a piece on the experience:

Downtown Montreal midday Tuesday, thousands upon thousands of people poured into Place des Festivals and the surrounding areas to begin a march. Montrealers march more readily than most Canadians, but this was a special day – the 100th day of the student strike against the tuition increase ordained by the Quebec government under Jean Charest.

Charest has been premier of Quebec since 2003. A Conservative at the federal level, he jumped for the chance when the Quebec Liberal Party needed a new leader. He has nudged the party steadily rightward ever since. In recent years his government has been rocked by multiple charges of corruption and collusion, but it was the party's planned increase in university tuition fees that sparked the real furor in Quebec.

Early 2011, Charest announced his intention to end a tuition freeze with an increase of $325 per year until a university year (two terms) ends up costing $3,793 in 2017. Sporadic protests were held, but the demo of February 17, 2012 was the beginning of daily protests, mostly in the evenings, most peaceful but with occasional outbreaks by "casseurs" breaking windows, throwing rocks and bottles at police, painting things red.

Concerns about access to education were foremost: yes, Quebec still has some of the lowest tuition fees around, but Quebec taxes are very high, a fact that's tolerated because Quebecers have nearly European expectations for collective health care, education and other services. Statistics show that fewer Quebecers progress to higher education than other Canadians, probably the legacy of a time when the Catholic Church dominated the culture (a hegemony that only ended with the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s). Pundits are in disagreement whether rising tuition rates will lower university attendance.

The most recent ratcheting of tension was last week's passage of a new law, Bill 78, the loi spéciale which limits freedom of assembly, protest, or picketing on or near university grounds, or anywhere in Quebec without prior police approval. A more vaguely worded part of the bill would criminalize the act of encouraging people to demonstrate.

At the same time, Montreal adopted a new bylaw banning face coverings at demonstrations – a prohibition the mayor had attempted before but had not been able to squeeze past freedom-of-expression rules. This time the bylaw passed like butter – but it was Bill 78 that put the public's back up. Newspapers printed legal opinions that it would never withstand a rights challenge. Protesters announced immediate intention to flout the new law. Websites tauntingly demanded arrest for civil disobedience.

Tuesday's march was technically illegal from the top, because the marchers immediately broke the new rule about sticking to a route previously vetted by police. Most wore some red, as the photo shows, but it was striking how tuition wasn't the issue on the minds of the crowd: Charest's dereliction of duty and disgust with his government was the theme of the day. The presence of many people older than the usual student age was also an indicator that this is no longer simply a student revolt. Charest's failure to resolve the tuition issue by bringing in a "loi matraque" (bludgeon law), was mocked and derided with chants and signs.

This "illegal" segment of the march circulated peacefully through the heart of Montreal's downtown and business district, passing by the gates of McGill University, the headquarters of SNC-Lavalin, federal government buildings, Hydro-Quebec. There was a festival ambiance with drumming and intermittent chanting: La loi spéciale, on s'en câlisse!

The march made its way to Lafontaine Park – the goal of the initial route submitted to police – but the crowd pushed along through the park and was clearly going to keep going even as the rain started in earnest. Evening demos have started around 8:30 every day for a month, and this demonstration looked set to meld directly into it.

Later, after dark, while most of the demo remained peaceful, the usual incidents of police charges, cat-and-mouse chases and arrests that have accompanied the night demonstrations for a month came back into play. By the end of the night, 100 demonstrators had been arrested.

Now a new kind of protest has popped up: the cacerolazo or casserole demo. This is a very old grassroots form of protest, also known as rough music, the charivari – in which people come out of their homes banging on pots and pans to make a racket. At 8 p.m. Wednesday, people all over town were banging away on metal bowls and pots in their back alleys, on major street corners, coalescing into marches that moved noisily through the neighbourhoods.

Wednesday night's downtown demo was estimated at 3000 people and was peaceful but, based on Bill 78's ban against any demo not cleared with police, it was declared illegal and 400 people were rounded up and arrested.

As I write, 1:30 a.m. Friday, the Thursday evening demo that arose from a combination of the "traditional" downtown march and the neighbourhood casserole protests, is winding down peacefully. It's a lovely warm night in Montreal.

There's both a feeling that this is the end of a régime, and a tacit understanding that something drastic may happen to end the demonstrations before June 8 – Grand Prix weekend, the biggest tourism event of the year and the beginning of the city's summer festival season. As I write, news media are saying talks will reopen between the government and the student leaders early next week if both sides can clear away conditions that would make talks futile.

