What Adam Curry is reading

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  'Homeland' Star Makes Muslim Joke To Obama | MRCTV
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  Senator Whitehouse Wants Action To Better Prepare For Emergency Situations Climate Change Presents
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    Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:50
  "The President Did Not Tell The American People The Truth!" Senator John McCain
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    Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:41
  Should Texas Be Allowed To Secede From The USA?
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    Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:30
  Cenk Calls People Who Sign Secession Petitions "Un-American Freeloaders Cowards & Traitors"
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:57
  The Rise Of Al Qaeda In Yemen
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 23:30
  "The American People Want The Wealthiest People To Start Paying Their Fair Share of Taxes!"
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:56
  Prosecutors Ask For Death Penalty In Robert Bales Case Of Massacre Of An Afghan Village
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:56
  Does Climate Change Threaten To Extinct Your Favorite Coffee? (AND YOU?)
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:55
  JAG Atty Explains Why He Believes Gen Allen Is Still Positioned To Become Supreme Commander Of NATO
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:52
  Man That Accused Sesame Street Puppeteer Of Molesting Him As A Child Recants His Story
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:51
  Any Of The States Wanting To Secede That Get 25000 Signatures Mandates A Response From Obama
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:51
  Cornel West "We End Up With A Rockefeller Republican In Blackface With Barack Obama"
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:50
  "It Is Of The Highest Importance That Gen Petraeus Testify As To What Really Happened In Benghazi"
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:49
  Jay Carney Pounded With Questions About Generals Petraeus & Allen At White House Daily Briefing
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:49
  Allegedly The Administration Watched The Benghazi Attack Occur In The White House Situation Room
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:48
  Meeting with the President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:47
  Millions Protest In The Streets Across Europe In Day Of Action Against Austerity
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:40
  Israel Threatens To Topple Abbas If Palestinian Authority Receives Non-Member State Status At UN
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    Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:40
  20 States File Petitions To Secede From USA
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    Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:54
  Filmmaker Ken Burns Subpoenaed After Refusing To Handover Video To NYPD
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    Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:51
  Second Woman Contacted FBI About Petraeus Mistress
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    Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:05
  Still No Explanation For Deadly Explosion In Indianapolis Residential Neighborhood
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    Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:02
  Australia's Prime Minister Announces Nationwide Investigation Into Child Sexual Abuse
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    Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:23
  Heavy Rains Leave Most Of Venice Under Water With Highest Ever Recorded Water Levels
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    Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:22
Forget Pippa Middleton's party pooper. Not all celebrity books are a bum deal
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  Source: Culture | guardian.co.uk
  Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:48
  Right royal ruckus '... Pippa Middleton at the launch of her party-planning book Celebrate. Photograph: David Levenson/Getty Images
  Ah, Pippa Middleton. It's not really her fault, you know. Dazzled by the sight of her in a white dress, some chump at Penguin gave her several buckets of cash to write a book about pass the parcel. And so she did '' and now nobody wants to buy it, and critics are mocking the poor lass. But can you blame her for accepting that fool's coin? Take the money and run, Pippa, that's what I say. Furthermore, I agree: turkeys are an ideal bird for large gatherings.
  Besides, it's not like she's the only famous person to write a book that landed in the marketplace like a corpse dumped in an unmarked grave. Arnold Schwarzenegger is rumoured to have been paid millions for his recently published memoirs. According to the Daily Beast, it has so far sold 27,000 copies, most of them in October, the month it was published. Avengers vs. X-Men Versus #6, a totally shit comic featuring nothing but extended fight scenes from an equally shit comic of almost the same name, sold three times as many units in the same month. Snooki's novel Gorilla Beach has sold a paltry 3,000 copies since it was published in May, while curiously nobody seems to give a toss about 80s actor Andrew McCarthy's memoir of how travelling helped him to overcome his fear of settling down. Well, around 5,000 people do, but no more than that. And Britney Spears is soon to write a novel. Can you spell "fiasco"? She can't.
  And that's just in the last couple of months. Go into the past and you'll find many big celebrity books that made oodles of cash vanish like a seaside magician fiddling with a publisher's gold watch. Edwina Curry's memoirs, anyone?
  But does this mean that the publishing model of big name+any old crap=$$$" is finished? Don't hold your breath, my friends. Publishers have to make money somehow and throwing scads of cash at a famous moron is, well, easy. After all, glamour model Katie Price's novels sold, so it's not as if quality matters. We can look forward to many more years of "novels" and "memoirs" from people who barely know how to hold a pen, never mind whether i comes before e.
  Is this much-maligned genre entirely awful? No. Every now and then, whenever I need a break from quality, I indulge. It started a few years back when I read Piers Morgan's memoir. Yes, I know he's a knob, but so does he, and the book was gossipy, entertaining and easy to read. I can't remember anything in it, of course, but I don't think that was the point.
  And it wasn't the only good celebrity book I've read. Bob Dylan's Chronicles was widely praised, and even though I never listen to his music I gave it a whirl. It's very good: self-aware, nicely written, full of interesting stories and observations. Another great rock autobiography is Keith Richards's Life. When it came out, the papers concentrated on twaddle about Mick Jagger's alleged micro-penis, but over the course of Richards's book I absorbed not only the tale of a remarkable life led by a clever man who had (remarkably) never lost touch with reality, but also an excellent portrait of a transitional era in British culture. John Cale's What's Welsh for Zen is likewise a great and thoughtful rock memoir.
  These books were good at least in part because the authors hadn't spent the past 40 years repeating the same anecdotes on chat shows; in many ways they were writing to counteract the myths that had accreted around their names. Written with some dude at the Times, but there was no trace of effort on the journo's part. It reads as though the legendary singer had mumbled into a tape recorder for a few hours and then shuffled off to drink a smoothie while his collaborator phoned it in almost as quickly as you can say "the cheque has cleared". Alice Cooper's Golf Monster reads like extended chat-show schtick. Recently I've been dabbling in Rick Wakeman's Grumpy Old Rock Star. Wakeman's voice is affable and engaging but every story has the feel of a well-worn anecdote rehearsed a thousand times down the pub. Still, none of those books are boring, and better yet, they can often be found in bargain bookstores for hardly any money at all!
  Books by actors I tend to avoid. I did read Charlie Chaplin's autobiography and agree with everyone else that the first 200 pages are excellent. Simon Cowell is supposed to be vaguely literary, but who cares? I heard that Rob Lowe's autobiography is better than you might expect, but obviously I'm not going to pay for it. The same goes for Michael Caine's second autobiography. I am, however, up for Schwarzenegger's Total Recall '' as soon as I see it on the "reduced" racks of my local bookshop, that is.
  Actually, all that talk of actors reminds me. I once sat in a pub with some people from a prestigious publisher (hint: it sounds like phaber) and was horrified when an editor suggested getting Russell Brand to write a book of essays about Arnold Bennett. I mean, that's an atrocious idea, nearly as awful as making relevant-in-the-90s pop crooner Jarvis Cocker an editor-at-large. Wait, what's that you say? They did?
  Still, I cannot end this brief overview of non-terrible celebrity books without mentioning the sub-category of cash-in titles by people made momentarily famous by a mega-scandal. These are usually twaddle but at least one of them is a fantastic read: The Politician by Andrew Young. You may remember him as the dead-eyed reptilian weirdo who degraded himself and his family for the sake of shiny-haired reptilian politician and fantasist John Edwards. Read that book, and shiver at its lies, its emptiness, its triviality; shudder at the hollow cores of the world's most ambitious men and the self-deception of the fools who follow them. Edwards is hardly unique, after all '' he just got caught. Friends, forget your Ozzys, your Alices, your Keefs and all those other infamous lords of rock '' here is the real heart of darkness.
Steve Case: America needs to 'double down on entrepreneurs' (Q&A)
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  Source: CNET News
  Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:42
  The AOL co-founder is on a mission to keep skilled entrepreneurs in the United States and to help fuel startups in cities far from Silicon Valley.
  Steve Case at this year's Techonomy confab.
  (Credit: Asa Mathat/Techonomy)Steve Case, who made his vast fortune as the co-founder of America Online, wants to help America's startup scene flourish. Not the scene in Silicon Valley, but in all the pockets between there and the East Coast -- what he calls the "rise of the rest." Cities like Cleveland, Memphis and Detroit. Through his Washington, D.C-based firm, Revolution, Case has invested in about 25 non-Valley startups, including LivingSocial and the now-public Zipcar.
  That mission plays into his big cause at the moment, pushing to reform America's high-skilled immigration system so that the country keeps and attracts the best tech workers and entrepreneurs. It's the key component of the bipartisan Startup Act 2.0, which Case helped get introduced last spring but which has made little progress.
  With the election behind us, Case hopes Washington will at last tackle this issue. I caught up with Case to discuss this topic and more. Here's an edited version of our conversation.
  Is Obama's victory good for your initiatives, for getting Startup Act 2.0 addressed?Case: The hope was to quickly follow the passing of the JOBS Act [about six months ago] with Startup Act 2.0. But obviously, when you're moving closer to November, things kind of get bogged down.Now that the election is completed, I think it will get more traction. Now is the time to build the momentum and take the steps we need, particularly around high-skilled immigration.
  Is global competition why this is so important?Case: The reason the United States has the leading economy in the world is the work of entrepreneurs, who built not just companies but entire industries that propelled the United States from being a startup to being the leading economy in the world. That didn't happen by accident. We need to recognize that and double down on entrepreneurs, because other nations are figuring this out.
  They're moving quite aggressively to put policies in place around immigration to attract talent; around incentives to attract capital; around a regulatory environment to make it easy for people to start and scale their companies; around research to help fuel more innovation. Other countries are stepping up their game and we need to step up our game with real urgency. This is not just a macro global competitive issue, although that's important. It's also an urgent issue around jobs and the economy now.
  Steve Case (second from left) with senators introducing Startup Act 2.0 in May. The bill has not yet had a House or a Senate hearing.
  (Credit: Office of Senator Chris Coons)When do you expect the Act to get some attention?Case:The media focus is on the fiscal cliff issue, so that gets most of the oxygen in the room. I've been trying to put down a marker in this lame-duck session so when the new Congress starts in January this is a priority. This is critically important. There is a hope that Startup Act 2.0 will move pretty quickly on its own, but some components are tied to some other issues.
  Such as?Case: High-skilled immigration. That issue will get a lot of attention early next year with the broader debate around immigration policy. There are a variety of different paths to get to the promised land. But the promised land is making sure that we build on the steps that were taken around capital and the JOBS Act and also take steps around talent and regulation and commercialization.
  How much pushback is there?Case:There is generally not pushback on the idea of winning the global battle for talent and trying to attract and keep some of the best and brightest entrepreneurs and engineers. There's general agreement on that. There's some debate on the specific provisions. There's different bills that have been introduced that try to deal with it in different ways.
  It can be dealt with in a narrow way focused on the Startup Act or some of the STEM bills that have been introduced. Or it can be dealt with in the broader context of comprehensive reform. My view is if there is a way to come together around broader immigration reform quickly, that would be great. But if that doesn't happen, then we shouldn't delay the issue because every year -- and again it will happen in May and June next year - 40,000 to 50,000 people will be graduating with Ph.D.s and masters' degrees, and half or so will end up having to leave. Some of those people will go back to their countries and start companies that could end up being the next Googles or Facebooks.
  Were you an Obama supporter?Case: I was not a public supporter for anybody. Part of what I've tried to do is be bipartisan and really focus more on bringing people together, and try to find the common ground. ... I concluded the best way to do that was to focus on the policy and not on the politics.
  Let's talk about Revolution, which is your main job.Case: We just launched a Revolution Growth fund, a $450 million fund we raised late last year, and we continue to make investments. We've made investments in a variety of sectors last few years--education, health care, transportation.
  How are your investments doing?Case: Up until we set up that fund, this was private investment vehicle. I was the single investor. We only institutionalized Revolution over the last year or so with outside capital. There are a lot of firms in your neck of the woods [in San Francisco], but not as many firms that have this digital and disruptive focus on the East Coast. D.C. is s vibrant market. New York is growing like crazy. We think there are lot of interesting, innovative, entrepreneurial companies all over the country, even though most of the capital is focused a few areas, like Silicon Valley. We think there'll be a regional growth of entrepreneurship, and part of our strategy is to help drive that.
  So you won't talk about LivingSocial, which landed a big investment from Amazon, or how others have done for you?Case: It's a private company. Obviously, it doesn't make sense to talk about that. But it's been a great investment of us.
  What's your view on the climate for startups now?Case: There's a little bit of have-and-have-nots, kind of two-Americas view here. Startups actually are down 23 percent over the last five years. There are fewer new companies being started. Part of the reason for the JOBs Act and the Startup Act, and part of the reason of the Startup America Partnership, which I chair, is to try to reverse that trend.
  That just doesn't seem the case, considering how cheap it's become to start an Internet company and all the two- and three-person startups popping up.Case: You may not see it. But If you travel around the county, that's the reality and there's a whole host of reasons -- some relate to access to capital, which is why crowd-funding has become important. Some venture firms that existed in some regions 10 years ago don't exist now. So it's much harder for most entrepreneurs in most regions to get the capital that people take for granted in Silicon Valley and other places. There really is a disconnect there. There are fewer startups and fewer people in each startup.
  That's why, in terms of entrepreneurship in America, as other global competitors step up their efforts, we need to step up our efforts. The last five years or so, we've been going in reverse. One example: Accel Partners, which backed Facebook. A decade ago all their investments were in Silicon Valley. Now they have more folks in China.
  And so your hope is to find the next Facebook in, say, Cleveland?Case: Our focus is on some of these regions that are underserved. There are a lot of fish in the Silicon Valley pond, but there are also a lot of people out here with fishing poles chasing those fish. In some of these other regions, the ponds are smaller, there are fewer fish, but there also are not a lot of people fishing. We think there's an imbalance, and we're trying to fix that. Both by a policy standpoint with things like crowd-funding, and what we're tying to do with the development regional ecosystems through the Startup America Partnership that we've launched in 30 different regions. Then, also in terms of putting our money where our mouth is in terms of Revolution kinds of investments.
r(C)sistance
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:25
  I was fascinated by Junior Reagan or the New Repbublican Insider in how they know absolutely nothing of value. If this child hiding under Ronald Reagan's corpse cares to show they real, then them tell us what is it that is inserted up John Boehner's rectum in what it is that Barack Hussein Obama is blackmailing most of the powerful folk in America to keep them from stating that election theft is what overthrew America and it started with the Bush41 years in how Clinton stole it via Lawrence Walsh from that old rascal.
  Perhaps the Lame Cherry should educate Junior Reagan on a few points as to how reality is in his Rick Perry "conservative" world from someone who was there when Ronald Reagan was born.The way to win this is only one way, and that is to cut off and kill the apparatus which the GOP Insider is either too ignorant to realize in being a juvenile blowhard or is part of the spin machine which has all the Limbaugh talking heads deliberately deflecting from election theft, ANALGATE and the reality of what is really taking place.
  Want to know my source in what is really going on in the Republican Party? It is someone you can trust as he absolutely loathes the Romneycrats. His name is Barry Chin. You know him as B. Hussein Obama.When Barack Obama stated in that open mic about Romney in knowing Romney was in on stealing several primary elections in vote flipping as was exclusively posted here, Barack Obama mentioned something about "the powers that be".
  That is not some conspiratorial thing Obama was chattering on about, but it was a reality that the GOP does indeed have powers that be. One can examine the Romney backers and soon realize they were the people who spiked oil prices in California and in the east after the hurricane, while dropping prices in Romney states.They were Wall Street people dropping stock prices and defense contractors who laid off people. They were the people who put a great deal of effort in luring Sarah Palin out and then terrifying her by cutting her off to a Gabby Giffords end by Libyan missiles all so Romney would have a clear shot at being a strawman.See these powers that be had it all worked out, that no matter Romney or Obama they would profit in carnivore capitalism. Business is what they do, and they rape every American and none of this matters to them as they are the same coin in global feudalism.
  They have stooges like Foster Freiss buy Romney or that Texas Jewish bunch of billionaires who buy Newt Gingrich and can not even control their liberal children donating to Obama.
  In the protocols of the overthrow of America, it was simple in one set up handlers or in this case they are called campaign managers by names of Steve Schmidt and Nicholle Wallace whose entire purpose as like this Trent Lott lobby whore outfit in DC, is to push the new world order
  You want a bombshell that will probably destroy this guys career the way this blog did in outing Keith Olbermann as a conservative more than most Conservatives?The 3rd most powerful person in the democratic party, meaning you have Obama, Reid and then number 3 in Chuck Schumer of New York, the much hated "liberal"...........Schumer is more conservative than most of the GOP put together. His real side came out after 9 11 when he got a reality call, but took another call a few months later that if he wanted to keep his job in the Senate, he had better go back to what he was paid for, and that was to be a liberal, or his skeletons would come dangling out.
  Why I bring that up is Ann Coulter, Peggy Noonan, Bill O'Reilly, they are all Obama voters and answer the call like Shep Smith for the paycheck as part of the steering committee.
  You can see this after the 2012 election theft by Obama, in they talking points are Lindsey Graham and Chuck Schumer "working together" as Graham is a liberal in reality to Schumer's conservative to push illegal citizenship to make a better version of the black vote as the democrats have been aborting all those worthless blacks and are getting a blackneck voting block of fat white tramps getting knocked up by narco nigs who are not going to be voting democrat and are too much of a drain on the DNC budget.No one is talking about the election being stolen and Patraeus is the catalyst to push it all off the books, as yes, 150% voter turn out in Florida, 99% voter turn out for Obama in Ohio and in Pennsylvania over 100% voter turn out for............Obama.
  But of course there is no election theft. No Scytl, no SOE, no Sequoia all from by foreigners of the New World Order, and all having proven to spit out votes for Obama when voting for Romney.Obama's numbers were down 11 % and Romneys were down 2 % , but the problem is according to Steve Schmidt is radical Todd Akin types, and according to conservative talking heads is, Obama's allure was gone and Romney never was conservative enough, but yet it is those missing voters just like in 2008 when 10 million GOP voters disappeared..........No one bothers with a reality check in maybe the surge was for Romney and Obama in the Scytl casino software could only flip so many votes before things were not as glaring as they are now when the votes were suppressed by Romney's backers using high fuel prices and acts of nature.
  It all starts adding up and it points to a powers that be as Obama defined and named, whose purpose it has been to employ image managers to craft strawmen who would fall down before the intended election highway man, so all of this legalized robbery would continue on unabated.
  So the kid who was not around and learned about Reagan from the history books tells everyone nothing, but more propaganda spin coming directly out of the same place Karl Rove shoves gerbils.
  You want to win this thing and raise America from the dead, the only way possible my children?Then you start hammering this Junior Reagan until he starts telling you to F*CK OFF. You peal his skin back and make him scream so that he start divulging the dirt, the real sh*t on the dick dirt on these Republican frauds, on these Foster Freiss frauds to embarass them, humiliate them and expose them for the shills they are.'Only then will this ever begin to start being what it will be in a legal political war in America, not for the American Virgin, but for that crown on her rotting head, buried in this Obama Abyss.Round two of the Obama Super Depression is coming. It has to as fuel prices will not drop below 3 bucks as that is what Harold Hamm out of Oklahoma negotiated this all for. There is 500 billion in tax stipulations from the Bush era coming due in January. There is a trillion dollars in new bills for Obama care coming for 2013.
  Are you comprehending why the Lame Cherry started laying out for your thought processes in who to bring this all down in using the world order's enslavement against them, in your protecting your assets and every last one of you finding a way to go on welfare to put 60 million more people onto this system and busting this Tower of Babel to the ground by overloading.
  If this GOP Insider is real, he will know the secrets to do to thee entire GOP leadership and their extended donors, and that most interesting group of championed "conservatives" like Jim DeMint, who like this entire ghost of apparitions, never seemed once in all their years of power to be able to advance one thing Conservative.
  Ever ask yourself why? It is because this entire motley crew is either nothing but frauds or like Michele Bachmann in getting a text about the things in her closet and if she does not play along, she is going to go down.You look long and hard at Michele Bachmann's eyes from a year ago to the woman in Congress today. There is a reason this "Conservative" never touched Romney in the debates and was made to go around whoring for him. It is all the blackmail machine and Obama has his benefactors just like the powers that be are on the right keeping this all under control in misdirection.
  This group destroyed Larry Craig, George Allen now twice and under Romney decapitated the Conservatives inside the Republican Party.I can tell you that Sarah Palin knows very well how this mengarie operates as much of what was enacted against her has been posted here, but she knows the details in the direct contact and she has been told to shut up or tomorrow will not arrive.
  So do not fall for someone hiding under the Reagan corpse professing they have all the things to save the GOP for Conservatives as this is part of the protocols as I warned each of you to keep you looking at the 2014 elections and the 2016 elections while you Mark Levin sit on your asses rant abou the last man standing.They do not want you up for revolution as they know this is the critical point. They want to sucker you into thinking elections will solve this AS NO ONE ADDRESSES liberal crossover voters to get Romney the nomination in numbers so Scytl can flip primaries and no one is going to address what good are a Conservative running like Todd Akin or someone in the Presidentials when the voting machines are tagging the outcome which was projected months ago.
  This can be done my children, but if you try this in a Tea Party they will take it over again and kill it. You are going to have do this legally by pressuring the stooges into spilling things as you are not going to fall for the crapola they are feeding you in Rick Perry and just wait for 2014. The dirt is where it is at. They know it if they are where they say they are, as they have the dirt on Congressional aids in their texts which would bring down these frauds as they were at the gatherings hearing it all.
  Step One: Legally Break the community organized system by taking what the regime is haning out to all. This is not your country as America is dead. Kill the changeling by using the cartel's own chains of enslavement against them.
  Step Two: Make the Insiders spill their guts about the GOP stooges across the board at their little gatherings, their billionaire whore purchases and what all their little Anthony Wiener's are up to.If you think this GOP Insider is real, you just snorted the green kook aide, as I revealed here from a Democratic operative who stated that Mitt Romney was behind all the sabotage against Fred Thompson the Conservative from 2008 all so McCain could take the fall from the Rovians.If the GOP Insider was real, he would know that and said more, instead of praising Romney as is the talking point one can find non stop in what a moral man he is.
  Goppie wants to perform for you for attention. Make the circus act perform. The FBI files are full of all of this stuff and the brothel of campaign trolls know enough of it to make it talking points.
  Break the community organized hold. Break the stooges, and in that the fall out will provide a launch platform to resurrect America on Lame Cherry Doctrines. The frauds will go along like Allan Simpson did with Ronald Reagan as much as Orin Hatch was forced to for the illusions.
  It is not as Milton Freidman stated in a few good men make the bad men do the right thing, but a few God given men like Reagan make the bad men too afraid to keep doing the wrong things.
  Your America was overthrown my children. She was taken out, raped, sold into slavery and murdered. You can not save her. What you can do is stop trusting in the sons of men, and legally start using the systems they have set up to make the American gulag against the organization employing the mob to make theft legal and make lawfulness legalities
  America has had it's last legal President. Patience my children. Your Lord is in Heaven and your leader is in each of your hearts. Swear allegiance to whatever flag they offer and use it legally against the system.
  R(C)sister, r(C)sister toujours, toujours r(C)sister, r(C)sister jusqu' ce qu'il succombe.This is not a revolution in which you will in panic reaction jump into the traps they have laid to criminalize and murder you legally.This is the brier patch and I was born here. It is good to be home.
  Resist, resist always, always resist, resist until it succumbs.
  agtG 240
The Plasmas
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Thu, 15 Nov 2012 13:22
  I post this as a message from Baby, as I was working on something silly in an Obama cartoon and the Plasmas decided to start communicating with me to note something they are hearing.Several things have been noted in for example the blog has been showing it posts material when I could not be possibly involved in the posting. That means someone is inside this blog moving information around in posted stories.I have company on new fronts with the DOD and some of the sweeps are infrared again as my television is turning off and on.A most interesting event took place today, in my vehicle's doors suddenly locked when I had not touched anything and I could not get out for a time. It was only resolved by turning the engine off to disengage the system. Interesting radar sweep apparently.There was a set pattern of an anchor date of the Dead Pope for some time, but that matrix literally blew apart before the elections and has now disappeared, and this is what Baby and the apes were pointing to in the above screen grabs. They are fixed on the glaring thing of what Obama did in stealing this election of 2012 in vote fraud.The key words appear to be BALANCE OF POWER.B. Hussein in a second message came linked to the balance of power and was listed as BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA II, as the feudal despot apparently in the Plasma's compilation.This election theft by Barry Chin has completely washed the matrix of events. Nothing is pooling to original source code now in weeks out from that election theft day.What is though trending is something immense as it is now the driving codex in the process verbal of the Plasmas.Lame Cherry3 hours ago '' They took the Lame Cherry and brought in the girls. I told you Obama crimes have no women and why they are not interesting. They brought in ... Baby and the apes seized upon the exact method of making this Obama scandal of ButtraeusGate bringing in women to gain attention to it.What trends then is ANALGATE, Sheik bin Laden's corpse which Obama took credit for in killing, Obama's dirty secrets and Obama behind it all.The events of the November election theft have so thrown everything in the matrix out of order that this is now the driving event as it has washed over in a flooded tidal wave over all other future historical events, even those planned, have been melded to this and disappeared.Those Mockingbird talking heads had better wrap around this fully as this is about election theft in the balance of power has been wiped out and it is driving all events now out of control and it is about ANALGATE and how it ties to the original event of Barack Obama buying a dead body called bin Laden and shooting a living body and claiming that DNA was from that actor.The Plasmas are "hearing" this dialogue in the aristocracy who built them. The fabricated demonic surge for Obama in 2008, was coming back to wash his regime from power, but his election theft has now caused another massive surge. When this surge back flows it will be greater. All events will be magnified again.Obama's disposition matrix - English pravda.ruOct 30, 2012 '' Like his predecessor, Obama claims success. It's always in the eye of the beholder. Bin Laden's alleged killing is cited. No matter that he died ...SteveLendmanBlog: Obama's Disposition Matrixsjlendman.blogspot.com/2012/10/obamas-disposition-matrix.htmlOct 28, 2012 ''Obama's Disposition Matrix. by Stephen Lendman. Call it elevating Murder, Inc. to a higher level. A Washington Post Special Report discussed ...Obama moves to make the War on Terror permanent | Glenn ...Oct 24, 2012 ''Obama moves to make the War on Terror permanent. Complete with a newly coined, creepy Orwellian euphemism '' 'disposition matrix' '' the ...Kill-list 2.0: Obama's 'disposition matrix' maps out extrajudicial - Russiart.com/usa/news/disposition-matrix-kill-obama-146/Oct 24, 2012 '' US-led drone strikes '-- the targeted executions of suspected insurgents using remote-controlled, killing machines from tens of thousands of ...The monster is being sacrificed to now in demanding to be fed in it's cancerous appetite.The Plasmas do not seem to know what to do with this as their combined memory is reality point, demon machine input and human comprehension, and the data they are reading is a contrary starting point in the abyss, a sort of anti point.
