What Adam Curry is reading

VIDEO-Threat letter was sent out by mistake | KXAN.com
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  Updated: Friday, 09 Aug 2013, 5:57 PM CDTPublished : Thursday, 08 Aug 2013, 6:29 PM CDT
  AUSTIN (KXAN) - Texas Military Forces says a memo its commanders received about a potential terror threat in Austin was sent out by mistake.
  The force protection alert outlines what it refers to as unconfirmed reports from the Department of Homeland Security about a potential terror attack in Austin sometime Thursday or Friday.
  After contacting the Texas Military Forces Headquarters, KXAN was told the internal memo was not intended for public release.
  It was sent out last week before all the details could be verified. The memo was later rescinded, but copies of the memo are now circulating on social media. It mentions Austin's famous 6th St. as a potential target area.
  Greg Lane works in an office on 6th St. and told KXAN some of his colleagues and friends were startled by the memo they found while browsing social media sites.
  "It makes you wonder," he said. "You saw what happened in Boston. Who would have thought two guys would detonate bombs at the Boston Marathon? To me that was out of left field. It seems like anything is possible this day and age. But you never think it's going to happen in your neck of the woods."
  On Monday, the Austin Police Department confirmed it was briefed about a potential "low credibility threat" that could take place in Austin this week. APD says they are taking all necessary precautions to protect the public.
  Residents who see something unusual are urged to simply speak up, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety.
  Preparations for terrorist attacks are often seen but rarely reported, DPS says. When in doubt, report the suspicious activity to your local law enforcement agency or through iWATCH , which is a DPS website where citizen-sourced information is collected in an effort to help thwart illegal and terroristic endeavors.
VIDEO- Patsy Pleads Guilty To Attempting To Blow Up The NY Federal Reserve With Bomb Supplied By FBI - YouTube
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 13:47
AUDIO-The Richard Nixon - Ray Conniff Incident (1972) - WFMU's Beware of the Blog
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 13:43
  Thank you for this piece of history unknown to me so far. I think that more peopel are needed to show this courage if we want to change the world to the better. It really makes me feel proud to belong to the generation of the 68.
  Many thanks from switzerland
  Posted by: Walter | February 07, 2010 at 06:09 AM
  Hey even Nixon thought Ray Conniff was "square". Wow, thats just great. In those days they never did background checks apparently. Good for her. Now if only this happened after Watergate!
  Posted by: Aaron | February 07, 2010 at 09:22 AM
  Wow impressive, especially by comparison to presidential event crashers these days who seem to consider getting on TV for doing so an end rather than a means.
  Posted by: bartleby | February 07, 2010 at 09:43 AM
  I guess a modern-day equivalent would be this gentleman:
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0LHtgzqTo0
  http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/800/1/
  Posted by: bartleby | February 07, 2010 at 10:16 AM
  Leave it to Richard Nixon to be a Ray Coniff fan. "Ma, He's Making Eyes At Me" is about a far from a protest song as you could get.
  Posted by: Kevin MacNutt | February 07, 2010 at 05:59 PM
  Wow, good for the lady (I'm not sure how to spell her name.) She had guts. As for Nixon's musical taste.... well, he said it perfectly: the Ray Conniff singers were the equivalent of the Reader's Digest.
  Posted by: Ivy | February 09, 2010 at 07:28 AM
  Was this the video in which Nixon commented on the incident? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS1_JGX3jVY
  Posted by: Ivy | February 09, 2010 at 07:30 AM
  What's interesting is that my dad, Ray, actually had John Lennon's "Imagine" in the music books that night. His music may have been considered "square" by some, but his arrangements were nothing but. And, he managed to have a 60-year career in music, no small feat.
  Posted by: Tamarastar | February 10, 2010 at 02:37 PM
  Nixon - a disgusting man.Almost as bad are those artists, like Mr. Conniff, who, instead of questioning power,challenging injustice and promoting peace and democracy, simply are in the pay of corrupt power brokers, echoing and amplifying their bloody propaganda.Sickening.
  Posted by: eclectik | February 23, 2010 at 07:17 PM
  Love Systems has never preached that you have to be "the best" to succeed. That would be pretty hard for us to be consistent with anyway, They can't all be the best. But they can all be very, very good. And that comes from being at your best...or being your best self. Maybe those words are what's causing the confusion?replica watches
  Posted by: Vashgerlie | July 02, 2010 at 12:46 AM
  I don't speak english, I speak portuguese. voces s£o uanderful, bealtiful.
  Posted by: Lucio Leite de Oliveira | January 24, 2012 at 05:24 PM
  I will liked que voces me conhececem pessoalmente, my adress:Rua (street)Francisco Pinhaneli Neto nº (Number) 214.Jardim Furlan.Santa Brbara D.oeste - SP.BRAZIL.CEP: 13-451-199
  Posted by: Lucio Leite de Oliveira | January 24, 2012 at 05:30 PM
  @Roxy
  Hey man, what is she doing nowadays? She deserves applause. I just learn about the events and I am googling to find info about her, but haven't found much so far...
  cheers
  Posted by: Luiz | December 23, 2012 at 04:25 AM
  Who is that worthless bitch? She basically sided with Communist genocide that night. She cared nothing for human rights. If she had she would have condemned the Communists for attaching South Vietnam.
  Posted by: Ted McCarron | August 01, 2013 at 11:46 PM
  Here's Ray Coniff's group singing the complete "Ma -- He's Making Eyes at Me".https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNWQ1pzkMp8
  Posted by: Rowby | August 03, 2013 at 01:16 AM
  oddly enough, Nixon was the one president since Vietnam started who actually put effort into ending it. He worked tirelessly w/ the south vietnamese govt to make arrangements to extract troops whereas Kennedy started our involvement there and LBJ escalated it. So, idiotic displays like this, were counterintuitive.
  Posted by: Ed Borden | August 11, 2013 at 06:34 AM
VIDEO- AND BLESS DANIEL ELLSBERG - YouTube
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Porcine Reproductive & Respiratory Syndrome (PRRS) - Disease of Pigs from The Pig Site. Pig Diseases List - The Pig Site
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  Disease:
  Use the above box to quickly switch to another disease
  PRRS is caused by a virus which was first isolated and classified as an arterivirus as recently as 1991. The disease syndrome had been first recognised in the USA in the mid 1980's and was called "mystery swine disease". It has also been called blue ear disease. The name porcine arterivirus has been proposed recently.The virus of PRRS has a particular affinity for the macrophages particularly those found in the lung. Macrophages are part of the body defences. Those present in the lung are called alveolar macrophages. They ingest and remove invading bacteria and viruses but not in the case of the PRRS virus. Instead, the virus multiplies inside them producing more virus and kills the macrophages. Once it has entered a herd it tends to remain present and active indefinitely.
  Up to 40% of the macrophages are destroyed which removes a major part of the bodies defence mechanism and allows bacteria and other viruses to proliferate and do damage.
  A common example of this is the noticeable increase in severity of enzootic pneumonia in grower/finisher units when they become infected with PRRS virus.
  It may take up to a year for all breeding stock, particularly in large herds, to become infected for the first time and although the virus appears to spread rapidly in a herd it may be some 4 -5 months before at least 90% of the sows have become sero-positive. Some sows remain naive. Furthermore, it is not uncommon for sow herds 1-2 years after infection to contain less than 20% of serological positive animals. This does not however necessarily mean they are not still immune nor does it mean that they have stopped passing on immunity to their offspring. Adult animals shed virus for much shorter periods of time (14 days) compared to growing pigs which can excrete for 1-2 months.
  The clinical picture can vary tremendously from one herd to another. As a guide, for every three herds that are exposed to PRRS for the first time one will show no recognisable disease, the second would show mild disease and the third moderate to severe disease. The reasons for this are not clearly understood. However the higher the health status of the herd, the less severe are the disease effects. It may be that the virus is mutating as it multiplies, throwing up some strains that are highly virulent and some that are not.
  PRRS infects all types of herd including high or ordinary health status and both indoor and outdoor units, irrespective of size.
  SymptomsAcute diseaseWhen the virus first enters the breeding herd disease is seen in dry sows, lactating sows, sucking piglets and growers.
  Sows
  Clinical signs in dry sows during the first month of infection
  Short periods of inappetence spreading over 7-14 days, 10-15% of sows at any one time.The body temperature may be elevated to 39-40°C (103-105°F).Abortions, often late term, may occur at a 1-6% level. These are often the first signs to be noted.Transient discoloration (blueing) of the ears may be seen (2% level. Blue ear disease).Some sows farrow slightly early. 10-15% over the first 4 weeks.Increased returns occur 21-35 days post-service.Prolonged anoestrus and delayed returns to heat post-weaning.Coughing and respiratory signs.Clinical signs in farrowing sows in the first month of infectionInappetence over the farrowing period.A reluctance to drink.No milk (agalactia) and mastitis - significant symptoms.Farrowings are often 2-3 days early.Discoloration of the skin and pressure sores associated with small vesicles.Lethargy.Respiratory signs.Mummified piglets. 10-15% may die in the last 3-4 weeks of pregnancy.Stillbirth levels increase up to 30%.Very weak piglets at birth.The initial phase of inappetence and fever will often take 3-6 weeks to move through.Cyanosis or blueing of the ears is a variable finding and less than 5% of sows show it. It is transient and may last for only a few hours.Coughing occurs in some sows and a few individual cases of clinical pneumonia may occur.This acute phase lasts in the herd for up to 6 weeks, and is characterised by early farrowings, increases in stillbirths, weak pigs and an increase in the numbers of large mummified pigs that have died in the last three weeks of pregnancy. In some herds, these may reach up to 30% of the total pigs born. Piglet mortality peaks at 70% in weeks 3 or 4 after the onset of symptoms and only returns to pre-infected levels after 8-12 weeks. The reproductive problems may persist for 4-8 months before returning to normal, however in some herds it may actually improve on the pre-PRRS performance.Longer term effects of PRRS on reproductive efficiency are difficult to assess, particularly in herds of low health status. In some there are increases in repeat matings, vulval discharges and abortions, all of which may be blamed on PRRS.The effects of PRRS on reproduction efficiency in herds in which the infection has become enzootic have been observed in the field for up to 12 months after disease has apparently settled.These are as follows:A 10-15% reduction in farrowing rate (90% of herds return to normality).Reduced numbers born alive.Increased stillbirths.Poor reproduction in gilts.Early farrowings.Increased levels of abortion (2-3%).Inappetence in sows at farrowing.PigletsMore diarrhoea.Less viable piglets.Increase in respiratory infections such as glassers disease.Signs in boarsInappetence.Increased body temperature.Lethargy.Loss of libido.Lowered fertility.Poor litter sizes.Lowered sperm output.Weaners & GrowersWhen first introduced into an EP and App free growing herd there may be few signs:
  A period of slight inappetence.Mild coughing.Hairy wasting pigs.In some herds there are no symptoms.If EP and/or virulent App are present but not under control in the herd:An acute extensive consolidating pneumonia.Formation of multiple abscesses.Disease becomes evident within 1-3 weeks of weaning.Pigs lose condition.Diarrhoea may be seen.Pale skin.Mild coughing.Sneezing.Discharges from the eyes.Increased respiratory rates.Mortality during this period may reach 12-15%.Once the acute period of disease has passed through PRRS virus normally only becomes of significance in the early growing period:Severe pneumonia.Periods of inappetence.Wasting.Pigs become infected as maternal antibody disappears and then remain viraemic for 3 to 4 weeks continually excreting virus. Clinical disease is seen in pigs 4 to 12 weeks of age:Inappetence.Malabsorption.Wasting.Coughing.Pneumonia.In this post-weaning period mortality can rise up to 12% or more and persist inspite of antibiotic treatments.Secondary bacterial infections become evident in pigs at a later stage from 12 to 16 weeks of age:Abscesses develop in the lungs and may spread throughout the body.Lameness with abscesses.Poor stunted growth.Causes / Contributing factorsThe following are common methods of spread and contribute to overall disease levels.Droplet contamination from older pigs to younger pigs.Nasal secretions, saliva, faeces and urinePermanently populated houses maintain the virus at high levels, particularly in the first and second stage nurseries.Movement of carrier pigs.Airborne transmission up to 3km (2 miles).Adult animals excrete virus for much shorter periods of time (14 days) compared to growing pigs which can excrete for 1-2 months.Mechanical means via faeces, dust, droplets and contaminated equipment, lorries etc.Contaminated boots and clothing.Vehicles especially in cold weather.Artificial insemination but only if the boar is viraemic. This period is probably only 3-4 days.The mallard duck and probably other species of bird.DiagnosisThis is based on the clinical signs, post mortem examinations and the known presence of the virus in the herd or by serological examinations and isolation of the virus in a laboratory.If the herd has not been exposed to PRRS then blood sampling and testing a minimum of 12 adult animals (preferably those that have been off their food at least three weeks) provides a reliable means of diagnosis.
  Click on the links below to find out more about this disease, including treatment, management control and prevention information. The top link is the main article on this disease.
Bitmessage Wiki
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 13:04
  Bitmessage
  Bitmessage is a P2P communications protocol used to send encrypted messages to another person or to many subscribers. It is decentralized and trustless, meaning that you need-not inherently trust any entities like root certificate authorities. It uses strong authentication which means that the sender of a message cannot be spoofed, and it aims to hide "non-content" data, like the sender and receiver of messages, from passive eavesdroppers like those running warrantless wiretapping programs. If Bitmessage is completely new to you, you may wish to start by reading the whitepaper.
  DownloadAn open source client is available for free under the very liberal MIT license. For screenshots and a description of the client, see this CryptoJunky article: "Setting Up And Using Bitmessage".
  Download for Windows
  Here is a simple echo server which will send your message back to you after being received: BM-orkCbppXWSqPpAxnz6jnfTZ2djb5pJKDb
  Source codeYou may view the Python source code on Github. Bitmessage requires PyQt and OpenSSL. Step-by-step instructions on how to run the source code on Linux, Windows, or OSX is available here.
  Bitmessage should run on any OS though it is only lightly tested on OSX. The start-on-boot and minimize-to-tray features are only implemented for Windows thus far.
  Security audit neededBitmessage is in need of an independent audit to verify its security. If you are a researcher capable of reviewing the source code, please email the lead developer. You will be helping to create a great privacy option for people everywhere!
  Forum
RISE Of The WARRIOR COP: The Militarization Of America's Police Forces
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Patsy Pleads Guilty To Attempting To Blow Up The NY Federal Reserve With Bomb Supplied By FBI
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U.S. Ready To Reopen Embassies
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'Meerderheid Nederlanders tegen boycot Winterspelen'
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:58
  11/08/13, 11:35 '' bron: ANP
  (C) anp.
  Een meerderheid van de Nederlanders vindt niet dat de Nederlandse olympirs volgend jaar de Winterspelen in Sotsji moeten boycotten. Dat blijkt uit onderzoek van Peil.nl, het onderzoeksbureau van Maurice de Hond, in opdracht van NU.nl.
  Van de ondervraagden vindt 58 procent dat de Nederlandse sporters in 2014 gewoon naar de Winterspelen in het Russische Sotsji moeten gaan. Bij VVD- en CDA-kiezers ligt dit percentage het hoogst op respectievelijk 70 en 67 procent.
  34 procent van de ondervraagden vindt dat de Nederlandse sporters tijdens de Spelen wel thuis moeten blijven. Dit percentage ligt het hoogst onder 50PLUS-kiezers met 47 procent, gevolgd door PvdA-stemmers met 44 procent.
  Een meerderheid van 53 procent van de ondervraagden vindt wel dat als de Nederlandse sporters naar Sotsji gaan, zij daar een statement moeten maken tegen de onlangs in Rusland aangenomen antihomowet. Dit percentage ligt het hoogst bij 50PLUS-stemmers (75 procent) gevolgd door D66-kiezers (71 procent).
  Zo'n 81 procent van de stemmers vindt het kwalijk dat de Russische antihomowet is aangenomen.
Janmaat met spierscheuring enkele weken uitgeschakeld
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  11/08/13, 11:42 '' bron: Fox Sports
  (C) epa. Daryl Janmaat (boven).
  UPDATE Feyenoord moet Daryl Janmaat enkele weken missen. Na een heupblessure kampt de rechtsback nu met een spierscheurtje in zijn bovenbeen.
  Dat zei trainer Ronald Koeman zojuist bij Fox Sports.
  De rechtsback wordt in het duel met FC Twente vervangen door Jordy van Deelen. Janmaat mist daardoor woensdag de interland van Nederland tegen Portugal.
'BBC faked Break The Safe Lottery show and denied us ‚£22,000 prize': Contestants reveal programme's ending was re-filmed at last moment.
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  Friends Helen Griffiths and Rina Evans say BBC's decision to alter last night's ending has denied them prize-money and betrayed viewersMail on Sunday can reveal the show, broadcast to millions of viewers, was in fact filmed twice '' and the contestants were ordered not to tell anyoneBy Hannah Ellis-petersen
  PUBLISHED: 16:05 EST, 10 August 2013 | UPDATED: 05:56 EST, 11 August 2013
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  The BBC's National Lottery game show is embroiled in a fakery row after two contestants accused bosses of cheating them out of £22,000 in prize money.
  The women, who appeared on last night's episode of 'Break The Safe', have revealed that the end of the show was secretly changed to produce different results.
  Friends Helen Griffiths and Rina Evans say the BBC's decision to alter the ending has denied them prize-money and betrayed viewers.
  Scroll down for video
  Lost out: Helen Griffiths (left) with friend Rina Evans on last night's Break The Safe Lottery show
  The women have revealed that the end of the show was secretly changed to produce different results, denying them a £22,000 prize
  Rina, 40, said: 'The episode is a fake '' it's complete deception for the viewer. It is not something I would ever have expected from the BBC and people need to know the truth.'
  The Mail on Sunday can reveal the show, broadcast to millions of viewers, was in fact filmed twice '' and the contestants were ordered not to tell anyone.
  The two versions, with different end results, were then put together and broadcast as a single, continuous episode.
  Helen, also 40, said: 'We had no expectations of winning but what we did expect was fair play.
  'Instead, they have made it look like the whole thing had been filmed on one day '' it is plain trickery.
  'We even had to wear the same clothes and have our hair exactly the same. The whole thing was completely staged.'
  Last night's TV audience witnessed Rina, a mother-of three, and Helen dramatically lose out on £44,000 in the final round of the tense game show presented by Nick Knowles.
  However, the pair, from Ammanford, Wales, have revealed the ending shown on BBC1 last night was 'switched' from the original and the rules were changed.
  If the same rules had applied to both episodes, they would have won £22,000.
  Contestants cry foul over BBC's Break The Safe show
  Last night's TV audience witnessed Rina, a mother-of three, and Helen, both from Ammanford, Wales, dramatically lose out on £44,000 in the final round of the tense game show presented by Nick Knowles (above)
  Rina said: 'We got a call from Stuart Harrison, the producer, literally the day after we had come all the way back to Wales to say they had decided the format was too difficult and they wanted to change the rules.
  'However, in order for that to happen he said they needed us to fly back to Glasgow that night '' which was the last thing we wanted to do. And he kept specifying on the phone, you must not tell anybody.'
  Under the initial rules, the pair of contestants who make it to the final both had to push separate buttons at the same time in order to win prize-money accrued in the safe. Only Helen had succeeded, meaning the friends had initially walked away with nothing.
  But the day after they had filmed the first episodes on June 26, the production company admitted to the contestants the 'flawed' format made it 'impossible' to win.
  Under the new rules, only one contestant needed to hit the button to win half the prize money '' meaning the Welsh pair had been entitled to £22,000 prize money the first time.
  'The new rules meant we had won the first time, so we thought they just wanted to re-shoot the final scene to show that,' said Helen, a primary school teacher.
  'Instead they made us do the final round all over again. The crew kept drilling us about what we could say and what we couldn't say. They even styled our hair exactly the same and made us say exactly the same lines as if we were actors. It was all about deceiving the audience.'
  Rina added: 'It was done in front of a skeleton audience of about 50 people at the most. All morning they said they were in a complete panic about finding people to sit in the audience. They were phoning friends and family and just grabbing people off the streets. The whole atmosphere was a sham.'
  Helen said: 'By that time, there was no natural reaction from either of us because it felt like a staged moment. We were expected to act out a natural, impromptu scene but we couldn't because we aren't actors. We came off the set feeling that we'd been used by the BBC to help fix their failed format. We went back to the hotel and cried.'
  After returning to Wales 'physically and emotionally exhausted', Helen contacted the BBC to express her frustration at their treatment, and even asked for their episode to be scrapped.
  The BBC last night denied any wrongdoing and said the show had fully complied with their editorial guidelines.
  'This is absolutely not a deception of viewers or contestants,' said a spokeswoman.
  Share or comment on this article
NSA memo says the agency monitors 1.6 percent of all internet traffic.
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:52
  Amid a global furor over US data collection policies, the Obama administration released two documents today describing the scope and what it claims is the legal justification for its monitoring of telephone metadata and internet browsing. The documents portray the National Security Agency's surveillance activities as more limited than recent published reports have made them out to be. But they avoid several key questions surrounding the spying, including which internet companies are cooperating with them and how, why the government has demanded absolute secrecy from the companies they work with, and how the agency's oversight functions work.
  According to an NSA memorandum, the agency "touches" 1.6 percent of the estimated 1,826 petabytes of information that flow through servers every day. Of that 1.6 percent of monitored traffic, the NSA said it selects 0.025 percent for review. The agency sought to downplay the amount of data if collects. "If a standard basketball court represented the global communications environment, NSA's total collection would be represented by an area smaller than a dime on that basketball court," the memo says. It represents the NSA's latest damage-control effort in the wake of revelations from documents leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden. Published accounts of the NSA's surveillance programs that draw from Snowden's revelations have depicted a much more comprehensive system for monitoring internet traffic and telephone calls.
  Citing a foiled 2009 plot as an example of the system's power
  The memo describes the origins of the program, which was created in the wake of a report from the 9/11 Commission that identified gaps in intelligence agencies' ability to collect and share information that might have prevented the attacks. It cites a foiled 2009 plot to bomb the New York subway as an example of the system's power to prevent terrorist attacks, although previous reports have questioned whether NSA surveillance was instrumental to the success. Najibullah Zazi pled guilty to plotting the attack in 2010.
  A separate white paper from the administration describes its legal rationale for collecting telephone metadata including phone numbers and the length and timing of the calls. It outlines the justification for the program under court precedents and section 702 of the Patriot Act, and describes the reasons that the NSA collects so many call records. In short, the administration says it cannot analyze patterns between calls unless it has a sufficiently large data set. The agency keeps its own copy of the records because in many cases telecommunications agencies purge the records. (The NSA keeps the metadata for up to five years, but telecom companies don't always maintain records for that long.)
  "America is not interested in spying on ordinary people."
  The documents' release followed a press conference at the White House on Friday afternoon in which President Obama announced plans to increase transparency and public awareness of surveillance programs carried out by US intelligence agencies. The president described four measures; making changes to the Patriot Act, reforming the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, appointing a privacy and civil liberties officer to the NSA, and appointing an independent advisory group to recommend additional changes. "To others around the world, I want to make clear, once again, that America is not interested in spying on ordinary people," Obama said today. "Our intelligence is focused above all on finding the information that's necessary to protect our people, and in many cases, protect our allies." The president also said he would launch a website to describe intelligence agencies' activities in more detail '-- but if today's document release is any indication, it won't tell us much.