Thousands of soldiers have come home with symptoms and illnesses they suspect are linked to open-air "burn pits." Now, a new study has confirmed that particulate matter from the pits causes lung damage and immune system impairment. Photo: U.S. Air Force

Since returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan, an untold number of soldiers have come down with puzzling health problems. Chronic bronchitis. Neurological defects. Even cancer. Many of them are pointing the finger at a single culprit: The open-air “burn pits” that incinerated trash — from human waste to computer parts — on military bases overseas.

Pentagon officials have consistently reassured personnel that there was no “specific evidence” connecting the two. But now, only days after Danger Room uncovered a memo suggesting that Army officials knew how dangerous the pits were, an animal study is offering up new scientific evidence that links burn pits to depleted immune systems.

“The dust doesn’t only appear to cause lung inflammation,” says Dr. Anthony Szema, an assistant professor at Stony Brook School of Medicine who specializes in pulmonology and allergies, and the researcher who led this latest study. “It also destroys the body’s own T-cells.” Those cells are at the core of the body’s immune system, “like a bulletproof vest against illnesses,” Szema tells Danger Room. When they’re depleted, an individual is much more prone to myriad conditions.

For scientists, trying to establish a definitive connection between those diffuse health problems and the pits has been exceedingly difficult to do. Most notably because the Department of Defense, as a report issued by the Institutes of Medicine noted last year, didn’t collect adequate evidence — like what the pits burned and which soldiers were exposed — for researchers to draw any meaningful conclusions about the impact of the open-air incinerators. Szema’s study is only on 15 mice, so it’s by no means definitive. But it is an important first step.

 Regardless, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Pentagon officials were aware of the risk posed by the pits.Another memo (.pdf), written by Lt. Col. Darrin Curtis in 2006 and obtained by Danger Room, warned of “an acute health hazard” to personnel stationed at Iraq’s Balad air base. “It is amazing,” he noted, “that the burn pit has been able to operate … without significant engineering controls being put in place.”

But as recently as yesterday, when asked about the leaked Army memo obtained by Danger Room (which cited a risk of ”long-term adverse health conditions” from the pits), Pentagon spokesperson George Little told reporters that “we do not have specific evidence that ties these kinds of disposal facilities to health issues.”

Perhaps not. But researchers just got way, way closer. A team, led by Dr. Szema at Stony Brook University, this week revealed to Danger Room the results of their ongoing investigations that are trying to directly link health problems to the air emitted by burn pits. And the results should cause those who served near the pits — which burned trash at most major bases in Iraq and Afghanistan during at least some period over the last decade — to be concerned.

Dr. Szema’s team used dust samples taken from around the burn pits at Camp Victory, Iraq (provided to them by the Army Corps of Engineers). That environs, according to Army Officer Daniel Tijerina (who blames the pits for his own chronic health problems), was rife with the fumes of incinerated “animal carcasses, asbestos insulation … lithium batteries, paints and paint strippers … copiers, printers, monitors, glues [and] styrofoam,” among other equipment, waste and chemical products.

The dust from Camp Victory was inserted into the airways of mice, and researchers tracked their subjects’ responses using two metrics: A pathologist examined tissue samples from the lungs for signs of inflammation, and the team used flow cytometry to count the T-cells in each subject’s spleen. The researchers found that the mice exhibited lung inflammation and suppressed immune cell counts within a period of two hours after exposure. More specifically, their T-cell counts dropped by one-third. Two weeks later, their T-cell counts had plummeted again, leaving the mice with 30 percent of the T-cells they’d had before the dust exposure.

All of the mice also exhibited inflammation in their airways, often alongside interstitial inflammation — swelling in the tissue network that extends throughout the lungs and facilitates the exchange of gas and air between the lungs and blood.

“I can’t even imagine what this data shows when you think about someone coming back from Iraq,” Szema says. “These guys weren’t inhaling this air once. They were working in it, sleeping in it, exercising in it. For days and days on end.”

Although Dr. Szema’s research relied on animal models, he says he’s confident the results “are highly applicable when you consider a human case.” They certainly seem to match the symptoms popping up among thousands of soldiers, many of whom have logged their ailments on a database at BurnPits360, a website dedicated to the topic. And his findings regarding immune-system suppression might help explain why soldiers exposed to the same fumes are now afflicted with vastly different illnesses.