  They read the known data and now the flow has been corrupted by what Obama completed in stealing this election, a literal change of whirlpool center point and they can not fathom the aspect as it can not be, and yet it is.They appear to be inquiring of me for center point.
  Newtonian Law states the 3 basic principles.
  Objects in motion stay in motion.
  Equal and opposite effect.
  Order settles out of chaos.
  The Obama effect then has utilized a double point power curve in energy in stealing this second election, the motion of the matrix will continue in centrifugal and gravitational flow to rectify the Obama disorder, and will rectify said disorder with equal disorder, to bring order from the chaos.
  More power will be released from other global points to balance this Obama surge. Energy out will bring an equal energy implosion.
  Perhaps the Prophecy here of January 2009 in Utter Ruin associated with Mr. Obama has not been assessed fully by this blog, as there is not a historical precedent to anchor such understanding.
  Fascinating what not eh.
  agtG 293Y power curve surge, short sequence and then ended with power sequence. Signature 5.
Study reveals climate changes may have 'adverse consequences' for satellites | The Verge
  Link to Article
  Thu, 15 Nov 2012 06:12
  Scientists from the Naval Research Laboratory, Old Dominion University, and the University of Waterloo have discovered that climate changes occurring on Earth are creating a dangerous situation for satellites floating around our planet. According to the NRL, as the temperature increases on Earth, the resulting CO2 that reaches the upper atmosphere is cooling and contracting the thermosphere (about 50 miles above the surface), decreasing drag at that elevation. As the process occurs, the rate in which debris burns up in the atmosphere is slowed and their trajectory through space have an increased likelihood of being altered, heightening the chance of collision. The findings are the result of analyzing eight years of CO2 readings made by the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment, a satellite that measures atmospheric gases.
  These conditions further stress the importance of cleaning up the leftover debris orbiting Earth, a task already being undertaken by some groups. DARPA, for example, hopes to do so with the Phoenix Program, which intends to harvest unused satellites, while the Swiss Space Center at EPFL plans to launch a series of "janitor satellites" that will carry debris back into the atmosphere to be burned upon reentry.
FUNNY Video: Diagramming the David Petraeus ''Sister Wives'' Family Tree
  Link to Article
  Source: Debbie Schlussel
  Thu, 15 Nov 2012 03:36
  By Debbie Schlussel
  This is a pretty good''and funny''diagram of the whole ''Desperate PetraeusWives'' soap opera. Truth is always stranger''and much more interesting''than fiction.
  Can you imagine this happening during World War II? I'm sorry, General MacArthur. The Philipinnes will have to wait. We found your Ashley Madison password.
  If we had the internet, Facebook, and e-mail during WWII, would this have happened to MacArthur, Eisenhower, and our other generals?
Obama the Rear View
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Thu, 15 Nov 2012 03:34
  Director General David Patraeus in the rear view, has worked a preliminary deal with Congressional Republicons, yes I mean Republicons, call it John McCain's Revenge.
  McCain invested a great deal of time, not for Romney but for key Senate running mates, chiefly Rick Berg of North Dakota who got the election swiped from him by that little Obamanazi girl.
  McCain has a sort of General Staff operating now in that John Hoven from the oil fracking state. This is the strange bedfellows mix as you will notice the renegade in this in neither McConnell or Thune of the leadership are involved, but this is once again Diane Feinstein and John McCain teamed up.Feinstein is still in double jeopardy over that entire murder situation of the oriental fundraiser who started chattering about the Obama voodoo chants and she deems it in her interest to feed the Republikhans, think about it pronounced Republicons in these khnas now in the Senate are in a Mongol process drawing the long knives on their little ponies encircling Barry Chin.
  Patraeus in ButtraeusGate has been talking and taking cover. He fully expected in lying to Congress for all Obama has been doing in becoming head of al Qaeda to be protected by the regime, and it stunned him on election day theft to be run over by the bus, and to have it all leaked on Friday, not for a cover up of it, but to politically destroy Patraeus in this Kittygate scandal.It was supposed to shut Patreaus up from the lies he is guilty of to protect Obama, but the reality is McCain has been involved in this, with Tommy Franks being a conduit again from the Romney camp.Romney flipped key early primaries so can not squawk about Obama having stolen the election from him, but Romney is coming out of his stunned phase with apparently the help of a feisty General who did not appreciate the trash talking Obama.
  This is who the Military Insider of Ulsterman was speaking about in watergating Obama. There is a group of a few powerful people who intend to at the least Monicaize the B. Hussein Obama in crippling him politically.It is in Diane Feinstein's interest to save herself by assisting the khans of which she is now one of.
  Obama has no real friends on Capitol Hill in the Senate. Harry Reid is deeming himself as the most powerful liberal in DC and is threw carrying Obama's water, and would not mind Obama having to come crawling to him for protection. The same is for Chuck Schumer who is answering the Latin slave trader icons in pushing his own agenda for the good of the party.You will notice that Nancy Pelosi had absolutely no problems as minority leader. Obama is in real trouble in being preoccupied as he did not even attempt to re engineer Congress as he did previously.
  That is Obama's big mistake in this as his Cassius long blades are in his own party and they are not going to go down for Obama, and are contemplating a clean slate for 2014 for them to blame Obama to try and retake Congress in getting out from under the Obama shroud.
  Watch what Patraeus says, as the word come is hints of things which will feed into the drama. John McCain got 2008 stolen from him, and this top gun is in the process of lighting up the board for a very warm 2013 drama.They took the Lame Cherry and brought in the girls. I told you Obama crimes have no women and why they are not interesting. They brought in the two MILF's for a reason, and made sure they were brunettes for a purpose in the visuals.
  Obama being all pissy about Susan Rice being blocked by McCain and Gay Ear, has Obama revealing he still thinks his Berliner boys will protect him, but there are things going on he has not figured on and as this blog is exclusively revealing, Obama's not engineering Congress is a massive tactical mistake.....McCain lectured Barry on this in 2008 and Obama did not learn.
  Protection means either blackmail or bribes as was the case in Pelosi and Issa. New forces are at work in this and it is coming out of the Pentagon. Most interesting in this girl got popular in texts in praising Obama for fun. Sent them off the deep end at Military Intelligence as that is who is sweeping the internet here now.Different sort and no NSA picking off the thinkers, as the Obama contractors have left the building. This is DOD in operational mode now, protecting their assets, their own and their country. Panetta has a hornet's nest and the buzz is leaving the SecDen out of the loop.
  It all depends now on what Deep Throat Patraeus has for an immunity deal. McCain wants this and would not be line in the sand with Gay Ear Graham if there was not the evidence already in his hands.
  This is the beginning of the Wrath of the Khans. We will see how the tourists reconnoiter in the brier patch. They already gave away position, but Obama is still flat footed on it all in thinking this is about dictating things in the second term, when this is about a tribunal which already found him guilty.
  "Do not scorn a weak cub; he may become a brutal tiger."
  Bend over Mr. Obama. Your Proctologist has arrived. You are suffering from a condition of Analgate with al Qaeda fissures and a severe case of Buttraeusgate.
  Lame Cherry
  Another Lame Cherry matter anti matter exclusive.
  nuff said.
  agtG 284y
IMPACT 2012: Investing in the Markets
  Link to Article
  Thu, 15 Nov 2012 03:23
  Tue 13 Nov 12 | 06:17 AM ET This term does not appear
  Click text to jump within video
  Tue 13 Nov 12 | 06:17 AM ETIn this "Squawk Box" excerpt, Marc Faber of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report, warns investors to prepare for an eventual "'reset" of the global financial system.
Kevin Clash: Voice of Sesame Street's Elmo accused of having 'sexual relationship with underage boy' | Mail Online
  Link to Article
  Thu, 15 Nov 2012 02:48
  Kevin Clash, 52, is on leave after the programme's lawyers were contacted by a 23-year-old manAccuser claims he had a sexual relationship with the puppeteer seven years ago, when he was aged 16By Jill Reilly
  PUBLISHED: 06:51 EST, 12 November 2012 | UPDATED: 08:14 EST, 12 November 2012
  The man who voices the puppet of Elmo on Sesame Street has taken leave amid allegations he had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy.
  Kevin Clash, 52, has taken a leave of absence from the popular children's show after the programme's lawyers were contacted by a 23-year-old man who claims he had a sexual relationship with the puppeteer seven years ago, when he was aged 16.
  TMZ, who reported the allegations, said that Mr Clash had admitted he had a relationship with the man, but only after the accuser was an adult and said the accusations were both false and defamatory.
  Scroll down for videoAllegations: Kevin Clash, the voice and movements behind Sesame Street's Elmo has taken leave amid allegations he had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy
  'I had a relationship with [the accuser]. It was between two consenting adults and I am deeply saddened that he is trying to make it into something it was not,' said Mr Clash who joined Sesame Street in the mid-80s,
  The website reported that after the accuser's initial meeting with Sesame Street lawyers, he felt that that he was being silenced so he hired a lawyer.
  He is now being represented by Andreozzi and Associates - the firm that worked with one of the victims in the Jerry Sandusky child rape case.
  Iconic: Kevin Clash, left, who has voiced Elmo for two decades, arrives at the 35th International Emmy Awards in 2007. He admitted he had a relationship with the man, but only after the accuser was an adult
  In August, the accuser's lawyers wrote a letter to Sesame Street accusing the programme of trying to 'discredit the victim in order to protect its employee and the image of one of its most valuable characters,'
  The letter also claimed the show's attitude 'places a greater value on a puppet than the well being of a young man.'
  But Sesame Workshop officials told TMZ they found the the allegation of underage sex was unsubstantiated after a thorough investigation.
  Legacy: Mr Clash joined Sesame Street in the mid-80s. Earlier this year he was the feature a documentary detailing Clash's childhood obsession with puppets to assuming his role on the iconic show
  They claim rather than trying to hush up the accuser, they asked for evidence of his allegations, which was not received.
  The website reported they had seen an email supposedly sent to the accuser by Mr Clash, acknowledging they had the affair when he was 16, but officials believe it is fake as they say the accuser never mentioned such an email existed.
  Sesame Street disciplined Mr Clash for inappropriate use of company email after they found emails between him and the accuser, but they did not indicate an illegal sexual relationship, according to TMZ.
  It is unclear why Mr Clash wanted a leave of absence, since he denies the allegations of underage sex, but the programme told TMZ it was to allow him to defend his reputation in the wake of the damaging allegations.
  Mr Clash has been the Elmo puppeteer for two decades, performing on the show as well as for PBS specials, DVD releases and TV movies while earning nine Daytime Emmy Awards.
  He eventually assumed the title of Sesame Street's Senior Puppet Coordinator and Muppet Captain, while also directing and producing show segments and TV specials.
  Earlier this year he was the feature of 'Being Elmo: A Puppeteer's Journey' a documentary detailing Mr Clash's childhood obsession with puppets to assuming his role on the iconic show.
  VIDEO: Kevin Clash talks about his life in Being Elmo movie trailer
Obama signs secret directive to help thwart cyberattacks - The Washington Post
  Link to Article
  Thu, 15 Nov 2012 02:19
  President Obama has signed a secret directive that effectively enables the military to act more aggressively to thwart cyberattacks on the nation's web of government and private computer networks.
  Presidential Policy Directive 20 establishes a broad and strict set of standards to guide the operations of federal agencies in confronting threats in cyberspace, according to several U.S. officials who have seen the classified document and are not authorized to speak on the record. The president signed it in mid-October.
Investigate the FBI - By Trevor Timm | Foreign Policy
  Link to Article
  Thu, 15 Nov 2012 02:13
  For the past week, Washington has been embroiled in an ever-escalating sex scandal involving Gen. David Petraeus, his biographer Paula Broadwell, and a third woman named Jill Kelley, and now, tangentially it seems, Gen. John Allen. The affair between Petraeus and Broadwell was discovered by the FBI and revealed late last week when Petraeus resigned as director of the CIA. But while the salacious details have kept Washington's press corps busy, the details about how the bureau ever got this information should concern us far more.
  Every turn in the investigation that led to Petraeus's resignation perfectly illustrates the incredible and dangerous reach of the massive United States surveillance apparatus, which, through hundreds of billions of dollars in post-9/11 programs -- coupled with weakened privacy laws and lack of oversight -- has affected the civil liberties of every American for years. The only difference here is the victim of the surveillance state's reach was not a faceless American, but the head one of the agencies tasked to carry it out.
  The spark that set events in motion was a handful of allegedly harassing emails sent anonymously to Kelley, a friend of Petraeus's, which she brought to a friend at the FBI. Yet it's unclear why an investigation was ever opened, given that everything publicly known about the emails suggests they weren't illegal.
  As the Daily Beast reported, they said things like "Who do you think you are? ... You parade around the base ... You need to take it down a notch." The story noted, "when the FBI friend showed the emails to the cyber squad in the Tampa field office, her fellow agents noted that the absence of any overt threats."
  It seems the deciding factor in opening the investigation was not the emails' content, but the fact that the FBI agent was friendly with Kelley. (Even more disturbing, the same FBI agent has now been accused of becoming "obsessed" with the Tampa socialite, sent shirtless pictures to her, and has been removed from the case.)
  But these initial emails reportedly did not identify Broadwell as the sender and only made passing reference to Petraeus. So how did the FBI end up uncovering the affair? They obtained the IP addresses attached to the emails, which can give a fairly accurate location of the email sender. This "metadata," as it's called, can be obtained by law enforcement without a warrant or any court oversight. All that is needed is a subpoena signed by a prosecutor indicating the information is relevant to an ongoing investigation.
  Metadata can include not only your IP address, but to whom and when you're sending emails, and in other cases, the exact location of your cell phone for weeks or months at a time. And police get this type of data in everyday investigations without a warrant at a staggering and alarming rate.
  But finding the location of the sender was just the beginning. From there, "armed with information about where the messages originated, the FBI is believed to have drawn up a list, as far as was possible, of who was at those locations when messages were sent," the BBC reported. Because the IP addresses were hotel WiFi hotspots, the FBI obtained the hotel records at the various locations.
  But how, exactly? Again, we don't know the precise procedure used, but hotel records -- which are private -- can also be obtained with just a subpoena and do not require a judge to sign off on anything.
  In other cases, the FBI has been known to use additional tools in its national security belt. The bureau once infamously used the relaxed "National Security Letter" requirements in the Patriot Act to get the hotel records on an estimated 1 million Las Vegas tourists -- all of whom turned out to be completely innocent.
  From here, once the FBI figured out that Broadwell was the likely sender, and only then went to get a warrant to read her emails -- or so it seems. One would assume, and hope, police have to get probable cause for all emails, just like they would for a physical letter or a phone call. But the law governing email -- the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) -- doesn't have such requirements for emails more than 180 days old. Because ECPA was written in 1986, before the World Wide Web even existed, archived emails were an afterthought given the incredibly small storage space on email servers.
  Complicating matters further, Petraeus and Kelley were communicating not by sending each other emails, but using an old (and apparently ineffective) trick -- "used by terrorists and teenagers alike" -- of saving drafts in the draft folder of Gmail, thinking this was more private than if they sent them to each other. But as the ACLU's Chris Soghoian explained, this was not so:
  "Ironically enough, by storing emails in a draft folder, rather than an inbox, individuals may be making it even easier for the government to intercept their communications. This is because the Department of Justice has argued that emails in the "draft" or "sent mail" folder are not in "electronic storage" (as defined by the Stored Communications Act), and thus not deserving of warrant protection. Instead, the government has argued it should be able to get such messages with a mere subpoena."
  Regardless of what method the FBI used to read their allegedly explicit communications, the Daily Beast reported, "the FBI agents found no indication that it constituted a crime or a threat to national security. They confirmed this when they interviewed Broadwell and then Petraeus."
  Incredibly, this didn't stop the investigation. And if privacy were any kind of priority, this again this should have been the end. The FBI has to comply with legally mandated "minimization" standards under law which, in theory, should prevent the bureau from snooping on personal conversations that do not reveal criminal conduct, even if its agents have permission to read all relevant communications to an investigation.
  Instead, as the investigation deepened, top FBI officials were alerted, and they in turn told the director of national intelligence. Petraeus eventually resigned.
  While these details may shock the average reader, these privacy-invasive tactics are used regularly by both federal and local law enforcement around the United States. In fact, as the New York Times reported, referring to Petraeus, "Law enforcement officials have said they used only ordinary methods in the case." The only difference here is the target was the director of the CIA and one of the most decorated soldiers in modern military history.
  The Petraeus scandal -- or perhaps we should call it the FBI snooping scandal -- dovetailed with Google releasing its semi-annual transparency report, which again showed that government requests for ordinary user data continues to skyrocket. The last six months showed the U.S. government requesting data from Google alone on more than 12,000 users, a marked increase over the six months prior. And this number doesn't even include some Patriot Act demands, National Security Letters with gag orders, or secret FISA court orders for intelligence operations. As Google said in conjunction with the release of its report, "This is the sixth time we've released this data, and one trend has become clear: Government surveillance is on the rise."
  Congress is now demanding to know why it wasn't informed by the Justice Department about the details of the Petraeus affair earlier. Lawmakers should instead be worried about why the public was informed of these details at all, given that no crime was committed. And instead of investigating one man's personal life, they should investigate how to strengthen our privacy laws so this does not happen to anyone else.
  The U.S. government has so far been unable to keep its colossal surveillance state in check. Now that it is so bloated it is eating itself, one hopes more people will finally pay attention.
House Republicans Find Corzine Guilty Of MF Global Collapse, Missing Funds; Democrats Refuse To Endorse Findings | ZeroHedge
  Link to Article
  Thu, 15 Nov 2012 02:10
  It appears that these days not even the Corzining of client money can happen without it being split across furiously polarized party lines. As it turns out hours ago, the Committee on House Financial Services released an advance glimpse into a report to be released in its entirety tomorrow, which puts the blame for the collapse of not only MF Global, but also the disappearance of millions in client money, right where it belongs: the firm's then CEO Jon Corzine.
  As Bloomberg summarizes, "The summary reflects conclusions reached by Republicans, who hold a majority on the panel and were in contact with Democrats during the investigation, according to Jeff Emerson, spokesman for the Financial Services Committee. The investigation included three congressional hearings, more than 50 interviews and a review of documents from MF Global, former brokerage employees and regulators, according to the summary."
  Yet that Corzine corzined millions, leaving clients scrambling in bankruptcy court in an attempt to recover what should have been segregated money from the very beginning, and also just happened to blow up one of the 21 Fed-anointed Primary Dealers, is not surprising: this has been long known by everyone. Those who need a refresher are urged to recall the Honorable's testimony before the House... or maybe not: after all it is not as if Corzine himself could recall a whole lot. Where it gets interesting is that the former Democratic governor, and senator, not to mention primary bundler for president Obama, is, in the eyes of the members of the committee, innocent: All the democrats on the Investigations Subcommittee refused to sign off on the findings, meaning that to them, Corzine is completely innocent. That this is purely a political move is glaringly obvious. It is also abhorrent, because as long as political ideology gets in the way of pursuing and imposing justice, the Banana States of America will remain just that.
  From The Committee on Financial Services:
  Subcommittee Investigation Reveals Decisions by Corzine Led to MF Global Bankruptcy and Missing Customer Funds
  Full report of Financial Services Oversight and Investigations Subcommitteeto be released Thursday
  WASHINGTON '' Decisions by Jon Corzine to chart a radically different course for MF Global and try to turn the 230-year-old commodities broker into a full-service investment bank were the cause of the firm's bankruptcy and failure to protect customer funds, Republican members of a congressional subcommittee will report this week.
  The House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, chaired by Rep. Randy Neugebauer, will release the full results of its year-long staff investigation into the collapse of MF Global on Thursday.
  ''Our investigation is essentially an autopsy of how MF Global came to its ultimate demise and what can be done to prevent similar customer losses in the future,'' said Chairman Neugebauer.
  Corzine, a former co-chairman of Goldman Sachs who later became a U.S. senator and governor of New Jersey, resigned from MF Global on November 4, 2011, almost 20 months after becoming the firm's Chairman and CEO. The brokerage had declared bankruptcy four days earlier and its collapse revealed a $1.6 billion shortfall in customer funds.
  ''Choices made by Jon Corzine during his tenure as chairman and CEO sealed MF Global's fate,'' Chairman Neugebauer stated. ''Farmers, ranchers and other customers may never get back over $1 billion of their money as a result of his decisions. Corzine dramatically changed MF Global's business model without fully understanding the risks associated with such a radical transformation.''
  The Subcommittee's staff investigation of MF Global involved three hearings, more than 50 witness interviews, and the review of more than 243,000 documents obtained from MF Global, its former employees, federal regulators and other sources.
  ''By expanding MF Global into new business lines without first returning its core commodities business to profitability, Corzine ensured that the company would face enormous resource demands and exposed it to new risks that it was ill-equipped to handle,'' the subcommittee report states.
  In order to generate the revenue needed to fund MF Global's transformation, Corzine invested heavily in the sovereign debt of struggling European countries. These investments, which carried enormous default and liquidity risks, were a ''prime focus'' of Corzine's attention and he failed to develop a corporate strategy for managing the risks, the subcommittee majority staff found.
  Authoritarian atmosphere
  Those risks were exacerbated by an authoritarian atmosphere Corzine created at the firm where ''no one could challenge his decisions,'' the subcommittee report reveals.
  Corzine made significant changes to MF Global's senior management, including the hiring of Bradley Abelow, his former gubernatorial chief of staff, as the firm's chief operating officer.
  When MF Global's chief risk officer disagreed with Corzine about the size of the company's European bond portfolio, Corzine directed him to report to Abelow rather than to MF Global's board of directors. ''This change effectively sidelined the most senior individual charged with monitoring the company's risks and deprived the board of an independent assessment of the risks that Corzine's trades posed to MF Global, its shareholders and its customers,'' the report declares.
  Corzine insulated trading activity from review process
  In addition, the subcommittee's report reveals that Corzine acted as MF Global's ''de facto chief trader'' and insulated his trading activities from the company's normal risk management review process. This enabled Corzine to quickly build the company's European bond portfolio ''well in excess of prudent limits without effective resistance.''
  Rather than hold the European bonds on MF Global's books, which could expose the company to earnings volatility, Corzine chose to use these bonds as collateral in repurchase-to-maturity (RTM) transactions. This permitted the company to book quick profits while keeping the transactions off its balance sheet.
  Failure to initially disclose extent of risks
  Since MF Global did not initially disclose the full extent of its European bond holdings, federal regulators and the investing public were not aware of all the risks facing the company.
  The belated disclosure in October 2011 of its extensive European RTM portfolio '' which amounted to 14 percent of MF Global's total assets '' combined with poor earnings news prompted credit rating agencies to downgrade the company's credit rating to junk status.
  The downgrade set off a ''run on the bank'' by MF Global's investors, customers and counterparties that created a liquidity crisis during what would turn out to be the company's final days.
  Because Corzine had failed to integrate systems and controls for managing the company's liquidity and protecting customer funds, the company could not fully assess and anticipate its liquidity needs during the crisis, nor could it coordinate its cash management, liquidity monitoring and regulatory compliance functions.
  Liquidity crisis prompts withdrawal of customer funds
  ''As the company struggled to find additional liquidity,'' the subcommittee reports, ''company employees identified excess company funds held in customer accounts. However, because they did not have an accurate accounting of the amount of customer funds the company held, they withdrew customer funds as well as company funds.''
  The subcommittee notes that it will be up to prosecutors and regulators to determine whether MF Global or its employees violated laws or regulations when these withdrawals of customer funds were made.
  'Dereliction of duty'
  ''However, the responsibility for failing to maintain the systems and controls necessary to protect customer funds rests with Corzine,'' the report maintains. ''This failure represents a dereliction of his duty as MF Global's chairman and CEO.''
  In its report, the subcommittee recommends that Congress consider legislation to impose civil liability on the officers and directors of futures commission merchants (FCMs) like MF Global who sign financial statements or authorize transfers from customer segregated accounts. Such legislation could ''restore investor confidence in the derivatives markets and ensure that an FCM does not misuse customer funds in the future,'' the Subcommittee report said.
  Other findings of investigation to be released
  In addition to its findings that Corzine's decisions led to MF Global's downfall, the Subcommittee report is expected to address regulatory agencies' failure to share critical information with each other about MF Global, failures by credit rating agencies to sufficiently review MF Global's public filings, and concerns about the New York Federal Reserve's decision to designate MF Global as a ''primary dealer'' despite the company's troubled financial situation.
  Average:Your rating: NoneAverage: 4.9(13 votes)
Top Georgia GOP Lawmakers Host Briefing on Secret Obama Mind-Control Plot | Mother Jones
  Link to Article
  Thu, 15 Nov 2012 02:01
  President Obama is using a Cold War-era mind-control technique known as "Delphi" to coerce Americans into accepting his plan for a United Nations-run communist dictatorship in which suburbanites will be forcibly relocated to cities. That's according to a four-hour briefing delivered to Republican state senators at the Georgia state Capitol last month.