  Additional reporting contributed by Sean Hollister.
  Thanks, S. Sun!
Obama Bodyguard Found Dead After Having an Affair With a Foreign National
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:51
  (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
  By Cassius MethylIntellihub.comAugust 5, 2013
  Employees for the government sometimes are required to inform the agency about relationships with foreign people, allegedly to confirm that the person is not a threat to 'national security'. Apparently, one of Obama's bodyguards, Rafael Prieto, had an affair, and killed himself for some reason while under investigation. His secret was revealed by other agents during their investigation for another sex scandal.
  Maybe the reason he killed himself was his marriage failing, or maybe it was something more complicated, such as what he saw working for the government, or what he learned. Maybe he was murdered, but that is not likely because it is difficult to force someone to sit in a car filling up with carbon dioxide. Maybe he was knocked unconscious first.
  This may be noteworthy to provide insight into the behavior and mental complex of these employees of government; bodyguards, agents, officers. In some cases, the track record of these people is to be filled with prostitution, indulgence in alcohol and criminal behavior, etc. Earlier this year, 13 Secret Service agents were implicated in a prostitution scandal in Colombia.
  This was what was under investigation, when the bodyguard who killed himself has his secret revealed. Officers and agents led prostitutes to their hotel after a long night of drinking and partying, possibly doing other drugs. An apparently self righteous and inconsiderate agent refused to pay a prostitute he used for sex, and he yelled at her in a hallway. The incident went public, and someone connected to Rafael essentially told on him.
  *****
  Read more articles by this author HERE.
  Cassius Methyl is a writer for Intellihub.com , a liberty activist in any way possible, and he plays every instrument and vocals for experimental metal / truth movement project core of a virus. Find his music HERE: www.facebook.com/coreofavirus
US remains 'uninterested' as Kurds massacred by Syria's militant opposition
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:50
  Patrick Henningsen is a writer, investigative journalist, and filmmaker and founder of the news website 21stCentury Wire.com.
  Reports this week of the radical Islamist opposition in Syria massacring Kurds in the northern Syria is a disturbing development, but not nearly as disturbing as the strategic silence on the issue by the US and European government-media complex.
  According to reports from the village of Tal Abyad near the Turkish border on Monday, jihadist terror brigades massacred some 450 residents, including 330 women and elderly, along with 120 youths and elderly near the Turkish border.
  For nearly a year now, this Saudi and Qatari-financed armed opposition, known as Al-Nusra Front, or Jabhat Al-Nusra, has been enabled by its benefactors to run rampant in and around Syria. Because of the US and Britain's cozy relationship with both their gulf allies Saudi Arabia and Qatar, very little, if any, condemnation has come from the political ring leaders of the Syrian reformation project based in Washington and London. The same goes for the Western media, who do not want to run any news that might further expose their political leaders' own shaky history with Syria since the conflict began.
  Any US congressional hearings or British parliamentary inquiries into the matter might just reveal too much information about the illegal flow of arms, or the presence of CIA, MI6, Mossad agents, along with any other undeclared special forces currently involved in operations around the conflict zone there. Given the current political climate, any such revelations would be a political disaster, especially for Washington.
  Other disturbing reports of targeted violence in the region include Kurds being targeted by both Al-Nusra Front and the Free Syrian Army in northern Syria. Recently, in Tall Hassel and Tall Aren near Aleppo, 200 Kurds were said to have been taken hostage. There are also fears of the possibly that dozens of other civilians, including women and children, may have been brutally massacred there.
  With the situation deteriorating, it's clear that thousands of civilians are becoming trapped in this region, threatened with execution, rape and victims of kidnapping by the FSA and Al-Qaeda groups. It's not yet known how many young people have been executed for the sole reason of being a Kurd.
  By empowering these radical Islamic foreign-dominated fighters in Syria, the West and its Gulf State business affiliates have fueled a situation whereby fatwas could be issued in radical Sunni mosques in Syria and elsewhere - making Kurdish blood 'legal'.
  Al-Nusra Front's efforts in the Kurdish region of Syria appear to have an ethnic cleansing, or genocidal shape to them. These radical Islamists appear to be motivated by religion and race, as evidenced by the Islamic front's public announcement of its wish to carve out an independent religious and Arab state, or emirate, in Northern Syria. Islamic rebels in Syria are already in the process of re-branding themselves as the 'Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham', also known as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS).
  With so much Kurdish blood already spilt, it's a foregone conclusion that most Syrian Kurds will never accept any alliance with the FSA-Islamist-Al-Qaeda confab. This means that fighting in the region could be a long and violent affair '' especially if Washington and Ankara continue to employ a policy of willful ignorance towards the bloodshed there.
  Washington's blind eye towards the Al-Nusra Front terrorist conclave was forced out into the open last month when the US Congress voted against arming the Syrian rebels on the grounds that it's now dominated by fighters with known terrorist affiliations, including Al-Qaeda. Many in the US government are beginning to realize that toppling the government of Bashar Assad at any cost is a cost too high to bear.
  The facts on the ground over the last year reveal that the so-called 'moderate opposition' known as the Free Syrian Army is painfully weak, and dominated by dozens, if not hundreds of radical, foreign-led Islamist fighting groups, of which Al-Nusra Front is the largest and best-funded. Still, Washington will not openly condemn the terror group for fear that such a public decrial of foreign militant terror in Syria would discredit the West's entire effort over the last two years of characterizing the Syrian Armed Opposition as some sort of progressive, modern democratic, freedom-loving homogenous effort.
  Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov probably said it best, when he explained recently, ''We saw before some Security Council members reluctant to condemn terror attacks in Syria on the grounds that '' as cynical as it sounds '' those attacks are being carried out by people fighting against an obsolete regime. This position is absolutely unacceptable. No double standards can be applied to terrorism.''
  Truer words could not have been spoken. It seems that in their imperial scramble to reform the Middle East to suit its corporate and Israeli-driven interests, the West has all but surrendered its moral pulpit to Russia, and after the dust settles in Syria, it's unlikely that neither the US or Britain will be able to ever to preach to the international community about the War on Terror.
  Turkey, it seems, is now caught in the geopolitical crossfire '' a victim of its leadership's own dubious partnerships.
  Prime Minister Erdogan has become hamstrung by his own overwhelmingly pro-Western, partisan positions taken early on in the Syrian destabilization effort which began in earnest two years ago. Last year's visits with President Obama were centered on hopes of carving out a NATO buffer zone in northern Syria, but that never got off the ground. This past spring, US visits to regions were focused on getting Turkey to patch-up its differences with Israel. We now know what that was all about - as Turkey dived into the deep end this past June by allowing the Israeli Air Force to use Turkish bases to stage at least two bombing runs on Syria over the last two months.
  This latest wave of violence against Syrian Kurds comes at a time when Turkish''Kurdish relations have been on the mend regionally. Ankara has made substantial progress towards peace and has even entered into bilateral energy partnership with the Kurdish Regional Government in Northern Iraq.
  In addition to this, Turkey invited a prominent Syrian Kurdish leader, Salih Muslim from the Partiya Yek®tiya Demokrat (PYD), in order to open dialogue with the Foreign Ministry and intelligence services in Ankara and Istanbul. This is significant because only one year ago, Turkey was threatening military action because of the PYD's activities in northern Syria, which Ankara believed was working in congress with its domestic nemesis, the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) whose members reside inside Turkey. The Turkish leadership is also engaged in a peace process with the PKK in Turkey, and the results of this effort will ultimately affect the outcome of its talks with the PYD in Syria.
  Turkey is also well aware that the West's proxy war in Syria is not going as well as geopolitical engineers in Washington, London and Paris think it is, and that Al-Nusra Front is being seen as an overwhelmingly negative phenomenon in terms of regional security '' and therefore will move to distance itself from it. Any political alliance with the PYD would benefit Turkey in moving away from its uncomfortable proximity to the terrorist brigades of northern Syria.
  According to a recent statement by PYD spokesman Alan Semo, ''Groups such Al-Nusra, not the Kurds, were the real threat to Turkey's security.''
  ''If you are going to work with us, we can protect you from these jihadists,'' he said, addressing the Turkish government (Financial Times of London August 5, 2013).
  Maybe Turkey has somewhat honest motives in this case, not least of all its own internal security, but time will tell how serious Ankara really is regarding its newfound support of Kurds in northern Syria. Certainly, Turkey is playing a very dangerous and potentially volatile game with its puppet master in Washington pulling strings and making threats from over the Western horizon.
  None can ignore the strategic and geopolitical importance of the Kurdish national movement '' a people without borders whose community straddles Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran. They are a people without a nation, both courted and reviled by power-players in governments, and yet, they may ultimately determine the outcome of not only the conflict in Syria, but the destiny of the entire region.
  On a global scale, however, the conflict in Syria is still a proxy war, and the great powers will most likely try to ride out the conflict from an Imperial perspective. Rather than deploying their own troops, or attacking Syria themselves, they will continue to employ others in order to destabilize the region, in the hopes that when the piles of ashes lay thick, the West can glide in to marshal over the rebuilding process of economic and political reformation.
  But that old plan may not actually work this time with Syria, it's certainly not going well for central planning at the moment.
  The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
Is Pope Francis Anti-Capitalism?
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Obama on Greece: It's Important to Have Plan For 'Managing Debt'. (video)
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:39
  Greece Prime Minister Antonis Samaras and President Barack Obama. (AP)
  (CNSNews.com) '' After meeting with the prime minister of Greece in the Oval Office on Thursday, President Barack Obama said it is important that government officials in Greece have a plan to manage their debt.
  In the United States, the total national debt is $16.7 trillion and Congress and the president are gearing up to raise the ceiling on federal borrowing '' to keep spending -- after the August recess.
  ''What we also agreed to is that in dealing with the challenges that Greece faces, we cannot simply look to austerity as a strategy," said Obama after his meeting with Samaras. "It's important that we have a plan for fiscal consolidation to manage the debt, but it's also important that growth and jobs are our focus, because we know from history that those countries that are growing, those countries where employment is high and people are increasing their productivity and feel as if the economy is moving forward, those countries have an easier time reducing their debt burdens than countries that -- where people are feeling hopeless."
  Obama said Greece was going through some ''incredible challenges'' and praised Samaras for his efforts to ''help reduce the debt burden that Greece experiences, but even more importantly, can unleash the incredible talents of the Greek people so that they are effectively competing in this new world economy.''
  Obama said the United States would be as ''helpful as we can'' and that the Prime Minister is doing what needs to be done.
  The U.S. national debt currently is $16.7 trillion. (AP Photo)
  ''We're confident that the Prime Minister recognizes what needs to be done and is going to be working very hard to accomplish it,'' Obama said.
  According to the U.S. Treasury as of Aug. 7, 2013 the U.S. national debt is $16,738,537,598,194.21.
  When Obama was inaugurated as president on Jan. 20, 2009 the U.S. debt was $10,626,877,048,913.08 -- $6.1 trillion less than it is today.
  Also, the federal government deficit under Obama has been as follows: FY 2010, $1.29 trillion; FY 2011, $1.3 trillion; FY 2012, $1.08 trillion; FY 2013, estimated $973 billion. (The fiscal year for the government runs from October 1 through September 30. FY 2013 will end at the end of September 2013. )
Schenden 'slimme' vuilnisbakken privacy?
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:35
  Bewerkt door: redactie '' 11/08/13, 14:09 '' bron: Tweakers.net
  (C) afp. Shoppers in Oxford Street.
  In het Verenigd Koninkrijk is discussie ontstaan over 'slimme' afvalbakken in de straten van Londen. Die verzamelen namelijk de unieke codes van draadloze apparatuur in de buurt, de zogenaamde MAC-adressen. Daarmee zou de Britse privacywetgeving mogelijk worden geschonden, meldt Tweakers.net.
  Het bedrijf Renew plaatste de eerste zogeheten smartbins in Londen tijdens de Olympische Spelen van 2012, en inmiddels zijn het er honderden. De vuilnisbakken zijn voorzien van een lcd-paneel en wifi. Op de schermen staan advertenties en mededelingen van het stadsdeel.
  Renew scant via de wifi-apparatuur de MAC-adressen van smartphones die voetgangers bij zich dragen. Met deze informatie bouwt het bedrijf uitvoerige profielen op en kan het bijvoorbeeld monitoren hoe lang een persoon in een bepaalde winkel is gebleven. De Britse krant The Independent meldt dat Renew in een week tijd meer dan 4 miljoen MAC-adressen verzamelde, waarvan 530.000 unieke.
  DiscussieInmiddels woedt een discussie of de smartbins de privacywetten niet schenden. Het verzamelen van MAC-adressen zou weliswaar niet zijn verboden, maar de cookiewetgeving zou het niet toelaten om burgers te volgen zonder hun toestemming. Privacyvoorvechters stellen dat de technologie van Renew hetzelfde functioneert als het plaatsen van een trackingcookie in een browser.
  Renew ontkent dat zijn smartbins illegaal zijn en stelt dat het alle verzamelde MAC-adressen geanonimiseerd bij adverteerders aflevert. Wel geeft het bedrijf toe dat er een grijs gebied is in de privacywetgeving. Renew zou dan ook graag de dialoog willen aangaan met zowel privavcywaakhonden als de Britse overheid.
UK wages drop among worst in Europe
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:32
  11 August 2013Last updated at08:24 ETWages in the UK have seen one of the largest falls in the European Union during the economic downturn, according to official figures.
  Figures from the House of Commons library show average hourly wages have fallen 5.5% since mid-2010, adjusted for inflation, which is the fourth-worst decline in the 27-nation bloc.
  By contrast, German hourly wages rose by 2.7% over the same period.
  Across the European Union as a whole, average wages fell 0.7%.
  Only Greek, Portuguese and Dutch workers have had a steeper decline in hourly wages, the figures showed.
  Other countries that have suffered during the eurozone debt crisis also fared better than the UK. Spain had a 3.3% drop over the same period and salaries in Cyprus fell by 3%.
  French workers saw a 0.4% increase, while the 18 countries in the eurozone saw a 0.1% drop during that period.
  'Worse off'"These figures show the full scale of David Cameron's cost of living crisis," said shadow Treasury minister Cathy Jamieson.
  "Working people are not only worse off under the Tories, we're also doing much worse than almost all other EU countries.
  "Despite out-of-touch claims by ministers, life is getting harder for ordinary families as prices continue rising faster than wages."
  But the government says it has tackled the higher cost of living by raising the tax-free personal allowance threshold to £10,000, taking 2.7 million people out of tax, and other measures such as freezing fuel duty.
  "The economy is on the mend, but we've still got a long way to go as we move from rescue to recovery and we appreciate that times are still tough for families," a Treasury spokesperson said.
  The GMB union said the government was "directly responsible" for the fall in wages.
  "Employers paying low wages get taxpayer subsidies in the form of tax credits to assemble a workforce for them to make decent profit margins," it said.
  In June, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said that a third of workers who stayed in the same job saw a wage cut or freeze between 2010 and 2011 amid a rise in the cost of living.
  "The falls in nominal wages... during this recession are unprecedented," the IFS said at the time.
  In 2009, the average public-sector worker earned about £16.60 per hour, which dropped to about £15.80 in 2011, the IFS said.
  Meanwhile, hourly pay for private-sector workers in 2009 was just over £15.10 and dropped to about £13.60 in 2011.
Gunmen attack gas plant in Yemen
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:32
  11 August 2013Last updated at07:20 ETSuspected al-Qaeda militants have killed five soldiers in an attack on a gas terminal in southern Yemen, reports say.
  They opened fire on a checkpoint near the Balhaf terminal in Shabwa province, killing the soldiers before fleeing.
  Almost all US diplomatic missions recently closed in the region due to threats were due to reopen on Sunday.
  But the US embassy in the capital, Sanaa, was to stay closed "because of ongoing concerns".
  Yemen is a stronghold of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - an al-Qaeda offshoot considered by Washington to be the most dangerous to the West.
  On Thursday, at least 14 suspected al-Qaeda militants - reportedly including seven from Saudi Arabia - were killed in Yemen in three drone strikes, Yemeni officials said.
  The US closed 19 diplomatic missions in the Middle East and Africa last Sunday in response to what it said was a threat of a terrorist attack, but 18 out of the 19 missions were due to reopen on Sunday.
  The consulate in the Pakistani city of Lahore, which closed after a separate threat, will also not reopen yet.
  The US statement said its Sanaa embassy would stay closed because of concerns about a "threat stream" emanating from AQAP, without providing further details.
  Most US employees at the Sanaa embassy were ordered to leave the country on Tuesday.
  The embassy closures, along with a US global travel alert, came after the US reportedly intercepted al-Qaeda messages, with reports saying they were between senior figures talking about a plot against an embassy.
  On Wednesday, Yemen said it had foiled a major al-Qaeda plot against oil pipelines and ports.
Russia Challenges US in Tank Biathlon.
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:27
  MOSCOW, August 10 (RIA Novosti) '' Blurring the line between sports and warfare, the Russian army premiered a new sport '' tank biathlon '' and invited US crews to compete.
  ''We've invited our American colleagues to participate'...and our invitation was accepted by US Secretary of Defense [Chuck] Hagel,'' Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Saturday.
  Italy and Germany also agreed to send their teams to compete with Russian and US tank crews, Shoigu said, adding that the event will take place sometime next year.
  Russia will host the world's first ever tank biathlon championship next week. The country's best tank crews will compete against each other at a firing range outside Moscow, the winners then taking on competitors from Armenia, Belorussia and Kazakhstan.
  The new sport allows showcasing the quality of Russian tanks, comparing them against foreign analogues, Shoigu's deputy Yury Borisov said Saturday.
  Next week's event, however, will be limited to T-72 tanks, the staple of post-Soviet militaries, Vedomosti business daily said Friday.
  The newspaper offered a preview of the new sport, covering a test competition held outside Moscow earlier this week. The event involved four tanks painted in bright colors '' including yellow and pinkish red '' which did three laps over rough terrain, shooting at targets shaped like tanks, houses and helicopters. The best time was 5:28.
Legal highs: A new prescription. New Zealands plan to regulate designer drugs is better than trying to ban them and failing
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:26
  AS THE world's drug habit shows, governments are failing in their quest to monitor every London window-box and Andean hillside for banned plants. But even that Sisyphean task looks easy next to the fight against synthetic drugs. No sooner has a drug been blacklisted than chemists adjust their recipe and start churning out a subtly different one. These ''legal highs'' are sold for the few months it takes the authorities to identify and ban them, and then the cycle begins again. In June the UN reported more than 250 such drugs in circulation.
  An unlikely leader in legal highs is New Zealand. Conventional hard drugs are scarce in the country, because traffickers have little interest in serving 4m people far out in the South Pacific. Kiwis therefore make their own synthetic drugs, which they take in greater quantity than virtually anyone else. The government shuts down more crystal-meth labs there than anywhere bar America and Ukraine. But the business has adapted. First it turned to benzylpiperazine, which a third of young New Zealanders have tried. When that was banned in 2008, dealers found plenty of other chemicals to peddle. Today the most popular highs are synthetic cannabinoids, which pack a harder punch than ordinary cannabis.
  Sick of trying to keep up with drugmakers, the government is trying a new tack. Last month a law was passed which offers drug designers the chance of getting official approval for their products. If they can persuade a new ''Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority'' that their pills and powders are low risk, they will be licensed to market them, whether or not they get people high. Drugs will have to undergo clinical trials, which the government expects to take around 18 months'--much less than for medicines, because the drugs will be tested only for toxicity, not for efficacy. Drugs that are already banned internationally, such as cocaine and cannabis, are ineligible. Only licensed shops will sell the drugs, without advertising and not to children.
  The arguments for legalisation'--that it protects consumers, shuts out criminals and saves money while raising tax'--are familiar to readers of this newspaper. Yet it requires careful regulation to ensure that its outcome is not worse than widely ignored prohibition. New Zealand must now get the details right. The government has yet to define ''low risk''. Set the bar too high and the policy will be prohibition by another name; too low and potentially lethal products will be on sale legally. (They are already, in the form of alcohol and tobacco, but consistency is hardly a feature of drug policy.) Nor does anybody know what level of taxation will most effectively deter consumption without encouraging a black market. Similar debates are under way in Uruguay, which is poised to legalise cannabis, and in Colorado and Washington state in America, which voted to do so last year.
  Trust the health ministry over the mafia
  These tricky questions may look like weaknesses in the policy. In fact, they are its strength. While New Zealand and Uruguay are discussing what level of toxicity or what dosage is acceptable, every other country is leaving the matter to drug dealers, who do not care about quality control and who peddle to children on the same terms as adults. As New Zealand ponders what rate of tax to levy, in the rest of the world the business is tax-free. A hard road lies ahead for New Zealand and its fellow policy innovators. But every dilemma they face is a reminder that, unlike other jurisdictions, through government they are regulating the drugs business, not the gangs.
AND BLESS DANIEL ELLSBERG
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U.S. And Russia Face "Challenging Moments And Not Just Over Edward Snowden" John Kerry
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GLOBAL LOOTING: The new EU bailin law was hurried through alright'...but the template was premeditated | The Slog. 3-D bollocks deconstruction
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:17
  Deutsche Bank'.....two left feet
  It's becoming clearer with each day that passes why the EC rushed its new bailin law through the European Parliament at the beginning of this month. When the US returns from vacations after September 2nd '' and even more so once the German elections take place on September 22nd '' we can expect to see the brakes come off eurobank insolvency. But this is a race against time: Angela Merkel's fate hangs in the balance, and there are clear signs that the bomb might go off prematurely.
  Almost exactly a year before the Cyprus bailout, EU Directive 2012/0150 COD was drafted with a view to creating a template for future banking collapses. Its proposals mirror pretty exactly what happened in Cyprus '' viz, a prototype bailin. Written in June 2012, it points clearly to the conclusion that Cyprus was a premeditated crime on the part of Brussels-am-Berlin.
  The most obvious reference in the document is this one (my emphasis):
  'In any case, if the institution under resolution fails and does not have sufficient funds to repay depositors, the universality of proceedings ensure the equal treatment of creditors irrespective of their nationality, place of residence or domicile'.....In order to ensure the equal treatment of creditors, [EU] Company Law Directives contain rules for the protection of shareholders and creditors. Some of these rules may hinder rapid action by resolution authorities.'
  Brussels sources say those safeguards have been quietly, but totally, dumped. The new Law '' part of a batch relating to the Monetary Union road map '' is, if you like, a post-rationalisation of what happened in Cyprus. But it is also a preparation for what the Eunatics know is coming down the line. What started off as a premeditated plan has suddenly become a matter of urgency. Here's why.
  My Madrid source has been saying for several months now that the Spanish banking system is being quietly propped up by the usual Peter-pays-Paul bollocks Draghi comes up with. Global Economic Analysis blogger Mish sums up the reality thus:
  'Spain's exposure to Portuguese sovereign debt and unrealized losses on real estate loans are two reasons a collapse is inevitable'....Spanish bank exposure to Portugal today is higher than French bank exposure to Greece in early 2010'....A restructuring of Portuguese sovereign debt similar to the one completed by Greece, which involved haircuts of over 50%, would wreak havoc on Spain's banking system.'