This study is also the first to examine current exposure and the onset of symptoms. Earlier research has been less comprehensive. The IOM study, for example, simply studied a host of air samples taken from Iraq. Other, epidemiological, investigations have evaluated the current health metrics of soldiers who’d served near the burn pits. None have actually tested the air samples on living subjects and then tracked the results.

Certainly, the research adds more heft to that earlier work. But even Dr. Szema, who is also conducting an analysis that uses the BurnPits360 database to compare soldier symptoms with their likely exposures, acknowledges that his results shouldn’t exactly be surprising. “Based on the patients I’ve seen, this is a no-brainer,” he says. “If anyone tries to say, ‘Oh, dust is just dust,’ I can tell them that’s simply not true.”

Marine Lance Cpl. Robert Dearborn guides a truck carrying boxes of food at Patrol Base Alcatraz, Afghanistan on Aug. 26, 2011. Photo: DVIDS

In 2008, the Pentagon began investigating whether the main supplier of food to troops in Afghanistan overcharged taxpayers. Since then, there have been audits, recriminations and the discovery that the supplier may have overbilled the military as much as $756.9 million. Now lawmakers are squeezing both the Pentagon and the contractor in an attempt to find out what happened.

That’s according to a statement released today from the two heads of the House Subcommittee on National Security, Homeland Defense and Foreign Operations. The congressmen want documents and information within 10 days from both the Pentagon’s Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) and the Switzerland-based company, Supreme Foodservice GmbH. This might be difficult, because the Pentagon has alleged Supreme Foodservice — which has been paid $5.5 billion since 2005 to supply food to more than 250 bases and outposts – did not maintain invoices and truck manifests (.pdf) while transporting food, water and other materiel; nor did the company provide data to investigators on fuel costs, price estimates and even correct flight plans.

“It is outrageous that DLA could ever be in the position of possibly overpaying any vendor by three quarters of a billion dollars — especially at a time when troop levels are being scaled back because funding is tight,” said subcommittee chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz in a statement. “The Subcommittee will work with the Department of Defense to investigate the facts and circumstances surrounding this apparent lack of oversight.”

Supreme, meanwhile, maintains the high costs reflect the difficulty of operating in Afghanistan. The contractor also claims it is owed more than $1 billion by the Pentagon beyond the billions already paid, which when combined with the Pentagon’s own claims, “raises serious concerns regarding DLA’s contracting oversight,” according to the congressmen. It also calls into question the Pentagon’s consideration of Supreme Foodservice for another contract in December, worth a massive $10 to $30 billion over the next five years.

“The American taxpayers refuse to accept a government contractor that bills more than $750 million in unsubstantiated charges, and they refuse to accept the Pentagon’s failure to manage this contract properly,” Rep. John Tierney, the  ranking member on the committee, said in a statement.

A majority of the unaccounted costs ($455 million) involved airlifting fresh fruits and vegetables from the United Arab Emirates to Afghanistan and onto bases and isolated outposts — without oversight. The Pentagon claims the contractor also billed for nonexistent cargo and overcharged $124.3 million for “transportation and corrugated packing boxes,” according to Bloomberg.

Supreme also grew too big, too fast. The original contract between Supreme and the Pentagon applied to only four Afghanistan bases. Within months, Supreme grew to supplying 64 bases. Today, the number of bases and outposts supplied by Supreme exceeds 250. Just getting fuel and food in and out of the country alone is a challenge — let alone supplying the goods to a slew of different military organizations.

“It was hard enough to locate appropriate items when we had to make substitutions in the goods we delivered and cope with other anomalies in the field,” Gaurav Kumar, Supreme’s information technology director, said in a June 2009 promotional “case study” for Microsoft’s Dynamics AX resource planning suite, which Supreme adopted in 2009. “But we also constantly struggled with invoices not matching the goods delivered, containing errors, and inconsistent data.”

Kumar added then: “When I looked at our inventory module, I saw that it had no checks built in for handling inventory management and addressing the principles of warehousing, such as systematic stock management and stock traceability, which are especially important with food service,” he said. “We tried to program some functionality to that end, but the effort was extremely frustrating and produced inconsistent outcomes.”