  On October 11, at a closed-door meeting of the Republican caucus convened by the body's majority leader, Chip Rogers, a tea party activist told Republican lawmakers that Obama was mounting this most diabolical conspiracy. The event'--captured on tape by a member of the Athens-based watchdog Better Georgia (who was removed from the room after 52 minutes)'--had been billed as an information session on Agenda 21, a nonbinding UN agreement that commits member nations to promote sustainable development. In the eyes of conservative activists, Agenda 21 is a nefarious plot that includes forcibly relocating non-urban-dwellers and prescribing mandatory contraception as a means of curbing population growth. The invitation to the Georgia state Senate event noted the presentation would explain: "How pleasant sounding names are fostering a Socialist plan to change the way we live, eat, learn, and communicate to 'save the earth.'"
  Watch:
  Agenda 21 Full Video from Bryan Long on Vimeo.
  The meeting consisted of a PowerPoint presentation followed by a 90-minute screening of the anti-Agenda 21 documentary, Agenda: Grinding America Down. It was emceed by Field Searcy, a local conservative activist who was forced out of the Georgia Tea Party in April due to his endorsement of conspiracy theories about the president's birth certificate and the collapse of World Trade Center Tower 7. The presentation also featured a special video cameo from conservative talking-head Dick Morris in which the former Clinton aide warns that Obama "wants to force everyone into the cities from whence our ancestors fled."
  About 23 minutes into the briefing, Searcy explained how President Obama, aided by liberal organizations like the Center for American Progress and business groups like local chambers of commerce, are secretly using mind-control techniques to push their plan for forcible relocation on the gullible public:
  They do that by a process known as the Delphi technique. The Delphi technique was developed by the Rand Corporation during the Cold War as a mind-control technique. It's also known as "consensive process." But basically the goal of the Delphi technique is to lead a targeted group of people to a pre-determined outcome while keeping the illusion of being open to public input.
  How perilous is the situation? Here's a slide from the presentation comparing Obama's record to that of Mao and Stalin:
  Courtesy of Better GeorgiaObama, of course, has taken no steps to bring the United States under the control of a United Nations sustainable-development-themed dictatorship. (Environmental groups complain that he hasn't even taken sufficient action to combat climate change.) But that hasn't stopped state legislatures and local conservative groups from taking aim at the perceived threat. In May, the Kansas Legislature approved a resolution blocking Agenda 21 from being implemented in its state, following in the footsteps of Tennessee. Rogers, the Georgia Senate majority leader, introduced legislation in January that would have blocked the nonbinding UN resolution from being applied to his state. Among other things, the resolution noted that, "according to the United Nations Agenda 21 policy, social justice is described as the right and opportunity of all people to benefit equally from the resources afforded by society and the environment which would be accomplished by socialists and communist redistribution of wealth."
  If it seems as if Rogers is just repeating John Birch Society conspiracies, he is'--literally. As in Tennessee, large portions of his 2012 bill, SR 270, were lifted word-for-word from draft legislation prepared by the Birchers.
  But as Seth Clark, the Better Georgia volunteer who filmed the Capitol conspiracy bash, points out, Rogers' warning extended well beyond the actions of liberal politicians. According to one slide that was featured at the presentation, "Smart Growth and Sustainable Development are often promoted by NGO's, Chambers of Commerce and [public''private partnerships] that are unelected and unaccountable to the people." In August, when the Georgia Chamber of Commerce handed out its official grades for state legislators, Rogers got an A+.
  Apparently the conspiracy is coming from inside the Capitol.
Raspberry Pi Mesh Network | Ape Boy Monkey Girl
  Link to Article
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 23:33
  Posted: November 14, 2012By: Chris BreshearsOnly one day after posting my top Raspberry Pi projects I came across this on Hack A Day. Eric Erfanian has created a four part series on how to set up a mesh network using Raspberry Pis with Wifi dongles. I have been playing with this as a side project, but Eric has gotten much further than I had.
  While it does not solve all my issues, it certainly is a great starting point.
Daily Kos: Nancy Pelosi swats down Luke Russert's 'offensive' question with a lesson on earning your job
  Link to Article
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 23:24
  You have to hand it to Nancy Pelosi. When emblem of establishment media nepotism Luke Russert asked if she shouldn't clear the way for younger leadership, being all old and stuff, she managed to both convey her disdain for the question (helped by cries of "discrimination" from some of the women of her caucus) and give a substantive answer that should make plenty of people, if not Baby Russert, think a little.Pelosi began by pointing to the men who are not asked if they are old and standing in the way of younger members'--Mitch McConnell and Steny Hoyer alike. No, she's the one who gets the question. But: "Let's for the moment honor it as a legitimate question although it's quite offensive but you don't realize it I guess." She then went on to offer a lesson in what fighting your way to the top looks like as a mother of five born in 1940:
  The fact is that everything that I have done in my almost decade now of leadership is to elect younger and newer people to the Congress. In my own personal experience it was very important for me to elect young women. I came to Congress when my youngest child Alexandra was a senior in high school and practically on her way to college. I knew that my male colleagues had come when they were 30. They had a jump on me because they didn't have to, children to stay home. Now, I did what I wanted to do, I was blessed to have that opportunity to sequentially raise my family and then come to Congress. But I wanted women to be here in greater numbers at an earlier age so that their seniority would start to account much sooner. And it wasn't confined to women, though. [...]
  You've got to take off of that 14 years for me because I was home raising a family, getting the best experience of all in diplomacy, interpersonal skills. No, the answer is no.
  Of course, in Luke Russert's world, network television jobs get handed to you right after you graduate from college.Silly question! He's not old or a woman, so why worry about the more qualified people who didn't get the job he was just handed because of who his father was?Originally posted to Laura Clawson on Wed Nov 14, 2012 at 08:23 AM PST.Also republished by Daily Kos.(Load)(Load)(Load)(Load)(Load)(Load)(Load)
I, Obama, Chivalrous Rex
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:58
  I'm sort of sad that B. Hussein Obama stole the 2012 election just like he did the 2008 election, as I will not be able to use that enticing Mormon chic anymore......and I was so looking forward to King and Queen Romney for four years.......
  But it is all Obama now and what wonder Mr. Obama is. You know Obama is the best thing to come along since white bread, and you know Obama should just be called White Bread from this moment on as he is so historic and wonderful.
  I say that as Tiger Lily's 4 gig phone just lost 3 gigs as someone did not appreciate my praising B. Hussein Obama AKA Barry Chin.
  Meanwhile back at the Obama Press Conference:
  Obama tried chivalry today......for Susan Rice in standing up for her. I hope Muchelle does not get jealous........did not know Susan had a gay penis.
  Yes how dare in the Gay Ear Graham and Geezer McCain threaten to hold up Susan B. Rice's Secretary of State's position with Hillary going AWOL, as Susan is such a pretty little Obama soldierette.Obama is really great guy. Obama is the one. Obama is the leader of leaders. You do not have to be all you can be, as Obama is already the man.
  In that, Obama has shown some of his cards in the ButtraeusGate distraction, in he is testy about how as ruler in people questioning who he appoints to his cabinet.
  I give you now step 3 in the resistance.
  Step 1: Find a way to accept every benefit the feudal state will give you in welfare, as by doing it in 60 million right wingers taking that money, it will overload the system and implode it.
  Step 3: Praise Obama every opportunity you have in Silent Running by Mike and Mechanics. Infiltrate your Kevin Yoder frauds in the GOP in being one of them, so the system reads you as a wooly little sheep and not an American.By doing this in letters, text messages from their staff to their gatherings, you will assist the process of gathering intelligence to expose them.
  For some reasons, the spiders are not pleased in the praising of beloved leader Obama.
  This will make sense in time
  List of gestures - Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaen.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gesturesThe benediction gesture is a raised right hand with the ring and little finger fingers... however Christians keep the thumb raised '-- the three raised fingers ( index, ... can be seen using it in many speeches and images from his political career.Let us all be so very grateful that Mr. Obama is exactly where he is at 1600 Penn Avenue.agtG
  *There once was a great nest which bore only one egg, as all of the fields of the air no more had birds in which to fly. The sun warmed the egg for 40 days and nights, and hatched a three headed eagle. It was golden as the sun and the stars were in it's wings.
Today Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen has called for funders and supporters of th - Pastebin.com
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  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:31
  By: a guest on Nov 12th, 2012 | syntax: None | size: 3.56 KB | hits: 830 | expires: NeverToday Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen has called for funders and supporters of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism - which produced the Newsnight investigation on Lord McAlpine - to cut all ties with the organisation. He has:
  · Tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament. The EDM reads: 'That this House deplores the appalling quality of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's investigation into Lord McAlpine for Newsnight, notes that the former Managing Director of BBC Television, Will Wyatt, described it as 'completely terrible journalism', notes that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has previously criticised Help for Heroes, believes the Bureau of Investigative Journalism is totally discredited as a serious producer of quality journalism, regrets that the investigation has taken attention away from other very serious allegations of child abuse, and calls on the following organisations to cut all ties and refuse to donate any more money to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: City University, The David and Elaine Potter Foundation, Oxfam, The Green Park Foundation, Stamp Out Poverty, Save the Children and The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.'
  · Written to all organisations with ties to the BIJ calling for them to cut those ties and refuse to donate any more money. Andrew Bridgen has written to the BIJ's supporters and funders, namely City University, Oxfam, Stamp out Poverty, JR Reform, Trust and Save The Children.
  · Written to the BIJ itself calling for the organisation to detail and return any fees earned for the Newsnight package. Andrew Bridgen has written to the BIJ calling for them to return any licence-fee payers' money received for their work on the investigation.
  Key points on the Bureau of Investigative Journalism
  · Angus Stickler, BIJ lead reporter, worked for Newsnight on this investigation. Angus Stickler, BIJ lead reporter, worked in conjunction with Newsnight on the child abuse investigation and presented the programme.
  · The BIJ's managing editor, Iain Overton, created a media firestorm by tweeting about the allegations before the programme was aired. The BIJ's managing editor, Iain Overton, tweeted about the allegations on 1 November: 'If it all goes well we've got a Newsnight out tonight about a very senior political figure who is a paedophile' (Twitter, 1 November 2012).
  · The BIJ is funded by a Labour donor. The BIJ was set up and is funded by a Labour donor, David Potter (TBIJ Website, link<http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/who/>). Potter donated £90,000 to Labour in 2001 (Electoral Commission). Potter is reportedly a non-dom (Daily Mail, 2 March 2010).
  · The BIJ's Newsnight investigation described as 'completely terrible journalism.' 'This is completely terrible journalism' (Will Wyatt, former Managing Director of BBC Television, The Observer, 10 November 2012).
  · The BIJ accused Help for Heroes of misusing funds. The BIJ's lead reporter, Angus Stickler, who was also responsible for the Newsnight fiasco, accused charity Help for Heroes of misusing funds. The charity claimed the report was misleading (BBC News, 9 August 2012, link<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19112550>).
  · Angus Stickler was recruited to the BBC's Today programme to 'cause trouble' for the Catholic Church. Angus Stickler reportedly recruited to BBC Radio 4's Today programme from Radio 5 Live 'to cause trouble for the Roman Catholic church' (The Guardian, 28 July 2003, link<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/jul/28/bbc.broadcasting>).
  Today Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen has called for funders and supporters of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism - which produced the Newsnight investigation on Lord McAlpine - to cut all ties with the organisation. He has:· Tabled an Early Day Motion in Parliament. The EDM reads: 'That this House deplores the appalling quality of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's investigation into Lord McAlpine for Newsnight, notes that the former Managing Director of BBC Television, Will Wyatt, described it as 'completely terrible journalism', notes that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has previously criticised Help for Heroes, believes the Bureau of Investigative Journalism is totally discredited as a serious producer of quality journalism, regrets that the investigation has taken attention away from other very serious allegations of child abuse, and calls on the following organisations to cut all ties and refuse to donate any more money to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism: City University, The David and Elaine Potter Foundation, Oxfam, The Green Park Foundation, Stamp Out Poverty, Save the Children and The Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust.'· Written to all organisations with ties to the BIJ calling for them to cut those ties and refuse to donate any more money. Andrew Bridgen has written to the BIJ's supporters and funders, namely City University, Oxfam, Stamp out Poverty, JR Reform, Trust and Save The Children.· Written to the BIJ itself calling for the organisation to detail and return any fees earned for the Newsnight package. Andrew Bridgen has written to the BIJ calling for them to return any licence-fee payers' money received for their work on the investigation.Key points on the Bureau of Investigative Journalism· Angus Stickler, BIJ lead reporter, worked for Newsnight on this investigation. Angus Stickler, BIJ lead reporter, worked in conjunction with Newsnight on the child abuse investigation and presented the programme.· The BIJ's managing editor, Iain Overton, created a media firestorm by tweeting about the allegations before the programme was aired. The BIJ's managing editor, Iain Overton, tweeted about the allegations on 1 November: 'If it all goes well we've got a Newsnight out tonight about a very senior political figure who is a paedophile' (Twitter, 1 November 2012).· The BIJ is funded by a Labour donor. The BIJ was set up and is funded by a Labour donor, David Potter (TBIJ Website, link<http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/who/>). Potter donated £90,000 to Labour in 2001 (Electoral Commission). Potter is reportedly a non-dom (Daily Mail, 2 March 2010).· The BIJ's Newsnight investigation described as 'completely terrible journalism.' 'This is completely terrible journalism' (Will Wyatt, former Managing Director of BBC Television, The Observer, 10 November 2012).· The BIJ accused Help for Heroes of misusing funds. The BIJ's lead reporter, Angus Stickler, who was also responsible for the Newsnight fiasco, accused charity Help for Heroes of misusing funds. The charity claimed the report was misleading (BBC News, 9 August 2012, link<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-19112550>).· Angus Stickler was recruited to the BBC's Today programme to 'cause trouble' for the Catholic Church. Angus Stickler reportedly recruited to BBC Radio 4's Today programme from Radio 5 Live 'to cause trouble for the Roman Catholic church' (The Guardian, 28 July 2003, link<http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/jul/28/bbc.broadcasting>).
Election elixir: Obama no longer gray | WashingtonExaminer.com
  Link to Article
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:20
  President Obama's reelection didn't just put a bounce in his step. It appears that it also erased his gray hair.
  Appearing in the East Room Wednesday for his post-election press conference, the chatty Obama displayed a head of rich, black hair. Photos and even the White House live stream of the session showed no more gray.
  But just a week ago, at the end of his campaign, the president had a head of salt and pepper hair with lots more gray.
Michael Hastings Confronts Piers Morgan Panel Over Media 'Mythologizing' Petraeus, Ignoring Poor Record | Mediaite
  Link to Article
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:11
  video
  On his show Monday night, Piers Morgan turned to his panel to discuss the recent scandal involving David Petraeus. During the segment, BuzzFeed reporter Michael Hastings '-- who recently penned a piece about the Petraeus '-- asserted that the media has been glossing over the problems with Petraeus record in Afghanistan and Iraq, specifically calling out a CNN reporter as well as another panelist.
  There are ''many other reasons'' Petraeus should have resigned, Hastings said. Reasons aside from the affair. Moreover, Hastings argued that ''the media has played a role in protecting David Petraeus and promoting David Petraeus and mythologizing David Petraeus.''
  In making his point, Hastings pointed to another guest on in the same segment, Gen. Mark Kimritt, who defended Petraeus. Kimritt is defending him on TV but not addressing the problems with Petraeus' record, Hastings said. Those problems being: ''He manipulated the White House into escalating Afghanistan, he ran a campaign in Iraq that was brutally savage, included arming, the worst of the worst.''
  Not letting up, Hastings pressed on with the media critique.
  ''So for me the questions of honor and integrity, I was raising those earlier,'' he said. ''A number of other journalists who were actually covering David Petraeus were raising those concerns. You might not get that from someone like Barbara Starr at CNN, who essentially is a spokesperson for the Pentagon in many ways.''
  ''Barbara is not a spokesperson for him, obviously,'' Morgan replied.
  ''Not too obviously,'' Hastings quipped. ''I have followed her coverage pretty closely as she has covered my work before, too.''
  ''Just because she's written naughty things about you doesn't make her a spokesperson,'' Morgan told Hastings.
  ''No,'' Hastings asserted, ''what makes her a spokesperson is repeating without question a lot of Pentagon claims.''
  Toward the end of the segment, Kimritt took issue with Hastings' characterization of Petraeus' military tenure, particularly the assertion that he failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such a suggestion ''belies the facts,'' he said.
  ''I was there three days ago,'' Kimritt said. ''I've been in Baghdad for the last two weeks. It is a much different place than it was when David Petraeus took over there.''
  ''I spent more time in Iraq than you have, man,'' Hastings replied. ''Come on. Let's be honest, David Petraeus fueled an Iraqi civil war that the Shiites won. We installed a radical Islamist government in Iraq.''
  Hastings is known for his military-related reporting '-- particularly garnering attention for his Rolling Stone piece, ''The Runaway General,'' that led to Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation.
  POLITICO's Dylan Byersresponded to the segment and noted a few ''things to know'' about Hastings in the context of his criticisms, the most important of which being: ''For Hastings, military perfidy is personal.'' Byers also added that Hastings ''has no problem using public platforms to address personal vendettas.''
  The third and final thing to know about Hastings is that he considers himself something of a gonzo journalist. His gut instinct is to cause trouble. At a time when the mainstream media seem more cautious than ever, that can be extremely refreshing. If you believe that journalists are supposed to call bull when they see it, then Hastings is your man.
  Of course, that's Byers' perspective.
  The segment below, via CNN:
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Texas NDAA Nullification Bill Includes Criminal Charges for Federal Agents - BlackListedNews.com
  Link to Article
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:10
  At the close of 2011, Barack Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act for the year 2012. In it are what some constitutional experts consider to be some of the greatest constitutional violations in American history. At issue are sections 1021 and 1022 which, in essence, create a new power for the federal government to ''indefinitely detain'' '' without due process '' any person. Indefinitely. That's little different than kidnapping.
  In response, there's been a bit of a firestorm from people across the political spectrum. Local communities in Colorado sent out the first warning shots, passing resolutions and ordinances rejecting such power earlier this year. Then, at the close of the 2012 state legislative session, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell signed House Bill 1160, making that state the first to paw a law not only rejecting the federal act, but fully banning any state agency from cooperating with the feds on it.
  Currently, more than 15 local communities have done the same. Michigan is also considering a bill that is similar to Virginia's. And today, Texas State Representative Lyle Larson introduced House Bill 149 (HB149), the Texas Liberty Preservation Act. This might be the strongest anti-NDAA bill introduced yet.
  It states, in part:
  Sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (Pub. L. No. 112-81) violate portions of federal law, the United States Constitution, and the Texas Constitution and, as such, are invalid and illegal in this state.
  It also, like Virginia's law, requires full noncompliance with the federal act:
  It is the policy of this state to refuse to provide material support for or to participate in any way with the implementation within this state of Sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (Pub. L. No. 112-81). Any act to enforce or attempt to enforce those laws is in violation of this subchapter.
  But, the Texas legislation takes it a step further, codifying into State law criminal penalties for violation of the act by even federal agents:
  A person who is an official, agent, or employee of the United States or an employee of a corporation providing services to the United States commits an offense if the person enforces or attempts to enforce a statute, a rule or regulation, an order, or any law of the United States in violation of this subchapter.
  An offense under Subsection(a) is a Class A misdemeanor punishable by confinement for a term not to exceed one year, a fine of not more than $10,000, or both the confinement and the fine.
  This coming legislative session, Texas won't be alone in its efforts. Sources close to the Tenth Amendment Center tell us to expect at least 10 other states considering the same. And potentially dozens of counties and cities can be expected to move along these lines as well.
  ACTION ITEMS
  If you live in Texas, contact your state representative and senator, and encourage them to support HB149. You can find legislative contact information HERE.
  Texans on Facebook (HERE) can also get involved in a grassroots organizing group. this is essential for legislative success.
  Urge your county commission or town council to consider a local Liberty Preservation Resolution HERE.
  If you live in outside of Texas, contact your state representative of senator and urge them to introduce state level liberty preservation legislation. You can find model legislation HERE.
  Track nationwide efforts against NDAA detention HERE.
Jill Kelley: Tampa woman was hostess to the military - The Washington Post
  Link to Article
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:06
  The Kelleys' party-giving tradition began before Petraeus's stint as Central Command chief from 2008 until 2010, friends said, but after the general and his wife arrived, the two couples developed a genuinely close bond.
  Jill Kelley and her twin sister, Natalie Khawam, often went shopping and out to lunch with Holly Petraeus, particularly when her husband was stationed in Afghanistan, the friends said. In a 2011 custody battle involving Natalie and her estranged husband, Gen. Petraeus and Allen submitted letters of support to the court.
Krauthammer: White House ''Held Affair Over Petraeus's Head'' For Favorable Testimony On Benghazi Prior To Election'... | Weasel Zippers
  Link to Article
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 20:27
  He's on to something, on September 14th Petraeus told members of Congress in a closed-door briefing the attack was the result of the Mohammed film.
  Via Newsbusters:
  CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: I think the really shocking news today was that General Petraeus thought and hoped he could keep his job. He thought that it might and it would be kept secret, and that he could stay in his position. I think what that tells us is really important. It meant that he understood that the FBI obviously knew what was going on. He was hoping that those administration officials would not disclose what had happened, and therefore hoping that he would keep his job. And that meant that he understood that his job, his reputation, his legacy, his whole celebrated life was in the hands of the administration, and he expected they would protect him by keeping it quiet.
  And that brings us to the ultimate issue, and that is his testimony on September 13. That's the thing that connects the two scandals, and that's the only thing that makes the sex scandal relevant. Otherwise it would be an exercise in sensationalism and voyeurism and nothing else. The reason it's important is here's a man who knows the administration holds his fate in its hands, and he gives testimony completely at variance with what the Secretary of Defense had said the day before, at variance with what he'd heard from his station chief in Tripoli, and with everything that we had heard. Was he influenced by the fact that he knew his fate was held by people within the administration at that time?
  Of course it was being held over Petraeus's head, and the sword was lowered on Election Day. You don't have to be a cynic to see that as the ultimate in cynicism. As long as they needed him to give the administration line to quote Bill, everybody was silent. And as soon as the election's over, as soon as he can be dispensed with, the sword drops and he's destroyed. I mean, can you imagine what it's like to be on that pressure and to think it didn't distort or at least in some way unconsciously influence his testimony? That's hard to believe.
Why did Paula Broadwell think the CIA had taken prisoners in Benghazi?
  Link to Article
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 20:03
  A YouTube video of Paula Broadwell's speech at the University of Denver, which is now set as ''private.'' (YouTube)
  Paula Broadwell, the former military intelligence officer whose alleged affair with CIA Director David Petraeus culminated in the end of his career, had earlier made some startling, now-revealed claims about the agency's role in the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi.
  In an Oct. 26 speech at the University of Denver, she said that Libyan militants had attacked the post to retrieve some fellow fighters who'd been taken prisoner at the nearby CIA annex. She also seems to suggest that Petraeus himself knew about it, implying that he may have been her source. Here's the relevant passage from the speech, transcribed in full here by Foreign Policy's Blake Hounshell.
  Now, I don't know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually, um, had taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that's still being vetted.
  The challenging thing for General Petraeus is that in his new position, he's not allowed to communicate with the press. So he's known all of this '-- they had correspondence with the CIA station chief in, in Libya. Within 24 hours they kind of knew what was happening.
  The CIA is flatly denying this. ''CIA adamant that Broadwell claims about agency holding prisoners at Benghazi are not true,'' The Post's Greg Miller tweeted. Fox News cites a single anonymous source saying that the CIA annex had prisoners at the time, and ''multiple intelligence sources'' as saying that the annex had at different times held prisoners. So why did she say it? I can only imagine three possible explanations, all of which should be taken with many grains of salt:
  1. Intelligence from faraway conflict areas can be hazy, and the story got honestly confused. Who knows how long or convoluted the chain of information was from Benghazi to Broadwell, whether or not it went through Petraeus, and it's not hard to imagine a misstatement or mistake getting amplified.
  2. She made it up or exaggerated some other piece of information, possibly including the name-dropping implication of Petraeus's knowledge, either deliberately or mistakenly.
  3. The story is true, and she let slip what had otherwise remained a remarkably well-kept secret from the Benghazi incident, which has been characterized by weeks of leaks. If true, it would raise further questions about the CIA's efforts to maintain necessary levels of security.
  I could be missing other possible scenarios, but all of these further raise the concern that, even if Petraeus did not allow classified intelligence to be compromised, his relationship with Broadwell may have heightened that very serious risk.
  The full story of Broadwell's access to Petraeus's world at the CIA is still not clear, but it appears to have been intimate, perhaps problematically so. The Wall Street Journal now reports that FBI investigators found classified documents on her computer. That Petraeus's relationship may have jeopardized sensitive intelligence would seem to remain the strongest case for his resignation.
The Bourne Supremacy (2004) Toaster Bomb-Diner (Expanded Soundtrack OST) - YouTube
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  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:58
Daily Morse Code
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  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 19:38
  Recordings from the No Agenda ITM Conference on Echo Link node 3373Podcast feed: http://www.DailyMorseCode.com/podcast.xml
  Recording StartLengthSize2012-NOV-13 16:09:09 CST15:093.5 MB2012-NOV-13 07:53:43 CST46:3210.7 MB2012-NOV-12 17:47:49 CST40:319.3 MB2012-NOV-12 09:39:44 CST37:358.6 MB2012-NOV-11 09:42:08 CST59:2913.6 MB2012-NOV-10 23:25:11 CST11:522.7 MB2012-NOV-10 16:02:31 CST59:4413.7 MB2012-NOV-09 12:19:08 CST31:377.2 MB2012-NOV-08 22:53:06 CST9:012.1 MB2012-NOV-08 22:24:27 CST0:140.1 MBIf you would like to contribute artwork for this page please email cmike@aqusa.org
Petraeus mistress reveals real motive behind Benghazi attack (video)
  Link to Article
  Source: WT news feed
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:10
  The fallout from former CIA head David Petraeus' resignation might be more significant than first thought: as all eyes turn to the ex-intelligence chief's mistress, it's apparent that she may have been privy to what really happened in Benghazi.