  Well beyond Spain, Europe's biggest banks '' which have more than doubled their highest-quality capital to meet tougher rules '' still have a long way to go in order to satisfy EC/ECB regulators'...hence all the scurrying about with rights issues of late. But ringing and Skyping around the Continent last Friday, three large banks were on most people's lists'....and seven were mentioned in all.
  Perhaps one of the more surprising of these is Barclays (not domiciled in the ezone, but huge across the EU) in that many observers see the banks' rights issue as likely to be a flop. This is accurately reflected by the fact that its shares closed nearly 6% lower after the bank said last month that it would issue £5.8bn in shares to meet new EU requirements. More disturbing are the recurrent rumours about ''cans full of worms'' in the bank, although there is nothing specific to go on.
  The most worrying potential casualty '' certainly for the inhabitants of the Chancellery '' remains DeutscheBank. The main contention is that the bank has taken a colossal hit on currency swaps. Last month Max Keiser described the bank as 'on suicide watch', and in June FDIC vice chairman Thomas Hoenig called Deutsche ''horribly undercapitalised''. German Sloggers continue to insist that DB is being secretly propped up with government money. There are of course elements in Frankfurt who would love to see more solid bad news from Deutsche to put the CDU completely on the spot; but they remain careful about what they wish for.
  The third most commonly mentioned bank in the 'troubled' category is SocGen. Look at the numbers on French banking exposure to Greece, and you will see how massively the French dumped their toxic waste onto the ECB after 2010. In some ways, that's bad for Greece (dumping Athens wouldn't collapse the French system today) but like every country in the West, there's lots of sub-sub-glub-glub underwater subprime in there.
  In Italy, multiply bailed-out Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA is not widely expected to make it to the finishing line. Italy's central bank continues its own Peter-pays-Paul version of the endless circulating money game with MdP, but that show is now so obvious to everyone, it's hard to see how it can stay on the road, let alone finish up anywhere safe. Standard & Poor's cut the ratings of 18 Italian banks during the last week of July saying the ''recession will be longer than expected''. I must confess I don't know of anyone who expected it to be short, but there you go.
  However, the Slog favourite for Collapse of the Century so far remains Royal Bank of Scotland. I said last week that all this bollocks about the taxpayers getting their money back was, er, bollocks, and this morning Vince Cable as good as admitted that, by saying RBS ''will be in public hands for another five years''. It's actually going to be a large piece of Stonehenge on our backs, but let's not split hairs. It is a gigantic collapse waiting to happen, and in my view it is inevitable. I really do not see how breaking it up is going to help.
  Last but not least, The Cooperative Bank is technically insolvent already. As I explained recently, it is the Bailin Which Dare not Speak it's Name down Westminster way, so dearly would all Parties in da House like this turd to be flushed away. But it refuses so to do'....and the longer they dither, the worse it's going to get. Basically, what's happening here is that 'bondholders' (who are really old and poor folks converted from depositors some time ago) are going to be treated the same as any trick-or-treat Hedge Fund, in order to bail out the larger account customers'....who just happen to include the LibDems, the Labour Party, and the TUC. The Co-op and the Unions in turn bankroll a great many Labour MPs '' including Ted Testicles himself, a bloke who isn't going to emerge from this scandal with a nice smell attached to his body.
  In short, thinking that the bailin template is a hastily flung together and somewhat academic exercise is fine if you want to lose the shirt off your back. Otherwise, withdraw such money as you can, and buy any asset that you can. It doesn't matter if its canned food, gold or a motor bike: just do it '' and get a move on.
  In the meantime'.....
  About these ads
In Newark, Gunshot Detection System Falls Short of Booker's Claims - WNYC
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  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 12:09
  As he runs for higher office, Newark Mayor Cory Booker talks a great deal about bringing his insight as chief executive of a crime-ridden inner city to the U.S. Senate. And he proselytizes about the ways technology can solve stubborn problems.
  One example that Booker touts is the gunshot detection technology he brought in to combat gun violence. But, the impact of the technology has been, at best, modest.
  New Jersey Public Radio found that officers who represent the Newark Police Department to the public were far from transparent about the effectiveness of the gunshot detection system, called ShotSpotter. The Newark Police Department officer in charge of the program was confused and uniformed about its use.
  Introducing Gunshot Detection Technology
  Back in 2007, Booker announced he was bringing in gunshot detection sensors to combat gun violence in the city, after four young people were lined up behind an elementary school in Newark and shot execution-style from close range, in the backs of their heads.
  The sensors are essentially microphones, strategically placed in high-crime neighborhoods. Of all the sounds of a city, they isolate any noise that sounds like gunfire.
  Booker said the combination of sensors and surveillance cameras would help police find the people who fire guns in the city.
  ''You can actually capture the perpetrators in their actions,'' Booker announced.
  But Sgt. Marvin Carpenter, who oversees the gunshot detection system in Newark, says that has not happened often. ''When we get there, usually the perp is not in the area,'' he said.
  In the last three years, gunshot detection sensors in Newark went off 3,632 times, and 17 shooters were arrested on scene.
  But for more than half of the sensors in Newark, there is no accompanying camera for several blocks. That leaves officers with insufficient information to act.
  ''So you might get a vehicle taking off, you might pick up somebody discharging a weapon,'' Carpenter said. But catching the person who fired the weapon? ''Very rare, because you would have to have cameras in every corner of the city in order for that to actually work."
  It costs Newark taxpayers about $80,000 a year to maintain the current system. But critics argue the total cost is much more than that, given the way police respond when a detector goes off. Since 2010, 75 percent of the gunshot alerts have been false alarms. But police are often deployed to the location anyway, just in case there is a shooter.
  George Muschal says that's a lot of police resources being diverted. He was a police officer in Trenton for 40 years and is now president of the Trenton City Council.
  Trenton no longer uses ShotSpotter, but when the city did, Muschal said multiple police units would be deployed when the sensors went off. ''And when you get there, it's noting more than a truck back firing,'' he said. ''Now you go and jeopardize everyone going past the speed limit, and you're putting everyone on a wild goose chase.''
  He says a Christmas Day shooting went undetected in Trenton. ''You got a guy shot in the back of the head that's dead, laid on the street approximately six hours before he was discovered,'' Muschal said.
  Measuring Success of the Program
  On April 11 of this year, Newark officers responding to a ShotSpotter alert recovered a .380 caliber handgun and 14 spent shell cases. And they arrested a 25-year-old male at the location.
  Newark Police Director Samuel DeMaio said that arrest was a measure of the technology's value, even if successful outcomes are rare.
  The effectiveness of ShotSpotter, he added, is not just in the number of guns recovered or the number of people arrested. ''Regardless of what that number is, for us to be able to know when a gunshot goes off immediately and not have to wait for someone to call us, it's invaluable to us,'' DeMaio said.
  DeMaio noted that the sensors give officers an actual location from which to start their investigations - something that is especially useful when no one calls 911.
  A spokesperson for Mayor Booker said the detectors can allow police to get to shooting victims faster.
  "Gunshot detection technology is, like most cutting edge technologies and policing strategies, imperfect, but make no mistake about it: having a head start, often measured in minutes, on real shooting incidents can and has meant the difference between life and death, apprehension and escape, and provides for a palpable deterrent effect," the spokesperson said. "Gunshot detection is one of many strategies Newark has employed to reduce gun violence, which is down 27 percent since Mayor Booker took office. While not a panacea, it has proven an incredibly valuable tool.''
  This is all part of what the sensors are designed to accomplish, according to Ralph Clark, the president of ShotSpotter, a privately held company based in California's Bay Area. But he says one of the ideas behind the program is for police departments to track their results and communicate those outcomes to the public.
  ''We were able to recover X number of weapons, capture these many of perpetrators, aid these many victims, recover these many shell casings,'' Clark said, listing the kind of data that could be publicly shared. ''But that's not what we do, that's obviously what the agency does.''
  Police in Camden, Paterson and East Orange are not keeping some of the most basic data '' like the number of times sensors pick up gunshots, or how often the system helps police arrest a shooter.
  In Newark, Booker has cited the effectiveness of ShotSpotter in his campaign for a seat in the U.S. Senate; the Democratic primary for the seat left vacant by the death of Sen. Frank Lautenberg is Tuesday. The mayor has said the technology serves as a deterrent, and that it reduces the confidence criminals have that they can shoot a gun in Newark and get away with it.
  But the number of violent crimes in Newark has continued to rise throughout Booker's tenure as mayor.
Apple 2 - 0 Samsung; Are The Lobbying Dollars About To Pay Off Again?
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  Source: Zero Hedge
  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 04:11
  Last week we witnessed the almost unprecedented veto intervention in the Apple-Samsung patent debate. Last night, after the market had closed, the hits kept coming for the South Korean company as the Cupertino crushed showed the ITC that Samsung's infringements should mean a sales and import ban in the US. As Reuters reports, the decision is likely to inflame passions in the long-running dispute since the decision will now - once again - go to President Barack Obama, who has 60 days to review them and decide whether to side with the American company that 'donated' $16.5mm to his campaign or the South Korean market-share 'stealer' that only gave $3.7 million in offerings at the altar of hope-and-change. While some are calling foul so soon after the veto, with South Korean government officials 'observing' closely, even the US Trade Representative is against the proposed Samsung ban, citing "competitive conditions and the effect on the US consumer."
  Hhhmm, we wonder who Obama will pick in this 'tricky' debate?
  Via Reuters,
  ...
  The U.S. International Trade Commission on Friday ruled that South Korea's Samsung infringes on portions of two Apple Inc patents on digital mobile devices, covering the detection of headphone jacks and operation of touchscreens.
  The decision is likely to inflame passions in the long-running dispute and could spark a rebuke from South Korea.
  The panel moved to prohibit Samsung from importing, selling and distributing devices in the United States that infringe on certain claims on the patents. It is unclear how many Samsung phones and devices would be subject to the ban.
  All exclusion orders are sent to President Barack Obama, who has 60 days to review them. If he does not veto the order, it will go into effect.
  ...
  But it comes less than a week after the Obama administration overturned an ITC decision from June that would have banned the sales of some older-model Apple iPhones and iPads in the United States for violating Samsung patents.
  U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman vetoed the ban on Saturday, cited its "effect on competitive conditions in the U.S. economy and the effect on U.S. consumers."
  That move, the first veto of an ITC ruling in decades, triggered concerns in the South Korean government and led to closer scrutiny of Friday's ruling than usual.
  Letting the ban on Samsung devices stand after having so recently intervened in the Apple case could spur allegations the administration is showing favoritism toward Cupertino, California's Apple.
  ...
  "We are disappointed that the ITC has issued an exclusion order based on two of Apple's patents. However, Apple has been stopped from trying to use its overbroad design patents to achieve a monopoly on rectangles and rounded corners," Adam Yates, a Samsung spokesman, said in a statement.
  ...
  The current case has dragged on for two years.
  Average:Your rating: NoneAverage: 5(1 vote)
DISTRACTION-Oprah faced not just fashion retail racism, but size bias too | Heidi Moore | Comment is free | theguardian.com
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  Archived Version
  Sun, 11 Aug 2013 04:05
  Oprah Winfrey is a successful billionaire with an empire worth $3bn, a woman whose public reputation has been built on self-empowerment. She has been frank about the stresses in her life '' racism and sexism figure often '' and about her struggles with her weight.
  It is this last aspect that may be the hardest to deal with. Oprah's thyroid condition makes her weight problems unavoidable. She has to deal with the rebellion of her body. She may find sympathetic tailors and fabulous shoes, and accessorize brilliantly, but she likely knows what all women know: shop assistants won't be kind to women over a size 10, and that is especially true of woman of color.
  To find something nice for Tina Turner's wedding, Oprah walked alone into Trois Pommes in Zurich last month, an upscale shop that carries clothes from the usual runway names '' Celine, Jil Sander, Lanvin '' and has locations in wealthy ski towns that attract billionaires: St Moritz, Gstaad, Basel.
  A shop assistant refused to show Oprah a $42,000 crocodile handbag. Here is the incident in Oprah's words, via the International Business Times:
  I was in Zurich the other day, in a store whose name I will not mention. I didn't have my eyelashes on, but I was in full Oprah Winfrey gear. I had my little Donna Karan skirt and my little sandals. But obviously, the Oprah Winfrey Show is not shown in Zurich. I go into a store and I say to the woman, 'Excuse me, may I see the bag right above your head?' and she says to me, 'No. It's too expensive.'
  Oprah later mused to Larry King that she considered following the script of Pretty Woman and deploying her fortune by buying everything in the store, but decided not to give the saleswoman the satisfaction of a larger commission. The head of the luxury chain, Trudie Goetz, later said that the saleswoman didn't recognize Winfrey and that by rejecting Oprah's request she tried to be "too kind".
  No doubt, the details of the incident will be pored over. It has already been attributed to racism, and rightfully so: Oprah's incident tripped a wire that worries many women of color: to be judged negatively and immediately by their race, to be treated as second-class citizens, to be pointed to the things that are not the best, but considered merely "good enough" for you. The best and most expensive, the implication goes, is saved for those with the obvious status markers: well-groomed, accompanied by a wealthy-looking man, and usually, not coincidentally, very thin.
  This is what Oprah, and most other women, rarely talk about: the struggle for respect faced by women of color is shared, at times, with another group: women of size, another category to which Oprah belongs. The scale is not the same '' racism can be as ugly as anything humans are capable of '' yet, on a day-to-day basis, they have parallels. There is the same sense of diminishment, the same high-handed assumption by others, the same struggle for control of your own image.
  Race is tied with socioeconomic status struggles; so is weight. There have been some studies of a link between a woman's size and her socioeconomic status, showing that women with low incomes tend to be of higher weight. There are many theories on this '' because of unsocial working hours, lower availability of healthy food in poor neighborhoods, and other factors that may affect food choice and metabolism.
  On the other side of the scale, anorexia and other eating disorders tend to be more common in people of higher socioeconomic status. You don't need science to tell you this: in the cold calculation of high-end fashion or jewellery or luxury bags, a woman's dress size is often assumed to be a marker of her status, as much as race is. Both indicate a certain institutional bigotry, an assumption based on outdated '' and just plain wrong '' cliches about what a person's bank balance looks like based on what their body looks like.
  This is what most women know: when a woman walks into an upscale store, she has already been evaluated as to the size of her bank account or credit line (or whether she looks like she can attract a man with both of them). High-end shop assistants, like everyone who works on bonus, commission or by their wits '' Wall Street traders and pool hustlers, for instance '' are taught to size up a mark at a thousand paces. They read grooming, body language, clothing, and accessories as a sign of how likely someone may be to spend '' or lose '' money.
  This is what that Zurich shop assistant was doing. Lacking the crucial information that Oprah was a celebrity, she relied on shallow markers: her size, her race. Even a Donna Karan dress is not enough to overcome those biases.
  Oprah was looking to buy a handbag, which has no size measurements, but the product is not the point: in an upscale boutique, all buyers are judged, in part, by their weight. Many shops want the people in them to look "thin and cool", in the words of Abercrombie & Fitch's CEO. They may grudgingly sell larger sizes, but only online.
  The key thing for people of any size is to remain hidden from areas where status is important. The rather unintelligent thinking seems to be that fat is infectious, or that thin people won't want products that have been merely glanced at by anyone over a size 10.
  As a result, there is a kind of social segregation based on weight as well as on race. To test this, walk into any other fashionable shop in Zurich, or Gstaad, or London, or Paris, or Los Angeles, or New York: you may see women in flip-flops, women with messy ponytails, women in ripped jeans. Those are all perfectly acceptable '' as long as she is also carrying an expensive handbag or accompanied by a man who looks like he has means. But you will rarely, if ever, see even a perfectly groomed, immaculately dressed woman above a size 10.
  Shop assistants in upscale boutiques in fashionable areas of major cities have become practiced at hovering around ample women in a hurry to remind them:
  Oh, I'm sorry: we don't have anything in your size.
  And this size bias trickles down the economic scale: clothing retailers at all levels perpetuate the idea that carrying an extra 30lb is anti-fashion. Identifying low body weight with low status seems to infect clothing retailers from Lululemon to Abercrombie & Fitch. Last week, Lululemon said that clothes above a size 12 "are not part of its business strategy", and Abercrombie's cheerleaders-only aesthetic has become the stuff of legend. "A lot of people don't belong (in our clothes), and they can't belong," says Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries.
  This is, of course, ridiculous. There are many reasons for a woman's weight to vary, including everything from medication to thyroid issues to stress to lifestyle. Fat-shaming, as the fashion retail industry often indulges in, is also a form of fat-blaming: it assumes that a woman's weight tells you all you need to know about her. This is irrational and, most importantly, completely false.
  The common bias of tying socioeconomic status with weight is just bad business. The saleswoman who made that assumption about Oprah was wrong '' and her shop not only lost a high-value customer, but is also paying a steep price in the very public wrath of a billionaire scorned. Whatever the social formula those shop assistants are using may be, it often fails to truly judge a customer's ability to spend. It was, to quote Pretty Woman, "a huge mistake".
  There are women who would like to have access to upscale fashion and have the means to indulge '' if only shops would recognize that high income and good credit comes in all shapes and sizes. Maybe clothing retailers should, similarly, learn that a woman's cultural, economic and social power is not solely discernible at a glance '' either by her skin color or by her weight.
  It might help their bottom line if they stopped judging those of others.
VIDEO-Anthony Weiner Losing It ~ Mocks British Reporter | MRCTV
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  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 23:10
  If the player does not load, please check that you are running the latest version of Adobe Flash Player.
  (h/t, HotAir) I have learned to grab stuff like this as it may dissapear... and this is [political] comedy gold! The original file comes from Dan Martland, and I must say, the Monty Python jab made me laugh. Because we all feel like we (the collective American public) are in a Monty Python skit with Weiner: "Kneed the dough."
  (Posted by: Religio-Political Talk)
CNN Reboots to Grab Non-News Ad Dollars | Media - Advertising Age
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  Archived Version
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 22:37
  It looks like CNN is gunning for ad dollars that typically go to networks like Nat Geo and Travel Channel, as the founder of 24-hour cable news broadens beyond its programming base.
  New President Jeff Zucker has been trying to remake CNN into a network that's essential every day rather than watched only during big news events.
  "CNN's new programming strategy lends itself to go after dollars that are not traditional news," said Sam Armando, senior VP-director of strategic intelligence at Publicis Groupe's SMGx.
  At the time of his hire, Mr. Zucker said news is more than just "politics and war." To this end, he is revamping the schedule -- bringing in personalities like George Stroumboulopoulos and Chris Cuomo; emphasizing mornings to take on the likes of "Today"; and moving into new genres with Anthony Bourdain's weekend travel show.
  These formats will help CNN broaden its appeal to a wider consumer base and give the network opportunities to bring in new advertising categories and more ad dollars, said Greg D'Alba, president, CNN News Networks and Turner digital ad sales and marketing.
  According to SNL Kagan, CNN ranked as the 23rd-largest basic cable network by gross advertising revenue in 2012 with $379.5 million. That puts it behind non-news networks like USA, Food Network, History, Syfy and Bravo. (ESPN was No. 1 with $2.08 billion.)
  Under the new formats, CNN's sales team will also be able to build promotions and sponsorship packages around show launches, which have historically been limited. Mr. Bourdain's show has attracted BMW and MillerCoors as launch sponsors; the latter hasn't bought time on the network in about five years.
  CNN is also selling its "foundation brands," like Mr. Bourdain, Anderson Cooper and Piers Morgan.
  According to Magna Global, cable evening news receives 12% of total cable TV ad spending in the U.S. This is the third-largest cable daypart by spend, behind weekday prime time (17%) and late night (13%).
  CNN also will be promoting its new research capabilities -- All-Screen, a partnership with Nielsen and Arbitron, and Advanced Media Targeting -- which give agency clients the ability to plan, measure and post their cross-platform campaigns more effectively, according to the company.
  CNN isn't hosting an upfront, instead it will be bringing Mr. Zucker into small meetings with select agencies.
Top 10 Pharma Advertising Budgets - 2012 - FiercePharma
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 22:31
  Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, something that once seemed shocking, has become such a part of the television landscape that it raises few eyebrows any longer. Oh, there was an FDA study and finding last year that calming voice-overs and images of puppies and beach houses did not distract consumers from picking up on the health risks of the products being pitched. And a recent study found that voluntary industry guidelines have been ignored to the point that family-hour viewing often comes with a dose of erectile dysfunction drug advertising. But all in all, it is a part of doing business embraced by consumers and used by drugmakers of all ilk.
  While DTC advertising spending has backed off from the $5-billion-a-year highs set during the boom years of the last decade, significant sums are still spent, particularly by the top 10 spenders. According to Nielsen, which tracks the numbers, those 10 last year spent $2.7 billion on ads for TV, magazines, newspapers, radio and billboards. The numbers do not track online advertising, which research shows is growing but still small comparatively. Two-thirds of the top 10's total went to television, and another 30% to magazines, leaving other media to share in about 4%, the Nielsen numbers indicate.
  Most of the top 10 largest ad budgets are fielded by the largest Pharma players, but Amgen ($AMGN) and Allergan ($AGN) are also among them. The world's largest drug company, Pfizer ($PFE), tops the list, spending 23% of that $2.7 billion on some of its best-selling drugs. In fact, as the data show, it is generally a company's best-selling drugs that get the greatest spends, suggesting that DTC advertising remains very effective.