Supreme’s resource software was also designed by a German company — in German. This meant few of Supreme’s international workforce, which speaks English as a common language, could understand it. Tracking fuel costs were prone to errors, given the effect of changes in temperature and monetary value to the price of gas. ”Tracking changes in volume was difficult, and price management for us was inelegant, time-consuming, and error-prone,” he said.

The Microsoft promo suggests Supreme mostly resolved its logistics problem. But this also needs a heaping dose of skepticism. And with an upcoming contract worth tens of billions, and with pressure from Congress, it’d be a wonder if the military renews with the company again.

Above, an ad that recently ran in The Guardian newspaper. “The government of a Middle Eastern state is recruiting a senior torturer to work in a well-equipped prison. Our ideal candidate would be prepared to inflict extreme pain and suffering… Candidates will be expected to inspire a small but enthusiastic team." The ad is part of a new awareness campaign for the Freedom From Torture medical foundation. Other positions they are advertising for include Abuser and Kidnapper. Both of those pay much more than Torturer. "Career Prospects in the Pain Business" (Design Observer)

Hackers associated with well known hacker-activist group “Anonymous Operations” have released a massive cache of data they say was obtained when they hacked a website belonging to the United States Department of Justice. “Today we are releasing 1.7GB of data that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now,” Anonymous wrote in a statement on its website. The hackers claim the file contains emails as well as “the entire database dump” from the DOJ website.

“We do not stand for any government or parties, we stand for freedom of people, freedom of speech and freedom of information,” the hackers wrote. ”We are releasing data to spread information, to allow the people to be heard and to know the corruption in their government. We are releasing it to end the corruption that exists, and truly make those who are being oppressed free.”

The Justice Department confirmed the breach in a statement given to ZDNet. “The department is looking into the unauthorized access of a website server operated by the Bureau of Justice Statistics that contained data from their public website,” a DOJ spokesperson said. “The Bureau of Justice Statistics website has remained operational throughout this time. The department’s main website, justice.gov, was not affected.”

The 1.7GB file containing data Anonymous says it obtained during the DOJ breach is available for download as a torrent.

In his new book Unintended Consequences: Why Everything You’ve Been Told About the Economy Is Wrong, Conard argues that gaping income inequality is an indication of a healthy economy, not a sick one. The more unequal we are, Conard told the New York Times Magazine, the better off we all will be. Why? Because economies grow and thrive when smart people devise solutions to our thorniest problems by inventing or perfecting goods and services. Conard singled out a group of twentysomethings sitting at a Manhattan coffee shop one afternoon, deriding them as lazy "art-history majors." Those people should be out creating businesses and taking risks, he insisted, because that’s how societies prosper. And the way to encourage that risk-taking is the promise of obscene wealth for those who succeed (and, implicitly, dismal poverty for those who don’t).

How obscene should that wealth be? In 2008, the top 1% commanded 21% of all income in America. Conard says our society would improve if only that figure were doubled.

Needless to say, there is no shortage of Conard critics. The more respectful ones ask: Teachers do not fit Conard's entrepreneurial ideal -- are they no use to society? What about judges? Government regulators? Others dismiss Conard as an out-of-touch millionaire living in a fantasy land. For instance, Conard claims that wages for American workers have climbed in recent decades; in fact, as liberal economist Dean Baker notes, wages have barely kept pace with inflation. "We'll leave it to his shrink," Baker quipped, "to determine whether the problem is that Conard is deluded or dishonest."

It’s not hard to imagine how members of the working poor would react to Conard's message. Here he is urging them to take the leap and design more efficient soda cans or search engines, when, as TomDispatch regular Barbara Ehrenreich makes strikingly clear, the working poor who dare share food with the down-and-out or kick up their feet on a subway seat can land in a debtor's hell created for them by state and local governments and law enforcement agencies. Unlike Conard, Ehrenreich, the author of the bestselling Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, had an actual urge to help those in trouble.  She’s just launching theEconomic Hardship Reporting Project, which will “will pay laid-off and/or underemployed journalists who are themselves caught in the maw of economic hardship to produce compelling stories.”  (To catch Timothy MacBain's latest Tomcast audio interview in which Ehrenreich discusses how the poor get soaked and her latest project to fund investigative journalism on poverty, click here or download it to your iPod here.)  Andy Kroll

Preying on the Poor 
How Government and Corporations Use the Poor as Piggy Banks 
By Barbara Ehrenreich

Crowdsourcing a next-gen drone or a rolling torture center? Uh, yeah, Kickstriker is a hoax.