  Two months after the storming of an US consulate in Benghazi, questions remain largely unanswered about both how and why insurgents entered the facility on September 11 and executed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans. The discussion became a heated issue on the campaign trail leading up to Election Day, and conflicting accounts from the White House, State Department and Congress all led to a mess of confusion that has only further spun out of control following the unexpected stepping down of Petraeus on Friday.
  In the immediate aftermath of the CIA chief's resignation, skeptics quickly suggested that there was more to the story, especially given Petraeus' role as head of the country's intelligence agency and the relatively unscathing extramarital affair that he rightfully admitted to in citing his departure from office. As journalists and investigators tried to dig deep for info on the alleged mistress, Petraeus biographer Paula Broadwell, as expected the story took a drastic turn by Sunday when it was revealed that she may have been briefed on the truth of the Benghazi scandal while the rest of the country claws for answers.
  A speech given by Broadwell only last month at her Alma matter suggests that she was given information about the terrorist attack that never made it to the American public.
  ''Now I don't know if a lot of you heard this, but the CIA annex had actually had taken a couple of Libya militia members prisoner,'' Broadwell told a crowd at the University of Denver alumni symposium on October 26. ''And they think that the attack on the consulate was an effort to try to get these prisoners back. So that's still being vetted.''
  Broadwell's address was publically available on YouTube until this weekend; it has since been removed, although mirrors have surfaced.
  Until then, and even today, the CIA denies Broadwell's claims that the CIA was holding anyone prisoner at what has long been described as a consulate building in Benghazi. Should her account prove true, however, it could mean that the agency had a secret black site prison in Libya, a fact long denied by Washington. If true, it could also mean that not only was the security of United States' top intelligence office breached, but also may for once provide an impetus for the Sept. 11 attack.
  The FBI has officially confirmed searching Broadwell's home in Charlotte, North Carolina. The agency did not say why it performed the search, but it's clear that Broadwell's potential access to any sensitive material is being taken seriously.
  In the initial aftermath of the assault, the Obama administration considered an anti-Islamic filmed produced in America, 'Innocence of Muslims,' as the catalyst for the Benghazi attack and similar strikes in the region. After days of pressing, however, the White House eventually admitted that the assassination of Ambassador Stevens was being blamed by Washington on terrorists, 11 years to the day after al-Qaeda operatives brought down the Twin Towers.
  According to last month's address in Denver, Broadwell also said a group of Delta Force operators, ''the most talented guys we have in the military,'' could have been dispatched to provide reinforcement for the Americans in Benghazi but were not. Instead, the US packed up and left immediately, not securing the scene until days later, by which point much of the facility, and presumably all evidence, had been looted or destroyed.
  On late Sunday, Greg Miller of The Washington Post wrote on Twitter that the ''CIA adamant that Broadwell claims about agency holding prisoners at Benghazi are not true.'' On Sunday, a spokesperson for the CIA told The Daily Beast that the agency "has not had detention authority since January 2009, when Executive Order 13491 was issued. Any suggestion that the Agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless.''
  Broadwell has yet to make any statements to the press since she made international headlines on Friday following Petraeus' resignation. On his part, the former CIA chief has yet to publically discuss the Benghazi massacre, and will no longer testify before Congress as originally scheduled to do as such this Thursday. Instead, acting CIA Director Michael Morell is expected to field questions to lawmakers in Washington.
Iranian Muslim Who Plays ''Homeland'' Terrorist Abu Nazir Says ''Islamic Terrorists Are the Heroes!'' VIDEO (Obama's FAVE show)
  Link to Article
  Source: Debbie Schlussel
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:05
  By Debbie Schlussel
  I've already told you that Showtime's ''Homeland'' and its actors and producers are sympathetic to Islam and Islamic terrorists. They've said so. Now, the Iranian Muslim actor who plays the major Islamic terrorist leader on Showtime's ''Homeland'' says that Islamic terrorists are ''heroes.'' No wonder it's Barack Obama's Favorite TV show.
  Life Imitates Art: Navid Negahban a/k/a ''Homeland's'' Abu Nazir Says Terrorists Are ''Heroes''When ''24'" was still on the air, the Greek actor who played a major Islamic terrorist leader during one of its last seasons praised and sympathized with PLO and other Palestinian terrorists, saying he ''understood their plight.'' That counterterrorism series was produced by a lot of the same people, all of them liberals. And, so, it's no surprise that Navid Negahban, the Iranian Muslim who plays Abu Nazir, ''Homeland's'' version of Osama Bin Laden, thinks that Islamic terrorists are ''the heroes.'' Yup, this is the world we live in: we give awards, high ratings and huge salaries to Iranian a-holes who think Islamic terrorists are heroes. Schmuck.
  WE FOUND ABU NAZIR!!! (or at least the guy who plays him on ''Homeland'') '... and last night, he made a very interesting comment about terrorists.
  TMZ came face to face with Navid Negahban in Hollywood last night '-- who seems to be a much nicer guy than the Osama Bin Laden-esque bad guy he plays on the hit Showtime series.
  So, when we asked what it's like to play such a hated terrorist, we were a little shocked by his answer:
  ''Depends on how you look at it,'' Navid said '... adding, ''Sometimes the terrorists in other countries are all the heroes.''
  The thing is, he's saying what the majority in Hollywood''and Muslim America''also believe, but don't have the guts to say (unless they're Oliver Stone).
  Like I already told you on this site, ''Homeland'' is a show for liberals who root for Islamic terrorists & blame America first. Again, that's why it's Barack Obama's FAVORITE show.
Major Movie Shows Past President Engaged in What Sex Act? A New Low For Hollywood
  Link to Article
  Source: Debbie Schlussel
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:01
  By Debbie Schlussel
  Yesterday, I was shocked to see a new low for even Hollywood: the depiction of a past American President getting masturbated by his girlfriend. In low-class slang, what was happening onscreen is referred to as an ''HJ,'' as opposed to what Monica Lewinsky performed on Bill Clinton (known as a ''BJ''). I saw this while attending critics' screenings of several upcoming major motion pictures. (And since I can't think of any appropriate pics, I'm posting the one below of Gloria Allred with a baseball bat.)
  Hollywood Stamps Out Prominent ''Old White Men'' & Their Achievements in U.S. History via Sexual ActsI'm forbidden from naming the movie (or the President involved) until the movie comes out, but there are a few upcoming movies featuring past American Presidents, so you can take a guess. It's safe to say the President involved is a White male and isn't Bill Clinton. Hollywood would never disrespect Clinton or Barack Obama at whose alters showbiz elitists worship. I don't even like or respect the politics of the President in question. But that's beside the point. The point of this was to take a well-respected American President down. It's just the latest in Hollywood's attacks on authority, achievement, and American institutions. That's long been Hollywood's contemporary agenda.
  And it's repulsive.
  But, sadly, that's the age we're in now. Every prominent White male in American history must be soiled and sullied and taken down, so the masses can feel good about themselves. Hey, this President is no different than Kim Kardashian becoming famous for making a porno flick with rapper Ray-J. He's no different than the teen moms who also had sex. That's the point they want to make with this''that are Presidents, the ''evil old White men,'' were sleazebags and as sleazy as the low-class, know-nothing, common lumpenproletariat masses who hang at strip clubs and have sex with strangers at the drop of a hat (but, hey, no one wears hats anymore, either''too classy). Make no mistake.
  It's sickening. And it's a pattern with Hollywood. But this was a new low.
  Can you imagine the Muslim world making a video showing Mohammed or Ali or Hussein getting an HJ? Heck, we saw what happened to the guy who made a silly, benign anti-Mohammed video earlier this year (even though it was a phony excuse for what was a pre-planned set of terrorist attacks on our embassies).
  But Hollywood does this. And I guarantee there won't be much outrage (other than my own).
Remarks at the General Assembly Stakeout Following the Human Rights Council Elections
  Link to Article
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:00
  Ambassador Rice: Good afternoon, everyone. The United States is pleased and proud to have been re-elected for a second, three-year term to the UN Human Rights Council. Four years ago, we took the decision that we could improve the work of the Human Rights Council by working within it rather than staying on the outside, and today the international community reaffirmed that it agrees with that judgment.We want to thank all four of our highly qualified competitor countries for what was a very spirited campaign. Ireland, Germany, Sweden, and Greece all are strong friends and partners, allies of the United States, and champions for human rights around the world. Each of them is deserving of a seat on the Council, and we look forward to continuing our work with them and others to advance human rights around the world.
  We made the decision in 2009 to seek a seat on the Human Rights Council because the United States believes that we must be at the forefront of speaking out against human rights abuses and speaking up in favor of those who are suffering and living under the grip of the world's cruelest regimes. And we are convinced that we are more likely and better positioned to strengthen the Human Rights Council by continuing our participation in it. I'm proud to say that today the Obama Administration's leadership at the Human Rights Council has delivered real results. Today's vote affirms that active U.S. leadership in the Human Rights Council and throughout the United Nations system will continue to pay real dividends for Americans and for the rest of the world.
  While we have much more work still to do, today's election gives the United States the opportunity to build on our accomplishments, to speak out about persistent shortcomings'--including the Council's excessive and unbalanced focus on Israel'--and to stand up for the human rights and values that are central to who we are as Americans and people of this world. Thank you very much.
  Reporter: --just on a specific issue that's in front of the Council. Two rapporteurs, Mr. Heinz and Emerson, have said they want the Council to look into this issue of drone strikes, that they think that it may raise issues under human rights law. Do you think'--I mean, do you think that's an appropriate thing for the Council to do? And what will be the U.S. position on that inquiry?
  Ambassador Rice: Well, we have questions about the appropriateness of that approach. But we will look at it on its merits, and as we do with all the work of the rapporteurs, we'll judge their work on the substance of their products.
  Reporter: Ambassador, rights groups have criticized about seven of the new members that have joined the Council for having spotty records of their own. Do you foresee any difficulties in working with some of these countries that do, you know, violate rights in their own countries?
  Ambassador Rice: Well, as you know, the United States publishes its annual human rights reports in which we outline in detail our concerns about every country with respect to their human rights records. Clearly, we believe that there is advantage when we have competitive slates, as we did this time in the Western European and Other Group. Those competitive slates often give the membership an opportunity to better make those sorts of distinctions. That didn't apply in our case within the Western Group, but obviously, in some instances, we have seen the benefits of competitive slates in terms of ensuring that those worst abusers of human rights are not elected to the Council.
  Reporter: Ambassador, some people think that it's a waste of time for the U.S. to be on this body, that there's not really a substantive improvement over the Human Rights Commission. What would you say to those critics? And then, second question, un-related to this: What are the'--how do you see your future in the second Obama Administration? Are you going to stay here in New York or might you move to the State Department or become National Security Advisor? What might you say to that?
  Ambassador Rice: As to your first question, Lou, the United States is clearly of the view that the Human Rights Council has its flaws, and I just enumerated a couple of them, including its excessive focus on Israel. But it is also a body that is increasingly proving its value, and we've been proud to contribute to some of what we think are the finer moments of the Human Rights Council: its approach to Syria, its approach to Sudan, its approach to the situation in Libya with the Commission of Inquiry. I could name many other instances'--it's standing up now strongly in support of the protection of the rights of those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. It's staked out important and, we think, comparatively progressive positions on the difficult issue of defamation of religion. So, across the board, there's been real important progress, and we've been proud to be part of that. And that's why we wanted to run for a second term, so that we could build on that progress in partnership with others and prove that even those elements of the system which have their flaws can benefit from strong American leadership joined with the principled leadership of others around the world.
  Lou, with respect to your question about me, I love my job here at the United Nations. I always have. I always will'--especially today. And I look forward to continuing to serve for as long as President Obama would like me to.
  Thank you all very much.
ABC Denver Runs Photoshopped Cover for Paula Broadwell's Book
  Link to Article
  Source: Crooks and Liars
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:59
  This is one of those on-air goofs you figure when you hear about them someone was pulling your leg but this happened. Now, I'm already sick of this story of Petraeus's dalliances as anyone but as a comeuppance for the media obsession this is pretty damn funny.
  From their website apology:
  A mistake that aired on Denver's 7 has gone viral on the internet.
  On 7NEWS at 5 p.m. on Monday, the station reported on ex-CIA director David Petraeus' relationship with his biographer, Paula Broadwell.
  Broadwell earned a master's degree at the University of Denver and had given a speech at an alumni event several weeks ago that may have provided insight into the early stages of their relationship.
  During the broadcast, 7NEWS showed an image of Broadwell's biography of Petraeus that is called, "All In: The Education of General David Petraeus."
  However, when the 7NEWS reporter went on the Internet to get an image of the book cover, the reporter mistakenly grabbed a Photoshopped image that said, "All Up In My Snatch."
  "It was a mistake," said KMGH-TV News Director Jeff Harris.
  h/t John Aravosis, AmericaBlog
Fox News Revives Swift Boat Ad to Attack Kerry Over Defense Secretary Rumors
  Link to Article
  Source: Crooks and Liars
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:59
  Fox News on Tuesday aired a discredited "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" ad in response to reports that Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) was being considered as the next secretary of defense.
  "This would be a remarkable brute insult to the men and women in uniform," Fox News strategic analyst Ralph Peters told host Megyn Kelly in reaction to a Monday Washington Post report that President Barack Obama was considering Kerry to replace Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. "To nominate for secretary of defense a man who made his military career trashing our military, criticizing it, who told lies about war crimes in Vietnam... and I don't want to hear, 'John Kerry's a combat veteran.' So is Benedict Arnold."
  "Are you out of your mind?" shot back Michael Meehan, who served as senior communications advisor to Senator John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. "John Kerry got the Silver Star for his service in Vietnam. He went twice -- signed up, volunteered twice to serve in the war. This is not about running for president and 'Swiftboating' people."
  Without noting that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads were misleading, Kelly played a portion the commercial that was used to undermine Kerry's military credibility during the 2004 campaign.
  "It was remarkable that veterans came out so vigorously against him because I'll tell you, vets stick together," Peters opined. "And for them to criticized John Kerry as vociferously and specifically as they did tells you a lot."
  "That ad was taken out of context," Meehan disagreed. "He was reading a report about what was happening in war and war is not pretty. It's unfair to sort of rerun that and say it's all the truth without pushing back that he was at that testimony in the 70s, he was reading what others were writing about what was happening in war. So, I don't find that to be a fair charge."
  Peters, however, insisted that Kerry had "never been interested in our military except to trash it. So please, don't insult our troops, don't nominate this guy for secretary of defense."
  In 2006, Steve Hayes, an early member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, broke with the group and lamented twisting Kerry's record.
  "The mantra was just 'We want to set the record straight,'" Hayes said a the time. "It became clear to me that it was morphing from an organization to set the record straight into a highly political vendetta. They knew it was not the truth."
Oil report suggests an earthquake in global politics | Full Comment | National Post
  Link to Article
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:58
  Take one of the most intractable problems in global politics '-- one that has been a key driver of political events around the world for decades '-- and eliminate it. Presto, a wave of the hand and it's gone, just like that. What happens then?
  It's obviously a big question, but it's the one you're left with from the conclusions of a report released Monday by the International Energy Agency. The central finding is that, by 2020, the U.S. will lose its dependence on Saudi Arabian oil and become self-sufficient in energy. Within another 15 years North America will become a net exporter of oil, and 90% of Middle East exports will begin flowing to China, India and fast-growing Asian economies. Chief among rising Middle East energy exporters will be Iraq, which the IEA sees accounting for 45% of the growth in global oil production after 2020, overtaking Russia to become the second-largest global oil exporter.
  It would be a breathtaking re-making of the international power structure, and only eight years into the future, according to the agency. Whoever replaces Barack Obama as the next president could preside over the biggest change in political dynamics since the U.S. emergence as a superpower. The forecast could also be totally wrong '' sweeping visions of future developments often are. But the agency is not alone in supposing profound results will follow from the rapid changes that have overtaken U.S. energy reserves with the development of technologies that give access to previously locked-in supplies of oil and natural gas. Rice University's Baker Institute reports that U.S. import terminals for liquified natural gas are already barely used and adds that ''developments in Canada, Brazil and the Americas more generally have tilted the center of gravity in energy markets toward the Western Hemisphere'' for the first time in decades.
  The obvious first reaction would be an immense wave of relief. No more dependence on the Middle East? Great. No more wars over oil; no more catering to unstable autocracies run by corrupt sheiks with their army of princes and princelings. No more need to wonder what happens if some insurgent group of religious fanatics gains control over vital shipping lanes and shuts off the energy flow. No more oil wells blazing in the desert because one murderous dictator or another doesn't want to give up his job.
  True. So what's it all mean? The fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet communism produced prophecies of halcyon days, as the world's sole remaining superpower, the U.S., held sway over a suddenly less-threatening world. Except it didn't quite work out like that.
  Given the degree of concern already focused ont the rise of China as a political and economic power, imagine what happens when Beijing replaces Washington as chief customer, and thus chief defender, of Middle East oil exporters. Chinese refusal to ''interfere'' in domestic affairs is already one reason so little progress has been made in halting Iran's nuclear ambitions or halting the slaughter in Syria. Imagine what happens when its investment in the region is multiplied several-fold.
  Washington's depth of involvement in the region is one of the few reassurances Israel has against a regional onslaught with it as the target. But once the U.S. is freed of dependence on Middle East oil, the willingness to shed blood presumably also wanes, no matter the depth of the emotional commitment. Add to that China's status as a major U.S. creditor, with debt holdings worth $1 trillion, and it's not hard to see American interest in Middle Eastern affairs shifting. Isolationism has run through U.S. politics since George Washington urged the country to stay out of Europe's wars; the response for half a century has been that it couldn't afford to withdraw from a region that supplied the fuel needed to keep America running. But what happens when that ceases to be the case?
  The IEA report is more bad news for the renewable energy industry, which received just $88 billion in subsidies in 2011, compared to $523 billion for fossil fuels, an increase of 30% despite the best efforts of green groups to shift priorities from fossil fuel to renewables. If anything, the end of U.S. dependence on foreign oil is likely to worsen greenhouse gas emissions by further curbing enthusiasm for alternatives. Damian Carrington, an environmental blogger for the leftwing British newspaper, The Guardian, laments:
  ''The truly global implications of the International Energy Agency's flagship report for 2012 lie '... in the quietly devastating statement that no more than one-third of already proven reserves of fossil fuels can be burned by 2050 if the world is to prevent global warming exceeding the danger point of 2C. This means nothing less than leaving most of the world's coal, oil and gas in the ground or facing a destabilized climate, with its supercharged heatwaves, floods and storms.
  What follows from this is that the idea of peak oil has gone up in flames. We do not have too little fossil fuel, we have far too much. It also follows directly that the world's stock markets are sitting on toxic levels of subprime coal and gas, a giant carbon bubble ready to explode.''
  Even if you believe the climate change argument has been overstated, it's difficult to get enthused about an escalation in emissions in place of a decrease. Yet the IEA report suggests the only way to avoid that is by some gigantic display of global willpower to avoid the easy route '' i.e. extracting and burning all that newfound oil and gas '' even though the record to date has been marked by the very absence of that will. Public pressure for green causes has waned with the struggles of the economy, because doing the right thing is always easier when the cost is low.
  Shifting direction away from fossil fuels once Americans learn they can jettison the Saudis will be that much harder. Don't expect Americans to willingly paid $4 a gallon for gas just to subsidize more windmills and solar panels when they know they could be paying significantly less, and that it's American oil to begin with. During the presidential race there was much more pressure on Barack Obama over high gasoline costs and subsidies for failed green corporations than there was over his failure to push harder for a carbon-pricing scheme. The IEA suggests that boosting renewable energy as a challenge to oil and gas by 2035 would require subsidies of $4.8 trillion, or more than 50 times last year's level. When you can get all the cheap gas you want out of the ground? Good luck with that.
  National Post
a civilized man
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:55
  Like all dictators it behooves any one of the Mormon following to ascertain a mirror remedy which B. Hussein Obama conducted against his enemies, meaning from pre Day One, B. Hussein conducted a scorched earth policy against Lawrence Sinclair, Donald Young, John Edwards, Governor Blagojevich, Jesse Jackson jr etc... in order to cement his power structure.
  This then immediately branched out to murdering all Muslims who would challenge Mr. Obama for control of al Qaeda, starting with lesser known entities in Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Predator strike coup against Muslims, graduated to the murdering of bin Laden's corpse and then the removal of the majority of Nationalist Muslims from Mubarak, Khadaffi and Assad, and replacing them with the Marxist Muslims of the Obama Osseiran traders.
  George W. Bush in his political understanding instead chose to ignore Clinton crimes from day one and left them viable, in which he actually rewarded Teddy Kennedy with legislation.Mr. Bush focused upon his real enemies in the Conservatives in wiping them out from Congress starting with Larry Craig and ending with George Allen, but in so doing when his other focus of Saddam Hussein took place, Mr. Bush had no political allies to protect him from the Obama allies who destroyed the economy and set about the Plamegate coup.
  As one can comprehend this, any el presidente would under such study would having had histories in decapitating the GOP Conservatives and running off Sarah Palin, comprehend that certain facets of political Cassius machinations do not actually follow the remedy of keeping one's enemies closer than one's friends.For example, Mr. Mano Romney kept Gov. Chris Christy close in a prime RNC speaking spot, but when it came down to the crucial make and break hour, it was Christy who was hopping on board Obama jets and praising Obama for all the wonder Obama was in the hurricane season.Christie was more concerned about his GOP Vice Presidential slot with the Jeb Bush ticket in 2016, than in being GOP loyal to Mitt Romney who stabbed numerous people in the back.
  This is the miscalculation of an old fool like Foster Freiss in buying Mitt Romney along with a Vatican appointment for Rick Santorum who was his man. El Mano has shown a propensity like Obama and Bush in sticking it hard to "conservatives" even if they are Aspen Institute geezer hippies. Freiss should have balanced his scales and donated to this blog for cover, but like most cock sure billionaires they ignore the lessons of Bill Gates being gotten to and end up like John Heinz dead with their fortune being given to liberals, as will the Texas billionaires slush funds Newt Gingrich tapped into.
  For this reason, an El Mano would be wise to follow certain protocols as those which Ronald Reagan in part espouse and which Richard Nixon exacted.
  There should be a Mormon Inquisition in which the crimes of B. Hussein Obama are not just investigated but hounded to imprisonment. It is vital in this things which must be worked out from a James Baker type standpoint in a seasoned bushwhacker would be sent out and tell the Berlin cartel that they will be left alone for their Obama crimes, on a few conditions in those trillions Obama stole for them would be filted back in various schemes to lower energy prices and they could rule from Europe to their little anti Christ contentment.Mr. Obama would be safeguarded in being around to tell specific tales, while individuals like Eric Holder and Colin Powell would be the fall boys for Obama in Gun Runner prosecutions and Powellgate.
  El Mano would also send in the FBI Director to inform certain people named Reid and Pelosi that elections stolen in Nevada and millions in over zealous spending in misuse of governmet perks were about to haul them into court, ruining their legacies if they did not support a combined Mormon appeal.Granted hints of Mr. Obama's bogus birth records and their knowing it could also provide interesting talking points.
  An example of perhaps Robert Borke, having a nice beef brisket feast in which John Roberts perhaps could attend, along with the two lesbian Obama frauds, and during conversations it would be revealed that blackmailed justices and justices who knew Obama was a foreign agent, just might not only end up not on the court, but before a military tribunal, and a nice General with a uniform could appear for effect in explaining how things would proceed in the next few months, and it would be amazing how supportive the justices might be.......like Congress and every military, intelligence and Congressional heads when educated on what a Mormon Inquisition would deal with, especially when a Justice Department in Andrew Jackson and Richard Nixon style descended on the media owners in what Mr. Obama did to Rupert Murdoch and his family, in how quickly FOX became an avid Obama telecaster.
  All of these things are quite simple governance, as ruling a nation is not about governing the masses, but having one's boot on the throat of the little demogogues who like to think they are above the law, because who they sold their soul to.Once they are in line, then like J. Edgar Hoover, a simple comment about files of their pedophilia being released, with an eager press, FBI agent and Grand Jury to greet them, suddenly makes demogogues quite cowardly and wanting to get along.
  The select prosecutions of key criminals and the ruining of others, worked quite well for Richard Nixon and Andrew Johnson. Unfortunately under Bill Clinton, the problems arose in a bit too many Andrew Breitbart moments.George Bush and George Bush though had problems with attacking the base they should have thrown bribes too while getting caught up in that Saddam thing.
  In that, it would behoove an el presidente to give a few things to Conservatives to make them content, and do it early. More guns and cheaper guns, tends to please Conservatives with more toys, like cheaper fuel prices. This is what Ronald Reagan did with great effect.Do what the Bush group did not in not making enemies of a group who tend to be friendly. Do not do the inquistion of Christians, but do it on Chris Christie and George Soros, as all would enjoy that sport.
  Mr. Obama was effective, but he was foolish in not comprehending he should have suckered the willing GOP into being involved in his Marxism. He made too many Kremlin and Peking mistakes like Hugo Chavez as arrogance always does.
  In that Mr. Romney must stoke the economy so his adversaries like under Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan will be drown out in the sound of ATM's cashing in.
  That though is the reality of the Mormon Inquisition balanced by the dreams of what was. One does not govern, but one rules by threats. Ronald Reagan had liberals scared of the masses as Reagan was one of the masses. Mitt Romney is a Mormon Dream, and in this dream he must do what he does best in the nightmare his opponents like Fred Thompson and Sarah Palin found themselves on the pointy end of the spear.
  One must have a loyal circle of cut throats, but also be wise in knowing who to always have watching over their shoulder for the FBI to haul them away to keep the rest of the traitors in line.
  Patrick Fitzgerald is a most interesting vanishing point, that perhaps a Mormon fantasy might like to revisit as nothing makes law enforcement more attentive than knowing one of the biggest untouchables is more than touchable, and will not be around to suddenly be appointed by an unleashed Nancy Pelosi on some new crime Dick Armitage dreams up for the installing of another cartel President.
  Michael Steele seems to be a man who just can not keep his mouth shut and in a fantasy a Paul Ryan just might end up riding his scooter to a problem, as the interesting thing in political intrigue, unless one carves up the opposition, they opposition finds way to find some Valerie Plame to Lawrence Walsh you when you just do not need it.