  Here are the numbers, and please post a comment or send us a note if you have observations you would like to share. -- Eric Palmer (email | Twitter)
VIDEO- "U.S. Government Has A Patent On Marijuana As An Antioxidant And Neuroprotectant In The Brain!" - YouTube
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  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 22:29
pharmaceutical advertising on cnn - Google Search
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  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 22:29
  Prosecutor blasts Google over drug ads - CNN.comwww.cnn.com/2013/06/19/tech/google-drug-ads
  19 Jun 2013 ... Mississippi's top prosecutor Wednesday threatened to subpoena the search giantGoogle over what he called its failure to crack down on ads ...Google braces for huge fine from rogue drug ads - CNN.comwww.cnn.com/2011/US/06/22/google.drug.ads/index.html- Cached1 Jul 2011 ... Internet search giant Google is bracing for a fine that could top $500 million, aftera federal probe of illegal online pharmacy ads placed on the ...Drug industry's free speech helps doctors - CNN.comwww.cnn.com/2012/12/10/opinion/frum-off-label-use-of-drugs
  10 Dec 2012 ... David Frum says a court ruling that drug companies can discuss off-label uses fortheir drugs allows doctors to learn of new options.Prescription drug deaths: Two stories - CNN.comwww.cnn.com/2012/11/15/health/deadly-dose-jackson-rummler
  Prescription drug deaths: Two stories. By Maxwell Newfield, CNN. updated 12:44PM EST, Mon November 19, 2012. STORY HIGHLIGHTS. Emily Jackson died ...The Double-Edged Sword of Drug Marketing - CNN.comwww.cnn.com/HEALTH/bioethics/9908/drug.marketing/- Cached9 Aug 1999 ...CNN.com ...Pharmaceutical advertising combines medical information for the laypublic with images of a healthy and carefree lifestyle.Gupta: Let's end the prescription drug death epidemic - CNN.comwww.cnn.com/2012/11/14/health/gupta-accidental-overdose
  Gupta: Let's end the prescription drug death epidemic. By Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN. updated 11:57 AM EST, Mon November 19, 2012. STORY HIGHLIGHTS.Prescription Drugs: News & Videos about Prescription ... - CNN.comtopics.cnn.com/topics/Prescription_Drugs- CachedCNN's Elizabeth Cohen reports. ... CNNMoney: Google pays $500 million tosettle DOJ case over illegal drug adsupdated: Wed Aug 24 2011 12:13:00.Are we sure our drugs are safe? - CNN.comwww.cnn.com/2012/02/01/opinion/dingell-drug-oversight
  1 Feb 2012 ... He also is the author of H.R. 1483, the Drug Safety Enhancement Act, which ... (CNN) -- When Americans pick up their prescriptions from the ...Cocaine: The evolution of the once 'wonder' drug - CNN.comwww.cnn.com/2011/HEALTH/07/22/social.history.../index.html- Cached22 Jul 2011 ... (CNN) -- Long before drug cartels, crack wars and TV shows about addiction,cocaine was promoted as a .... The advertisements went away.Generic drug safety argued at high court - CNN.comwww.cnn.com/2013/03/19/health/court-generic
  Generic drug safety argued at high court. By Bill Mears, CNN Supreme CourtProducer. updated 9:05 AM EDT, Wed March 20, 2013. Federal law requires ...CNN Adswww.ask.com/CNN+Ads
  Search for CNN AdsLook Up Quick Results now!K&F Healthcare Ad Agencywww.kaneandfinkel.com/
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Medical Marijuana Business Daily '' Legal, Financial and Dispensary NewsExclusive: US Medical Marijuana Sales to Hit $1.5B in 2013, Cannabis Revenues Could Quadruple by 2018
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  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 22:26
  March 21, 2013By Chris WalshRetail medical cannabis sales in the United States could hit an estimated $1.3 billion-$1.5 billion in 2013, growing 10-15% from last year as the industry recovers from widespread turmoil, according to exclusive research data released today byMMJ Business Daily.
  The long-term future appears even brighter: The legalization of marijuana for adult use in Colorado and Washington '' coupled with the emergence of several new markets and continued overall growth on the medical side '' could boost overall state-legal cannabis sales to $3 billion in 2014 and $6 billion by 2018.
  These forecasts appear in the Marijuana Business Factbook 2013, a 180-page industry report, with 69 exclusive table and charts, that begins shipping on Monday, March 25.
  The Factbook '' published by the editors of MMJ Business Daily '' provides a comprehensive overview of the cannabis industry and includes state-by-state market estimates and stability/opportunity rankings as well as regulatory and investing information. It also features a wealth of financial data such as average revenues and startup costs for dispensaries, cultivation operations, edibles companies and ancillary firms. You can order it now here.
  ''Although plenty of information has been published elsewhere about cannabis itself, as well as the legalization movement, until now there's been a near-complete dearth of financial, market and other business-related data,'' said Cassandra Farrington, publisher of MMJ Business Daily. ''These are all facts that entrepreneurs, investors and expanding businesses need at their fingertips.''
  The industry revenue estimates include sales of medical cannabis and infused products at dispensaries in states that have marijuana laws on the books, but not wholesale revenues or dollars tied to ancillary products and services. Projections for 2014-2018 include sales of marijuana for recreational use in states where it's legal.
  MMJ Business Daily estimates that retail medical cannabis sales totaled roughly $1.5 billion in 2011. The numbers could have been much higher, but a crackdown by the federal government and other challenges stunted growth and led to hundreds of dispensary closures and plummeting patient numbers in some areas.
  The turmoil intensified in 2012, leading to an estimated $200 million to $300 million decrease in retail medical marijuana sales as hundreds of additional dispensaries closed for various reasons and the industry collapsed in some states and cities, such as Montana and San Diego.
  This year, however, the industry is poised for a recovery and should be able to get back to 2011 levels.
  Dozens of MMJ centers are on track to open in Arizona '' generating tens of millions of dollars in revenues this year '' while states such as New Jersey, Rhode Island and Vermont as well as Washington DC are moving forward with their dispensary programs. The Colorado, Oregon and Washington State markets also are expected to grow, and there could be an MMJ revival in several California cities such as San Diego and San Francisco.
  In 2014, the emergence of cannabis retail stores in Colorado and Washington could generate roughly $1 billion in state-legal cannabis sales during the first full year of operation. The markets will eventually be much bigger, but it could take time for the recreational marijuana industry in those two states to reach its near-term potential, in part because officials might look to prevent rapid growth (Colorado and Washington are still crafting regulations). Several other states are expected to pass medical or recreational cannabis laws this year, which will further fuel growth in 2014.
  This trend is expected to continue for years to come, and the industry could see another huge spike in 2018 '' when any marijuana-related ballot measures passed in the 2016 general elections would really begin to play our from a business perspective. It often takes at least a year or two for states to get their dispensary/retail marijuana programs up and running after a law is passed.
  There are some caveats to the projections, though.
  California is still a very shaky market, and the industry could swing one way or the other this year. For instance, Los Angeles '' the largest single MMJ market in the country '' could see most of its dispensaries close later this year if voters back one measure on the ballot this spring. Several other markets, including Michigan, face challenges as well.
  Additionally '' and more importantly '' the feds have not yet clarified how the government will respond to the recreational marijuana business in Colorado and Washington. Industry revenues will come in much lower if the Obama administration fights the new laws or looks to clamp down on retail cannabis stores.
  On the other hand, revenues could soar much higher than expected if Colorado and Washington both allow visitors to purchase cannabis, which would create a massive marijuana tourism industry (the industry sales projections do not currently account for this possibility, as it is currently a big unknown).
  MMJ Business Daily arrived at its estimates after conducting an in-depth study of the marijuana market in each state with dispensaries.
  Given that the amount and quality of information available varies greatly in each state, the research team used a mix of methodologies to come up with reliable estimates, including: existing estimates by government agencies or other sources, identifiable trends, the maturity of the market, averages for similar markets or neighboring states with reliable data, average revenue per dispensary estimates, average annual patient spend in the area, information from local professionals, and/or MMJ tax revenues.
VIDEO- "Medical Marijuana Is A REAL MEDICINE! That Can Do Things Other Medicines Don't!" Sanjay Gupta - YouTube
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  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 22:18
Drone strike kills two in southern Yemen-officials and residents
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  Archived Version
  Source: Reuters: World News
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 22:00
  ADEN | Sat Aug 10, 2013 4:27pm EDT
  ADEN (Reuters) - Local officials and residents in Yemen's southern Lahj Province said a drone destroyed a vehicle travelling on a mountain road late on Saturday evening killing its two occupants and bringing to 15 the death toll from four strikes in three days.
  The local officials and residents said the vehicle, which was travelling between Yafe and Radfan, was believed to be carrying arms and its occupants were suspected members of al Qaeda.
  On Friday an air strike in Yemen's eastern Hadramout Province killed five suspected militants, while two strikes in Hadramout and Marib Province killed eight militants on Thursday.
  Yemen said on Wednesday it had foiled a plot by al Qaeda to seize the port of Mukalla, the capital of Hadramout and a major oil and gas export hub.
  Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the movement's local wing, has previously plotted unsuccessfully to attack international airliners and is seen in Washington as a potential threat to Yemen's neighbor Saudi Arabia and Red Sea oil tankers.
  A threat from al Qaeda last week caused the United States and Britain to evacuate staff from Yemen.
  Yemen is one of a handful of countries where Washington acknowledges using drones, but it does not publicly comment on the practice.
Revealed: Obama admin's nonsensical legal justification for bulk collection of Americans' phone records | End the Lie '' Independent News
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 21:54
  By Madison Ruppert
  Editor of End the Lie
  (Image credit: WeMeantDemocracy/Flickr)
  The Obama administration recently released a white paper which summarizes the supposed legal justification for the bulk collection of Americans' phone records. Contained therein are some thoroughly nonsensical and leave the door open for massive invasions of privacy.
  Meanwhile, it was revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) can conduct warrantless searches for the phone calls and emails of Americans and that the collection of data expands far beyond what was previously admitted to.
  The Department of Justice white paper deals with the ''Associational Tracking Program,'' operated under section 215 of the Patriot Act, codified in the U.S. Code as 50 USC § 1861.
  ''There is no direct authorization for the Associational Tracking Program in section Patriot Act section 215,'' writes Cindy Cohn, legal director and general counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
  The statute includes no authorization of the NSA's mass collection and analysis of the Americans who are neither suspects nor targeted individuals.
  Furthermore, the statute does not authorize such collection on a continuous basis or the practice of requiring records that have yet to be produced, as the court order did in requiring future records from Verizon.
  ''The plain meaning of the statute fails to reach their breathtaking and unprecedented activities and it isn't even ambiguous about it,'' Cohn writes.
  The Obama administration's legal argument then becomes quite troubling.
  On page 16 of the white paper, the Justice Department argues that they can order prospective information because ''nothing in the text of the statute suggests that FISC [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court] orders may relate only to records previously created.''
  Cohn notes that this kind of argument was addressed by Justice Antonin Scalia in the 2001 Supreme Court case, Whitman v. American Trucking.
  Congress ''does not, one might say, hide elephants in mouseholes,'' Scalia wrote.
  Yet the Justice Department apparently has no problem stretching the meaning of words, as they did when redefining ''imminent'' in an attempt to justify targeted killings.
  The Obama administration did ''some fancy legal dancing '-- stretching terms like 'tangible things' and 'relevance' beyond recognition,'' Cohn wrote.
  The administration claims that, '''relevance' is a broad standard,'' so broad in fact that they claim that it ''permits discovery of large volumes of data in circumstances where doing so is necessary to identify much smaller amounts of information within that data that directly bears on the matter being investigated.''
  As Spencker Ackerman notes, they argue that ''relevance'' can ''include the 'reasonable grounds to believe' that when all the data is collected, 'when queried and analyzed consistent with the [surveillance] Court-approved standards, will produce information pertinent to FBI investigations of international terrorism.'''
  Furthermore, ''tangible thing'' now means anything from a phone number to the length of a phone call, despite the fact that such data is not, in fact, a ''tangible thing.''
  ''There is little question that in enacting Section 215 in 2001 and then amending it in 2006, Congress understood that among the things that the FBI would need to acquire to conduct terrorism investigations were documents and records stored in electronic form,'' the document claims.
  In the document, the government argues:
  ['...] there is an exceptionally strong public interest in the prevention of terrorist attacks, and telephony metadata analysis can be an important part of achieving that objective. This interest does not merely entail ''ordinary crime-solving,'' King, 133 S. Ct. at 1982 (Scalia, J., dissenting), but rather the forward-looking prevention of the loss of life, including potentially on a catastrophic scale. Given that exceedingly important objective, and the minimal, if any, Fourth Amendment intrusion that the program entails, the program would be constitutional even if the Fourth Amendment's reasonableness standard applied.
  Mike Masnick of TechDirt pointed out that if this argument is taken to its logical conclusion, it would be quite a slippery slope, aside from the fact that ''there has yet to be any evidence presented that Section 215 did anything at all to prevent terrorism.''
  ''But, even more to the point, that justification is the justification for wiping out the entire 4th amendment. There's an exceptionally strong public interest in stopping all kind of negative activity, so why not place a video cameras and a recorder in every private room in the country?'' Masnick wrote.
  The government goes on to argue:
  Moreover, information concerning the use of Section 215 to collect telephony metadata in bulk was made available to all Members of Congress, and Congress reauthorized Section 215 without change after this information was provided. It is significant to the legal analysis of the statute that Congress was on notice of this activity and of the source of its legal authority when the statute was reauthorized.
  Yet many individuals in Congress claimed they were unaware of the extent of the program and continue to be kept in the dark despite attempting to obtain more information.
  To make matters even worse, as Masnick points out, this argument comes down to essentially claiming that ''because Congress did not explicitly tell us to stop collecting all data, we take that as implicit permission to collect all data.'' Yet if they were not actually aware of the extent of the data collected, they couldn't have specifically blocked such collection.
  Even Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), the author of the Patriot Act, has said he is ''extremely disturbed'' by the administration's distortion of the Act's intent and does ''not believe the released FISA order is consistent with the requirement of the Patriot Act.''
  ''How could the phone records of so many innocent Americans be relevant to an authorized investigation as required by the Act?'' Sensenbrenner asked.
  Suffice it to say, the white paper is riddled with problems, some of which may be addressed in future articles here at End the Lie.
  However, perhaps the most significant aspect of the release of the paper is that the government's legal rationales are finally out in the open.
  This leads Cohn to note that the EFF hopes ''to finally be able to fight this out in the place where competing interpretations of federal statutes should be decided: in the public federal courts where both sides get to argue.''
  Currently a large, diverse coalition of groups is suing the NSA to challenge the Associational Tracking Program and the Jewel v. NSA case is still pending, as it has been since 2008.
  I'd love to hear your opinion, take a look at your story tips and even your original writing if you would like to get it published. I am also available for interviews on radio, television or any other format. Please email me at [email protected]
  Please support alternative news and help us start paying contributors by donating, doing your shopping through our Amazon link or check out some must-have products at our store.
  Help Spread Alternative News
EconomicPolicyJournal.com: This Week in TSA Drama
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  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 21:50
  Baghdad TSA Bob reports in:An anomaly was detected in a checked bag at St. Thomas (STT). After inspecting the bag, 2.2 kilograms of cocaine were discovered concealed inside candles. We're not looking for drugs, but powder inside what should be a solid wax candle does call for additional scrutiny. This is just another example of how our technology can spot anomalies and keep the flying public safe.
  A shot gun was discovered in a checked golf bag in Detroit (DTW)
Two killed in Yemen 'drone strike'
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  Archived Version
  Source: BBC News - Middle East
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 21:44
  10 August 2013Last updated at17:14 ETTwo militants have been killed in a suspected US drone strike in southern Yemen, officials and witnesses say.
  Two other militants were reportedly wounded when the vehicle in which they were travelling was destroyed near al-Askariya in Lahij province.
  Local officials said the targets were believed to have been members of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).
  It is thought to have been the ninth US drone strike in Yemen since 27 July. They have left 38 militants dead.
  Five were killed in a strike in the eastern province of Hadramawt on Friday, while two strikes in Hadramawt and Marib on Thursday killed eight.
  The US acknowledges using drones in Yemen, but does not comment on individual strikes.
  The US embassy in Yemen has been closed for the past week because of "ongoing concerns" about possible attacks by AQAP. Eighteen other US missions in the Middle East and North Africa will reopen on Sunday.
  On Wednesday, the Yemeni authorities said they had foiled a AQAP plot to seize major oil and gas terminals and blow up pipelines.
We need Big Tech to protect us from Big Brother | Jeff Jarvis | Comment is free | theguardian.com
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  Archived Version
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 21:37
  Technology companies: now is the moment when you must answer for us, your users, whether you are collaborators in the US government's efforts to "collect it all" '' our every move on the internet '' or whether you, too, are victims of its overreach.
  Every company named in Edward Snowden's revelations has said that it must comply with government demands, including requirements to keep secret court orders secret. True enough. But there's only so long they can hide behind that cloak before making it clear whether they are resisting government's demands or aiding in them. And now, the time has come to go farther: to use both technology and political capital to actively protect the public's privacy. Who will do that?
  We now know, thanks to Snowden, of at least three tiers of technology companies enmeshed in the NSA's hoovering of our net activity (we don't yet know whether the NSA has co-opted companies from the financial, retail, data services, and other industries):
  (1) Internet platforms that provide services directly to consumers, allowing government to demand access to signals about us: Google with search, mail, calendars, maps; Facebook with connections; Skype with conversations, and so on.
  In its first Prism reporting, the Washington Post apparently unfairly fingered nine of these companies, accusing the NSA and FBI of "tapping directly into the central servers" that hold our "chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, and connection logs". Quickly, the companies repudiated that claim and sought the right to report at least how many secret demands are made. But there's more they can and should do.
  (2) Communications brands with consumer relationships that hand over metadata and/or open taps on internet traffic for collection by the NSA and Britain's GCHQ, creating vast databases that can then be searched via XKeyscore. Verizon leads that list, and we know from the S¼ddeutsche Zeitung that it also includes BT and Vodafone.
  (3) Bandwidth providers that enable the NSA and its international partners to snoop on the net, wholesale. The S¼ddeutsche lists the three telco brands above in addition to Level 3, Global Crossing, Viatel, and Interroute. Eric King, head of research for Privacy International, asked in the Guardian: "Were the companies strong-armed, or are they voluntary intercept partners?"
  The bulk data carriers have no consumer brands or relationships and thus are probably the least likely to feel commercial pressure to protect the rights of the users at the edge. The telephone companies should care more but they operate as oligopolies with monopoly attitudes and rarely exhibit consumer empathy (which is a nice way of saying their business models are built on customer imprisonment).
  A hodgepodge alliance of US legislators is finally waking up to the need and opportunity to stand up for citizens' rights, but they will be slow and, don't we know, ineffective and often uninformed. The courts will be slower and jealous of their power. Diplomacy's the slowest route to reform yet, dealing in meaningless symbolism.
  So our strongest expectations must turn to the first tier above, the consumer internet platforms. They have the most to lose '' in trust and thus value '' in taking government's side against us.
  At the Guardian Activate conference in London last month, I asked Vint Cerf, an architect of the net and evangelist for Google, about encrypting our communication as a defense against NSA spying. He suggested that communication should be encrypted into and out of internet companies' servers (thwarting, or so we'd hope, the eavesdropping on the net's every bit over telcos' fibre) '' but should be decrypted inside the companies' servers so they could bring us added value based on the content: a boarding pass on our phone, a reminder from our calendar, an alert about a story we're following (not to mention a targeted ad).
  Now, there are reports that Google is looking at encrypting at least documents stored in Google Drive. That is wise in any case, as often, these can contain users' sensitive company and personal information. I now think Google et al need to go farther and make encryption an option on any information. I don't want encryption to be the default because, in truth, most of my digital life is banal and I'd like to keep getting those handy calendar reminders. But technology companies need to put the option and power of data security directly into users' hands.
  That also means that the technology companies have to reach out and work with each other to enable encryption and other protections across their services. I learned the hard way how difficult it is to get simple answers to questions about how to encrypt email. The industry should work hard to make that an option on every popular service.
  But let's be clear that encryption is not the solution, probably only a speed bump to the NSA's omnivorous ingesting. At the Activate conference, Cerf was asked whether the solution in the end will be technical or institutional. No doubt, institutional, he answered. That means that companies and government agencies must operate under stated principles and clear laws with open oversight.
  Before Snowden's leaks, technology CEOs would have had to balance co-operation and resistance, just as the nation supposedly balances security and privacy. But now, the tide of public opinion has clearly shifted '' at least for now '' and so this is the moment to grab control of the issue.
  If they do not assert that clear control, these technology companies risk losing business '' not only from skittish consumers, but also from corporate and foreign-government clients. The Cloud Security Alliance polled companies and found that 10% had canceled US cloud business and 56% were less likely to do business with US providers. "If businesses or governments think they might be spied on," said European Commission Vice President Neelie Kroes, "they will have less reason to trust the cloud, and it will be cloud providers who ultimately miss out."
  Besides taking action to secure technology and oversight within their companies and the industry, right-thinking technology companies also need to band together to use their political capital to lobby governments across the world to protect the rights of users and the freedom and sanctity of privacy and speech on the net. They must take bold and open stands.
  To do that, they must first decide on the principles they should protect. In my book Public Parts, I proposed some principles to discuss, among them:
  ' the idea that if any bit on the net is stopped or detoured '' or spied upon '' then no bit and the net itself cannot be presumed to be free;
  ' that the net must remain open and distributed, commandeered and corrupted by no government;
  ' that citizens have a right to speak, assemble, and act online and thus have a right to connect without fear;
  ' that privacy is an ethic of knowing someone else's information and coming by it openly;
  ' and that government must become transparent by default and secret by necessity (there are necessary secrets). Edward Snowden has shown us all too clearly that the opposite is now true.
  I also believe that we must see a discussion of principles and ethics from the technologists inside these companies. One reason I have given Google the benefit of the doubt '' besides being an admirer '' is that I believe the engineers I know inside Google would not stay if they saw it violating their ethics, even if under government order.
  Yonathan Zunger, the chief architect of Google+, said this after the Guardian's and Glenn Greenwald's first revelations were published:
  I can tell you that it is a point of pride, both for the company and for many of us, personally, that we stand up to governments that demand people's information '... I can categorically state that nothing resembling the mass surveillance of individuals by governments within our systems has ever crossed my plate. If it had, even if I couldn't talk about it, in all likelihood I would no longer be working at Google.
  In the end, it's neither technologies nor institutions that will secure us from the inexorable overreach of government curiosity in the face of technical capability. Responsibility for oversight and correction begins with individuals, whether whistleblowers or renegade politicians or employees of conscience who finally remind those in power:
  Don't be evil.
Apple's Tim Cook, tech executives meet with Barack Obama to talk surveillance - Tony Romm - POLITICO.com
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  Archived Version
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 21:27
  The White House has declined to provide details about its new outreach. | AP Photo
  ClosePresident Barack Obama hosted Apple CEO Tim Cook, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson, Google computer scientist Vint Cerf and other tech executives and civil liberties leaders on Thursday for a closed-door meeting about government surveillance, sources tell POLITICO.
  The session, which Obama attended himself, followed a similar gathering earlier this week between top administration officials, tech-industry lobbyists and leading privacy hawks, the sources said. Those earlier, off-the-record discussions centered on the controversy surrounding the NSA as well as commercial privacy issues such as online tracking of consumers.
  Continue Reading
  The White House has declined to provide any details about its new outreach since the beginning of the week. A spokesman didn't comment Thursday about the high-level meeting with the president '-- and the companies and groups invited also kept quiet when contacted by POLITICO.
  (PHOTOS: Pols, pundits weigh in on NSA report)
  Obama has promised more public debate about the country's counterterrorism policies and privacy safeguards amid a deluge of criticism about the NSA's controversial surveillance programs. As the steady stream of revelations continues, however, the White House has chosen to meet quietly with tech executives and consumer groups behind closed doors.
  The administration's outreach began Tuesday, when chief of staff Denis McDonough and general counsel Kathy Ruemmler convened a privacy-focused huddle in the Roosevelt Room. Joining them were representatives from the Information Technology Industry Council, TechNet and TechAmerica, which together represent a diverse swath of the tech industry '-- from major defense contractors to companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic Privacy Information Center were also present, sources said.
  While the White House at the time declined to comment, one administration aide, speaking to POLITICO ahead of the Tuesday session, portrayed it as part of a larger campaign.
  (WATCH: Obama defends NSA surveillance)
  ''This is one of a number of discussions the administration is having with experts and stakeholders in response to the president's directive to have a national dialogue about how to best protect privacy in a digital era, including how to respect privacy while defending our national security,'' the official said.
  The second meeting Thursday, however, was organized with greater secrecy.