Inspired by the Kony 2012 fad, a group of New York University grad students has set up the wartime version of Kickstarter, where random people can bankroll new weapons and new paramilitary missions. Among the offerings: an all-seeing drone armed with “a new kind of explosive” promising to cut down on civilian casualties, or a bus packed with a rolling “enhanced interrogation” center.

Just one thing, and it’s a spoiler alert: The site, Kickstriker, is an obvious hoax — one meant to get you thinking about how a world of crowdfunded warfare might not be so far away.

“Polemically, that’s really interesting,” says Clay Shirky, the NYU professor and internet theorist, out of whose communications tech class the idea was born, “but that’s actually a thing that could happen, given that there are these guns for hire. What would it take to create a crowdsourced hire of [mercenaries]?”

Kickstriker, a site only a few days old, bills itself as a way for average citizens “who care” to support the resolution of intractable wars. “Following the massive success of Invisible Children’s ‘Kony 2012′ campaign, we found ourselves excited about the potential that crowdsourcing held for addressing global conflicts,” reads its About page. “Disappointed” by the backlash to Kony 2012′s messianism, comfort with U.S. military intervention and disquieting racial undertones, the crew of three Shirky students sought to “cut out the middleman in online activism.”

While the site is “in beta,” it’s only got a few projects ready for funding. One of them is the “Panopticopter,” the brainchild of three MIT students, a “prototype drone that has more accurate image-capture and image-processing abilities than the current generation of drones being used by the U.S. military,” plus a special, experimental explosive more advanced than the Hellfire missiles armed drones currently tote.

Another is the “Mobile Black Site,” a transportable torture chamber: “With the click of a button, an operator can alter its temperature, noise level, darkness and/or humidity. The MBS also comes equipped with a 165-decibel sound system, capable of playing music and other sounds at unprecedented levels (for reference, just 158 decibels can cause intense nausea).”

Charming. But also, not real.

Check out the “MIT students” working on the drone project: “The three of us (Brandon McCartney, Natassia Zolot and Radric Davis) can spend the summer focusing on the Panopticopter.” That would be real names of the rappers Lil B, Kreayshawn and Gucci Mane. (While I have no doubt about Gucci’s engineering prowess, I certainly doubt his ability to stay out of jail for an entire summer; and he seems to prefer working with Kreay’s awful co-conspirator V-Nasty.)

And that Mobile Black Site? It’s supposedly pushed by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank, with partnership from longtime CIA cutout Tepper Aviation. (#eyeroll) Indeed, when you click through the donation tool, Kickstriker admits the hoax before the gullible open their wallets and its creators end up arrested for fraud.

So what’s the Kickstriker crew’s real goal here?

During one of Shirky’s classes in mid-March, a discussion broke out about Kony 2012. One of the site’s founders, James Borda, mused as a reductio ad absurdum about doing a Kickstarter campaign soBlackwater could get the cash to hunt war criminal Joseph Kony. “This hush fell over the room,” Shirky remembers.

“We laughed about it, but then we said this was an idea that’s just one step removed from reality,” says co-founder Mehan Jayasuriya, who put in the rappers’ government names “as a little Easter Egg” for fans. “It’s just believable enough that people might fall for it, or some percentage of people might actually think it’s a good idea, which would be horrifying.”

After the class was dismissed, Jayasuriya and his friends decided that the way to take the critique all the way would be to build a crowdsourcing platform. A parody site was born. “We thought it was such a ridiculous and dark idea that we couldn’t not build it,” he tells Danger Room. “Kony was our starting point — that kind of focus on what James calls the commodification of altruism. The new activism that puts the reader, the donor, the viewer at the center of the story.”

And by using hot-button issues that interest war nerds (drones, torture) and internet nerds (crowdsourcing! Kickstarter!) they thought they might “get people really excited about it, to the point where maybe they wouldn’t even really think about the really damaging, horrible implications of putting something like this out into the world.”

So far, they haven’t gotten angry emails from Heritage, let alone Gucci Mane’s camp. And some reporters (who I agreed not to name) have contacted Kickstriker, credulously, to discuss the project. It’s gone around on Twitter — particularly after Shirky, who wasn’t involved in the project itself, tweeted it Thursday night — but it’s too new to have reached critical mass.

“It was probably better that we did this as a joke,” Jayasuriya says, “rather than somebody launching something like this for real.”