  Yes a nice friendly Mormon Inquisition at the correct spots would certainly be the spoils in this.
  agtG 259
ANALGATE to BUTTreausGATE
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:52
  So my children, now that the moon has slowly set in the east as all have gotten this wrong, it is time to rise to the Sun of Righteousnes and do some exclusives.
  What is Lame Cherry speaking about ?
  Why none other than BUTTraeusGate, Yes jus think of Director General David Patreaus in name and this new fissure of ANALGATE is what this is all about. I really do not give a draft dodge about Spook Dave, Gen, Flirt, Big Tits Kelly nor the Nordyke from Bismark North Dakota sucking dick.First, is it not nice to have male who desire to stick their dicks in women and not like B. Hussein in desiring to stick his penis in men.Second is it not nice in these women are not licking Hillary Clinton's pussy like Human.
  Now for what this is about in ButtraeusGate, and no it is not sex, so stop watching these twats.
  Ok you remember......or I know You do not, but this is all my faul ok. Yes I take credit for this, not the sex stuff, but the deal with Patraeus.
  You can search the archives of this blog in nominating one David Patareus as Vice President to Mitt Romney in order to secure intell and in order to secure a voter margin that even Obama could not rig the elections for.
  See when this blog talks, the Brown Recluse listens in the White House and just like when John Edwards was made an enemy of the state, the Obama Clinton regime decided with Jeb Bush for 2016 that something had to be done with Dave Patraeus, just like Edwards, and this is where ButtraeusGate started as a bowel movement.
  It was all supposed to be sort of quiet really. Dave was busy setting up for Obama illegall CIA training centers in Libya and there was that little special branch annex in Benghazi that was sort of a finishing school to protect Obama's terrorists from the terrorists.More on that later, as Broadwell in her explanation must have missed that when Dave was plugging her ears.
  Where was I?
  So I alert all that Dave is in the VP slot and probably Presidential material in 2016, and Obama goes Axelrod on this and and Holder has the FBI start digging for dirt on Dave, which they find as the honeypot has been set.As this scandal all reads like pulp fiction, that points to Obama's folks as they have a thing for zipers and sex. Meaning the best way to get attention is to start a cat fight.
  Broadwell's resume reads like a Mockingbird plant of the left in popping all the New York Times to Harvard. Her bonafides come from Madeleine Albright's communist old man in a degree from there.
  Broadwell "spoke" to GOP women, but she is from Maddy Aldyke's group and that drips Marxism like Obama, so she took one for the team.
  This chic with large bossoms in Florida, is the same minder social butterfly. She kept tabs on the general staff of the Pentagon, meaning the blackmail files in what information could be pulled and what the psychological profiles were of America's leading men in the military to know who was Obama bound and who was in need of blackmail.
  Where was I?
  Hard to keep track in all this Kremlin sex for blackmail stuff going on snaring Obama contenders.
  The real jest of ButtraeusGate is Dave has been front and center for Obama in all the damned crimes Obama has had the CIA up to. Patreaus flew too high in thinking he actually was bright when it was all Bush43 doing the thinking. Obama though wanted to date George's best girl though so brought him on to keep him out of politics and stuck him in CIA.
  As stated Dave did a good condom job in covering up Obama's cockshots. Problem with it al though is that ANALGATE thing which got really feces penis scented messy. Dave knew the CIA got caught in that sh*thole which Obama had them set up in terror training bases in the wider vision war of the Middle East. He was fed intel that the attack in Benghazi was not about Chris Stevens being taken hostage, but who was really in that Benghazi annex that CIA was running.It was not Libyan militia in there being held, but it was the terror guests of Obama who CIA was hosting, a rival faction.
  Ah you probably do not get the story so will be plain. Patreaus and CIA knew the terrorists were there as the brought them in and trained them. They were hosting a rival faction of al Qaeda when Benghazi went down, and it was the "oh sh*t" moment for them, because when Obama was busy blaming Christians, the CIA was busy worrying about a story leaking out of this rectal area, that terrorists, they were harboring, were attacked by terrorists they trained and OOOOPPPSSS Chris Stevens just happened to get caught in the middle and get himself butt raped.
  When one has half a dozen scenarios, and arming terrorists with sophisticated weapons as Obama direct the CIA and still is, Dave Patraeus just decided to go with the flow and lie to Congress.
  After he lied, which is a felony, he started getting wind that the regime was going to finger someone for Benghazi, and the most likely candidate was a GOP contender named David Patraeus as the Rovians and Obama were fixing the 2012 election theft.
  That is why Patraeus went AWOL on Obama before the election, and when this blog outed that Patraeus was having conversations to help Romney out via his old boss, an operation was crafted on the above dirty dicks and putrid pussies involving the above parties, to find a way to shut Patreaus up in not testifying before Congress which would implicate Obama implicitly and voila ButtraeusGate was formed in another Obama high crimes without misdemeanors sullying the Oval Office.
  So Patreaus gets a repreive from Terry Lakin's old cell, and Obama continues the cover up of ANALGATE as that is what this operation was all about, in covering up all the details of what happened in the botched kidnapping of Chris Stevens.
  This Paul Broadwell and this Jill Kelley read like MILF whores of the shadow CIA, as their purpose was to provide the fodder to blow all of this in a direction away from ANALGATE, and it is working, because there is nothing like a big set of tits to divert attention from a gay man's butt hole.
  The sex is not that interesting, but it is grabbing the attention as usual, and I'm certain some Obama producer already has Brab Pitt, Angie Jolie..............some other dits to make this all about rolling around in the carpet in sexting, so no one remembers anal sex. It is all Mockingbird to cover up the most prominent assassination of a sodomite since.........I really do not care less who is dead in this.
  You will not know this, but this all broke when I was on an undercover journey, but not so undercover as the Plasmas made certain via their lords to make a post welcoming to the city I visited. Not many people I know of have an entire internet specify my exact travel route. I must still be the popular girl with all these tarts showing their jelly for the jam.
  That is worth quoting:
  I must still be the popular girl with all these tarts showing their jelly for the jam.Lame Cherry
  So for a short review, a synopsis, so all can look the expert, Obama tries to get Chris Stevens kidnapped while he is worried about David Patreaus in bed with Mitt Romney, so Obama sends in the FBI via conduits to "investigate" things as the cat fight kitties give a cover reason for all of this.In the meantime, Patreaus to save himself from being blamed for allowing Obama to arm and train terrorists which got Stevens murdered, starts feeding information to Mitt Romney on all of this to head CIA under a Romney regime, not knowing in trying to save himself, that Obama has a sword over Patraeus in all of this sex stuff, just waiting to cut him off after the election theft, as things start to unravel due to the work of this blog concerning ANALGATE.ButtreausGate is about the cover up of ANALGATE in which Dave's Deep Throat got him into trouble.
  nuff said
  agtG 252
  What was it like a week and no one told you any of this, and by Inspiration this blog had to come back and explain the basics.......and under duress too as a new scheme has emerged to shut this blog down by operatives of this regime.
What is ICTD Anyway? | ICTD4STUDENTS
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:39
  Posted by joellen on Saturday, September 15, 2012 · Leave a Comment
  How many people have had the experience of telling people you are studying ICTD or working in the field of ICTD to watch their eyes glaze over. How do you explain ICTD to a friend in the grocery line, your grandmother at a family reunion, or your father who thinks technology is ruining young people?
  Most commonly, ICTD is described as an attempt to bridge the digital divide'--the disparity between the 'haves' and 'have-nots' in the technological world. Some consider it to be the latest golden bullet'--with access to technology comes the ability to improve a livelihood. A farmer can access commodity information in Cameroon to ensure a fair price and expand reach beyond the local market. A family living in a rural community, who once found doctors out of reach, can significantly improve the chances of a child surviving past the age of 5 due to a community health worker equipped with a mobile health application connecting to doctors real time. A child can grow up with access to education and the opportunity to take college courses without great expense or the necessity of leaving her community.
  Maximizing Mobile Infographic. Source: World Bank
  Alternatively, perhaps a less altruistic view of ICTD depicts the field as a marriage between telecom companies in search of expanding markets and NGOs in need of new solutions to addressing hunger and poverty. The proliferation of the mobile phone in the developing world has been nothing short of a technological revolution according to the World Bank. Powerful infographics from the World Bank and USAID depict an undeniable success story regardless of the original intension. On a planet of 7 billion, there are over 6 billion mobile subscriptions and over 75% of the world has access to a mobile phone. Besides providing a link to markets, education and health providers, mobile technology is employed to create a safer and less corrupt world. Of course ensuring the bandwidth to handle the mobile data traffic expected to reach 1.2 GB per user by 2016 will present a challenge to the FCCs of the world and a subject for a future blog post.
  One last point of interest in the world of ICTD identity is confusion around the acronym. ICTD is often interchanged with ICT4D, a nuance on the surface, but politically charged when peering more deeply. What implications are being asserted when one says ICT for development? Some suggest this is another version of colonialism. Terminology does evolve over time and development lingo could certainly use an overhaul, perhaps alleviating the need to define what ICTD means to everyone. For an in-depth definition, refer to the Wikipedia page for ICT4D where some (or one) ICTDers have been doing a commendable job educating the world about this enigmatic field.
Georgian Prime Minister visits NATO
  Link to Article
  Source: DVIDS Unit RSS Feed: Natochannel
  Wed, 14 Nov 2012 15:39
  Choose quality '–¼Embed code '–¼<iframe width="500" height="300" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" style="border: none; overflow: hidden; width: 500px; height: 300px;" allowtransparency="true" src="http://www.dvidshub.net/video/embed/180953"></iframe>
  Georgian Prime Minister Mr. Bidzina Ivanishvili and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen jointly talked to the press at NATO Headquarters. Also available in High Definition. Audio: Left Track is the floor and the Right Track is the English translation.
TRENDING: Feinstein says she'll push for Petraeus to testify '' CNN Political Ticker - CNN.com Blogs
  Link to Article
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 21:04
  (CNN) '' Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Senate Intelligence Committee chairwoman, said she hopes to talk to Gen. David Petraeus and will urge him to testify on the Benghazi, Libya attacks as previously scheduled.
  "I believe he will. I think he's a responsible person and I believe he will come. We are going to try to set that up today," she said in an interview to air Tuesday on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer."'' Follow the Ticker on Twitter: @PoliticalTicker
  Feinstein said the former CIA director's testimony is relevant because news of his extramarital affair broke after his recent trip to Libya, where he discussed the violence and other issues with the CIA station chief there.
  In a separate interview with CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent Dana Bash, Feinstein said Tuesday the committee could call Petraeus to appear on Capitol Hill as early as Friday morning, adding that his lack of testimony would be a very big stone left unturned.
  Feinstein told CNN that she and Sen. Saxby Chambliss, the vice chairman of the committee, are meeting with Michael Morell, the acting director of the CIA who took over after Petraeus resigned Friday, and other intelligence officials as part of an "inquiry" into September's U.S. consulate attack in Libya that killed four Americans.
  "(Petraeus) was actually in Benghazi, and actually spoke to people involved in the incident. I think that's important for us to hear," she said on "The Situation Room."
  She later added: "There's only one way to ascertain (his trip), and that is to talk directly with Petraeus and do it in a classified setting with the committee present."
  The California senator has been vocal in her disappointment of the Federal Bureau of Investigation for its handling of the Petraeus scandal, as well as a second investigation involving Gen. John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, and "potentially inappropriate" e-mails he exchanged with Jill Kelley, a friend of Petraeus.
  Feinstein questioned why the FBI did not notify oversight committees in Congress about the investigations beforehand, given that classified information could be at risk.
  "It's rather shocking to find out candidly that we weren't briefed and that we find out from the press in the way in which we did, with no heads up, with no opportunity to ask questions, or put together any information," she said. "So we have been coming from behind on this."
  She continued: "I have many questions about the nature of the FBI investigation, how it was instituted, and we'll be asking those questions."
  '' Watch Feinstein's interview on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer," starting at 4 p.m. ET.
  Related: Sen. Collins: 'Imperative' Petraeus testify on Benghazi
  Watch The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer weekdays at 4pm to 6pm ET and Saturdays at 6pm ET. For the latest from The Situation Room click here.
Canadian Supreme Court puts Viagra in the public domain because Pfizer wouldn't disclose enough of its workings - Boing Boing
  Link to Article
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:34
  Michael Geist sez,
  The Supreme Court of Canada this morning shocked the pharmaceutical industry by voiding Pfizer's patent in Canada for Viagra. The unanimous decision provides a strong reaffirmation of the policy behind patent law, namely that patents represent a quid pro quo bargain of public disclosure of inventions in return for a time limited monopoly in the invention. The Supreme Court describes it in this way:
  "The patent system is based on a "bargain", or quid pro quo: the inventor is granted exclusive rights in a new and useful invention for a limited period in exchange for disclosure of the invention so that society can benefit from this knowledge. This is the basic policy rationale underlying the Act. The patent bargain encourages innovation and advances science and technology."
  Canadian Supreme Court Voids Viagra Patent as Insufficient Disclosure Means It Fails the "Patent Bargain" (Thanks, Michael!)
Full List of Participants to the BBC CMEP Seminar on 26 January 2006 | Omnologos
  Link to Article
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:33
  This list has been obtained legally.
  This is for Tony, Andrew, Benny, Barry and for all of us Harmless Davids.
  January 26th 2006,
  BBC Television Centre, LondonSpecialists:Robert May, Oxford University and Imperial College LondonMike Hulme, Director, Tyndall Centre, UEABlake Lee-Harwood, Head of Campaigns, GreenpeaceDorthe Dahl-Jensen, Niels Bohr Institute, CopenhagenMichael Bravo, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of CambridgeAndrew Dlugolecki, Insurance industry consultantTrevor Evans, US EmbassyColin Challen MP, Chair, All Party Group on Climate ChangeAnuradha Vittachi, Director, Oneworld.netAndrew Simms, Policy Director, New Economics FoundationClaire Foster, Church of EnglandSaleemul Huq, IIEDPoshendra Satyal Pravat, Open UniversityLi Moxuan, Climate campaigner, Greenpeace ChinaTadesse Dadi, Tearfund EthiopiaIain Wright, CO2 Project Manager, BP InternationalAshok Sinha, Stop Climate ChaosAndy Atkins, Advocacy Director, TearfundMatthew Farrow, CBIRafael Hidalgo, TV/multimedia producerCheryl Campbell, Executive Director, Television for the EnvironmentKevin McCullough, Director, Npower RenewablesRichard D North, Institute of Economic AffairsSteve Widdicombe, Plymouth Marine LabsJoe Smith, The Open UniversityMark Galloway, Director, IBTAnita Neville, E3GEleni Andreadis, Harvard UniversityJos Wheatley, Global Environment Assets Team, DFIDTessa Tennant, Chair, AsRiaBBC attendees:Jana Bennett, Director of TelevisionSacha Baveystock, Executive Producer, ScienceHelen Boaden, Director of NewsAndrew Lane, Manager, Weather, TV NewsAnne Gilchrist, Executive Editor Indies & Events, CBBCDominic Vallely, Executive Editor, EntertainmentEleanor Moran, Development Executive, Drama CommissioningElizabeth McKay, Project Executive, EducationEmma Swain, Commissioning Editor, Specialist FactualFergal Keane, (Chair), Foreign Affairs CorrespondentFran Unsworth, Head of NewsgatheringGeorge Entwistle, Head of TV Current AffairsGlenwyn Benson, Controller, Factual TVJohn Lynch, Creative Director, Specialist FactualJon Plowman, Head of ComedyJon Williams, TV Editor NewsgatheringKaren O'Connor, Editor, This World, Current AffairsCatriona McKenzie, Tightrope Pictures catriona@tightropepictures.com
  BBC Television Centre, London (cont)Liz Molyneux, Editorial Executive, Factual CommissioningMatt Morris, Head of News, Radio Five LiveNeil Nightingale, Head of Natural History UnitPaul Brannan, Deputy Head of News InteractivePeter Horrocks, Head of Television NewsPeter Rippon, Duty Editor, World at One/PM/The World this WeekendPhil Harding, Director, English Networks & NationsSteve Mitchell, Head Of Radio NewsSue Inglish, Head Of Political ProgrammesFrances Weil, Editor of News Special Events
Obama order protects intelligence community whistleblowers | The Center for Public Integrity
  Link to Article
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:31
  President Barack Obama signed an executive order last week creating new protections for national security and intelligence community whistleblowers, effectively sidestepping a congressional impasse provoked by the reservations of congressional Republicans.
  The order '-- formally known as "Presidential Policy Directive 19" and signed by Obama out of public view on Oct. 10 and without a White House announcement '-- directs intelligence agencies to establish procedures for the protection of employees reporting waste, fraud and abuse.
  The order is meant to address longstanding concerns that whistleblowers in the intelligence agencies lacked legal protections like those available to employees of the Department of Defense and other federal agencies.
  The new order bans retaliation against whistleblowers in the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and other intelligence organizations. Until now, these agencies were not specifically prohibited from retaliating against whistleblowers.
  A House bill aimed at improving protections for most federal employees, known as the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act and passed by that chamber in September, lacked the safeguards ordered by Obama. Angela Canterbury, from the Washington, D.C. watchdog group Project on Government Oversight, said House Republicans had narrowed the bill's focus due to worries that its provisions might encourage Wikileaks-type disclosures of sensitive information.
  She called this a "red herring," explaining that by protecting those with security clearances who want to blow the whistle on wrongdoing at intelligence agencies, a new law could have encouraged them to ''use safe internal channels.'' The Senate has yet to take up its own version of the bill.
  In the meantime, Obama's order "fills a vacuum," according to Tom Devine, a legal adviser to the Government Accountability Project, a Washington, D.C. nonprofit that provides legal support for government whistleblowers, including many working on national security matters. The order could function as a "beachhead" for further reforms in future legislation, he says.
  The executive order, which Devine said was devised by the White House over the past year, protects certain disclosures of classified information to Congress and agency inspector generals; creates an appeal channel for whistleblowers facing punishment; and promises that those who prove improper retaliation can be reinstated and given financial compensation. The Director of National Intelligence is responsible for ensuring that each agency puts new review procedures in place. (A spokesman for the DNI did not immediately respond to questions about this story.)
  But one advocate said the order is "toothless" because the role it gives the DNI, who is an intelligence official. Stephen M. Kohn, the Executive Director of the Washington, D.C.-based National Whistleblower Center, another group that counsels whistleblowers, calls the directive a "smokescreen" that masks real reform. Kohn also highlighted a disclaimer in the presidential directive that he says cancels the order's other provisions. "This directive is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law," the order reads.
  "We are concerned that national security employees may think that this directive gives them some much-needed protections when it does not," Kohn says. But Canterbury says the order's disclaimer is boilerplate for presidential directives and should not be read as undermining its real, and positive, changes.
  White House spokesman Eric Schultz says the directive provides new recourse for those facing retaliation. Besides giving the Director of National Intelligence authority to oversee intelligence agencies handling of whistleblower cases, the order requires agencies for the first time to provide ''whole'' relief for employees whose right to free speech is violated, he noted.
  "We'll be pressing very hard to get permanent statutory fix,'' Devine said.
  Like our National Security coverage on Facebook and get the latest news instantly.
Here's the e-mail trick Petraeus and Broadwell used to communicate
  Link to Article
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:24
  General David Petraeus shakes hands with Paula Broadwell. (ISAF via Reuters)
  CIA Director David Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, a former military intelligence officer and his biographer, adopted a well-worn online trick, in an apparent attempt to keep their communications secret.
  They wrote their ''intimate messages'' as draft e-mails in a shared Gmail account, according to the AP, allowing them to see one anothers' messages while leaving a much fainter data trail. When messages are sent and received, both accounts record the transmission as well as such metadata as the IP addresses on either end, something the two seemed to be seeking to avoid.
  Petraeus and Broadwell apparently used a trick, known to terrorists and teen-agers alike, to conceal their email traffic, one of the law enforcement officials said.
  Rather than transmitting emails to the other's inbox, they composed at least some messages and instead of transmitting them, left them in a draft folder or in an electronic ''dropbox,'' the official said. Then the other person could log onto the same account and read the draft emails there. This avoids creating an email trail that is easier to trace.
  The trick has achieved notoriety as a tactic of terrorists who are rightly wary of espionage.
  It's the sort of measure you take if you fear there's a risk that someone will look in on you. And it's been around for quite some time, which may be why the FBI investigators were not fooled by it.
  A January 2005 PBS special on al-Qaeda identified the tactic as one of several ''terrorist tricks,'' alongside logging in from public Internet cafes. The trick is also used in a 2008 spy film ''Traitor.''
Ios6 causing excessive data usage?: Apple Support Communities
  Link to Article
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:43
  Thought I was just gonna chime in on this issue.
  iPhone 4GS, currenly 6.0 (yet to update)
  I got a text from my operator yesterday that I had exceeded the monthly limit for mobile data transfer (5GB). I was very confused and talked to them and they said that for instance on friday 2nd I had used 1.6 GB of mobile data transfer and just this saturday about 850 MB. I tried to recall what I had been doing but nothing came to mind and this just seemed absurd to me, in the 3½ years before I have never been over 2 GB in a whole month, now I had managed to use 5GB in 11 days.
  Anyway, they agreed that it looked sketchy and gave me another GB to use and this morning I started monitoring and just like a lot of people allready have said in this thread it was 100% the new built in Podcaster app. I had it set to not sync subscriptions but to automatically download new episodes. However, the "Use cellular data" was off. Despite this, I started listening to a podcast this morning that I had allready downloaded and reset my usage to monitor. In just over 5 minutes I had 110 MB recieved data, only the Podcast app running. Note that all my subscriptions (only have four) should allready be fully downloaded and synced as I do this at home through WiFi.
  I had to put the phone in Flight mode to stop it from downloading...whatever it is downloading. Note that whatever it is downloading isnt stored anywhere, the total data used on the phone hasnt grown at all, despite 100+ MB of fresh data was recieved. When I got to work I turned Flight mode off and it instantly resumed recieving data, it had downloaded 2 MB before I even had navigated to the usage display. When I killed the Podcast app, it stopped.
  So in short: the Podcast app is running amok, downloading stuff (that it doesnt store in any way that can be seen at least). I called my carrier (Telia, Sweden) back this morning to inform them about this and also this thread because yesterday they said that they didnt know of anything that could cause this.
Jill Kelley, woman who sparked Petraeus probe, has Philadelphia roots
  Link to Article
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:42
  Kelley works as an unpaid social liaison to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. According to a statement released Sunday, she and her husband, Scott Kelley, have been friends with Petraeus and his wife, Holly, for five years.
  A 1988 Inquirer feature about the family's culinary roots described Kelley's father as an accomplished musician in their homeland and her mother as a chef who liked to entertain political and cultural figures.
  At one point, the Khawams ran a Middle Eastern restaurant in Voorhees called Sahara. John Khawam also owned an auto tag store in Northeast Philadelphia, records show.
  After living in Northeast Philadelphia, the family moved to Huntingdon Valley.
  Jill Khawam and her twin sister, Natalie, were the youngest of four children.
  Both women moved about a decade ago to Tampa, where Jill Kelley's husband works as a surgeon and the couple are active in the social circuit.
  Natalie Khawam is a lawyer specializing in representing whistleblowers. According to her online resume, she attended Beaver College (now Arcadia), and earned graduate degrees from Temple University and Georgetown University Law School.
  An older sister, Caroline, also lives in Florida, while Kelley's older brother, David Khawam, lives in Mount Laurel, records show.
  None could be reached for comment on Sunday.
  Contact John P. Martin at 215-854-4774, at jmartin@phillynews.com or follow @JPMartinInky on Twitter.
Who is Jill Kelley? 10 facts
  Link to Article
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:41
  Jill Kelley served as an unpaid social liaison at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa. | AP Photo
  CloseShe's been described as the ''other, other woman'' by The New York Post, and a ''whistle blowing beauty'' by The Daily News. Jill Kelley, 37, is the woman who reports say received harassing emails and notified a friend in the FBI sometime last summer. An investigation led to Paula Broadwell and eventually uncovered Gen. David Petraeus's extramarital affair. Here are some more details about Kelley:
  1. Served as an unpaid social liaison at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Fla., home to the military's Central Command and Special Operations Command.
  Continue Reading2. Has three kids and is married to Dr. Scott Kelley, a surgeon of the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center's Esophageal Oncology and Surgery in Tampa.
  3. Her identical twin is NatalieKhawam, a lawyer who works on whistle blower cases after graduating from Georgetown University Law school.
  4. With her husband hosted parties at their Tampa mansion that Petraeus, 60, attended. During one 2010 party for Tampa's Gasparilla Festival, Petraeus showed up with a 28-cop motorcycle escort.
  5. Kelley and her twin sister were on a 2003episode of the Food Network television series ''Food Fight.''.
  6. The Petraeus and Kelley families are so close that they've even spent holidays together at Petraeus' Washington, D.C., residence.
  7. Petraeus met Kelley and her husband when he was working at the Central Command in Tampa sometime before he went on to serve in Afghanistan.
  8. Hosted a birthday party for her daughter on Sunday '-- just two days after the scandal first broke '-- at her and her husband's home.
  9. Grew up in Philadelphia until she moved to Florida in her mid-20s and her parents at one point owned a Middle Eastern restaurant in New Jersey.
  10. Told the St. Petersburg Times in 2003 that put studying medicine on hold in order to have a child.
Gen. John Allen ensnared in Petraeus scandal - Mike Allen
  Link to Article
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:40
  The email web has now ensnared two of the biggest U.S. national security stars. | AP Photo
  CloseMarine Gen. John R. Allen, the four-star U.S. commander of the war in Afghanistan, exchanged thousands of ''potentially inappropriate'' emails with Jill Kelley, the Tampa woman who claimed to have been harassed by the ex-mistress of former CIA Director DavidPetraeus, a senior defense official told POLITICO early Tuesday.
  Allen, 58 and married, was nominated in October by President Barack Obama to be Supreme Allied Commander Europe and commander of the U.S. European Command. That nomination is now on hold, but Allen will remain commander of U.S. forces and the NATO International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, the official said.