  Those invited were mostly senior executives, including Cook, Stephenson and Cerf, as well as representatives of groups like the Center for Democracy and Technology and Gigi Sohn, the leader of Public Knowledge, according to three sources familiar with the meeting. Each declined comment for this story.
  As the White House consulted with industry, though, some members of Congress continued their push for legislation adding new checks to federal surveillance programs.
  (WATCH: Obama: 'Nobody is listening to your telephone calls')
  ''Trust and credibility depend on the appearance of fairness and accountability. My fear is that some of those agencies and institutions are in peril of losing it,'' said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) during a speech Thursday at Harvard Law School.
  The senator is sponsoring a bill that would create a new, adversarial public-interest defender before the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which approves government requests to companies for user data. And Blumenthal also seeks to redo the FISC judge selection process to get more diverse voices on its bench.
  ''The purpose of the debate is to make sure we have both liberty and security,'' he said.
  Michelle Quinn contributed to this report.
Obama Admin Unveils Spying Justification - BlackListedNews.com
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  Archived Version
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 20:58
  ''The way the government is interpreting relevance, anything and everything they say is relevant becomes relevant.''
  The Obama administration on Friday released a white paper in an apparent attempt to justify the National Security Agency's dragnet surveillance of Americans.
  Sign seen at a Restore the Fourth protest. (Photo: Steve Rhodes/cc/flickr) The release came the same day Obama admitted at a press conference that NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden "triggered a much more rapid" dialgue on the agency's spying programs.
  One section of the NSA paper explains that the agency "touches" 1.6% of Internet traffic per day:
  The paper also outlines the agency's justification of its bulk collection of Americans' "telephony metadata" as the Associational Tracking Program under section 215 of the Patriot Act.
  However, as Cindy Cohen of the Electronic Frontier Foundationpoints out,
  There is no direct authorization for the Associational Tracking Program in section Patriot Act section 215.
  Nowhere does the statute say that the NSA may conduct bulk collection and analysis of the phone records of nonsuspect, nontargeted Americans on an ongoing basis, including requiring the production of records that haven't even been produced yet.
  The Guardian's Spencer Ackerman explained further on the Associational Tracking Program, which "authorizes the government to acquire 'tangible things' that are 'relevant' to an investigation":
  Since the Guardian disclosed the existence of the bulk phone records program, thanks to the ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden, legal scholars have puzzled over how the phone numbers dialed, lengths of calls and times of calls of millions of Americans unsuspected of terrorism or espionage meet that standard.
  Cohen adds that
  any analysis of the government's legalistic parsing of the legislative language has to start with the fact that, to believe the government, you have to believe that Congress intended to allow NSA to collect of all of the phone records of all Americans by hiding it in, at best, extremely strained interpretations of the statute that otherwise simply does not authorize bulk collection.
  Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said, ''The way the government is interpreting relevance, anything and everything they say is relevant becomes relevant.''
  >>
Bloomberg's at it Again: Electronic Cigarettes in the Crosshairs
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  Archived Version
  Source: Activist Post
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 20:46
  Paul LawranceActivist PostNewly drafted tobacco bills leaked by the Consumer Advocates for Smoke-free Alternatives Association (CASAA) reveal NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to wage war on electronic cigarettes.
  If the ordinances were to be executed, the display of smokeless tobacco and e-cigarettes would be prohibited in retail stores and would require 21 years of age to acquire.
  The bills, which were drafted by the Health Department at the request of Mayor Bloomberg, define electronic cigarettes, their parts and accessories as tobacco products.
  Tobacco and menthol flavored e-cigarettes would still be available in retail stores, while all other flavors must be sold at age-restricted tobacco bars.
  Since Dec. 31, 2001 NYC law has prohibited any new tobacco bars from operating.
  Read the CASAA leaks here
  Michael Bloomberg relentlessly continues his nannying by attempting to executively rule over the behaviors of NYC businesses and consumers.Bloomberg's attempt to prohibit the sale and consumption of large sugary soft-drinks recently was shot down by a state appeals court.
  Even though the court found Bloomberg's effort to ban large soft drinks in NYC unconstitutional, the state is still pushing for the law's passage.
  Nanny Mike has vowed to decided what is best for other people through the use of force his position as mayor illegitimately grants him until he is replaced as mayor at the end of the year.
  Paul Lawrance writes for Eyes Open Report where this first appeared.
  BE THE CHANGE! PLEASE SHARE THIS USING THE TOOLS BELOW
Kid Rock's gamble on cheap tickets wakes up concert industry | Detroit Free Press | freep.com
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  Archived Version
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 20:36
  When Kid Rock unveiled his $20 ticket innovation in the spring, he didn't mince words: He was out to rock the concert industry.
  Ticket prices had gotten out of hand, the Detroit star said. Fans were disgruntled. Pitting himself against the ''highway robbery'' of $200-plus tickets for acts such as Jay Z and Justin Bieber, Rock declared himself a music-biz revolutionary: For his 40-date summer tour, seats in every section would be $20. Beers would be $4. Tickets purchased at Walmart would have no extra fees.
  As Rock hits DTE Energy Music Theatre Friday night to begin an eight-show stand '-- a record run boosted by the cheap tickets '-- it's clear his summer adventure has the close attention of an industry looking for lessons.
  ''That's what has been missing in the modern concert business, at the top level, anyway '-- the ability to experiment,'' said Gary Bongiovanni, editor of the trade magazine Pollstar.
  Rock's camp, meantime, is already proclaiming it a grand slam. In most markets, his show attendance is up substantially from 2011, in some cases threefold, said Rock's manager, Lee Trink. The remaining six weeks of shows, with opener ZZ Top, are nearly sold out.
  '– Related:Kid Rock's Badass Beer making comeback
  The week after the DTE stand wraps up on Aug. 20, Rock expects to play to 28,000 in Chicago, where he drew 15,000 two summers ago.
  It all stems from a novel deal with promoter Live Nation, quietly hatched by Rock last year. Rather than operate with a traditional guarantee '-- a set fee for the artist '-- Rock and Live Nation would split revenues from ticket sales, concessions, merchandise and other ancillary revenue. Success would hinge on getting more bodies through the turnstiles.
  Also crucial would be sales of about 1,000 quality seats for each show via Live Nation's Platinum Ticket system, where prices shift in real time based on demand. Many have ranged from $100-$200.
  A concert's financial risk is usually entirely on a promoter's shoulders. Here, Rock would be putting his own neck on the line. This was uncharted territory. In interviews ahead of the tour, he said he risked a pay cut of up to $100,000 per night.
  ''Somebody's got to try it,'' Rock told CNN's Piers Morgan in April. ''I'm in a position where I can.''
  Trink said the scheme faced skepticism from many industry peers: ''Nice, cute idea you've got there, but you guys can't make any money with this.''
  That tune changed as the tour unfolded, said Trink, who expects Rock's take to be ultimately ''in the same financial ballpark'' as previous tours '-- with the bonus of an expanded audience.
  Trink said he's aware of at least one ''significant artist at the top of their game'' in negotiations for a similar deal. (A Live Nation corporate spokeswoman declined to comment.)
  Fan-friendly experienceRock is bucking price trends. In the first six months of 2013, the average ticket price for North America's top 100 tours was $70.91, according to Pollstar's midyear report '-- up 14.1% from the same period last year.
  That was enough to push total revenue for the top 100 tours to a record $1.24 billion, despite a nearly 6% decline in ticket sales.
  Agents, promoters and analysts interviewed by the Free Press said Rock's model can't necessarily be replicated by every artist. But they said it reflects a bigger rethink under way in the industry, as some acts try to nurture a more fan-friendly experience, including anti-scalping measures and innovations like Mumford & Sons' invite-only ticket sales.
  ''The real lesson the industry can draw from this is thinking in creative ways about the needs of artists and fans, and how we meet those needs in a way that strengthens the connection,'' said Fielding Logan of the artist management firm Q Prime, where he oversees the careers of the Black Keys and Eric Church. ''I don't know if you'll see others do this exactly '-- $20 tickets, $4 beer, Walmart-no-surcharges '-- but the lesson is about ways to strengthen the fan bond and extend an artist's career. That should be the takeaway.''
  With the advocacy group Fans First Coalition, Logan is a vocal proponent of paperless ticketing, designed to thwart scalping and the higher resale prices that often result. Several thousand seats at each Kid Rock show are paperless, requiring those concertgoers to show a credit card for entry. When country star Church went paperless, Logan said, fans overwhelmingly supported the move.
  ''That's the thing: If Kid Rock is winning, it's because he's looking out for fans,'' Logan said. ''Clearly, he has a large blue-collar fan base, salt of the earth. Twenty dollars really speaks to them.''
  Bon Jovi manager Paul Korzilius applauded Kid Rock's gamble: ''This is a very entrepreneurial business. You either do it yourself, or it's not going to happen.''
  Bon Jovi has added a $19.50 ticket to its own array of price options.
  ''It's about great pricing, accessibility, growing your fan base. Slowly but surely over the years, our pricing strategy became more refined,'' Korzilius said. ''What we found is we're getting people into the show who used to be priced out, who wanted to come but couldn't. It's good for the fans, and it's good for future business.''
  That points toward another big-picture benefit for 42-year-old Rock: shoring up his audience at an age when many rock acts struggle to stay relevant.
  With inexpensive tickets to draw new fans '-- or coax old ones back into the fold '-- Rock can pitch his wares and try snaring them for the long haul. This summer's tour may amount to what retailers call a loss-leader '-- discounted merchandise that lures customers through the door in hopes they'll stick around.
  ''Present a value, and you'll make fans for life. I think that's what Kid Rock has very savvily done in the middle of his career, maybe past the middle of his career: get some fans to re-up and recommit to him,'' Q Prime's Logan said.
  ''We know that with the strength of his show, once you get them in the room, you'll have them as a fan,'' Trink said.
  The $20 price convinced Birmingham's Nicole Akemann. Wednesday will be her first-ever Kid Rock concert, and one of the few shows she's attended in years.
  ''I'm not paying these crazy ticket prices anymore,'' she said. ''When we heard Kid Rock was doing a $20 concert, we were like, 'Well, yeah!' ''
  Trink concedes that the Kid Rock camp has learned some lessons along the way. Kool & the Gang may have been an ill-fitting opener for the tour's first half, he said. (Another unnamed act had been initially slotted as opener.) Folding parking fees into the ticket price turned into a red-tape headache in some cities. And if Rock sticks with this model, the price point may not always be $20, which was chosen this year ''to throw down the gauntlet and almost shock sensibilities,'' Trink said.
  But for now the mood is decidedly upbeat as Rock preps for his eight-show DTE home stand, which Trink said would have grown to 10 or more shows if the venue's event calendar had the room.
  Longtime Kid Rock associates weren't surprised to see him roll the dice.
  ''When I first heard about it, I thought it was a concept that was completely unprecedented,'' said Joe Nieporte, who operates Freedom Hill Amphitheatre and booked some of Rock's hometown shows in the 1990s. ''And it didn't surprise me it was Kid Rock that came up with it. He's a pretty smart cookie.''
Ten Years And Counting: Where's The Global Warming? - Forbes
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  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 20:35
  Log in with your social account:Or, you can log in or sign up using Forbes.New PostsMost PopularWhat 20-Year-Olds Don't GetListsAmerica's Top CollegesVideoDigital CarjackersINTRODUCING: The Forbes Wine Club ... get your tasting kit today!Help|Connect
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Putin's Lone Walk After Coach's Funeral - Business Insider
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  Archived Version
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 20:34
  Russian President Vladimir Putin is known for his rugged spirit and unflinching exterior.
  But he was so overcome following the funeral of his personal judo coach Anatoly Rachlin that he forcefully pushed past his car and security and went for a lone walk, reports Russia Today.
  The tension is palpable as he tells his security to give him space.
  Even though it is undoubtedly staged to an extent, like most of Putin's public outings, this manufactured moment is still imbued with the feeling of losing a teacher.
  This is what it looks like when a former KGB colonel grieves for a lost friend.
  Watch:
Did a Whistleblower Stop a False Flag Terror Attack in Austin? : Conscious Life News
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 18:41
  Aaron Dykes and Melissa MeltonActivist Post
  A memo warning law enforcement of a possible terror attack at specific locales was officially sent out '' but without authorization.
  KXAN reported that the threat advisory warning law enforcement of a possible terror attack in Austin was 'sent out by mistake,' claiming that ''someone released an official memo that they shouldn't have, and that has caused fresh worries.''
  Yeah, ''worries'' that only lend credibility to the suspicion that an inside-system terrorist attack may have been planned for Austin, Texas, but has now been brought to the public's attention '' possibly by a whistleblower who leaked the Homeland Security warning without authorization.
  While the threat advisory was reportedly sent to law enforcement without official permission, it was, nevertheless, verified as authentic and based upon an actual Homeland Security warning.
  Was this individual acting out of conscience as a whistleblower to alert law enforcement officials, the media and the public to the fact that a ''real'' terror alert had been issued by Homeland Security for several specific locations ON THE SAME DATES that Homeland Security began conducting a multi-level joint-force terrorism drill in Austin?
  The unauthorized memo was issued by the J3 Protection Branch of the Texas Military Services. We attempted to speak with both of the points of contact listed at the bottom of the threat advisory. The first, LTC Rob Eason, AT Officer, left a voicemail greeting stating that he was out 'in the field', while the second contact, CW2 Steven Johnston, Threat Analyst, supposedly does not work for Texas Military Services at all, according to an unidentified spokesperson there. The number to contact this individual, listed in the release, is furthermore supposedly an ''unmanned phone'' not tied to any specific individual at the military installation.
  UPDATE: Austin Terror Threat Confirmed, Why Wasn't the Public Warned?http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QujpOM_ZGgA
  While the public has not been warned of an impending terror threat, the Texas Department of Public Safety did issue a press release on August 7 with information about drills it would be conducting in Austin during that same time period: ''Multiple Law Enforcement Agencies to Conduct Homeland Security Exercise in Austin.''
  ''The public should not be alarmed if they observe unordinary law enforcement or first responder activity over the next few weeks in the Austin area,'' said DPS Director Steven McCraw, who also serves as the Texas Homeland Security Director.
  ' Nearly every alleged terrorist plot since 9/11 on American soil has been ADMITTEDLY provoked by the FBI '' that is set-up cases where informants prodded suspected extremists into accepting cash, weapons and/or explosives only to be ''caught'' and stopped after being goaded into attack.
  RT: FBI organizes almost all terror plots in the US
  FBI Aids Terrorist Death Ray Plot to Foil Terrorist Death Ray Plot
  We must wake up, grow up and face the fact that honest law enforcement and counter-terrorism officials have been repeatedly infiltrated from INSIDE THE GOVERNMENT. The terrorism is being staged by the government. Period.
  ' Numerous security drills were taking place on 9/11, which reportedly confused or slowed the real response to real terrorism and gave any malicious actors inside the government cover and plausible deniability.
  http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-military-drills-of-september-11th-why-a-new-investigation-is-needed/6906
  ' During the 7/7 bombings in London, anti-terror drills nearly identical to the real attack took place in the underground at the same time, led by Peter Power of Visor Consultants.
  http://www.globalresearch.ca/was-there-advanced-knowledge-of-the-7-7-london-bomb-attacks/31748
  ' Similarly, a Homeland Security-led Urban Shield exercise was taking place DURING the Boston Marathon bombing AT THE FINISH LINE!
  Emergency response officials from the Boston Mayor's office were photographed arriving on scene less than 1 minute after the first bombing '' they were there!
  Truthstream Media Analyzes Evidence of Drill at Boston Marathon Bombing
  VIDEO '' Boston Terror: Precursor to an Attack on Our Rights
  Austin may have had a close call '' we'll never know exactly how close '' and we can ponder whether a patriotic individual brought this to light to expose and halt it. With cautious relief, we can go on, like someone who changed their plans at the last minute before driving down a road where some horrible pile-up crash happened just a short time later they may have been killed in, but instead avoided.
  According to the Homeland Security threat advisory, a back-up date of August 29 was set in the event that August 8-9 was 'not a viable option' for an attack.
  Aaron and Melissa created TruthstreamMedia.com, where this first appeared, as an outlet to examine the news, place it in a broader context, uncover the deceptions, pierce through the fabric of illusions, grasp the underlying factors, know the real enemy, unshackle from the system, and begin to imagine the path towards taking back our lives, one step at a time, so that one day we might truly be free'...
  Tags:Austin false flag event, Austin terror alert, Austin terrorism drill, featured
Europe's Crowned Bloodsuckers: Sport, the gay question and cultural imperialism - English pravda.ru
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  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 18:29
  Sport, the gay question and cultural imperialism - English pravda.ruIt comes as no surprise that certain quarters in the west suggest boycotting the Russian Winter Olympics in Sochi in retaliation against what they perceive as an unjust policy against the LGBT community by the Russian authorities. Where were these people when NATO was strafing civilian targets in Libya and are not Russian laws for Russians?The first point is to get things straight regarding the legal framework covering all citizens in Russia. The age of consent in Russia is 16 years of age, regardless of sexual orientation; transsexuals and transgender persons are allowed to change their legal gender, homosexuality is not regarded as a mental illness and it is not a criminal offence under Russian law; single persons can adopt children whatever their sexual orientation, while homosexuals can serve in the armed forces without any type of restriction.Secondly, let us examine the law in question that was passed recently by 436 votes in favour and zero against with one abstention by Russia's DUMA, or Parliament: it is a law which bans the propagation of non-traditional sexual activities among minors. In other words, it is a law which prohibits the distribution or dissemination of homosexual acts, among children.So, suppose those who are making this bru-ha-ha about the Winter Olympics and are talking of boycotting them, considered how they would feel if someone showed graphic images of same-gender sexual activities to their children? One can only consider that they would stand back and applaud?Print version Font Size Send to friend The third point in question here is that of cultural values and respect for these in context. Russian society today stands solidly behind traditional family values, and as a rule Russian society today does not understand, or condone, same-sex marriage or unions. Period. It is not for the west to complain about it, any more than it is up to the average Russian citizen to launch a campaign against London because it is still illegal today to run or sing in the Burlingdon Arcade between Piccadilly and Cork Street.If an Afghan woman wishes to use the burqah to reveal herself only to her husband, it is a cultural question, as it is also a cultural question that western girls do not dress up in mini-skirts and hot pants and cavort around inside Mosques in Saudi Arabia, neither do people kiss in public and it is generally accepted that in Cathedrals in Italy women cover up a bit.If a man or woman enter a synagogue they are supposed to cover their heads as a sign of respect, at western dinner tables one does not belch loudly or say "shabash" (be joyful) to show that one has enjoyed the meal, but in northern India it is a compliment to the chef. Many African societies do not condone gay Anglican bishops but this is considered acceptable in some communities in the UK and North America.After five hundred years of intrusion, colonialism and imperialism, sticking their noses into other societies' business, spreading their own morals and morality across the globe, imposing it in a top-down, arrogant, murderous and chauvinistic attitude, complete with massacres, the west just cannot mind its own business, leave people alone and accept that things do not have to be the same the world over.So whatever a person's own position regarding the LGBT community, however a person feels about the transgender, lesbian, gay or bisexual persons in society and whether or not one interacts personally with these people in one's social life, or networks with others trying to defend their rights, the fact of the matter is that the LGBT community are not discriminated against under Russian federal law, which merely reflects the stance of Russian society in not recognizing same-sex unions and strives to protect minors from exposure to unnecessary images at a tender age.Suppose the campaigners stopped the hysteria, dropped the hype and took a stand against NATO's illegal wars, its support for terrorists in Libya and Syria, its intrusion into the internal affairs of sovereign states, its wanton acts of mass murder, strafing civilians with military hardware, targeting civilian structures with the same? Suppose they started criticizing the arming of rogue elements on NATO's own lists of proscribed terrorist groups, the transportation of al-Qaeda murderers to Syria, its detention of persons without due legal process in its torture and concentration camps, its practice of urinating in food, setting dogs on people, forcing Moslems to eat pork, ridiculing their sexual organs, and sodomising them.If NATO or the citizens in its member states want Russians to start behaving in the same way, it is not going to happen. What was that about casting the first stone?
  Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
  Pravda.Ru
aangirfan: FRY, SPIES AND GAY RUSSIA
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 18:26
  Stephen Fry, the famous Jewish TV personality and author, wants a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Russia because of Russia's alleged homophobia.Fry knows a lot about the security services and has written a novel on the subject - The Stars' Tennis Balls.Was Fry recruited by the spooks while he was in prison for fraud?
  Fry is wrong about Russia."The age of consent in Russia is 16 years of age, regardless of sexual orientation.""Transsexuals and transgender persons are allowed to change their legal gender."Homosexuality is not regarded as a mental illness and it is not a criminal offence under Russian law."Single persons can adopt children whatever their sexual orientation, while homosexuals can serve in the armed forces without any type of restriction."Pioneers by Deineka. Deineka.info"Secondly, let us examine the law in question that was passed recently by 436 votes in favour and zero against with one abstention by Russia's DUMA, or Parliament: it is a law which bans the propagation of non-traditional sexual activities among minors.
  "In other words, it is a law which prohibits the distribution or dissemination of homosexual acts, among children..."Suppose the campaigners stopped the hysteria, dropped the hype and took a stand against NATO's illegal wars, its support for terrorists in Libya and Syria, its intrusion into the internal affairs of sovereign states, its wanton acts of mass murder, strafing civilians with military hardware, targeting civilian structures with the same?"Suppose they started criticizing the arming of rogue elements on NATO's own lists of proscribed terrorist groups,the transportation of al-Qaeda murderers to Syria, its detention of persons without due legal process in its torture and concentration camps, its practice of urinating in food, setting dogs on people, forcing Moslems to eat pork, ridiculing their sexual organs, and sodomising them."If NATO or the citizens in its member states want Russians to start behaving in the same way, it is not going to happen. What was that about casting the first stone?"
'–¶ 1. Introduction to HSMM-MESH or Broadband-Hamnet - YouTube
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  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 14:30
Obama's former adviser ridicules statement that NSA doesn't spy on Americans
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  Source: RT - USA
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 16:29
  United States President Barack Obama insists his government isn't in the business of domestic surveillance, but one of his former advisers says that's contrary to the truth.
  "Everybody knows I love this president, but this is ridiculous," former-Special Adviser for Green Jobs Van Jones said Wednesday on CNN. "First of all, we do have a domestic spying program, and what we need to be able to do is figure out how to balance these things, not pretend like there's no balancing to be done.''
  The remark made by Jones, who currently serves as a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, directly contrasts with comments Obama made earlier in the week to late night talk show host Jay Leno.
  ''We don't have a domestic spying program,'' Obama told Leno during a Tuesday night interview. "What we do have are some mechanisms where we can track a phone number or an email address that we know is connected to some sort of terrorist threat."
  Speaking to CNN's Jake Tapper, Jones jabbed the president's remarks while also assaulting the commander-in-chief's record with regards to charging intelligence leakers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden with espionage.
  Despite campaigning on a platform of utmost transparency, Obama and his administration have so far charged more leakers with espionage than all previous presidents combined twice over. Speaking to CNN, Jones challenged the president's past behavior towards whistleblowers and suggested that Snowden, the 30-year-old leaker of classified National Security Agency documents, stands little chance of a fair trial in America.''But much more important, he said something else that I thought that was really awful,'' Jones continued. He said that if somebody like Snowden wanted to be a whistleblower, they could have gone ahead.