  Continue ReadingGen.: Allen's 'bizarre' behaviorThe FBI notified the Defense Department on Sunday of ''potentially inappropriate communications'' between Allen and Kelley, and turned over to Pentagon lawyers 20,000 to 30,000 pages of emails exchanged by the two from 2010 to 2012.
  (Also on POLITICO: 10 facts about Jill Kelley)
  The email web has now ensnared two of the biggest stars of the U.S. national-security establishment, and two of the commanders in America's longest war. Allen succeeded Petraeus as commander in Afghanistan in July 2011. Before that, Allen had been based in Tampa as deputy commander of the U.S. Central Command.
  From late 2008 until mid-2010, Allen was deputy commander at CENTCOM while Petraeus was commander.
  Kelley, 37, who had complained of threatening emails from Petraeus biographer PaulaBroadwell, has been described as a Tampa socialite and friend of Petraeus who was viewed by Broadwell as a potential romantic rival.
  Kelley's complaint to an FBI agent about the emails touched off the investigation that led to the resignation of Petraeus, 60, on Friday.
  (Also on POLITICO: Petraeus could lose security clearance)
  Allen holds one of the highest profile and most sensitive positions in the military, consulting with President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Afghan President Hamid Karzai as the U.S. prepares to transition control of the country's security to Afghans. The U.S. has about 68,000 troops in Afghanistan, and the total NATO force numbers about 100,000.
  Panetta, now on an Asia-Pacific swing, was flying from Hawaii on Sunday when the FBI contacted his general counsel, who was aboard the plane, about the emails at about 5 p.m. ET Sunday. The secretary's senior advisers immediately told him of the call, and the White House was also notified, the official said.
Obama Prepares To Flee As Coup Topples Another General
  Link to Article
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:11
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  Obama Prepares To Flee As Coup Topples Another General
  By:Sorcha Faal, and as reported to her Western Subscribers
  A grim Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU) report circulating in the Kremlin this afternoon says that President Barack Obama is preparing to leave the United States for a clandestine meeting on Diego Garcia this coming week with those top military commanders still loyal to him in an effort his regime is making to head off a growing coup-plot that today has claimed as its latest victim US Marine General John Allen [photo 2nd left], commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF).
  According to this report, GRU analysts became ''alarmed'' after US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta departed suddenly from Washington D.C. earlier this morning on an unscheduled and unannounced flight toward Asia and whose plane issued a Force Protection Condition (FPCON) DELTA alert status signaling to all American military commands that an attack is taking place or has just occurred.
  Within 4 hours of this highest of alert statuses being issued by Secretary Panetta, this report says, Obama operatives leaked to the propaganda American mainstream media that General Allen was under investigation for ''inappropriate'' emails thus adding this US Marine hero to the list of top American military officers to be toppled in the past 3 weeks, and which includes, Former US Army General and CIA Director David Petraeus, Rear Admiral Charles M. Gaouette, US Army General Carter Ham, Brigadier General Jeffery A. Sinclair, and US Navy Commander Joseph E. Darlak.
  As we began reporting on these events in our 2 September report ''Obama Overthrow Plot Widens As US Martial Law Fears Grow,'' and continued to follow in our subsequent reports ''Obama Coup Plot Slams Into Russia,'' ''Obama Topples Top Coup Leader After Washington Gunbattle,'' and ''Massive Explosion Reported After CIA Drone Targets Indianapolis,'' the toppling of so many top US Military leaders by the Obama regime is unprecedented in American history.
  The toppling of General Allen, this report continues, is particularly noteworthy in that he was due to take command of NATO, an appointment, however, that was suspended today by Obama.
  US propaganda media reports are saying that General Allen was toppled due to his sending ''thousands'' of sexual emails to Jill Kelley[photo 3rd left]who is said to be the woman who initiated the FBI investigation into Paula Broadwell, the biographer of General Petraeus whom it said caused his resignation because they were having an affair.
  Important to note about Kelly, GRU analysts say in this report, is that while she has only been indentified by the US propaganda media as being a ''social liaison'' to MacDill Air Force Base, Russian intelligence operatives have long noted that she is, in fact, a top CIA operative who has long worked with the United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM), the United States Special Operations Command Central (SOCCENT), the United States Marine Forces Central Command (MARCENT), and the United States Africa Command (USAFRICOM), all of which are headquartered at this massive Tampa, Florida military facility.
  Interesting to note about Kelly, too, this report says, is that she was the ''main liaison'' to the many US Military leaders who secretly attended the Republican National Convention in Tampa this past August where they were hosted by some of America's top billionaires and bankster elites where the coup-plot, Russian intelligence analysts believe, against Obama was first conceived.
  GRU analysts in this report further state it was Kelly's ''electronic actions'' in setting up these meetings between top US Military and business leaders which first alerted the Obama regime to the very real danger they were facing.
  Fearing a repeat of the coup-plot launched against President Franklin Roosevelt in the summer of 1933 by these same fascist factions, called the Business Plot, this report says, Obama has been ''swift'' in his attempts to fight against it, including his announcement he would be leaving the United States for an unprecedented trip to Asia between 17-20 November.
  Secretary Panetta's ''sudden trip'' to Asia today, this report continues, will see him joining US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Australia whereupon both of them will meet with Obama and loyal US Military commanders later this week, thus meaning that for this period of time all of the top officials in the Obama regime will be out of the United States.
  The only clue to the true events now occurring in the United States came, strangely, from Paula Broadwell's father who said Sunday that ''his daughter is the victim of character assassination and implied the bombshell story is just a smoke screen for something bigger.''
  To the American people believing truth, however, instead of their really believing that their most highly trained military and intelligence commanders would be so foolish as to allow themselves to be caught up in any kind of sex scandal, let alone document their sordid deeds using emails that even the smallest child knows is the most insecure type of communication for anyone to use, there appears to be no evidence.
  Most eerie to note, too, in all of these events, and in a classic case (perhaps?) of art imitating life'...the 1997 movie titled Conspiracy Theory staring Mel Gibson saw his character warning anyone who would listen that the President's life was in danger due to an ''earthquake weapon'' that was going to be used against him by the US military during his visit to Turkey.
  So to be noted in this context, within 48 hours of Obama announcing he would become the first American President to visit Burma (Myanmar) this past week this Asian nation was struck by a powerful earthquake which left at least 38 people dead or missing.
  November 13, 2012 (C) EU and US all rights reserved. Permission to use this report in its entirety is granted under the condition it is linked back to its original source at WhatDoesItMean.Com. Freebase content licensed under CC-BY and GFDL.
  [Ed. Note: Western governments and their intelligence services actively campaign against the information found in these reports so as not to alarm their citizens about the many catastrophic Earth changes and events to come, a stance that the Sisters of Sorcha Faal strongly disagrees with in believing that it is every human beings right to know the truth. Due to our missions conflicts with that of those governments, the responses of their 'agents' against us has been a longstanding misinformation/misdirection campaign designed to discredit and which is addressed in the report ''Who Is Sorcha Faal?''.]
  You May Already Be To Late'...But It Has Begun!
  They Are Going To Come For You'...Why Are You Helping Them?
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ISAF commander Gen. John Allen under investigation over 'inappropriate' emails
  Link to Article
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:11
  Military officials announced that up to 30,000 pages of "potentially inappropriate" e-mails connect Gen. John Allen, who replaced former CIA Director David Petraeus as commander in Afghanistan last year, to Jill Kelley, the woman whose initial complaint launched the FBI probe into the connection between Petraeus and his biographer Paula Broadwell. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.
  By NBC News staff
  U.S. General John Allen, commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, is under investigation over allegations of ''inappropriate'' emails between him and the woman who sparked the probe into CIA Director David Petraeus, officials said early Tuesday.
  In a statement, the Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said that the FBI had referred ''a matter involving" Allen to the Department of Defense.
  ''Today, the secretary directed that the matter be referred to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense for investigation, and it is now in the hands of the Inspector General,'' Panetta said.
  The statement said that Allen would remain commander of ISAF during the investigation and that he was ''entitled to due process in this matter.''
  Emails on 'coming and goings' of Petraeus, other military officials escalated FBI concerns
  A senior defense official told reporters Tuesday that it was alleged there had been ''inappropriate communications'' between Allen and Jill Kelley.
  He also said the general ''disputes that he has engaged in any wrongdoing in this matter.'' The official said the investigation involved some 20,000 to 30,000 pages of material, mostly emails, which were sent from 2010 to 2012.
  The Petraeus scandal emerged after Kelley complained to the FBI about receiving anonymous threatening emails. FBI agents traced the allegedly threatening emails received by Kelley to Paula Broadwell, Petraeus' biographer.
  Those who know the two women at the center of General David Petraeus' affair scandal are speaking out. Jill Kelley's brother says she is "dedicated" to her husband, while Paula Broadwell's friend calls her "a pretty great person." NBC's Kristen Welker reports.
  During the investigation, agents discovered emails between Petraeus and Broadwell that were indicative of an extramarital affair between them, according to government and law enforcement officials.
  Petraeus, who was appointed 14 months ago to head the Central Intelligence Agency, announced his resignation on Friday, citing an extramarital affair.
  Confirmation hearing on holdAllen was in line to take over as head of U.S. forces in Europe and NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe.
  On Monday, he was in Washington, D.C., preparing for his Senate confirmation hearings which were originally scheduled for Thursday, NBC News reported. That nomination has now been put on hold ''until the relevant facts are determined,'' Panetta's statement said.
  ''The secretary has asked both Senators Levin and McCain that the confirmation hearing on General Allen's pending nomination to be Commander of the United State European Command and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe be delayed,'' the statement said.
  Allen had no advance warning about the investigation, a close aide of Allen's told NBC News. He was alerted to the probe by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey Monday night ET. Allen had a number of meetings scheduled for Tuesday on Capitol Hill, although the aide was unsure if they would take place.
  The FBI eventually discovered that the emails received by Jill Kelley, a close friend of the Petraeus family, were sent by Paula Broadwell. And as they dug deeper, the affair between Broadwell and Petraeus came to light. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.
  Allen's connection to the Petraeus investigation also seems to have caught the Defense Department off guard.
  ''This came as very surprising news, to say the least. No one in the Pentagon is leaping to conclusions just yet,'' a senior defense official traveling with Panetta told NBC News. ''It's important to review the materials to determine the facts, and it's too early speculate about where this will lead. In the meantime, Gen. Allen needs to focus on the war effort, which he's successfully led since last year.''
  The ISAF was also unaware of the investigation until late Monday or early Tuesday, and it declined to comment, in a written statement, referring all questions to the Defense Department.
  Allen, a highly decorated officer, took over as ISAF commander in July 2011, and was nominated on Oct. 10 to take over as NATO commander, the same time that his successor at the ISAF was named as General Joseph Dunford.
  The confirmation of Dunford, currently assistant commandant of the Marine Corps, is now expected to be fast tracked.
  ''The secretary has respectfully requested that the Senate act promptly on that nomination," Panetta's statement said.
  NBC News' Courtney Kube, Ian Johnston and Rachel Elbaum contributed to this report.
  Some members of Congress are saying that they or, at the least President Obama, should have been told about the investigation into the director of the CIA while it was going on. NBC's Pete Williams reports.
  Related content from NBCNews.com:
  Follow US news from NBCNews.com onTwitterandFacebook
tabs.mediahackers.org
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:57
  The World tab contains feeds from non-US sites about the rest of the world. This was an attempt to create a flow that's not mostly about America. This was a community project, in a thread on scripting.com. In fact the idea came from an earlier thread.
  The Berkman tab was removed to make room. I have a feeling about how many tabs there should be. And while I personally want to keep up on the Berkman community, there aren't that many other people tuned in who are. (I can tell by usage patterns.) However, the river is still running, and if you have the URL bookmarked, it should continue to work. It just isn't in one of the tabs.
  Apple
  I asked John Gruber, Brent Simmons and Marco Arment for the Apple feeds that are most important to them. Then I added feeds from the major tech pubs and blogs.
  Apple news became the "lead river" when the Olympics were over. Apple is the hot topic because there's an announcement coming in September so there's likely to be a lot of news.
  If you want to follow these feeds in another news reader app, here's the OPML reading list. Note however that this is dynamic and may change, so you'll want to reload it every so often.
  Tech
  This river is made up of the feeds in TechMeme's leaderboard. It's cool because it's a view of TechMeme that previously only their bot would see. When I want to know what's new, I want to know it all, not just what's popular. Sometimes the things that are least popular are the most interesting, and shift my point of view.
  I have a script that reads their leaderboard page every night, and pulls out the RSS feeds to form an OPML file that then acts as a subscription list for River2. You're welcome to use the feed in whatever aggregator you use. But remember that it's dynamic, it changes every night. Most readers can't handle that (if yours does, let me know).
  NYT
  There are plenty of New York Times stories in my personal selection, also known as the Dave tab (see below), but there are lots of other stories as well. This river contains only stories from the Times, so it's more concentrated. It's simply a reflection of what's in the NYT firehose feed.
  World
  I started with the "international" feeds from major news outlets such as the ABC from Australia, Ria Novosti from Russia, Al Jazeera, Ha'aretz, The Hindu, NYT international feed, etc. Then I asked people who read the site for other feeds. English-language. Cover non-local news for their geography, but not be focused on the United States. We already have lots of American news in other tabs.
  NOLA
  New Orleans' main newspaper, the Times-Picayune, has curtailed publication. I love the city, I went to college there many years ago, and it's been through a lot. But I think something good can come from this. A river of news combining the flow of a number of blogs and community publications makes for interesting reading. That's what this river is about. If you have suggestions for feeds, check out this thread.
  Berkman
  I spent a couple of years at Berkman Center at Harvard, and met a lot of interesting people there, many of whom have gone onto to other interesting things. I thought that a river of that community might be interesting. So far I don't have a lot of feeds, but I'm keeping this here for a while in the hope that it might develop. If you have suggestions post a comment here.
  This river was taken off the tabs in v3.0, but it's still accessible at this URL.
  Frontier
  Frontier is a powerful scripting and database environment that has been my life's work in many ways. It's centered on outlining, and has hooks into all the powerful protocols of the Internet. It's also got deep content management capabilities. The latest incarnation of Frontier, the OPML Editor is also the server environment that runs all the software you're seeing here.
  This river combines all the feeds and mail lists for the community. It's the one place to go to find out what's new.
  Dave
  These are my own personal selections. It started as the first river, the one I used in all examples and demos, and it's what I rely on to stay current. It's an eclectic selection of news sources and blogs, columnists and gadflies. The only qualification for being in this river is that at one time I thought it would be interesting to follow this source. I almos tnever unsub from one of these.
  River2
  River2 is a server app that reads your feeds every 15 minutes and builds a static river. All these rivers are created one of my servers. It supports podcast enclosures, realtime updates with rssCloud, dynamic OPML reading lists and all flavors of RSS and Atom.
  OPML Server
  OPML Server is server environment running inside the OPML Editor.
  Following in the tradition of powerful Unix editors, we have an incredible programming language, database, and communication stack built into our favorite outliner.
  It's so powerful that you can make a complete server environment out of it.
  Amazon EC3
  It's so cool that you can create a new virtual server when you want one. A server is almost like a document. And when you're done, throw it away.
  Amazon had a great idea. It could be simpler, but it's a great start.
  I wrote a howto that shows you how to create a new instance of an OPML Server on EC2. If you're new to EC2, the first year is free! Wow. :-)
  Amazon S3
  It's a great storage system. Fast, high availablilty, infinite scaling. Cheap. Easy API. What else could you want.
  I wrote a howto called S3 for Poets that makes it easy to get started with S3.
  Bootstrap Toolkit
  RT
  On each item in all the rivers you'll see a RT link. The first time you click on one it will ask for the address of your linkblog server. It's a very simple protocol. It passes the title, link and description for the item to the linkblogger, which then will likely put those elements in a dialog that you can tweak before sending to your followers. It's the feed-oriented analog of Twitter's retweet command.
  I use Radio2 as my linkblogging tool.
  People ask if they can pay for this. It's so gratifying to hear that people think it's worth money. But for now, the best thing to tell people about it. Especially people who work at news organizations and bloggers. I want them all to do rivers for their communities. They don't have to be as fancy as this one. And we'll help. It's important to have these streams running all over the web, not just on Twitter and Facebook.
  Dan MacTough for his help with JavaScript.
  Thanks to the community that developed the beautiful river jQuery app that displays all the rivers, especially Nicolas Gallagher and Martin Duffy.
  My name is Dave Winer.
@chrissiecurry: @davealexander72 bedankt voor de plaat, echt ZO lief van je!!
  Link to Article
  Source: Twitter / chrissiecurry
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:57
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Email Location Data Led FBI to Uncover Top Spy's Affair | Threat Level
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:56
  U.S. Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, presides over a re-enlistment and awards ceremony while visiting Soldiers of Task Force Mountain Warrior. Photo: U.S. Army Spc. Albert L. Kelley, 300th Mobile Public Affairs Detachment
  Every year careless hackers, cyberstalkers and others are undone by the digital trails they leave behind for law enforcement to collect and trace back to them.
  But who would have thought the nation's top spy chief would be undone so easily by digital footprints left behind in e-mail?
  In the irony of ironies, the distinguished career of CIA Director and former Afghanistan war commander David Petraeus appears to have come unhinged after authorities traced the location of the sender of threatening e-mails that were written from an anonymous e-mail account and sent to a woman in Florida.
  Authorities say the location data connected to the e-mails and the e-mail account from which they were sent, helped them identify the sender as Petraeus' biographer, Paula Broadwell. This helped them search other e-mail accounts owned by Broadwell, including a Gmail account she used, which led them to the affair with Petraeus, according to The Wall Street Journal.
  The case shows just how easy it is to discover the personal connections that can unmask anonymous parties. But the Petraeus affair is as much an outlier as an exemplar. The FBI rarely, if ever, gets involved when one person is harassing another online.
  ''I'm not aware of any case when the FBI has gotten involved in a case of online harassment,'' Justin Patchin, an associate professor of criminal justice at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, said. ''The FBI definitely wouldn't get involved in your Joe Schmoe love triangle.''
  The affair began to unravel after the Florida woman, Jill Kelley, contacted an FBI friend after receiving threatening and harassing e-mails from an anonymous person who accused her of flirting with a man who was not identified in the e-mails. Kelley is a volunteer social planner for events at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida, which is home to the military's Central Command. Petraeus was commander of CENTCOM from 2008 to 2010, when he left to take his position as head of the CIA.
  The e-mails, between 5 and 10 of them, began arriving last May, and reportedly told Kelley to ''back off'' and ''stay away'' from the unnamed man.
  Kelley's FBI friend launched an investigation to determine if the threatening e-mails constituted a cybercrime.
  FBI investigators determined that the anonymous account from which the e-mails were sent belonged to Broadwell and her husband, who live in North Carolina. Reports are unclear about how they did this, but, according to the New York Times investigators were able to determine what other e-mail accounts had been accessed from the same computer address as the one that sent the harassing e-mails, which may have led them to Broadwell or her husband.
  The information contained in the metadata of e-mail headers varies. It's unclear if the anonymous account was a Gmail account or came from another e-mail service provider. In Gmail, the header generally only includes the IP address and domains of the servers through which the e-mail was sent, as well as ones it passed through in transit to the recipient's inbox. Authorities would have had to contact Google to obtain information about the IP address that was used to log into the anonymous account and any other accounts that were accessed from the same address. But other e-mail providers, such as Yahoo, do include the sender IP address in the metadata.
  Agents considered that the anonymous e-mail account used to send the harassing e-mails might have been hacked by someone else who was sending the e-mails to Kelley. But they eventually were able to match the locations from which the e-mails were sent to the same locations, including hotels, where Broadwell was known to have been during the times the correspondence was set to Kelley, according to the Journal.
  Based on these connections, investigators obtained a warrant to monitor other e-mail accounts Broadwell used, including a Gmail account.
  In examining these other accounts, agents uncovered sexually explicit e-mails that Broadwell exchanged with another party who also used a Gmail account. Investigators were not able to immediately identify Petraeus as the other party, however, because he'd set up his Gmail account using a pseudonym.
  Investigators determined sometime during mid-summer that it belonged to Petraeus and that the two were having an affair. The reports do not say how investigators made that connection. According to the New York Times it's not known if the FBI gained access to Petraeus' personal e-mail account, or if its investigation relied solely on e-mails found in Broadwell's account.
  Broadwell's affair with Petraeus reportedly began two months after he took over the CIA and ended about four months ago, around the same time the FBI discovered the affair, according to Col. Steven Boylan, who spoke to ABC News.
  After the FBI contacted Broadwell the week of Oct. 21, she acknowledged the affair and provided authorities with her computer. The agents discovered several classified documents on the computer, which raised concerns that Petraeus had given them to her, but agents ultimately determined this was not the case. Petraeus admitted to the affair but said he had not given any classified documents to her.
  Though Petraeus is not believed to have broken any laws, he resigned from his position with the CIA last Friday, expressing regret for hurting his family and at his lapse in judgment in conducting the affair.
  Broadwell will now become part of the statistics that Gmail reports in its next semi-annual transparency report on government data requests.
  The e-mail provider and search giant releases a so-called Transparency Report every six months, to provide users with generic statistics about government requests for data and takedowns. The last 2011 report showed that U.S. government agencies sought user data from Google 6,321 times for the six months ending December 2011, which was up from 5,950 during the first six months of 2011. The requests targeted 12,243 Google accounts in the latter half of that year, and 11,057 in the six months prior.
  Google, which offers e-mail, cloud storage, a blogging platform, web search, and other services, provides government agencies with e-mail communications, documents, browsing activity, IP addresses used to create an account and other data when asked.
  It's not known how many of these requests are accompanied by a warrant, however, since Google doesn't disclose this in its report, and U.S. laws are unclear on when a warrant is required. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act, for example, allows access to electronically stored data without warrants.
  Update 3:30 PST: To clarify that although reports indicate that Broadwell and Petraeus used Gmail accounts to communicate with one another, the e-mail account that was used to send the harassing e-mails to Kelley has not been identified as a Gmail account in news reports.
  Additional reporting by Robert Beckhusen
Callista Gingrich on Petraeus: Affairs Are 'Painful' for the Family
  Link to Article
  Source: Crooks and Liars
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:53
  The woman who married former House Speaker Newt Gingrich after cheating wuth him while he was married to his second wife says that former CIA Director David Petraeus' extramarital affair is "sad" and "painful" for his family.
  "I think it's personally very sad for he and his family," Callista Gingrich told ABC's Barbara Walters on Monday. "I think he did the right thing by resigning. But this is painful and they'll have to work together through this as a family. And that will take some time."
  The former House Speaker pointed out that Petraeus would have been in an "impossible situation" if he had tried to stay on as director of the CIA.
  "This man served 37 years," he pointed out. "We need to remember, he was the key to winning in Iraq. If he had not turned around the surge, we would have literally lost the war. He was the key to giving a fighting chance in Afghanistan. He is a brilliant, very hard-working person. And I hope he and his family can work through this."
  Newt Gingrich's second wife, Marianne, revealed to Esquire in 2010 how the former speaker had presented his first wife with the terms of their divorce while she was in the hospital recovering from surgery for uterine cancer in 1980.
  Rumors about Gingrich's fondness for oral sex with other women have circulated for some time. A 1995 Vanity Fair profile explained how Anne Manning had claimed she had been intimate with him.
  In 1999, over the Mother's Day weekend and on the same day his second wife had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, Gingrich informed her he had found someone else.
  In fact, he had reportedly been having an affair with Callista Bisek for six years.
  Gingrich divorced his second wife in 2000 and married Callista that same year.
  In 2011, the then-Republican presidential candidate suggested to CBN's David Brody that he had strayed from his marriages because he felt so "passionately" about the country.
  "There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate," he explained.
False Posts on Facebook Undermine Its Credibility
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:52
  SAN FRANCISCO '-- The Facebook page for Gaston Memorial Hospital, in Gastonia, N.C., offers a chicken salad recipe to encourage healthy eating, tips on avoiding injuries at Zumba class, and pictures of staff members dressed up at Halloween. Typical stuff for a hospital in a small town.
  But in October, another Facebook page for the hospital popped up. This one posted denunciations of President Obama and what it derided as ''Obamacare.'' It swiftly gathered hundreds of followers, and the anti-Obama screeds picked up ''likes.'' Officials at the hospital, scrambling to get it taken down, turned to their real Facebook page for damage control. ''We apologize for any confusion,'' they posted on Oct. 8, ''and appreciate the support of our followers.''
  The fake page came down 11 days later, as mysteriously as it had come up. The hospital says it has no clue who was behind it.
  Fakery is all over the Internet. Twitter, which allows pseudonyms, is rife with fake followers, and has been used to spread false rumors, as it was during Hurricane Sandy. False reviews are a constant problem on consumer Web sites.
  Gaston Memorial's experience is an object lesson in the problem of fakery on Facebook. For the world's largest social network, it is an especially acute problem, because it calls into question its basic premise. Facebook has sought to distinguish itself as a place for real identity on the Web. As the company tells its users: ''Facebook is a community where people use their real identities.'' It goes on to advise: ''The name you use should be your real name as it would be listed on your credit card, student ID, etc.''
  Fraudulent ''likes'' damage the trust of advertisers, who want clicks from real people they can sell to and whom Facebook now relies on to make money. Fakery also can ruin the credibility of search results for the social search engine that Facebook says it is building.
  Facebook says it has always taken the problem seriously, and recently stepped up efforts to cull fakes from the site. ''It's pretty much one of the top priorities for the company all the time,'' said Joe Sullivan, who is in charge of security at Facebook.
  The fakery problem on Facebook comes in many shapes. False profiles are fairly easy to create; hundreds can pop up simultaneously, sometimes with the help of robots, and often they persuade real users into friending them in a bid to spread malware. Fake Facebook friends and likes are sold on the Web like trinkets at a bazaar, directed at those who want to enhance their image. Fake coupons for meals and gadgets can appear on Facebook newsfeeds, aimed at tricking the unwitting into revealing their personal information.