  ''Well, hold on a second, sir. That is '-- you are right now prosecuting more whistleblowers '' not only than any American president, than every American president combined! So you can't then come out on Leno and yuck it up and say, 'Well, whistleblowers, come on out and we'll treat you right.' because you haven't been doing that.''
  Last week, Russia approved Snowden's request for asylum by allowing him a one-year stay overseas as charges of spying loom stateside. Meanwhile, days earlier a military judge convicted Army Private First Class Bradley Manning with multiple counts of espionage for his role in sharing classified material with the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. Manning's court-martial is currently in its sentencing phase and could end with Col. Denise Lind sending him to prison for a maximum of 90 years.
LinkTrackr.com - Knowledgebase - Why Was My PayPal Subscription Canceled?
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  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 13:09
  If your PayPal subscription was cancelled, and you're sure you didn't do it, this is what probably happened:
  Your credit card expired - If your credit card is due to expire in the next few months, PayPal will automatically terminate all your current subscriptionsYou deleted / changed a credit card - If you deleted a credit card from your PayPal account, or changed the number, PayPal automatically cancels all your current subscriptions.You changed your bank details - If you removed / changed a bank account, your active subscriptions are also automatically canceled. Your PayPal account status is "Limited Access" - If PayPal limits your access, all subscriptions are automatically cancelled.That's how PayPal works.
  You can easily create a new subscription by logging into your account. Then click on Invoices and you shoud be able to see your outstanding invoices. When making a payment for an invoice, you can create a new subscription easily.
"Medical Marijuana Is A REAL MEDICINE! That Can Do Things Other Medicines Don't!" Sanjay Gupta
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  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 13:07
Some Samsung imports banned in US patent case
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  Source: Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 12:55
  Some Samsung imports banned in US patent caseJavascript is currently disabled in your web browser. For full site functionality, it is necessary to enable Javascript. In order to enable it, please see these instructions.2 hours agoThe US International Trade Commission has blocked imports of some Samsung electronic devices, backing complaints by Apple that the South Korean company violated its patents. The ruling was the latest in a long-running global legal battle over alleged patent infringement between the two smartphone and tablet giants.
  The US International Trade Commission blocked imports of some older model Samsung mobile devices following complaints by Apple that the South Korean company had violated its patents.
  The ruling by the Washington-based trade body was the latest in a long-running and bitter global battle over alleged patent infringement between the two smartphone and tablet computer giants.
  The ITC ruled that Samsung had infringed two Apple patents'--numbers 949 and 501, dealing with touchscreen actions and headphone jack plug-ins'--but cleared the South Korean company of charges that it had violated four more.
  Apple welcomed the ITC ruling while Samsung expressed its disappointment.
  "With today's decision, the ITC has joined courts around the world in Japan, Korea, Germany, Netherlands and California by standing up for innovation and rejecting Samsung's blatant copying of Apple's products," Apple said in a statement.
  "Protecting real innovation is what the patent system should be about," it said.
  Spokesman Adam Yates said Samsung is "disappointed that the ITC has issued an exclusion order based on two of Apple's patents."
  "However, Apple has been stopped from trying to use its overbroad design patents to achieve a monopoly on rectangles and rounded corners," Yates said, referring to design features at issue in rejected patent claims.
  "The proper focus for the smartphone industry is not a global war in the courts, but fair competition in the marketplace.
  "Samsung will continue to launch many innovative products and we have already taken measures to ensure that all our products will continue to be available in the United States," the Samsung spokesman said.
  The US International Trade Commission ruled that Samsung had infringed two Apple patents'--numbers 949 and 501, dealing with touchscreen actions and headphone jack plug-ins'--but cleared the South Korean company of charges that it had violated four more.
  It was unclear precisely which devices would be targeted in the ban, but it was aimed at early model smartphones and tablets that are no longer hot products in the United States.
  "It really doesn't mean that much," independent Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle said of the ITC ruling.
  "It is not the new stuff they are talking about, but the older devices that are more likely to be shipped to emerging markets than here."
  The import block is subject to a review by the White House and Samsung will be allowed to continue to sell the items at issue during the two-month review period.
  The ITC ruling raised the question of whether US President Barack Obama's administration will once again intervene in a patent fight playing out between the companies at the agency.
  Less than a week ago, the US Trade Representative overturned an ITC ruling in a patent suit brought by Samsung against Apple that would have banned the sale of certain iPads and iPhones in the United States.
  It was the first time the USTR has overruled the commission since 1987, and South Korea's trade ministry made its feelings clear at the time.
  Legal analysts point out that a critical difference in the cases is that the USTR intervened regarding patents deemed "standards essential," indicating that the technology involved was needed to comply with industry standards.
  An Apple iPhone 4s (L) and a Samsung's Galaxy S3 are shown at a mobile phone shop in Seoul on August 27, 2012. Samsung has taken pains to modify smartphone and tablet designs to avoid attacks over Apple patents.
  "Our ministry expresses concern about negative impacts the decision by the USTR will have on protecting patents held by Samsung," the company said in a statement at the time.
  The ITC ruling also opens a door for Apple to try to use the same patent violation claim against newer Samsung gadgets that have incorporated the same technology.
  Samsung has taken pains to modify smartphone and tablet designs to avoid attacks over Apple patents.
  "I don't think this decision will reverberate much through Samsung's product line," Enderle said.
  In a separate battle in US federal court, Samsung was ordered last August to pay more than $1 billion for patent infringement, a ruling which also opens the door to a ban on some Samsung devices.
  A judge later slashed the award to $598.9 million. Apple continues its quest to get other Samsung mobile devices banned in that case.
  Legal brawls between Samsung and Apple became common after the South Korean company began gobbling smartphone market share with devices powered by Google's free Android operating system.
  Explore further:Obama administration overrules Apple import ban
  (C) 2013 AFP
  More from Physics Forums - General Engineering
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  The US International Trade Commission on Wednesday ordered review of a ruling that Samsung violated Apple patents for smartphones and tablet computers.
  iPhone 4 imports banned in US patent case (Update 2) Jun 04, 2013
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  (C) Phys.org' 2003-2013
  Some Samsung imports banned in US patent caseJavascript is currently disabled in your web browser. For full site functionality, it is necessary to enable Javascript. In order to enable it, please see these instructions.2 hours agoThe US International Trade Commission has blocked imports of some Samsung electronic devices, backing complaints by Apple that the South Korean company violated its patents. The ruling was the latest in a long-running global legal battle over alleged patent infringement between the two smartphone and tablet giants.
  The US International Trade Commission blocked imports of some older model Samsung mobile devices following complaints by Apple that the South Korean company had violated its patents.
  The ruling by the Washington-based trade body was the latest in a long-running and bitter global battle over alleged patent infringement between the two smartphone and tablet computer giants.
  The ITC ruled that Samsung had infringed two Apple patents'--numbers 949 and 501, dealing with touchscreen actions and headphone jack plug-ins'--but cleared the South Korean company of charges that it had violated four more.
  Apple welcomed the ITC ruling while Samsung expressed its disappointment.
  "With today's decision, the ITC has joined courts around the world in Japan, Korea, Germany, Netherlands and California by standing up for innovation and rejecting Samsung's blatant copying of Apple's products," Apple said in a statement.
  "Protecting real innovation is what the patent system should be about," it said.
  Spokesman Adam Yates said Samsung is "disappointed that the ITC has issued an exclusion order based on two of Apple's patents."
  "However, Apple has been stopped from trying to use its overbroad design patents to achieve a monopoly on rectangles and rounded corners," Yates said, referring to design features at issue in rejected patent claims.
  "The proper focus for the smartphone industry is not a global war in the courts, but fair competition in the marketplace.
  "Samsung will continue to launch many innovative products and we have already taken measures to ensure that all our products will continue to be available in the United States," the Samsung spokesman said.
  The US International Trade Commission ruled that Samsung had infringed two Apple patents'--numbers 949 and 501, dealing with touchscreen actions and headphone jack plug-ins'--but cleared the South Korean company of charges that it had violated four more.
  It was unclear precisely which devices would be targeted in the ban, but it was aimed at early model smartphones and tablets that are no longer hot products in the United States.
  "It really doesn't mean that much," independent Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle said of the ITC ruling.
  "It is not the new stuff they are talking about, but the older devices that are more likely to be shipped to emerging markets than here."
  The import block is subject to a review by the White House and Samsung will be allowed to continue to sell the items at issue during the two-month review period.
  The ITC ruling raised the question of whether US President Barack Obama's administration will once again intervene in a patent fight playing out between the companies at the agency.
  Less than a week ago, the US Trade Representative overturned an ITC ruling in a patent suit brought by Samsung against Apple that would have banned the sale of certain iPads and iPhones in the United States.
  It was the first time the USTR has overruled the commission since 1987, and South Korea's trade ministry made its feelings clear at the time.
  Legal analysts point out that a critical difference in the cases is that the USTR intervened regarding patents deemed "standards essential," indicating that the technology involved was needed to comply with industry standards.
  An Apple iPhone 4s (L) and a Samsung's Galaxy S3 are shown at a mobile phone shop in Seoul on August 27, 2012. Samsung has taken pains to modify smartphone and tablet designs to avoid attacks over Apple patents.
  "Our ministry expresses concern about negative impacts the decision by the USTR will have on protecting patents held by Samsung," the company said in a statement at the time.
  The ITC ruling also opens a door for Apple to try to use the same patent violation claim against newer Samsung gadgets that have incorporated the same technology.
  Samsung has taken pains to modify smartphone and tablet designs to avoid attacks over Apple patents.
  "I don't think this decision will reverberate much through Samsung's product line," Enderle said.
  In a separate battle in US federal court, Samsung was ordered last August to pay more than $1 billion for patent infringement, a ruling which also opens the door to a ban on some Samsung devices.
  A judge later slashed the award to $598.9 million. Apple continues its quest to get other Samsung mobile devices banned in that case.
  Legal brawls between Samsung and Apple became common after the South Korean company began gobbling smartphone market share with devices powered by Google's free Android operating system.
  Explore further:Obama administration overrules Apple import ban
  (C) 2013 AFP
  More from Physics Forums - General Engineering
  Related Stories
  Obama administration overrules Apple import ban Aug 04, 2013
  President Obama's trade representative has vetoed a ban on imports of some Apple iPads and older iPhones, dealing a setback to rival South Korean electronics company Samsung.
  US panel reviews patent ruling against Samsung Jan 24, 2013
  The US International Trade Commission on Wednesday ordered review of a ruling that Samsung violated Apple patents for smartphones and tablet computers.
  iPhone 4 imports banned in US patent case (Update 2) Jun 04, 2013
  A U.S. trade agency on Tuesday issued a ban on imports of Apple's iPhone 4 and a variant of the iPad 2 after finding the devices violate a patent held by South Korean rival Samsung Electronics.
  Apple fends off Samsung challenge in US trade panel (Update) Sep 14, 2012
  Apple prevailed Friday at a US trade panel in a patent infringement complaint filed by South Korea's Samsung over wireless communication technology for the iPhone and other Apple devices.
  US court revives Apple gripe against Motorola Mobility Aug 08, 2013
  A US appeals court on Wednesday revived an Apple smartphone patent complaint against Motorola Mobility.
  Tokyo court backs Apple against Samsung on patent Jun 21, 2013
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Bussemaker: Meedoen aan Spelen beter dan boycot
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  Archived Version
  Source: VK: Home
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 12:53
  Bewerkt door: redactie '' 10/08/13, 11:55 '' bron: ANP
  (C) anp. Minister Jet Bussemaker (M) van Onderwijs op een boot op de Prinsengracht tijdens de botenparade van de Gay Pride.
  Het is verstandiger om volgend jaar naar Rusland te gaan voor de Olympische Winterspelen en daar de homorechten aan de orde te stellen, dan de festiviteiten te boycotten. Dat zei minister Jet Bussemaker (Emancipatie) zaterdag in het radioprogramma Tros Kamerbreed.
  Ze baseert zich onder meer op haar ervaringen tijdens de Olympische Spelen in de Chinese hoofdstad Peking in 2008. Bussemaker was toen staatssecretaris van Sport. 'We hebben daar de mensenrechten wel aan de orde gesteld. Mede door de Olympische Spelen is er in China iets gebeurd dat nooit meer terug is te draaien. Er zijn contacten ontstaan en er is kennis overgedragen.'
  Tijdens de spelen in Peking heeft toenmalig premier Jan Peter Balkenende de Chinese autoriteiten aangesproken op de manier waarop zij met de mensenrechten omgaan. Daarnaast hebben veel Chinezen kennisgemaakt met westerlingen en hun visie op mensenrechten en homo-emancipatie. Zelf werd de minister begeleid door een Chinese studente. 'We hadden intensief contact, hebben over van alles en nog wat gesproken. We e-mailen nog steeds. Dit is een voorbeeld op hele kleine schaal, maar het helpt wel.'
  In Rusland is het sinds een paar maanden verboden om 'propaganda te maken voor niet-traditionele seksuele relaties'. Wie bijvoorbeeld in het bijzijn van kinderen over homoseksualiteit praat, riskeert een hoge boete. Die regel geldt ook voor atleten, heeft de Russische minister van Sport Vitali Moetko gezegd. Bussemaker vindt het goed dat het Internationaal Olympisch Comit(C) daar opheldering over eist.
PM rejects Fry Olympic boycott call
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: BBC News - Home
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 12:53
  10 August 2013Last updated at06:21 ETThe Prime Minister has rejected a call from broadcaster Stephen Fry to strip Russia of the 2014 Winter Olympics because of its treatment of gay people.
  In an open letter on his website Fry said Russia was "making scapegoats of gay people".
  David Cameron said he shared Fry's "deep concern about the abuse of gay people in Russia", but did not support a boycott.
  He said: "I believe we can better challenge prejudice as we attend."
  A Russian law, passed in June, prescribes heavy fines for anyone providing information about homosexuality to people under 18.
  'Absolute ban'In his letter, which was published on Wednesday, Mr Fry compared the situation to the decision to hold the 1936 games in Nazi Germany.
  In Russia, he wrote: "Beatings, murders and humiliations are ignored by the police. Any defence or sane discussion of homosexuality is against the law."
  "It is simply not enough to say that gay Olympians may or may not be safe in their village. An absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics of 2014 is simply essential," he also said.
  Continue reading the main storyThe Games themselves should be open to all, free of discrimination.''
  End QuoteJacques RoggePresident, International Olympics Committee"Stage them elsewhere in Utah, Lillyhammer [sic], anywhere you like. At all costs (Russian President Vladimir) Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world."
  He urged International Olympics Committee (IOC) President Jacques Rogge and his fellow committee members to "take a firm stance on behalf of the shared humanity it is supposed to represent".
  'Need clarification'On Saturday, Mr Rogge said he had asked Russia to explain how its new law on gay propaganda might affect the games.
  He said in Moscow that Russia's written reassurances over the Winter Olympics needed clarification.
  "We don't think it is a fundamental issue, more a translation issue," Mr Rogge added.
  "We are not clear about the English translation of the Russian law and we want clarification of this translation to be able to understand what has been communicated to us," he said.
  Mr Rogge was visiting Moscow ahead of the the world athletics championships due to start there on Saturday.
  He stressed that, under the Olympic charter, sport was a "human right and should be available to all regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation".
Analysis Of Media Coverage Of The Boston Marathon Bombing
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Uploads by MOXNEWSd0tC0M
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 12:47
Omission Watch: IRS Agent Testifies The Agency's Still Targeting Tea Party Groups for Added Scrutiny
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Tim Graham's blog
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 12:47
  Would the media feel compelled to cover the IRS Tea Party-targeting scandal if investigators found that targeting was ongoing in the Obama administration? Apparently not. It didn't come up at Obama's press conference.
  Paul Bedard of The Washington Examiner reported Friday that the House Ways and Means Committee was told "the agency is still targeting Tea Party groups, three months after the IRS scandal erupted." Apparently, no one in Obama-land feels intimidated by the media in the slightest to change their politicized behavior:
  In a remarkable admission that is likely to rock the Internal Revenue Service again, testimony released Thursday by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp reveals that an agent involved in reviewing tax exempt applications from conservative groups told a committee investigator that the agency is still targeting Tea Party groups, three months after the IRS scandal erupted.
  In closed door testimony before the House Ways & Means Committee, the unidentified IRS agent said requests for special tax status from Tea Party groups is being forced into a special "secondary screening" because the agency has yet to come up with new guidance on how to judge the tax status of the groups.
  In a redacted transcript from the committee provided to Secrets, a Ways & Means investigator asked: "If you saw -- I am asking this currently, if today if a Tea Party case, a group -- a case from a Tea Party group came in to your desk, you reviewed the file and there was no evidence of political activity, would you potentially approve that case? Is that something you would do?"
  The agent said, "At this point I would send it to secondary screening, political advocacy."
  The committee staffer then said, "So you would treat a Tea Party group as a political advocacy case even if there was no evidence of political activity on the application. Is that right?" The agent admitted, "Based on my current manager's direction, uh-huh."
  Camp called the renewed targeting of Tea Party groups "outrageous."
  Added a committee aide, "In plain English, the IRS is still targeting Tea Party cases."
  ...Camp, the Michigan Republican, told Secrets, "It is outrageous that IRS management continues to target Tea Party cases without any justification. The harassment, abuse and delays these Americans have faced over the last few years has been unwarranted, unprovoked and, at times, possibly illegal. The fact that the IRS still continues to treat the Tea Party differently and subject them to additional targeting is outrageous and it must stop immediately."
  In response, the IRS reiterated Werfel's pledge to not target groups because of political labels. "The IRS has taken decisive action to eliminate the use of inappropriate political labels in the screening of 501(c)(4) applications. We look forward to seeing the full transcript to gain a fuller understanding of the context of the interview," they said early Friday.
FEINSTEIN'S GAFF AND MERKEL'S MESSAGE: THE RETRENCHMENT CONTINUES?
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Giza Death Star
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 12:45
  TweetTweetThese two articles appeared in Russia Today (RT),and they are worth pondering. The first concerns a recent ''gaff'' made by Senator Diane Feinstein during a Senate Committee Hearing, and a recent unilateral decision by the German government. But first, Senator Feinstein's Gaff:
  Mexico and Canada declared part of US homeland by Senate maps
  Now, for those who've been following the conspiracy literature, the idea of a North American political and economic union has been around since, well, since Gary Kah if not longer. People laughed at such researchers back then, but while ''they'' were laughing, the powers that be were plotting GATT, then NAFTA, and of course, more recently, the whole idea of the ''Amero'', the North American equivalent to the stunning and wild success of the ''euro.'' And let's not forget, the Bilderbergers in the last decades of the 20th century were actually attempting to ''disband Canada'' by sponsoring an ''Independent Quebec'', which would then be openly annexed by the USA in its very own Anschluss.
  So Senator Feinstein may not, indeed, be committing a gaff. Indeed, given the recent ''revelations'' about the NSA, it only stands to geopolitical reason that the USA's intelligence agencies would look upon North America as their own fiefdom, national sovereignties notwithstanding.
  But I submit there may be a deeper agenda in play, and it is precisely the theme of ''retrenchment'' that I have been hypothesizing lately, a retrenchment made necessary by the ''pushback'' the Anglosphere oligarchs have been receiving, mostly from Russia, but now with the formation of the BRICSA understanding. I have detailed this hypothesis in the past few days, so I won't repeat my arguments here. Simply suffice it to say that I believe that Senator Feinstein is giving us a subtle signal of this retrenchment.
  Then, there is Frau Bundeskanzlerin Merkel. Germany, it seems, is suspending until further notice its agreement with the USA to share intelligence gathered electronically:
  Germany scraps old surveillance pact with US, Britain over NSA leaks
  Now as the article avers, this could be simply in response to the domestic political realities in Germany. Germans, for good reason, view such massive spying with a great deal of skepticism. They, like the Russians, have lived in totalitarian states with great technical resources, and a culture of domestic spying. The German government's decision could thus be viewed, in one sense, as window-dressing, a pro forma break while the spying and intelligence swaps continue secretly.
  But I suggest that the move may be real, that it may be viewed as a part of the growing disillusionment and pushback against the power-mad Anglosphere oligarchs and their lust for control. After all, this move would be consonant with German attempts to repatriate their gold reserves from the US Federal Reserve in New York '' so far, as we know, that effort has been met with stonewalling on the part of the Fed's apparatchiks and the Anglosphere nomenklatura. This move would also be consonant with growing German-Russian cooperation, and with the growing disillusionment in Europe against the Anglo-Sphere.
  In short, I submit these two articles are more little bits of data to add to the growing list that a retrenchment into North America is being implemented by the Anglosphere oligarchy.
  See you on the flipside.
Weekly Address: A Better Bargain for Responsible, Middle Class Homeowners
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 12:42
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  August 10, 2013
  WASHINGTON, DC'-- In this week's address, President Obama said that the housing market is starting to heal, and now it's time to build on that progress by creating a better bargain for responsible, middle class homeowners. The President announced steps he will take to strengthen the housing market, and now Congress must act to help make homeownership a source of pride and middle class security for generations to come.
  The audio of the address and video of the address will be available online at www.whitehouse.gov at 6:00 a.m. ET, August 10, 2013.
  Remarks of President Barack ObamaWeekly AddressThe White HouseAugust 10, 2013
  Hi, everybody. For the past few weeks, I've been visiting folks across America to talk about what we need to do as a country to secure a better bargain for the middle class.
  I've been laying out my ideas for how we can build on the cornerstones of what it means to be middle class in America. A good job. A good education. Affordable health care when you get sick. A secure retirement even if you're not rich. And the chance to own your own home.
  This week, I went to Arizona and California, two of the states hit hardest when the housing bubble burst, triggering the recession. All across the country, millions of responsible Americans were hurt badly by the reckless actions of others. Home values plummeted. Construction workers were laid off. And many families lost their homes.
  Over the past four years, we've worked to help millions of responsible homeowners get back on their feet. And while we're not where we need to be yet, our housing market is beginning to heal. Home prices and sales are rising. Construction is up. Foreclosures are down. Millions of families have come up for air because they're no longer underwater on their mortgages.
  Now we have to build on this progress. Congress should give every American the chance to refinance at today's low rates. We should help more qualified families get a mortgage and buy their first home. We should get construction workers back on the job rebuilding communities hit hardest by the crisis. And we should make sure that folks who don't want to buy a home have decent, affordable places to rent.
  As home prices rise, we have to turn the page on the bubble-and-bust mentality that created this mess, and build a housing system that's rock-solid and rewards responsibility for generations to come. We need to wind down the companies known as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, make sure private capital plays a bigger role in the mortgage market, and end the era of expecting a bailout after your pursuit of profit puts the whole country at risk. We need to preserve access to safe and simple mortgages like the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage. We need to keep laying down rules of the road that protect homeowners when they're making the biggest purchase of their lives. And finally, Congress needs to confirm Mel Watt to be our nation's top housing regulator, so that he can protect consumers and help responsible lenders provide credit.
  No program or policy will solve all the problems in a multi-trillion dollar housing market, and it will take time to fully recover. But if we work together, we can make a home a source of pride and middle-class security again. And if Washington is willing to set aside politics and focus on what really matters, we can rebuild an economy where if you work hard, you can get ahead.
  Thanks, and have a great weekend.
  ###
US says no charges for border agent who shot Mexican teen - U.S. News
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Sat, 10 Aug 2013 12:21
  Alonso Castillo / Reuters file
  Friends of Ramses Barron hug outside his home while mourning his death in Nogales, Mexico, on Jan. 6, 2011.
  By Tim Gaynor, Reuters
  PHOENIX - U.S. authorities will not bring charges against a Border Patrol agent in Arizona who shot dead a rock-throwing Mexican teenager two years ago because the fatal injury did not occur in the United States, the Justice Department said on Friday.
  An unidentified Border Patrol agent shot Ramses Barron, a 17-year-old Mexican citizen, through the border fence in Nogales, Arizona, in the early hours of January 5, 2011.
  The incident began after agents responded to reports of a group of people trying to smuggle suspected drug packages across the border, the department said. The group, among them Barron, then pelted the agents with rocks, forcing them to take cover.
  An independent investigation concluded that the agent fired the fatal shot after Barron ignored commands in Spanish to stop throwing rocks. A videotape of the incident captured Barron making a "throwing motion with his right arm, then falling to the ground," the department said in a news release.
  No charges were brought because the department "lacks jurisdiction" to prosecute the agent under a criminal civil rights use of force statute that "requires that the victim be in the United States when he was injured," it said.
  Over the past five years, U.S. border agents have fired into Mexico at least 10 times, killing six Mexicans, according to a report released earlier this year by the Washington Monthly and the Investigative Fund at The Nation Institute.
  In another Border Patrol shooting incident in Nogales in October, 16-year-old Mexican citizen Jose Antonio Elena Rodriguez was shot at least seven times from behind after an agent, or agents, opened fire across the border.
  Following the shooting, Mexican authorities condemned the U.S. Border Patrol's use of lethal force and called for a timely and transparent investigation, which is continuing.
  In a separate report released on Friday, the Justice Department said it would not pursue charges against another Border Patrol agent who shot and killed a 19-year-old U.S. citizen in the border city of Douglas, Arizona, in March 2011.
  Douglas police officers had earlier spotted Carlos LaMadrid loading suspected drug bundles into a truck. LaMadrid then fled south in the truck toward the border, striking a Border Patrol agent's vehicle, before scrambling up a ladder placed against the border fence, the report said.
  The unidentified agent opened fire after another man on top of the fence began throwing "brick sized rocks." LaMadrid, who got "in the line of fire" between the agent and the rock thrower, was struck by four bullets and later died in hospital, it said.
  In that case, the department said, a careful and thorough review concluded that there was insufficient evidence to pursue homicide or criminal civil rights charges against the agent.
  Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
This fully-automatic Gauss gun has 3D printed guns running scared
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: BlackListedNews.com
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:02
  This fully-automatic Gauss gun, dubbed the CG-42, has a 15-round capacity and can fire an entire clip of ammo in 1.5 seconds. What it fires is almost as frightening as the gun itself, because the CG-42 is armed with nails, side-stepping the need for even the slightest of paper trails.
  A Gauss gun, also known as a coilgun, is a battery-operated, electromagnetic linear motor which pulls a projectile forward faster and faster until it exits the weapon's muzzle, no gunpowder required. The CG-42 has a muzzle velocity of 138 feet per second, which doesn't sound like a lot until you see it put a nail right through a laptop's casing. Gauss guns also get more powerful the longer you make them, so a Gauss "rifle" would be capable of much more destruction.
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Fear Porn: CIA warns of crisis as al-Qaeda prepares to pounce
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: BlackListedNews.com
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:01
  Source: smh.com.au>>
  The war in Syria poses the greatest threat to US security because of the risk of the government falling and the country becoming a weapons-rich haven for al-Qaeda, a CIA official said in Washington.
  CIA deputy director Michael Morell gave the assessment in an interview published by the Wall Street Journal as he prepares to retire after 33 years with the agency.
  Mr Morell said there were more foreign fighters flowing into Syria each month to take up arms with al-Qaeda-affiliated groups than there were going to Iraq to fight with al-Qaeda at the height of the war there.
  Read more...
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President Obama signs the "Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act of 2013
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Video Feed
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:01
  Oval Office
  2:21 P.M. EDT
  THE PRESIDENT: Well, before I sign this, I just want to say thank you to this extraordinary coalition that helped make this signing possible. I want to thank Chairman Kline, all the members of both House and Senate from both parties that came together to design a sensible, common-sense approach to keeping student interest rates at a reasonable level so that young people have a better opportunity to go to college, get the education that they need not only to better their own lives but also to strengthen the country's economy.
  And I want to thank the advocates, including some of the young people I suspect will be benefiting from lower student loans -- or lower student loan interest rates -- because without their voice, without their participation, we probably would not have gotten this bill done.
  Last point I'll make, and I suspect the Senators and Congressmen behind me will agree with this, even though we've been able to stabilize the interest rates on student loans, our job is not done, because the cost of college remains extraordinarily high. It's out of reach for a lot of folks, and for those who do end up attending college, the amount of debt that young people are coming out of school with is a huge burden on them; it's a burden on their families. It makes it more difficult for them to buy a home. It makes it more difficult for them if they want to start a business. It has a depressive effect on the economy overall. And we've got to do something about it.
  So I'm going to be looking forward to engaging this same coalition to see if we can continue to take additional steps to reform our higher education system, and I'll have some more things to say about that in the weeks to come.
  But for now, I want to celebrate what we accomplished here, and again, thank everybody here for their leadership in getting it done.
  (The bill is signed.)
  Those of you who haven't seen me do this before -- (laughter) -- it is a real art form. (Laughter.)
  SENATOR DURBIN: Thank you, Mr. President -- I remember the 90-minute seminar in this office. (Laughter.)
  THE PRESIDENT: It was very interesting. (Laughter.)
  It feels good signing bills -- I haven't done this in a while. (Laughter.) Hint, hint. Hint, hint. (Laughter.)
  SENATOR DURBIN: How about a budget, Mr. President?
  THE PRESIDENT: There you go. That's what I'm talking about. (Laughter.)
  All right, thank you, everybody.
  END
  2:25 P.M. EDT
  Close Transcript
CNN Scores Second Lowest Rated Primetime Night of the Year Among Adults 25-54
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: TVbytheNumbers
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:00
  CNN garnered its second lowest primetime ratings of the year among adults 25-54 on Thursday, August 8, 2013, averaging 76,000 Adults 25-54 viewers from 8-11PM and 392,000 total viewers. Piers Morgan Live delivered one of its ten lowest rated episodes of the year, with 71,000 adults 25-43 at 9PM.
  Cable Network Primetime Thursday, August 8th
  (8-11PM/ET)
  FNC: 1,644,000 in P2+ (216,000 in 25-54)
  MSNBC: 533,000 in P2+ (131,000 in 25-54)
  CNN: 392,000 in P2+ (76,000 in 25-54)
Impact of Time Warner Cable Blackout on CBS Prime Ratings Through 7 Days
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: TVbytheNumbers
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 23:00
  via press release:
  NATIONAL RATINGS HIGHLIGHTS FOR CBS PRIMETIME
  FRIDAY, AUGUST 2 - THURSDAY, AUGUST 8
  The impact of the Time Warner Cable blackout on the national average has been minimal through seven days.
  Compared to the seven-day period during the week prior to the blackout, CBS is down only -0.2% in viewers and is unchanged in adults 18-49.
  Compared to the same week last summer, CBS's Friday-Thursday primetime programs during the blackout are up +38% in viewers and up +33% in both adults 18-49 and 25-54.
  RATINGS IN CONTEXT OF TIME WARNER CABLE DISPUTE
  Time Warner Cable has blacked out CBS stations to 3.2 million of its customers in New York, Los Angeles and Dallas.
  Because of CBS's strong ratings growth this summer, the net effect of the blackout will not present an overall ratings hardship.
  In addition, August is traditionally one of the lowest months of the year for ratings and advertising revenue, making the overall financial impact of the blackout negligible.
Lebanon has record marijuana crop
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Dr. Jones reports
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 22:59
  The Lebanese government will not attempt to eradicate marijuana fields blooming across the country's Bekaa Valley, Beirut's Daily Star newspaper reported Friday. Sources cited by the Star said it was because of the fragile security situation in the area near the border with Syria and because the government had been unable to live up to pledges to provide financial compensation to farmers whose crops were destroyed last year.
  marijuana field, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon (wikimedia.org)
  They are also up against Bekaa Valley marijuana farmers in no mood to see their livelihood messed with."In the absence of alternatives, we will break the hands and legs of anyone who dares destroy our crops," one of the region's biggest growers, Ali Nasri Shamas, told the Daily Star. "We will not be gentle with [the security forces] like we usually are," added Shamas, who is wanted on several arrest warrants, including on a charge of attacking the Army. "It will be a full-blown war if necessary."
  This after last year's eradication effort led to clashes between would-be eradicators and farmers armed with rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and mortars. Those clashes, which resulted in the destruction of bulldozers hired by the government to plow under pot fields, ended only when the government promised to pay compensation to farmers. That didn't happen. The Finance Ministry said it didn't have the money.
  This year, although the Higher Defense Council had fighting drug cultivation on the agenda this week, sources told the Daily Star that a "tacit agreement" last month between government officials and local leaders from the Baalbek-Hermel region in the northern Bekaa meant that eradication efforts weren't going to happen this year.
  "The Army is exhausted by the roving security incidents and the farmers are poor and angry," said a political source. "Everyone wants to avoid a major confrontation with the military. No one wants carnage."
  The Syrian civil war raging next door has led to repeated clashes inside Lebanon, especially since the open involvement of Hezbollah members in the fighting earlier this year. The Bekaa Valley is also a Hezbollah stronghold.
  Lebanese hash provided funding for feuding militias in the Lebanese civil war between 1975 and 1990, and grew into a multi-billion dollar industry before the government cracked down under international pressure in the late 1990s. But its eradication campaigns have often generated violent clashes, and promised alternative development schemes have failed to materialize.
  Now, the marijuana fields are back in a big war. The Daily Star described roads in the Bekaa Valley "lined with dark green cannabis fields."
  This year's pot crop would be "wonderful," Shamas said. "We moved from 5,000 dunums of cannabis-cultivated land to 45,000 dunums," he said. (A dunum is about a quarter of an acre.) There is no shortage of dealers to buy the resulting hashish, he said, adding that it was destined for markets in Egypt, Turkey, and Europe.
  While Shamas reveled in his anti-government outlaw status, other marijuana farmers said they had few other options. "We have no other choice," said Abu Asaad from Yammouneh. "Our region is highly poor and neglected and I prefer planting cannabis to turning into a bandit or a car thief."
  The farmers scoffed at international aid and alternative development programs, saying they had been a bad joke.
  "It's high time international donors realize that their money is not spent to devise tangible agricultural policies, but rather goes straight to the pockets of officials," Abu Asaad said. "Eradication campaigns are carried out at our expense and used to secure more funds, which will surely be embezzled."
  Meanwhile, to save face, Lebanese authorities may do some Potemkin eradication.
  "The police and Army might destroy a small plot of land where cannabis is grown in the next few weeks just to demonstrate that they have not dropped the ball on the matter, but I totally rule out a large-scale campaign," a source told the Daily Star.
MSNBC Contributor: Debate over NSA is a 'Privileged' Discussion
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Hacker News
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 22:58
  Reacting to President Obama's lengthy presser this afternoon, MSNBC contributor Dr. James Peterson said that the debate over the NSA's domestic surveillance operations is a ''privileged discussion'' that ignores the daily ''physical surveillance'' experienced by America's poor and minorities.
  ''I really find it to be quite a privileged discussion,'' Peterson said of the NSA scandal. ''It's not that I'm not interested in transparency'... I think this conversation is important, but I just believe we needed to have this conversation a long time ago.''
  ''I believe that poor people and people of color are under a different type of surveillance in this country,'' he continued, citing stop and frisk policies in various American cities. ''There's a tremendous amount of physical surveillance that goes on in our nation every day. I'd love to transmit this energy around the NSA'... to think more critically about poor folk and people of color are under constant physical surveillance.''
  Watch below, via MSNBC:
  [h/t WFB]
  '' ''>> Follow Andrew Kirell (@AndrewKirell) on Twitter
DutchNews.nl - High Dutch petrol prices drive motorists over the border to fill up.
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: WT news feed
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 22:56
  High Dutch petrol prices drive motorists over the border to fill upFriday 09 August 2013
  The Dutch treasury is missing out on over '‚¬1bn a year because so many motorists fill up their cars with petrol in Belgium and Germany, where fuel is cheaper, according to research by garage owners.
  The report, drawn up on behalf of the Bovag and Nove organisations, shows 53% of people who live up to 20 kilometres from the German and Belgian borders regularly fill up their cars abroad.
  If Dutch petrol prices rise again, that percentage will rise to 66%, the report states. Dutch taxes on petrol are set to increase in January next year.
  According to fuel price comparison websites, a litre of unleaded petrol costs '‚¬ 1.84 per in the Netherlands, making it the most expensive in Europe. A litre of fuel costs around '‚¬1.71 in Belgium and '‚¬1.60 in Germany.
  Some 890 petrol stations, of which 560 are manned, are close to the Dutch borders and under threat because of the price differences, Bovag says.
  (C) DutchNews.nl
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Background on the President's Statement on Reforms to NSA Programs
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 22:56
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  August 09, 2013
  President Obama believes that there should be increased transparency and reforms in our intelligence programs in order to give the public confidence that these programs have strong oversight and clear protections against abuse. That is what he has pursued as President, and today he is announcing several initiatives that will move that effort forward.
  Since the disclosures were first made, the President has held a series of meetings with Intelligence Community leaders, during which he has emphasized the importance of transparency and openness and directed IC leadership to press forward with declassification of relevant materials, to the maximum extent possible, without undermining national security. Already, the Administration has declassified unprecedented information about the activities of the National Security Agency (NSA). On July 31, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) made public three documents dealing with the Section 215 program.
  The Administration has also engaged Congress on these issues on 35 occasions, including several committee hearings and all-Senate and all-House Members' meetings. On August 1, the President met with a group of bipartisan members of Congress to discuss key programs under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
  The President and senior White House and Administration officials have also engaged in a national dialogue on privacy in the 21st century, soliciting feedback from relevant stakeholder groups in the private sector, academia, and civil society. To date, the Administration has taken various steps to advance this national privacy dialogue, including: meeting with the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, and leading several conversations on privacy issues with a broad array of organizations representing industry, civil society, civil rights and transparency groups. Most recently, the President met with a group of leaders from the private sector, civil society and academia yesterday at the White House to discuss a range of privacy issues.
  Today, the President directed his Administration to work with Congress to pursue appropriate reforms to our nation's surveillance programs and the court that oversees them. Specifically, he laid out four steps his Administration will take:
  (1) The Administration will work with Congress to pursue appropriate reforms to Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. After having a dialogue with members of Congress and civil libertarians, the President believes that there are steps that can be taken to give the American people confidence that there are additional safeguards against abuse. For example, steps could be taken to put in place greater oversight, transparency, and constraints on the use of this authority.
  (2) The Administration will work with Congress to improve the public's confidence in the oversight conducted by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Specifically, steps can be taken to make sure civil liberties concerns have a greater voice in appropriate cases by ensuring that the government's position is challenged by an adversary.
  (3) The President directed the Intelligence Community to make public as much information about these programs as possible. Already, the Administration has declassified unprecedented information about the activities of the NSA. On July 31, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) made public three documents dealing with the section 215 program. The NSA is taking steps to put in place a full time Civil Liberties and Privacy Officer, and has released information that details its mission, authorities and oversight. The Intelligence Community is creating a website that will serve as a hub for further transparency. This will give Americans '' and the world '' the ability to learn more about what our intelligence community does; how it does it; and why.
  (4) The President called for a high-level group of outside experts to review our intelligence and communications technologies. The President is tasking this group to step back and review our capabilities '' particularly our surveillance technologies. They will consider how we can maintain the public's trust, and how this surveillance impacts our foreign policy '' particularly in an age when more and more information is becoming public. They will provide an interim report in 60 days, and a final report by the end of this year, so that we can move forward with a better understanding of how these programs impact our security, our privacy, and our foreign policy.
Presidential Memorandum -- Continuation of U.S. Drug Interdiction Assistance to the Government of Colombia
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 22:55
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  August 09, 2013
  MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE
  THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE
  SUBJECT: Continuation of U.S. Drug Interdiction Assistance to the Government of Colombia
  By the authority vested in me as President by section 1012 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1995, as amended (22 U.S.C. 2291-4), I hereby certify, with respect to Colombia, that: (1) interdiction of aircraft reasonably suspected to be primarily engaged in illicit drug trafficking in that country's airspace is necessary, because of the extraordinary threat posed by illicit drug trafficking to the national security of that country; and (2) Colombia has appropriate procedures in place to protect against innocent loss of life in the air and on the ground in connection with such interdiction, which shall at a minimum include effective means to identify and warn an aircraft before the use of force is directed against the aircraft.
  The Secretary of State is authorized and directed to publish this determination in the Federal Register and to notify the Congress of this determination.
  BARACK OBAMA
Statement by the Press Secretary on H.R. 267, H.R. 678, H.R. 1092, H.R. 1171, H.R. 1344, H.R. 1911, H.R. 2167, H.R. 2576, and H.R. 2611
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 22:55
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  August 09, 2013
  On Friday, August 9, 2013, the President signed into law:
  H.R. 267, the "Hydropower Regulatory Efficiency Act of 2013," which modifies the Federal Power Act and the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act to promote and facilitate the development of hydroelectric power capacity;
  H.R. 678, the "Bureau of Reclamation Small Conduit Hydropower Development and Rural Jobs Act," which amends the Reclamation Project Act of 1939 to authorize the Secretary of the Interior to contract for small conduit hydropower development at Reclamation facilities;
  H.R. 1092, which designates the air route traffic control center located in Nassau, New Hampshire, as the "Patricia Clark Boston Air Route Traffic Control Center" in honor of Patricia Clark, an FAA employee who has worked at the Center since it opened 50 years ago;
  H.R. 1171, the "Formerly Owned Resources for Veterans to Express Thanks for Service Act of 2013," which expands the ability of States to donate Federal surplus property to organizations that serve veterans;
  H.R. 1344, the "Helping Heroes Fly Act," which requires the Transportation Security Administration to develop and implement a process for expedited air passenger screening for severely injured or disabled members of the Armed Forces and veterans;
  H.R. 1911, the "Bipartisan Student Loan Certainty Act of 2013," which amends the Higher Education Act of 1965 to establish interest rates for new direct student loans made on or after July 1, 2013;
  H.R. 2167, the "Reverse Mortgage Stabilization Act of 2013," which provides the Department of Housing and Urban Development expanded authority to improve the fiscal stability of the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage Program;
  H.R. 2576, which modifies requirements relating to the availability of pipeline safety regulatory documents incorporated by reference into Federal pipeline safety regulations; and
  H.R. 2611, which designates the headquarters building of the Coast Guard located at St. Elizabeths West Campus in the District of Columbia as the "Douglas A. Munro Coast Guard Headquarters Building" in honor of the only member of the U.S. Coast Guard to have received the Medal of Honor.
Obama cites sealed indictment in Benghazi probe - Boston.com
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 22:07
  The Associated PressPresident Barack Obama gestures during his news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Friday, Aug. 9, 2013. The president said he'll work with Congress to change the oversight of some of the National Security Agency's controversial surveillance programs and name a new panel of outside experts to review technologies. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)By BRADLEY KLAPPER / Associated Press / August 9, 2013
  WASHINGTON (AP) '-- President Barack Obama vowed Friday to bring to justice those responsible for last year's deadly assault on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, and made a public reference to a sealed indictment.
  Obama said catching the militants who killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans on Sept. 11 remained a top priority, defending himself by noting that it took his government longer than 11 months to make good on his promise to find Osama bin Laden.
  And he said his administration was making progress in its investigation.
  ''There's a sealed indictment,'' Obama said at a news conference at the White House. ''It's sealed for a reason, but we are intent on capturing those who carried out this attack. And we're going to stay on it until we get them.''
  It's unusual for a public official to talk openly about grand jury protected material. Sealed criminal charges are supposed to be secret until they're unsealed.
  U.S. officials said earlier this week the Justice Department filed the first criminal charges against an unknown number of people believed responsible, and one official said they included Ahmed Abu Khattala, the head of a prominent Libyan militia.
  It was described then as a criminal complaint, not an indictment.
  Justice Department spokesman Brian Fallon declined to comment Friday about the president's reference to a sealed indictment.
  Republicans have criticized the administration's response to Benghazi and its shifting explanation of what happened. Obama has promised justice since the attack but has yet to apprehend any suspects.
  ___
  Associated Press writer Pete Yost contributed to this report.
  (C) Copyright 2013 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
VIDEO-Dr. Sanjay Gupta Attacks DEA Classification of Marijuana | Crooks and Liars
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 22:05
  Just as the tide turned with same-sex marriage, more people will be coming around to the decriminalization of medical marijuana. It's really crazy that a substance with so much medical potential is treated like heroin:
  CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta said Thursday that the federal Drug Enforcement Agency had no reason to treat marijuana the same way it treated PCP and heroin.
  ''I also looked closely at the DEA's scheduling policy,'' he said on CNN. ''They classify marijuana as a Schedule I substance. It is in the category of the most dangerous substances out there. And when I looked carefully at that, I found there was really no scientific evidence to say it was that dangerous, that it had high abuse potential and that it had no medical applications. I believe it does have medical applications.''
  Twenty states and the District of Columbia have legalized the use of marijuana for medical purposes. But the DEA has refused to reschedule marijuana, insisting it has no medical value. The DEA currently considers cocaine and methamphetamines to be less harmful than marijuana. Both substances are classified as Schedule II drugs.
  For conditions such as neuropathic pain, marijuana worked better and was less dangerous than other medications, Sanjay added.
  ''So you have something that works better, it may work when other things don't, and probably much safer and, again, I think that is important for both patients and the medical community to hear,'' he said.
NSA loophole allows warrantless search for US citizens' emails and phone calls | World news | theguardian.com
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 21:45
  The National Security Agency has a secret backdoor into its vast databases under a legal authority enabling it to search for US citizens' email and phone calls without a warrant, according to a top-secret document passed to the Guardian by Edward Snowden.
  The previously undisclosed rule change allows NSA operatives to hunt for individual Americans' communications using their name or other identifying information. Senator Ron Wyden told the Guardian that the law provides the NSA with a loophole potentially allowing "warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans".
  The authority, approved in 2011, appears to contrast with repeated assurances from Barack Obama and senior intelligence officials to both Congress and the American public that the privacy of US citizens is protected from the NSA's dragnet surveillance programs.
  The intelligence data is being gathered under Section 702 of the of the Fisa Amendments Act (FAA), which gives the NSA authority to target without warrant the communications of foreign targets, who must be non-US citizens and outside the US at the point of collection.