  Somewhat more benignly, some college students use fake names in an effort to protect their Facebook content from the eyes of future employers.
  Mr. Sullivan declined to say what portion of the company's now one billion plus users were fake. The company quantified the problem last June, in responding to an inquiry by the Securities and Exchange Commission. At that time, the company said that of its 855 million active users, 8.7 percent, or 83 million, were duplicates, false or ''undesirable,'' for instance, because they spread spam.
  Mr. Sullivan said that since August, the company had put in place a new automated system to purge fake ''likes.'' The company said it has 150 to 300 staff members to weed out fraud.
  Flags are raised if a user sends out hundreds of friend requests at a time, Mr. Sullivan explained, or likes hundreds of pages simultaneously, or most obvious of all, posts a link to a site that is known to contain a virus. Those suspected of being fakes are warned. Depending on what they do on the site, accounts can be suspended.
  In October, Facebook announced new partnerships with antivirus companies. Facebook users can now download free or paid antivirus coverage to guard against malware.
  ''It's something we have been pretty effective at all along,'' Mr. Sullivan said.
  Facebook's new aggressiveness toward fake ''likes'' became noticeable in September, when brand pages started seeing their fan numbers dip noticeably. An average brand page, Facebook said at the time, would lose less than 1 percent of its fans.
  But the thriving market for fakery makes it hard to keep up with the problem. Gaston Memorial, for instance, first detected a fake page in its name in August; three days later, it vanished. The fake page popped up again on Oct. 4, and this time filled up quickly with the loud denunciations of the Obama administration. Dallas P. Wilborn, the hospital's public relations manager, said her office tried to leave a voice-mail message for Facebook but was disconnected; an e-mail response from the social network ruled that the fake page did not violate its terms of service. The hospital submitted more evidence, saying that the impostor was using its company logo.
  Eleven days later, the hospital said, Facebook found in its favor. But by then, the local newspaper, The Gaston Gazette, had written about the matter, and the fake page had disappeared.
  Facebook declined to comment on the incident, and pointed only to its general Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.
  The election season seems to have increased the fakery.
FBI Agent in Petraeus Case Under Scrutiny
  Link to Article
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:46
  By DEVLIN BARRETT, EVAN PEREZ and SIOBHAN GORMANWASHINGTON'--A federal agent who launched the investigation that ultimately led to the resignation of Central Intelligence Agency chief David Petraeus was barred from taking part in the case over the summer due to superiors' concerns that he was personally involved in the case, according to officials familiar with the probe.
  After being blocked from the case, the agent continued to press the matter, relaying his concerns to a member of Congress, the officials said.
  New details about how the Federal Bureau of Investigation handled the case suggest that even as the bureau delved into Mr. Petraeus's personal life, the agency had to address conduct by its own agent'--who allegedly sent shirtless photos of himself to a woman involved in the case prior to the investigation.
  A State Department official's complaints about email stalking launched the months-long criminal inquiry that led to a woman romantically linked to former Gen. David Petraeus and to his abrupt resignation Friday as CIA chief. Photo: REUTERS.
  The Charlotte Observer/Associated PressPaula Broadwell, at the center of the Petraeus case, poses with her biography of the former CIA Chief in January.
  Associated PressJill Kelley leaves her house Monday.
  FBI officials declined to identify the agent, so he couldn't be reached to give his side of the story. The agent is now under investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, the internal-affairs arm of the FBI, according to two officials familiar with the matter.
  The revelations address how the investigation first began and ultimately led to Mr. Petraeus's downfall as director of the CIA. The new developments also raise questions about the role played by the FBI and the adequacy of notification to administration and congressional leaders about the scandal.
  The FBI agent who started the case was a friend of Jill Kelley, the Tampa woman who received harassing, anonymous emails that led to the probe, according to officials. Ms. Kelley, a volunteer who organizes social events for military personnel in the Tampa area, complained in May about the emails to a friend who is an FBI agent. That agent referred it to a cyber crimes unit, which opened an investigation.
  However, supervisors soon became concerned that the initial agent might have grown obsessed with the matter, and prohibited him from any role in the investigation, according to the officials.
  One official said the agent in question sent shirtless photos to Ms. Kelley well before the email investigation began, and FBI officials only became aware of them some time later. Eventually, supervisors told the agent he was to have nothing to do with the case, though he never had a formal role in the investigation, the official said.
  The agent, after being barred from the case, contacted a member of Congress, Washington Republican David Reichert, because he was concerned senior FBI officials were going to sweep the matter under the rug, the officials said. That information was relayed to top congressional officials, who notified FBI headquarters in Washington.
  By that point, FBI agents had determined the harassing emails had been sent by Paula Broadwell, who had written a biography of Mr. Petraeus's military command.
  Investigators had also determined that Ms. Broadwell had been having an affair with Mr. Petraeus, and that the emails suggested Ms. Broadwell was suspicious of Ms. Kelley's attention to Mr. Petraeus, officials said.
  The accusatory emails, according to officials, were sent anonymously to an account shared by Ms. Kelley and her husband. Ms. Broadwell allegedly used a variety of email addresses to send the harassing messages to Ms. Kelley, officials said.
  One asked if Ms. Kelley's husband was aware of her actions, according to officials. In another, the anonymous writer claimed to have watched Ms. Kelley touching "him'' provocatively underneath a table, the officials said.
  The message was referring to Mr. Petraeus, but that wasn't clear at the time, officials said. A lawyer for Ms. Kelley didn't respond to messages Monday seeking comment on the anonymous emails or on the alleged emails from the FBI agent. A lawyer for Ms. Broadwell also didn't respond. Neither woman has replied to requests to speak about the matter.
  By then, what began as a relatively simple cyberstalking case had ballooned into a national security investigation. Mr. Petraeus and Ms. Broadwell, both of them married, had set up private Gmail accounts to contact each other, according to several officials familiar with the investigation. The FBI at one point was concerned the CIA director's email had been accessed by outsiders.
  After agents interviewed Ms. Broadwell, she let them examine her computer, where they found copies of classified documents, according to the officials. Both Mr. Petraeus and Ms. Broadwell denied that he had given her the documents, and FBI officials eventually concluded they had no evidence to suggest otherwise.
  Even as the probe of the relationship between Mr. Petraeus and Ms. Broadwell intensified in late summer and early fall, authorities were able to eventually rule out a security breach, though intelligence officials became concerned Mr. Petraeus had left himself exposed to possible blackmail, according to officials.
  On Monday night, reporters watching Ms. Broadwell's home in Charlotte, N.C., saw federal agents conduct what appeared to be a search. An FBI spokeswoman confirmed agents were at the home but declined to say what they were doing.
  A day after the Nov. 6 election, intelligence officials presented their findings to the White House. Mr. Petraeus met with White House officials last Thursday and announced his resignation the following day.
  Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have questioned whether Mr. Petraeus needed to resign over the affair, and some have argued that the FBI should have alerted both the White House and Congress much earlier to the potential security implications surrounding Mr. Petraeus.
  In a separate twist in the tangled matter of Mr. Petraeus's resignation, the CIA disputed a theory advanced by Ms. Broadwell that insurgents may have attacked the U.S. consulate and a CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya, on Sept. 11 in a bid to free militants being held there by the agency. Ms. Broadwell suggested that rationale for the consulate attack in an address at the University of Denver on Oct. 26.
  "I don't know if a lot of you had heard this, but the CIA annex had actually taken a couple of Libyan militia members prisoner and they think the attack on the consulate was an attempt to get these prisoners back," she said then. "It's still being vetted."
  A CIA spokesman said there were no militant prisoners there, noting that President Barack Obama ended CIA authority to hold detainees in 2009. "Any suggestion that the agency is still in the detention business is uninformed and baseless," said the spokesperson.
  Some critics pointed to Ms. Broadwell's remarks in Denver as an indication that she may have been passing on classified information, leading to speculation that Mr. Petraeus may have been the source. Based on descriptions by U.S. officials, the romantic relationship had ended by then.
  In addition, the source of her comment may not have been intelligence information, but news reports. Earlier in her address, she cited findings of a report that day by Fox News. Immediately after, she mentioned the possibility that the CIA had held militants at the site, which the Fox report also mentioned.
  The Sept. 11 consulate attack resulted in the deaths of U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans. One person briefed on U.S. intelligence said that reports focused on two main motives for the attack: inspiration from the violent protest that day at the U.S. embassy in Cairo, and the exhortation of al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri to avenge the death of his second in command. The possibility of attackers trying to free detainees never came up, this person said.
  This week, lawmakers are slated to receive a series of closed-door briefings on both Benghazi and the FBI investigation that turned up the affair between Mr. Petraeus and Ms. Broadwell. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has one such briefing on Benghazi scheduled Tuesday. On Wednesday, leaders of the House intelligence committee'--Rep. Michael Rogers, a Michigan Republican who chairs the panel and Rep. C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the top Democrat'--will be briefed by FBI Deputy Director Sean Joyce and acting CIA director Michael Morell.
  Senate intelligence committee staffers are working to schedule similar briefings. On Thursday, both the House and Senate intelligence committees were already slated to receive testimony on Benghazi from top intelligence and law-enforcement officials. The investigation that uncovered the affair is now expected to also be a central issue at those hearings, which won't be public.
  Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), who chairs the Senate intelligence committee complained Sunday that she and her colleagues should have been told of the Petraeus-Broadwell affair when the FBI discovered it because of national-security concerns.
  Write to Devlin Barrett at devlin.barrett@wsj.com, Evan Perez at evan.perez@wsj.com and Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com
  A version of this article appeared November 12, 2012, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: FBI Agent In Petraeus Case Under Scrutiny.
Jill Kelley, social liaison to MacDill Air Force Base, is mystery woman Paula Broadwell harassed via email leading to FBI probe - NY Daily News
  Link to Article
  Tue, 13 Nov 2012 05:23
  The mystery woman who blew the lid off former CIA Director David Petraeus' career-ending affair is also tied to the military '-- a sexy social liaison for an Air Force base in Tampa who says she and the ex-general are just ''friends.''
  Jill Kelley, 37, a married mother of three from the Gulf Coast city, alerted the FBI several months ago after receiving emails from Petraeus' alleged mistress, biographer Paula Broadwell, warning the stunning Tampa socialite to ''stay away from'' the spymaster, according to sources with knowledge of the messages.
  POLS WANT TO KNOW WHY THEY WERE LEFT IN THE DARK ABOUT PETREAUS SCANDAL
  The raven-haired Kelley, who has an unpaid position as a social planner for MacDill Air Force Base, insisted in a statement Sunday her relationship with the retired four-star general and ex-CIA director was platonic, dating to when Petraeus ran the U.S. Central Command from the base.
  ''We and our family have been friends with Gen. Petraeus and his family for over five years,'' Kelley said. ''We respect his family's privacy and want the same for us and our three children.''
  TWO FAMILIES SHATTERED: CIA DIRECTOR DAVID PETRAEUS' ACCUSED MISTRESS HAS 'IDYLLIC FAMILY'
  BEFORE AFAIR WENT PUBLIC, PETRAEUS' MISTRESS SAID GENERAL HAD 'NO DIRTY SECRETS'
  But Broadwell's father said Sunday his daughter is the victim of character assassination and implied the bombshell story is just a smoke screen for something bigger.
  ''This is about something else entirely, and the truth will come out,'' Broadwell's dad, Paul Krantz, told the Daily News outside his home in Bismarck, N.D.
  ''There is a lot more that is going to come out,'' said Krantz, claiming he was not allowed to elaborate. ''You wait and see. There's a lot more here than meets the eye.''
  He said he supports his daughter ''100%.''
  PETRAEUS AFFAIR: TIMELINE ON PAULA BROADWELL AND THE GENERAL'S PHYSICAL SPECIAL OPS
  ''I stand by my daughter. She is an exceptional person,'' Krantz told The News, adding that Broadwell, a West Point grad, and her family were ''doing well, considering.''
  Kelley has not spoken publicly about the scandal. She and her husband, Dr. Scott Kelley, were busy Sunday entertaining guests at a birthday party for one of their daughters at their colonial-style mansion overlooking Tampa's Hillsborough Bay.
  In an exclusive photo obtained by The News, the Kelleys appeared worried while speaking with Vice Adm. Robert Harward, deputy commander of the Central Command, who showed up at the party in his white dress uniform.
  Jill Kelley was raised in Philadelphia, where her family settled in the mid-1970s and opened a Middle Eastern restaurant after immigrating from Lebanon. Her father, John Khawam, was a renowned organist in Lebanon.
  A close friend of Petraeus told ABC News that Kelley saw the general often, but their relationship was innocent.
  ''It is very clear there was nothing going on other than friendship between Kelley and Petraeus,'' the friend said.
  In 2010, Kelley and her husband, a surgeon at Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, invited Petraeus and his wife of 38 years, Holly, to be their guests at a party for the Gasparilla parade, an annual pirate-themed festival in Tampa. At the time, Petraeus ran the Central Command from MacDill.
  Kelley's 7-year-old daughter, Caroline, even posted a family photo album online that she dedicated to her parents and included family photos '-- one of her and her sisters posing with Petraeus.
  ''I was with Gen. Petraeus. He came to my house,'' Caroline wrote.
  Broadwell's extended family members were completely caught off guard by the news of Petraeus' shocking resignation, which broke Friday.
  ''They didn't find out about the affair until they saw it on the news Friday night,'' the grandmother of Broadwell's husband, Scott, told The News. ''Everyone's reaction was shock. We were all shell-shocked.''
  The grandmother, who would only give her first name, Sylvia, described Paula Broadwell as ''intelligent and really smart.''
  ''She's too smart for that,'' said Sylvia, adding that her grandson is ''a wonderful father to those two young kids.''
  She said Scott Broadwell's parents in Sanibel, Fla., ''felt like the rug was pulled out from under them.''
  ''It's a sad situation,'' the grandmother said.
  Petraeus began seeing Paula Broadwell, a writer with a military background, on the side in 2011, several months after he retired from the military, but ended the romance about four months ago, sources told ABC News.
  BuzzFeed, citing sources, said he took her on a government-funded trip to Paris in July 2011.
  Russell Broadwell, Scott's father, confirmed to The News that he, too, was astonished by the news he first heard on TV Friday.
  Asked if he has spoken to his son, Broadwell said, ''Of course, he's my son.'' He refused to further comment.
  Paula Broadwell, 40 (above), wrote the biography ''All In: The Education of General David Petraeus.'' She has yet to publicly comment on the scandal that has rocked Washington and the U.S. security community.
  A source told The Wall Street Journal that Broadwell, who lives in North Carolina, became jealous when she suspected Kelley was in a romantic relationship with Petraeus.
  Kelley's twin sister, Natalie Khawam, is a lawyer who represents whistleblowers, but there was no indication Sunday that she was representing her sister.
  The FBI probe into the menacing emails uncovered other exchanges between Broadwell and Petraeus' personal email account that made clear their relationship had gone beyond professional limits, including one that talked about ''sex under a desk.''
  The scandal is spreading beyond the participants into the political arena. Several top lawmakers are demanding more information about what the FBI, the CIA and President Obama knew '-- and when they knew it.
  Obama accepted the 60-year-old Petraeus' resignation Friday, a mere three days after his reelection.
  Rep. Dave Reichert (R-Wash.) confirmed Sunday he first learned of the affair several months ago from a friend who knows Kelley. Reichert told House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), who put Kelley in touch with FBI Director Robert Mueller.
  Cantor's staff didn't immediately tell the House Intelligence Committee or other House leaders because they didn't know whether the information was credible, Fox News reported.
  Retired U.S. Army Col. Steve Boylan, Petraeus' former spokesman, said the general is kicking himself for his atrocious lack of judgment.
  ''He hugely regrets what happened,'' Boylan told ABC News. ''He pretty much threw away the best job he ever had and put his family through something just too hard to describe.''
  whutchinson@nydailynews.com
  CLICK FOR VIDEO
What's happening at the BBC : CJR
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:19
  The Corporation is facing a serious challenge to its future and to its independence
  ''To lose one parent, Mr Worthing, may be regarded as misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.'''--Oscar Wilde, The Importance of Being Earnest
  A very British crisis needs a very British epigraph. The BBC has lost not one, but two directors general in the space of three months. The first, Mark Thompson, left the Corporation under what seemed like orderly circumstances to take up a post as chief executive of The New York Times, a job he officially starts on Monday. The circumstances of the second departure are far messier. George Entwistle, who had been in the job barely more than a month, did ''the honorable thing'' on Friday and resigned after two editorial mistakes made by the formerly well regarded BBC program Newsnight made his position untenable.
  Entwistle's resignation on Saturday was directly linked to a report broadcast by Newsnight on November 2 that misidentified a public figure allegedly involved in a child abuse scandal. The report, connected to an already broiling scandal, did not make things any worse, theoretically, for Thompson. But the BBC he left is now facing a very serious challenge to its future and independence.
  The turmoil at the BBC started with a revelation involving a now-dead TV presenter and public figure, Jimmy Savile, who is accused of molesting possibly hundreds of children. US commentators have tried to explain Savile to the domestic audience, but there really is no parallel here. (For those who really want to understand the deep roots of the scandal, you can do no better than to read Andrew O'Hagan's essay in the London Review of Books.) The allegations against Savile were being investigated by Newsnight last year, but its editor, Peter Rippon, decided not to run the investigation on the grounds that the evidence was not sound enough. Subsequently, rival broadcaster ITV pulled together a documentary carrying the allegations against Savile, making the BBC's decision not to run the original piece seem both flawed and possibly compromised. Just as Entwistle succeeded Thompson as director general, the story of how the BBC had shelved its piece broke.
  Two internal inquiries were ordered, and the speculation over what had happened at the BBC ran rife on social media, across newspapers, websites, and on the BBC itself. The Corporation is public property in the UK, and with it can come both a strong sense of pride and institutional love, but also a visceral and inclusive criticism and calls for heads to roll.
  The most preposterous and fitting denouement to the whole horrible affair happened when, in an attempt to prove itself institutionally robust, Newsnight commissioned a second piece into another child abuse scandal. The show broadcast its investigation on November 2, conducted with the London-based Bureau for Investigative Journalism. Including details about an alleged pedophile, the report led to the misidentification of a former member of a Conservative government as being involved in a North Wales care-home scandal after the central witness interviewed misidentified his abuser. Failing to conduct a sufficiently thorough cross-checking of the victim's evidence, or even to show him a picture of the former politician, were basic journalistic errors. To make matters worse, the Bureau's editorial head, Iain Overton, had foreshadowed the ''exclusive'' by tweeting about it earlier in the day. So in scrambling to address the perception that it was timid in breaking stories about pedophilia, Newsnight's overcompensation has led to a potentially ruinous situation of the BBC creating false rumors.
  There are two separate issues in play with all this that have become toxically intertwined. One is the existence of an endemic culture of child abuse in a number of British institutions, and the other is about the editorial independence and journalistic future of the BBC.
NYT: U.S. Officials Say Petraeus's
  Link to Article
  Mon, 12 Nov 2012 16:14
  Amy Scherzer/Tampa Bay Times, via Associated Press
  From left, Natalie Khawam, David H. Petraeus, Scott Kelley, Jill Kelley and Holly Petraeus at an event in Tampa in 2010. Ms. Kelley's complaint about harassing e-mails prompted the initial inquiry that led to Mr. Petraeus's resignation as director of the C.I.A.
  WASHINGTON - High-level officials at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Justice Department were notified in the late summer that F.B.I. agents had uncovered what appeared to be an extramarital affair involving the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, David H. Petraeus, government officials said Sunday.
  But law enforcement officials did not notify anyone outside the F.B.I. or the Justice Department until last week because the investigation was incomplete and initial concerns about possible security breaches, which would demand more immediate action, did not appear to be justified, the officials said.
  The new accounts of the events that led to Mr. Petraeus's sudden resignation on Friday shed light on the competing pressures facing F.B.I. agents who recognized the high stakes of any investigation involving the C.I.A. director but who were wary of exposing a private affair with no criminal or security implications. For the first time Sunday, the woman whose report of harassing e-mails led to the exposure of the affair was identified as Jill Kelley, 37, of Tampa, Fla.
  Some members of Congress have protested the delay in being notified of the F.B.I.'s investigation of Mr. Petraeus until just after the presidential election. Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California and the chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that her committee would "absolutely" demand an explanation. An F.B.I. case involving the C.I.A. director "could have had an effect on national security," she said on "Fox News Sunday." "I think we should have been told."
  But the bureau's history would make the privacy question especially significant; in his decades-long reign as the F.B.I.'s first director, J. Edgar Hoover sometimes directed agents to spy improperly on the sex lives of public figures and then used the resulting information to pressure or blackmail them.
Petraeus Catfight: Did Ex-CIA Director Have More Girlfriends? Other Lessons I Learned From the General
  Link to Article
  Source: Debbie Schlussel
  Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:46
  By Debbie Schlussel
  So, now, we're learning that the reason disgraced former CIA Director David Petraeus' extra-marital affair with Paula Broadwell (age 40) came to light is that she was e-mail harassing his younger female friend, Jill Kelley (age 37). Wow, this is gettin' better than ''Fatal Attraction.'' Was Kelley another Petraeus concubine? She says no, and so does Petraeus. Whatever the case, we now know that the FBI knew about all of this back in the summer.
  ''Look at My Harem!'': David Petraues w/ Paula Broadwell (above) and Natalie Khawam, Scott Kelley, Jill Kelley & Holly Petraeus (below)While it's being reported that Kelley and her husband were close friends of the Petraesus, Broadwell certainly thought there was something going on between them, which is why Broadwell send threatening e-mails to Kelley. It begs the question: how many other chicks did this unscrupulous then-CIA Director have? He may turn out to be the White Kwame Kilpatrick . . . at least in the ''dating'' (euphemism) department.
  What kind of CIA Director has multiple girlfriends other than his wife? Maybe this one. He does like Islam, and, hey, he's got his own harem. Imagine the blackmail this doofus exposed himself to. If it weren't so scary to U.S. national security, it would be comedy gold. I mean, is this guy Petraeus gonna turn out to have more mistresses than Tiger Woods? Don't bet against it.
  And the story has shown us a lot of things:
  1) Whenever an author says he or she had ''exclusive access'' as Broadwell constantly did, you gotta ask: does that mean the author is sleeping with the subject? I mean the book she wrote is a gushing loveletter to a hayseed goober pan-Arabist in uniform who butt-snorkled Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan at the cost of thousands of American lives. And, yes, like you, I laughed at the title of the book, ''All In,'' which should've been called ''All In With a Condom,'' or if they didn't use protection (which means Broadwell's hubby now has the diseases of all the General's chicks), then, ''All In Without Protection,'' which kind of describes what Petraeus did to America by using CentCom and the CIA as his personal pick-up joint, and by sending American men to build roads and hand out candy to people armed with SAMs aimed at the Americans. Insider access sometimes really means inside her access. I think there's no question that two egomaniacs''Broadwell and Petraeus''temporarily found their soulmates. How many times must we hear about their six minute miles and how Broadwell was at the top of her class at West Point and a fitness champ. Me, me, me, me. Look at me, notice me, I'm important! Too bad Glenn Close is too old to play her in the movie.
  2) Anyone who was worried that Petraeus wouldn't be there to spout the BS he already spouted about the Benghazi consulate murders (he already blamed it on the anti-Mohammed video), well, you have something else to look forward to. I guarantee there will be hearings on Petraeus unzipped. Yup, our great Kardashified country just got even more dignified. Thanks, General.
  3) You have to doubt what you read from Ronald Kessler and NewsMax and many other so-called ''journalism'' outlets on the right, just as you have to do the same with those on the left. For much of the weekend, Drudge had as his main headline a link to a ''report'' by Kessler, claiming his FBI insiders told him they were the investigators and that the investigation began as a look into corruption. Uh, WRONG. It began when Paula Broadwell sent threatening e-mails to what she believed was her Petraeus co-concubine, Jill Kelley, and Kelley reported it to a friend who is an FBI agent. NewsMax's Kessler also claimed that Broadwell broke up with Petraeus and he sent her ''thousands of e-mails'' trying to get her back, which failed. WRONG again. It's pretty clear Broadwell was still very much hot and heavy for Petraeus, but that he was either not interested or was, indeed, still having an affair with Broadwell. I mean, why else would she threaten what she thought was the other chick . . . if she broke it off with the General and ignored his e-mails trying to get her back. Clearly that isn't what happened. Either Kessler made all of this up (which it sounds like) or his source was a fraud. Either way, his ''reporting'' wasn't too accurate. Not even close. But, hey, he wrote for the New York Times for years, until they dumped him and NewsMax scooped him up from the trash bin.
  It's probably the same for NewsMax, where there's little fact-checking or real journalism to speak of, and you can't believe the vast majority of what you read. The right constantly complains about the left-wing mainstream media, but then serves up completely false, totally fabricated crap at places like NewsMax, WND, and Breitfraud (all of the sites of which spent two weeks covering Sean Hannity's ass when my story broke that he committed the Freedom Concert fraud '' the three Breitfraud sites all backed Sean Vannity's claim that he paid for his private planes, his posse's fancy suites and vehicles, etc., and yet never ever obtained or demanded any receipts or financial records . . . because they show otherwise). (Conservative News Service did the same, because it's owned by Hannity buddy Brent Bozell, Jr.)
  Breitfraud chief Joel Pollak repeatedly tweeted what a great guy and friend of Israel Nelson Mandela is, something only a complete ignoramus or liar would say (he's both). It's well known that Mandela is a Jew-hating, anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian piece of crap, despite the fact that dhimmi Jews helped him during Apartheid. Pollak just doesn't know what he's talking about or care about the facts, and again, he heads Breitfraud. That's not to mention that for weeks, the Breitfraud sites ran the ''work'' of Jeff Dunetz, who goes by the deceptive name ''Yid With Lid'' (he's not a religious Jew), attacking Anthony Weiner's exposing himself on Twitter, all while Dunetz knew that he, himself, had posted his own masturbation video online and sent it to women other than his wife, in addition to apparently rating the prostitutes he patronized. (He used the fake name ''Sammy Benoit'' for some time, as well as ''Gridney,'' in order to evade detection.)
  Yup, you cannot believe these people and you have to question their motives . . . whether it's Paula Broadwell, whose ''work'' appeared in the New York Times or things you read on these ''conservative'' sites, which simply lie to get their own slice of the Drudge links and traffic. Whose itch are they scratching? It usually isn't an arms length, journalistically ethical relationship. And what they're serving up isn't fact or accurate.
  Bottom line: I doubt Broadwell is the only one. She's just the most mentally unstable concubine. David Petraeus didn't just start doing this at age 60''or 59, since he only recently celebrated his birthday.
  So, how many chicks did this arrogant fool have on the side? You can bet I'm not the only one asking. His wife is, too.
  Aren't you glad this guy wasn't the Republican nominee for President, as Roger Ailes and Peter King and William Kristol and others wanted? The information would have come out, and Obama would have won in a landslide.
@chrissiecurry: RT @davealexander72: @chrissiecurry http://t.co/Tup7UPfU
  Link to Article
  Source: Twitter / chrissiecurry
  Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:44
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The Armageddon Crusade
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:43
  I be upon foot now, a soldiery corp of one, sword on one hand and mace upon the other. Striking earthly blows with other worldly strike, where one falls the shadow of death darkens the spot and where the other impales the crimson trail of hell fire spurts it's flame.
  Upon my back is my trusty steed, of mail and metal, protector of my blind side. Both tooth and iron hoof place their mark and the foe knows nobly in missing pounds of flesh given or shattered cranium splintered, that the beasts of field, yield no second in the fosse of the battle land.
  The work is warm and heavy as nostrils flare of blood and ear drum beats in the tune of groaning life spent. This is not parade nor joust in civilized fight, but fighting to death upon ground so sacred that each inch is the breath of life exhaled by fraction of thrust and percent of parry.
  He knows me there, my stud of work, and snorts in rage at those he knows have come too close. With slash and dash he jostles me as my knowing counselor in bloody deeds well done. In times past of excitement, he has marred me, with scars of tooth upon my metal cage. His enthusiasm for me is not much less than his lust for the fight.I wonder at times in his raring plunge of hooves smashing brain to bits. If he my ride has killed more enemy, than the two arms of hammer and blade of me.
  I have pride in him, as he allows no master than me, in friendly camp nor in foreign field. He readily crushes the hand which feeds him as the hand with dagger blade. Yes set his fodder down a cubit from him, and retreat past his tethers of leather. Yes better to rush to the knights blade and face him, than to die from the blow of a horse.
  We rode from the mysts in that battle morn time, like a nightmare of awe upon ten thousand thousand. Slowly in dawn shadow and star sunny glint, the spectre of the grim reaper dream. A scythe upon the mind of that lordless host ready to bundle the straw of their nature in beaten flail to thresh the harvest of them.
  I was a joy to duel from the box of the knights in battles upon Crusader trail. It was almost too easy to live in that sort. Four knights fighting with four warhorses slashing, ten thousand Mohammedans were in need of one hundred thousand more.It became so hot, that our piles of trophies became our bulwark in pikes scrambling up it and over to us, to come sliding down in bloody gut sled, to add to our protective bank. Such a sight it was to mount to the summit of it, and continue the fight on our mountain of dead.
  To dull ones blade on the wet of bone and to sharpen it's steel to the whet of stone.
  To dull ones blade on the wet of bone and to sharpen it's steel to the whet of stone.He watches over me like God in His Heavens. His crucifix is his bit of iron. He says his grace in prayerful sojourn and sing praises in his armour swung chime.
  The wrath of him is poured out to the fields upon which he was born. He is the sonnet of lute song long ago in singing ballads of all our war dead.
  I mount him in camp with the sign of the cross, but in battle he mounts calm in a river of curses in serpents tongues. I never have enjoyed battle as much as with him in the poetry of the stanzas of him.
  We fight for God in the honor to fight on that rod of ground, chained in ploughed furrows we turn. Sowing there men watered in their own blood, to raise a crop in Christ's Glory of Him.
  Long since the dawn of millennium ago, we fought battle of land and shore sea, and bow for the battle to join once again. The rider and ridden in prophetic tomorrow joined plea. The host there assembles before as in yore, for that battle of Armageddon.
  agtG
Justified
  Link to Article
  Source: Lame Cherry
  Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:08
  Forgive me Father for I have justified myself and not You in my being cast down.
  satan accuses me of guilt in sins.
  Jesus testifies me innocent by His Blood.
  I have no reservations about my pride, for I do have it in You. What is man when the Breath of God Breathes within that form when You are mindful of him.
  You have done things You have done and You are always Justified God in Your doing for You are always Righteous.
  It is the point in how can I stand before the Lord in His wrath and fury when it is resistless and without end. For I can not stand.
  A virtuous woman is rare and here am I what You have made, formed and craft.I have asked of You how to curse God and die as Job's wife counselled, so as to still be granted eternal Life, and Your answer was simple in the world can not provide and answer for assaults of satan, as no sin is so great that the Lord would do to His children these murderous things, but here am I, accused in justifying myself rather than God, and of course, God is always correct.
  I could breathe my last and it would be my first. It would be that burden though of those on whom depend on me, would be martialed out of this world too soon before they commited the sins which would destroy them or suffered the torment of being preyed upon, that his lowly weapon stands guarding the flock in the watch day and night.
  This is all God for Goodness is God as is Duty, Honor and Fidelity. None of this is mine.
  What has been my possession is lamentations, mourning and woe. It is not my property, but has been entitled to me. No matter the ownership I advocate my release from, it is a witness in this crumbling form of Joseph in confinement, Ruth in a strange land and Mary the Mother of the Lord for 33 years of pondering.
  What is God that men are mindful of Him? What is the Son of God that me would visit Him?
  God is not minded of men and men do not visit their Salvation, without the calling of God to mind nor directing their footsteps to His Grace.
  I called upon the Lord and He answered not, but observed for years. Still I called for there is none other Who I will be saved by.
  Reason is God's and to that I bow in Spiritual blood flowing from Spiritual rape. My sacrifice is that and my offering is waiting upon the Lord.
  I make a tearful noise unto the Lord for He is the God of my Salvation.
  There is only Justification in Christ. This I profess and confess. There is only Justification in Christ and what God deals to me is dealt, for the Lord gives and the Lord takes away, bless we the Name of the Lord Our God.
  agtG 269
Quitting Smoking for Good - NYTimes.com
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Mon, 12 Nov 2012 15:02
  Few smokers would claim that it's easy to quit. The addiction to nicotine is strong and repeatedly reinforced by circumstances that prompt smokers to light up.
  Yet the millions who have successfully quit are proof that a smoke-free life is achievable, even by those who have been regular, even heavy, smokers for decades.
  Today, 19 percent of American adults smoke, down from more than 42 percent half a century ago, when Luther Terry, the United States surgeon general, formed a committee to produce the first official report on the health effects of smoking. Ever-increasing restrictions on where people can smoke have helped to swell the ranks of former smokers.
  Now, however, as we approach the American Cancer Society's 37th Great American Smokeout on Thursday, the decline in adult smoking has stalled despite the economic downturn and the soaring price of cigarettes.
  Currently, 45 million Americans are regular smokers who, if they remain smokers, can on average expect to live 10 fewer years. Half will die of a tobacco-related disease, and many others will suffer for years with smoking-caused illness. Smoking adds $96 billion to the annual cost of medical care in this country, Dr. Nancy A. Rigotti wrote in The Journal of the American Medical Association last month. Even as some adult smokers quit, their ranks are being swelled by the 800,000 teenagers who become regular smokers each year and by young adults who, through advertising and giveaways, are now the prime targets of the tobacco industry.
  People ages 18 to 25 now have the nation's highest smoking rate: 40 percent. I had to hold my breath the other day as dozens of 20-somethings streamed out of art gallery openings and lighted up. Do they not know how easy it is to get hooked on nicotine and how challenging it can be to escape this addiction?
  Challenging, yes, but by no means impossible. on the Web you can download a ''Guide to Quitting Smoking,'' with detailed descriptions of all the tools and tips to help you become an ex-smoker once and for all.
  Or consult the new book by Dr. Richard Brunswick, a retired family physician in Northampton, Mass., who says he's helped hundreds of people escape the clutches of nicotine and smoking. (The printable parts of the book's provocative title are ''Can't Quit? You Can Stop Smoking.'')
  ''There is no magic pill or formula for beating back nicotine addiction,'' Dr. Brunswick said. ''However, with a better understanding of why you smoke and the different tools you can use to control the urge to light up, you can stop being a slave to your cigarettes.''
  Addiction and Withdrawal
  Nicotine beats a direct path to the brain, where it provides both relaxation and a small energy boost. But few smokers realize that the stress and lethargy they are trying to relieve are a result of nicotine withdrawal, not some underlying distress. Break the addiction, and the ill feelings are likely to dissipate.
  Physical withdrawal from nicotine is short-lived. Four days without it and the worst is over, with remaining symptoms gone within a month, Dr. Brunswick said. But emotional and circumstantial tugs to smoke can last much longer.
  Depending on when and why you smoke, cues can include needing a break from work, having to focus on a challenging task, drinking coffee or alcohol, being with other people who smoke or in places you associate with smoking, finishing a meal or sexual activity, and feeling depressed or upset.
  To break such links, you must first identify them and then replace them with other activities, like taking a walk, chewing sugar-free gum or taking deep breaths. These can help you control cravings until the urge passes.
  If you've failed at quitting before, try to identify what went wrong and do things differently this time, Dr. Brunswick suggests. Most smokers need several attempts before they can become permanent ex-smokers.
  Perhaps most important is to be sure you are serious about quitting; if not, wait until you are. Motivation is half the battle. Also, should you slip and have a cigarette after days or weeks of not smoking, don't assume you've failed and give up. Just go right back to not smoking.
  Aids for Quitting
  Many if not most smokers need two kinds of assistance to become lasting ex-smokers: psychological support and medicinal aids. Only about 4 percent to 7 percent of people are able to quit smoking on any given attempt without help, the cancer society says.
  All 50 states and the District of Columbia have free telephone-based support programs that connect would-be quitters to trained counselors. Together, you can plan a stop-smoking method that suits your smoking pattern and helps you avoid common pitfalls.
  Online support groups and Nicotine Anonymous can help as well. To find a group, ask a local hospital or call the cancer society at (800) 227-2345. Consider telling relatives and friends about your intention to quit, and plan to spend time in smoke-free settings.
  More than a dozen treatments can help you break the physical addiction to tobacco. Most popular is nicotine replacement therapy, sold both with and without a prescription. The Food and Drug Administration has approved five types: nicotine patches of varying strengths, gums, sprays, inhalers and lozenges that can curb withdrawal symptoms and help you gradually reduce your dependence on nicotine.
  Two prescription drugs are also effective: an extended-release form of the antidepressant bupropion (Zyban or Wellbutrin), which reduces nicotine cravings, and varenicline (Chantix), which blocks nicotine receptors in the brain, reducing both the pleasurable effects of smoking and the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. Combining a nicotine replacement with one of these drugs is often more effective than either approach alone.
  Other suggested techniques, like hypnosis and acupuncture, have helped some people quit but lack strong proof of their effectiveness. Tobacco lozenges and pouches and nicotine lollipops and lip balms lack evidence as quitting aids, and no clinical trials have been published showing that electronic cigarettes can help people quit.
  The cancer society suggests picking a ''quit day''; ridding your home, car and workplace of smoking paraphernalia; choosing a stop-smoking plan, and stocking up on whatever aids you may need.
  On the chosen day, keep active; drink lots of water and juices; use a nicotine replacement; change your routine if possible; and avoid alcohol, situations you associate with smoking and people who are smoking.
A Look in the Mirror
  Link to Article
  Source: Clusterfuck Nation
  Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:27
  The verdict is apparently in: if Fox News will replace its current heraldic theme music with a mariachi band, and Sean Hannity puts on a sombrero for his nightly broadcast prayer circle, then the Republican Party will once again rule the land... ...Not - in the immortal word of Borat Sagdiyev. The so-called Grand Old Party now faces a fugue of recrimination that could end in its demise. The party marginalized itself by becoming an alliance of corporate oligarchs with poorly-educated Southern suburban white trash religious fanatics, both using each other to browbeat the nation into transforming itself into kleptocratic theocracy. There are no more people of good will and intelligence left in that camp, and a blame-fest between its two remaining factions can only lead to a death struggle. The beginning of the end really came with the death of William F. Buckley in 2008. Buckley labored for years to keep the John Birch Society and its agents out of the GOP's leadership circles. For those of you unacquainted with this organization, it was a group that coalesced during the early 1950s anti-communist crusade of Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. The Birchers named themselves after an obscure American soldier and Baptist missionary executed by the Red Army in China during the final months of World War Two. The group was founded and funded by Robert Welch, a Boston candy manufacturer (Junior Mints, Sugar Daddy) tormented by conspiracy fantasies. Another founding board member was Fred Koch, father of the billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David, who have become the latter-day sugar daddies of the Republican Party. The Birchers retailed all kinds of ideological nonsense that made them the butt of ridicule during the Camelot days of John F. Kennedy and the heady Civil Rights years of his successor Lyndon B. Johnson. (Bob Dylan wrote a song about them in 1962: "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues.") Everything perceived to be a threat in a changing society was sold by the Birchers as a communist plot - water fluoridation, de-segregation, even, by a kind of tortured logic, the US strategy in the Vietnam War. Since a Democratic president and congress passed the civil rights legislation of 1964-5, the traditionally Democratic "solid South" revolted almost overnight and eventually turned solidly Republican. (It was also good for business.) Something else was going on in Dixieland from the late 1950s on. The region boomed economically, partly from luring northern industry down with cheap labor, and partly because so many large military bases were located there - hence the hyperbolic, militant patriotism of a region that had lately staged a violent insurrection against the national government. The region also went through an explosion of air-conditioned suburban sprawl because the southern states were geographically huge and the climate was unbearable half the year. The sprawl industry itself generated vast fortunes and widespread prosperity in a part of the country that had been a depressed agricultural backwater since the Civil War. Consequently, a population of poor, ignorant crackers crawled out of the mud and dust to find themselves wealthy car dealers and strip-mall magnates in barely one turn of a generation. The transition being so abrupt, their cracker culture of xenophobia, "primitive" religion, and romance with violence came through intact. They were the perfect client group for a political party that styled itself "conservative," as in maintaining the old timey ways. Toward the end of the 20th century, as the old northern states' economies withered, and Yankee culture lost both footing and meaning, and poor white folks all over America looked with envy on the glitz of country music and Nascar, and gravitated toward the Dixieland culture of belligerent, aggressive suburbanization, religiosity, and militarism. This cartoon of the old timey ways swept the "flyover" precincts of the nation. Along in the baggage compartment was all the old John Birch Society cargo of quasi-supernatural ideology that appealed so deeply to people perplexed by the mystifying operations of reality. That perplexity was supposedly resolved in a Bush II White House aide famously stating, "We make our own reality." The results of the 2012 election now conclusively demonstrate the shortcomings of that world-view. And so the news last week was that a different version of America outvoted the John Birch Dixiecrat coalition by roughly two million ballots. Meaning, of course, that there are still a lot of dangerous morons out there, but also that the times they are yet a'changin' again. I am personally glad that Mr. Romney lost because he came across to me as a dangerously hollow, not very smart, pre-cooked personality marinated in cant and opportunism. I'm not so delirious either about the victor, Mr. Obama, though he seems a more reliable character in contrast to his vanquished opponent. I think we can rely on him to not prosecute any misconduct in banking for another four years. But, at least, he's not trying to turn the country into one big prayer circle. He's surely in for a rough ride in the four years ahead. There is a sickening, heavy sense of foreboding about the seemingly endless financial melodrama. It leads to the bewildering fork in the road at which the split paths lead to two different ways of going broke: savage deflation or turbo-inflation. Either way, you're toast. The gross interventions and arrant accounting fraud that pervade global finance, both in government and in private banking, can only lead to perversity and dysfunction in the operations of money that we depend on to remain civilized. If America were able to look in a mirror now, it would see an image of a sclerotic society, physically run down, strikingly ugly, and sordid in its cultural programing. It would see an armature for daily life - the drive-in Utopia - with very poor prospects for the future. I don't know if Mr. Obama can get this nation engaged in the great tasks that we have been avoiding for so long: purging corporate money from politics, preparing for post-petroleum reality minus the fantasy that we can just live inside our smart phones, and downscaling and re-localizing economic life. Much of that agenda would seem contrary to the common expectation that Mr. Obama wants ever more government intervention in the economy. The past four years he has seemingly done everything possible to support the status quo - leading a few observers to brand him as a "conservative" - and he still acts like a hostage of the too-big-to-fail banks. I'm not convinced that he'll act decisively for the right things in the right way on anything. At least he won't be running for office again and can act perhaps more freely as he will. Anyway, I subscribe to the sentiment that it was a good thing for the nation to re-elect a leader of mixed-race, to show that we mean it about who is allowed to succeed here. I spent a lot of time in Dixieland this fall. I can report that its era of hyper-prosperity is on the wane. The boom is pretty much over, except for some deceptive last twitchings over in Texas and in the Northern Virginia beltway counties where lobbyists spawn. The failure of the Republican Party this year marks the end of the economic ascendency of the South. Now they will have to contend with the imminent failure of their suburban way of life and all its comfortable trappings. I've predicted for many years that the process would drive them batshit crazy. When I was in North Carolina in October, I got the odd impression that I was in a giant car dealership masquerading as a state. That's just not going to work anymore. But it remains to be seen whether anything will work in any quarter of this big old country. One interesting thing is shaping up: a beard-growing contest between Paul Krugman and Ben Bernanke to see who can end up looking most like Rutherford B. Hayes.____________________________________
Why Occupy's plan to cancel consumer debts is money well spent | Charles Eisenstein | Comment is free
  Link to Article
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:26
  The 'Rolling Jubilee' debt relief plan has re-energised the Occupy movement. Photograph: KeystoneUSA-ZUMA/Rex Features
  A new initiative is re-energising the Occupy movement. Called the Rolling Jubilee, it is a plan to use money from donations to buy distressed consumer debt from lenders at a marked down price, just as debt collection agencies normally would. But instead of hounding debtors for payments, it will simply cancel the debts. The hope is that the liberated debtors will themselves contribute to the fund, "rolling" the jubilee forward.
  The Rolling Jubilee is a genius move for several reasons. First, debt relief is a transpartisan message that eludes conventional political categorisation. As such, it returns Occupy to its origins as an advocate for the wellbeing of ordinary people, neither leftwing nor rightwing. The Rolling Jubilee says, non-threateningly, "We just want to help people in this unfair system."
  But despite its non-threatening appearance, the Rolling Jubilee has significant transformative potential. Two pillars uphold the present debt regime: the moral legitimacy of debt in society's eyes, ie, the idea that a person "should" pay back what he owes; and the coercive mechanisms that enforce repayment, such as harassment, seizure of assets, garnishment of wages, denial of employment or housing, and even imprisonment. The Rolling Jubilee erodes both. It destigmatises debt by saying, "we're all in this together, we believe your situation is unfair, not shameful, so we're going to help you out". And it lessens the severity of the consequences of default. If defaulting means you might get bailed out, why keep paying?
  For this reason, we might expect lenders to balk at co-operating with the Rolling Jubilee, perhaps by refusing to sell loans to anyone who doesn't agree to seek collection. So here is a third reason why the idea is so brilliant: if the lenders block debt cancellation even when it comes at no cost to themselves (as they would have sold it at the same price to a collection agency), they appear as a bunch of greedy, vindictive Scrooges. Given their current vulnerability, banks might not want to incite hostility by preventing people from helping each other out.
  Accordingly, it is important that the Jubilee organisers continue to frame it in precisely that way: people helping each other out of hardship. Yes, they might understand that its political significance runs deeper, but if they portray it as a political ploy then it will be met as such by the banks or other authorities. Public opinion might also not be as sympathetic.
  This also goes for the way the organisers portray it to themselves. In a political system that is lost in a maelstrom of hype, spin and messaging, we crave authenticity in others and in ourselves. Let the Rolling Jubilee stay grounded in the simple goal of freeing people from debt. The political effect will be greater, not less, when it comes from a place of sincerity.
  The Rolling Jubilee could influence economic policy as a model for a very different kind of bailout in response to the next financial crisis. The problem of unpayable debts bedevils every corner of our financial system '' public, corporate, and personal. So far, the response of the monetary and fiscal authorities to nearly every financial crisis has been to bail out the creditors but not the debtors. Governments and central banks purchase all kinds of shoddy loans from the private sector, but rather than reduce interest or principal on those loans, they merely become the new creditor. The underwater homeowner, the indebted university graduate, the laid-off worker juggling credit cards ... they get no relief at all.
  The Rolling Jubilee brings a different kind of solution into the public consciousness. The next time a systemic crisis breaks, central banks can rescue the banking system by once again buying the delinquent loans '' and then cancel them or reduce the amount borrowers owe. Central banks, with their unlimited capacity to print money, have the power to do this at no cost to the taxpayer. The result would be a release of pent-up consumer purchasing power that had been stuck in debt service. Rising demand would fuel employment, wages, and a broad-based economic expansion.
  Would this solution be inflationary? Yes. But a little inflation isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as wages rise as fast as prices. Then it is an equalizer of wealth, as the relative value of hoarded wealth shrinks.
  Debt cancellation, whether a "people's bailout" or government policy, is only part of the solution to our economic woes. Deep systemic reforms are necessary, especially given the reality that we are operating a growth-dependent system on a finite planet. But right now, debt is the issue staring us in the face. As always, the most innovative solutions rise from the margins. The Rolling Jubilee may be showing us a glimpse of what is to come.
Germany learning difficulty of self-imposed nuclear energy abandonment
  Link to Article
  Source: Atomic Insights
  Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:24
  One of my sources posted a link to this brief video clip from Russia Today titled Fukushima Legacy: Nuclear phase-out hits Germans with high energy prices regarding Germany's Energiewende, a well-publicized effort sold to the German public as a replacement of nuclear energy with renewable energy. According to this and many other stories, the reality is that nuclear energy from German plants is being replaced by coal, natural gas and imported energy, often from nuclear plants located in countries that are Germany's neighbors.
  Part of the reason that the transition is not going very well is that the renewable system pushers have exaggerated their overall capacity factors. As the above video declares, the actual output of German wind farms has been roughly half of what the wind system marketers told their customers it would be, averaging about 16% of the nameplate capacity during the past ten years instead of the 30% that was projected in the sales literature.Admittedly, early nuclear power plants often had the same issue with capacity factors in the range of 45-50% compared to an advertised 75%, but the underlying technology was not the problem. Improving capacity factors was a matter of learning how to better operate the plants and schedule the required maintenance.
  In the US, our installed fleet of nuclear plants demonstrated an ability to maintain average fleet capacity factors in excess of 89% for a ten year period. It is not easy to imagine ways to improve the capacity factor of mechanically reliable wind turbines that can only produce as much energy as the weather will allow.
  It is entirely possible to operate a modern economy without any nuclear energy. The question worth asking, however, is why would anyone want to do that. Nuclear energy has a demonstrated record of being safe, reliable and economic to operate. Even the dreaded Fukushima nuclear plant accident, where three nuclear reactors experienced fuel melting, has not resulted in a single injury more serious than a mild sunburn.
  In contrast, a single natural gas explosion in San Bruno killed eight people in a residential neighborhood in December 2010. Though the ''authorities'' have not yet conclusively stated the cause, a similar explosion occurred at about 11:00 pm on Saturday, November 10, 2012 in Indianapolis, IN, obliterating 2 homes, catastrophically damaging at least two more, and making another 29 homes temporarily uninhabitable.
  Nuclear energy's primary disadvantage is that the opposition has worked diligently to make it as difficult as possible '-- you can translate ''difficult'' into ''expensive and time consuming'' if you desire '-- to build new stations. Reluctance to spend the time and money required to build new nuclear power plants under current conditions is almost rational if your horizon is short; a decision to prematurely shut down 17 well-maintained and properly designed facilities is completely irrational.
  There is an excellent, relevant post at Yes Vermont Yankee titled Phobias Should Not Determine Policy: Guest Post by Peter Roth.
  Irrational fear of nuclear energy is a costly phobia for everyone but the people who are collecting large quantities of money from selling inferior energy products. Here is a thought provoking quote from a June 2012 article in Spiegel Online International titled Germany's Nuclear Phaseout Brings Unexpected Costs (and undeserved wealth).
  New Class of Millionaires
  Cash-strapped energy consumers find themselves pitted against profit-hungry entrepreneurs who have been spoiled by subsidies. They are businesspeople such as Frank Asbeck, a photovoltaics manufacturer who has become a multimillionaire '-- with his own private castle, hunting grounds and a Maserati '-- thanks to the EEG.
  Asbeck received an appointment with Altmaier, the new environment minister, right away last Tuesday, to express his views on the issue. The energy transition will also prove profitable for investors in the project to expand Germany's power grid. The return on such investments is guaranteed by the government to be around 9 percent, an interest rate of which mere mortals with standard retirement plans can only dream.
TSA Veterans Still Proudly Serving
  Link to Article
  Source: The TSA Blog
  Mon, 12 Nov 2012 14:21
  I serve alongside our proud veterans who deserve that gratitude. Here at TSA, I am privileged to work with many employees who are veterans of the United States Armed Forces. I myself served in the U.S. Army's Third Armored Division during the end of the Cold War and in Operations Desert Shield and Storm. Across our entire agency, veterans account for nearly 25 percent of the workforce. They're still serving, only in a different uniform.In addition to the veterans among us, there are many other TSA employees who continue to serve our nation as reservists. Every month some of our colleagues throughout the agency deploy to active duty and others return from military service to their work at TSA. We are proud that so many veterans have made the choice to wear the uniform of a transportation security officer when their commitment to wearing the uniform of the United States military has been fulfilled. Our workforce is strengthened by the qualities and disciplines our service men and women possess as a result of their military training. Thank you to all veterans who have served and sacrificed for our great nation.If you have a travel related issue or question that needs an immediate answer, you can contact us byclicking here.