  The communications of Americans in direct contact with foreign targets can also be collected without a warrant, and the intelligence agencies acknowledge that purely domestic communications can also be inadvertently swept into its databases. That process is known as "incidental collection" in surveillance parlance.
  But this is the first evidence that the NSA has permission to search those databases for specific US individuals' communications.
  A secret glossary document provided to operatives in the NSA's Special Source Operations division '' which runs the Prism program and large-scale cable intercepts through corporate partnerships with technology companies '' details an update to the "minimization" procedures that govern how the agency must handle the communications of US persons. That group is defined as both American citizens and foreigners located in the US.
  "While the FAA 702 minimization procedures approved on 3 October 2011 now allow for use of certain United States person names and identifiers as query terms when reviewing collected FAA 702 data," the glossary states, "analysts may NOT/NOT [not repeat not] implement any USP [US persons] queries until an effective oversight process has been developed by NSA and agreed to by DOJ/ODNI [Office of the Director of National Intelligence]."
  The term "identifiers" is NSA jargon for information relating to an individual, such as telephone number, email address, IP address and username as well as their name.
  The document '' which is undated, though metadata suggests this version was last updated in June 2012 '' does not say whether the oversight process it mentions has been established or whether any searches against US person names have taken place.
  Senator Ron Wyden. Photograph: Jacquelyn Martin/APWyden, an Oregon Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, has obliquely warned for months that the NSA's retention of Americans' communications incidentally collected and its ability to search through it has been far more extensive than intelligence officials have stated publicly. Speaking this week, Wyden told the Guardian it amounts to a "backdoor search" through Americans' communications data.
  "Section 702 was intended to give the government new authorities to collect the communications of individuals believed to be foreigners outside the US, but the intelligence community has been unable to tell Congress how many Americans have had their communications swept up in that collection," he said.
  "Once Americans' communications are collected, a gap in the law that I call the 'back-door searches loophole' allows the government to potentially go through these communications and conduct warrantless searches for the phone calls or emails of law-abiding Americans."
  Wyden, along with his intelligence committee colleague Mark Udall, have attempted repeatedly to warn publicly about the ability of the intelligence community to look at the communications of US citizens, but are limited by their obligation not to reveal highly classified information.
  But in a letter they recently wrote to the NSA director, General Keith Alexander, the two senators warned that a fact sheet released by the NSA in the wake of the initial Prism revelations to reassure the American public about domestic surveillance was misleading.
  In the letter, they warned that Americans' communications might be inadvertently collected and stored under Section 702, despite rules stating only data on foreigners should be collected and retained.
  "[W]e note that this same fact sheet states that under Section 702, 'Any inadvertently acquired communication of or concerning a US person must be promptly destroyed if it is neither relevant to the authorised purpose nor evidence of a crime,'" they said.
  "We believe that this statement is somewhat misleading, in that it implied the NSA has the ability to determine how many American communications it has collected under Section 702, or that the law does not allow the NSA to deliberately search for the records of particular Americans."
  The foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court issues approvals annually authorizing such operations, with specific rules on who can be targeted and what measures must be taken to minimize any details "inadvertently" collected on US persons.
  Secret minimization procedures dating from 2009, published in June by the Guardian, revealed that the NSA could make use of any "inadvertently acquired" information on US persons under a defined range of circumstances, including if they held usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity.
  At that stage, however, the rules did not appear to allow for searches of collected data relating to specific US persons.
  Assurances from Obama and senior administration officials to the American public about the privacy of their communications have relied on the strict definition of what constitutes "targeting" while making no mention of the permission to search for US data within material that has already been collected.
  The day after the Guardian revealed details of the NSA's Prism program, President Obama said: "Now, with respect to the internet and emails, this doesn't apply to US citizens and it doesn't apply to people living in the United States."
  Speaking at a House hearing on 18 June this year, deputy attorney general James Cole told legislators "[T]here's a great deal of minimization procedures that are involved here, particularly concerning any of the acquisition of information that deals or comes from US persons.
  "As I said, only targeting people outside the United States who are not US persons. But if we do acquire any information that relates to a US person, under limited criteria only can we keep it."
  Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who chairs the Senate intelligence committee, said in June 2012 that she believed the intelligence agencies and the Justice Department were sufficiently mindful of Americans' privacy.
  "The intelligence community is strictly prohibited from using Section 702 to target a US person, which must at all times be carried out pursuant to an individualized court order based upon probable cause," Feinstein stated in a report provided to the Senate record.
  While there are several congressional proposals to constrain the NSA's bulk collection of Americans' phone records, there has to date been much less legislative appetite to abridge its powers under Section 702 '' as lawmakers are satisfied it doesn't sufficiently violate Americans' privacy.
  "702 is focused outside the United States at non-citizens," said Adam Schiff, a member of the House intelligence committee. "The evidence of the effectiveness of 702 is much more substantial than 215 [the bulk phone records collection]. So I think there are fewer fourth amendment concerns and more evidence of the saliency of the program."
  Wyden and Udall '' both of whom say foreign surveillance conducted under Section 702 has legitimate value for US national security '' have tried and failed to restrict the NSA's ability to collect and store Americans' communications that it accidentally acquires.
  Wyden told the Guardian that he raised concerns about the loophole with President Obama during an August 1 meeting with legislators about the NSA's surveillance powers.
  "I believe that Congress should reform Section 702 to provide better protections for Americans' privacy, and that this could be done without losing the value that this collection provides," he said.
  The Guardian put the latest revelations to the NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence but no response had been received by the time of publication.
  More: NSA surveillance: the long fight to close backdoor into US communications
VIDEO-Presidential News Conference - C-SPAN Video Library
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  President Obama held a news conference in the East Room of the White House.'‚He addressed a number of issues including implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Nathional Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs, .. Read MorePresident Obama held a news conference in the East Room of the White House.'‚He addressed a number of issues including implementation of the Affordable Care Act, Nathional Security Agency (NSA) surveillance programs, relations with Russian President Putin, immigration reform, and recent threats to U.S. diplomatic facilities abroad.
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Police investigate 169 staff over predatory sexual behaviour
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  Source: The Guardian World News
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 21:07
  Police forces are being ordered to face up to corruption by officers who commit sexual offences against vulnerable women and young people as figures obtained by the Guardian reveal 169 officers and support staff are under investigation for predatory sexual behaviour.
  Senior officers from the 43 forces of England and Wales have held a high-level private meeting to address the problem of officers who abuse their position to make inappropriate sexual advances or carry out sexual assaults on members of the public, many of whom are victims of crime.
  The predatory sexual behaviour of officers, ranging from rape to voyeurism, is among the issues at the top of the agenda at the meeting in Chester, and forces have been told the service has to tackle the problem as a matter of urgency, the Guardian has been told.
  Figures obtained from 38 of the 43 forces in England and Wales reveal that 169 officers, police community support officers (PCSOs) and support staff are under criminal and disciplinary investigations for sexually related offences.
  There are concerns, however, that only 31, 18%, of the cases are being overseen in any way by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).
  Debaleena Dasgupta, a lawyer who represents women who have been raped or sexually assaulted by police officers, said: "If a woman reports rape or sexual assault by a police officer it is not just that the investigation has to be properly carried out, it has to be seen to be done properly in order for victims to have confidence in the system.
  "If these cases are being investigated by the police themselves then victims are going to get anxious. The IPCC may not have perfect resources but they should be fighting for them in order to investigate these kinds of cases."
  The development comes as the former partner of a police officer, who was jailed last year for having inappropriate sexual relationships with vulnerable women, speaks out against his actions, in testimony seen by the Guardian.
  In a film made by Nottinghamshire police, which is being released to all forces next month, the woman said: "I thought he was going to work and doing a professional job, making a difference, and it was all just lies. It affected everybody.
  "These people [his victims] were vulnerable. He was in a position of authority. He abused their trust, he abused the public's trust."
  The majority of the 169 investigations involve officers or PCSOs and include allegations of rape, sexual assaults, misconduct relating to inappropriate sexual behaviour with victims of crime, voyeurism, accessing indecent images, and indecent acts with a child.
  Emerging evidence suggests that the victims chosen by police officers were often vulnerable in some way, either women who had gone to the police because they had suffered domestic violence, rape or sexual assault, or individuals who had drug or alcohol addictions.
  Five forces did not provide figures, including Leicestershire, which cited exemption Section 30(3) under the Freedom of Information Act, claiming that to do so could prejudice inquiries. Northamptonshire police said they were considering withholding the statistics under the same exemption.
  One senior source within the police service said: "There are some forces up and down the country who '' while they might not be sweeping it under the carpet '' are being less than open about what is going on."
  Britain's largest force, the Metropolitan police, has set up an internal inquiry to investigate the problem of sexually predatory officers and is taking advice from the Nottinghamshire force, which is acting robustly against such criminality.
  In the Met, the directorate of professional standards is carrying out 42 investigations relating to 47 allegations against officers and PCSOs, including 36 allegations of sexual assault. Sixteen Met officers are awaiting trial for sexual misconduct offences.
  In Humberside, where seven officers and staff are under investigation, the IPCC has intervened after a woman complained about the way her allegations of sexual assault by a PCSO in January this year had been dealt with by the force. The PCSO was arrested and questioned, but the case was never referred to the Crown Prosecution Service for criminal charges and the officer resigned a month later, avoiding disciplinary action.
  It has since emerged that other alleged victims of the PCSO have come forward and the Humberside force is carrying out a new criminal inquiry, managed by the IPCC.
  Detective Superintendent Jackie Alexander, head of the professional standards unit of Nottinghamshire police, where 15 officers and staff are under investigation, said: "We in the police service need to be concerned. This happens in other professions, the church and in teaching, for example, but we in the police have the biggest obligation.
  "If people cannot trust the police, who can be trusted? One case is too many for the service and we have got to change our attitude and be alive to the fact that it will happen."
  As well as making a film about the problem, her force has introduced a whistleblowing hotline for officers to report concerns.
  "We have drawn a line in the sand. We are now finding that more complaints are coming in from colleagues of the officers concerned, or from the officers coming forward themselves, because we are trying to create a culture where this behaviour is totally unacceptable," she said.
  Dame Anne Owers, chair of the IPCC, which has urged all forces to do everything in their power to stop such abuse of power by officers, said the police watchdog wanted to get involved in more cases.
  "We are currently awaiting the home secretary's proposals on the expansion of the IPCC and welcome the opportunity to extend and strengthen our work. As more resources become available, the IPCC will aim to investigate more abuse of powers cases independently of the police service," she said.
  The Guardian first highlighted last year the hidden scandal of the abuse of power for sexual purposes by police officers. Since then a string of officers have gone through the courts.
  Jeffrey Davies, a South Wales officer, faces a jail sentence when he appears at Swansea crown court next week after being convicted of two sexual assaults on victims of domestic violence he met in the course of his duty as an officer. His two senior officers are under investigation for gross misconduct over claims they failed to investigate when the women came forward. Last month Clifford Earl, a Met officer, was jailed for 12 months for groping two women he met in the course of his work.
  Sexual assaults and inappropriate behaviour
  Police forces
  Number of incidents
  Notes
  Metropolitan police 42 42 investigations involving 47 allegations. 36 allegations of sexual assault and 11 of inappropriate sexual conduct Greater Manchester 17 Nottinghamshire 15 Devon and Cornwall 14 Humberside 7 West Midlands 7 Essex 6 Kent 6 Avon and Somerset 5 Hampshire 5 South Yorkshire 5 Cleveland 4 Hertfordshire 4 Mersyside 4 Northumbria 4 West Mercia 4 City of London 3 Lancashire 3 Cumbria 2 Derbyshire 2 North Wales 2 One police officer one pcso both suspended both criminal investigations South Wales 2 Staffordshire 2 Gwent 1 Norfolk 1 Suffolk 1 Sussex 1 Bedfordshire 0 Cambridgeshire 0 Cheshire 0 Dorset 0 Durham 0 Lincolnshire 0 North Yorkshire 0 Surrey 0 Warwickshire 0 Wiltshire 0 Dyfed Powys Yet to provide figures Gloucestershire Yet to provide figures Leicestershire Refused to provide figures Northamptonshire Yet to provide figures Thames Valley Yet to provide figures West Yorkshire Yet to provide figures
Proclamation -- National Health Center Week, 2013
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  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 21:05
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  August 09, 2013
  NATIONAL HEALTH CENTER WEEK, 2013
  - - - - - - -
  BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
  A PROCLAMATION
  Community health centers play a critical role in providing affordable, high-quality preventive and primary health care to millions of Americans. From urban centers to rural towns, they offer vital services regardless of ability to pay -- services that help patients stay healthy and avoid emergency room visits. During National Health Center Week, we recognize health centers' significant contributions to keeping America healthy, and we offer our continuing support to the dedicated providers who operate them.
  Today, health centers operate thousands of clinics across our country. One in every fifteen people living in the United States depends on their services. They are an important source of jobs in many low-income communities, employing more than 148,000 people nationwide. And with clinical and support staff who are responsive to their communities' needs and cultures, health centers are important partners in our efforts to reduce health disparities. From coast to coast, they coordinate care and build professional, compassionate health care teams focused on improving patient outcomes.
  My Administration has worked to strengthen this essential network. Through the Affordable Care Act and the Recovery Act, we have made significant investments that have helped health centers expand their work, which is now reaching more than 20 million people each year.
  As millions of Americans gain access to more health insurance options through the Affordable Care Act, health centers remain as valuable as ever. They help community members understand their options, determine their eligibility, and review possibilities for financial assistance. With support and funding from the health care law, health centers are also helping the uninsured enroll in plans made available through the new Health Insurance Marketplace, as well as in Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program.
  This week, we celebrate these valuable services and extend our thanks to the women and men who operate America's health centers.
  NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim the week of August 11 through August 17, 2013, as National Health Center Week. I encourage all Americans to celebrate this week by visiting their local health center, meeting health center providers, and exploring the programs they offer to help keep families healthy.
  IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this ninth day of August, in the year of our Lord two thousand thirteen, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-eighth.
  BARACK OBAMA
War Is A Racket, by Major General Smedley Butler, 1935
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 21:04
  Smedley Darlington Butler
  Born: West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881Educated: Haverford SchoolMarried: Ethel C. Peters, of Philadelphia, June 30, 1905Awarded two congressional medals of honor:capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico, 1914capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917Distinguished service medal, 1919Major General - United States Marine CorpsRetired Oct. 1, 1931On leave of absence to act asdirector of Dept. of Safety, Philadelphia, 1932Lecturer -- 1930'sRepublican Candidate for Senate, 1932Died at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940For more information about Major General Butler,contact the United States Marine Corps.
  CHAPTER ONE
  War Is A Racket
  WAR is a racket. It always has been.
  It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
  A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
  In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
  How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?
  Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.
  And what is this bill?
  This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.
  For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.
  Again they are choosing sides. France and Russia met and agreed to stand side by side. Italy and Austria hurried to make a similar agreement. Poland and Germany cast sheep's eyes at each other, forgetting for the nonce [one unique occasion], their dispute over the Polish Corridor.
  The assassination of King Alexander of Jugoslavia [Yugoslavia] complicated matters. Jugoslavia and Hungary, long bitter enemies, were almost at each other's throats. Italy was ready to jump in. But France was waiting. So was Czechoslovakia. All of them are looking ahead to war. Not the people -- not those who fight and pay and die -- only those who foment wars and remain safely at home to profit.
  There are 40,000,000 men under arms in the world today, and our statesmen and diplomats have the temerity to say that war is not in the making.
  Hell's bells! Are these 40,000,000 men being trained to be dancers?
  Not in Italy, to be sure. Premier Mussolini knows what they are being trained for. He, at least, is frank enough to speak out. Only the other day, Il Duce in "International Conciliation," the publication of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said:
  "And above all, Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. . . . War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it."
  Undoubtedly Mussolini means exactly what he says. His well-trained army, his great fleet of planes, and even his navy are ready for war -- anxious for it, apparently. His recent stand at the side of Hungary in the latter's dispute with Jugoslavia showed that. And the hurried mobilization of his troops on the Austrian border after the assassination of Dollfuss showed it too. There are others in Europe too whose sabre rattling presages war, sooner or later.
  Herr Hitler, with his rearming Germany and his constant demands for more and more arms, is an equal if not greater menace to peace. France only recently increased the term of military service for its youth from a year to eighteen months.
  Yes, all over, nations are camping in their arms. The mad dogs of Europe are on the loose. In the Orient the maneuvering is more adroit. Back in 1904, when Russia and Japan fought, we kicked out our old friends the Russians and backed Japan. Then our very generous international bankers were financing Japan. Now the trend is to poison us against the Japanese. What does the "open door" policy to China mean to us? Our trade with China is about $90,000,000 a year. Or the Philippine Islands? We have spent about $600,000,000 in the Philippines in thirty-five years and we (our bankers and industrialists and speculators) have private investments there of less than $200,000,000.
  Then, to save that China trade of about $90,000,000, or to protect these private investments of less than $200,000,000 in the Philippines, we would be all stirred up to hate Japan and go to war -- a war that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.
  Of course, for this loss, there would be a compensating profit -- fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars would be piled up. By a few. Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat packers. Speculators. They would fare well.
  Yes, they are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays high dividends.
  But what does it profit the men who are killed? What does it profit their mothers and sisters, their wives and their sweethearts? What does it profit their children?
  What does it profit anyone except the very few to whom war means huge profits?
  Yes, and what does it profit the nation?
  Take our own case. Until 1898 we didn't own a bit of territory outside the mainland of North America. At that time our national debt was a little more than $1,000,000,000. Then we became "internationally minded." We forgot, or shunted aside, the advice of the Father of our country. We forgot George Washington's warning about "entangling alliances." We went to war. We acquired outside territory. At the end of the World War period, as a direct result of our fiddling in international affairs, our national debt had jumped to over $25,000,000,000. Our total favorable trade balance during the twenty-five-year period was about $24,000,000,000. Therefore, on a purely bookkeeping basis, we ran a little behind year for year, and that foreign trade might well have been ours without the wars.
  It would have been far cheaper (not to say safer) for the average American who pays the bills to stay out of foreign entanglements. For a very few this racket, like bootlegging and other underworld rackets, brings fancy profits, but the cost of operations is always transferred to the people -- who do not profit.
  CHAPTER TWO
  Who Makes The Profits?
  The World War, rather our brief participation in it, has cost the United States some $52,000,000,000. Figure it out. That means $400 to every American man, woman, and child. And we haven't paid the debt yet. We are paying it, our children will pay it, and our children's children probably still will be paying the cost of that war.
  The normal profits of a business concern in the United States are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time profits -- ah! that is another matter -- twenty, sixty, one hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent -- the sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear. Uncle Sam has the money. Let's get it.
  Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time. It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country, and "we must all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump and leap and skyrocket -- and are safely pocketed. Let's just take a few examples:
  Take our friends the du Ponts, the powder people -- didn't one of them testify before a Senate committee recently that their powder won the war? Or saved the world for democracy? Or something? How did they do in the war? They were a patriotic corporation. Well, the average earnings of the du Ponts for the period 1910 to 1914 were $6,000,000 a year. It wasn't much, but the du Ponts managed to get along on it. Now let's look at their average yearly profit during the war years, 1914 to 1918. Fifty-eight million dollars a year profit we find! Nearly ten times that of normal times, and the profits of normal times were pretty good. An increase in profits of more than 950 per cent.
  Take one of our little steel companies that patriotically shunted aside the making of rails and girders and bridges to manufacture war materials. Well, their 1910-1914 yearly earnings averaged $6,000,000. Then came the war. And, like loyal citizens, Bethlehem Steel promptly turned to munitions making. Did their profits jump -- or did they let Uncle Sam in for a bargain? Well, their 1914-1918 average was $49,000,000 a year!
  Or, let's take United States Steel. The normal earnings during the five-year period prior to the war were $105,000,000 a year. Not bad. Then along came the war and up went the profits. The average yearly profit for the period 1914-1918 was $240,000,000. Not bad.
  There you have some of the steel and powder earnings. Let's look at something else. A little copper, perhaps. That always does well in war times.
  Anaconda, for instance. Average yearly earnings during the pre-war years 1910-1914 of $10,000,000. During the war years 1914-1918 profits leaped to $34,000,000 per year.
  Or Utah Copper. Average of $5,000,000 per year during the 1910-1914 period. Jumped to an average of $21,000,000 yearly profits for the war period.
  Let's group these five, with three smaller companies. The total yearly average profits of the pre-war period 1910-1914 were $137,480,000. Then along came the war. The average yearly profits for this group skyrocketed to $408,300,000.
  A little increase in profits of approximately 200 per cent.
  Does war pay? It paid them. But they aren't the only ones. There are still others. Let's take leather.
  For the three-year period before the war the total profits of Central Leather Company were $3,500,000. That was approximately $1,167,000 a year. Well, in 1916 Central Leather returned a profit of $15,000,000, a small increase of 1,100 per cent. That's all. The General Chemical Company averaged a profit for the three years before the war of a little over $800,000 a year. Came the war, and the profits jumped to $12,000,000. a leap of 1,400 per cent.
  International Nickel Company -- and you can't have a war without nickel -- showed an increase in profits from a mere average of $4,000,000 a year to $73,000,000 yearly. Not bad? An increase of more than 1,700 per cent.
  American Sugar Refining Company averaged $2,000,000 a year for the three years before the war. In 1916 a profit of $6,000,000 was recorded.
  Listen to Senate Document No. 259. The Sixty-Fifth Congress, reporting on corporate earnings and government revenues. Considering the profits of 122 meat packers, 153 cotton manufacturers, 299 garment makers, 49 steel plants, and 340 coal producers during the war. Profits under 25 per cent were exceptional. For instance the coal companies made between 100 per cent and 7,856 per cent on their capital stock during the war. The Chicago packers doubled and tripled their earnings.
  And let us not forget the bankers who financed the great war. If anyone had the cream of the profits it was the bankers. Being partnerships rather than incorporated organizations, they do not have to report to stockholders. And their profits were as secret as they were immense. How the bankers made their millions and their billions I do not know, because those little secrets never become public -- even before a Senate investigatory body.
  But here's how some of the other patriotic industrialists and speculators chiseled their way into war profits.
  Take the shoe people. They like war. It brings business with abnormal profits. They made huge profits on sales abroad to our allies. Perhaps, like the munitions manufacturers and armament makers, they also sold to the enemy. For a dollar is a dollar whether it comes from Germany or from France. But they did well by Uncle Sam too. For instance, they sold Uncle Sam 35,000,000 pairs of hobnailed service shoes. There were 4,000,000 soldiers. Eight pairs, and more, to a soldier. My regiment during the war had only one pair to a soldier. Some of these shoes probably are still in existence. They were good shoes. But when the war was over Uncle Sam has a matter of 25,000,000 pairs left over. Bought -- and paid for. Profits recorded and pocketed.
  There was still lots of leather left. So the leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of McClellan saddles for the cavalry. But there wasn't any American cavalry overseas! Somebody had to get rid of this leather, however. Somebody had to make a profit in it -- so we had a lot of McClellan saddles. And we probably have those yet.
  Also somebody had a lot of mosquito netting. They sold your Uncle Sam 20,000,000 mosquito nets for the use of the soldiers overseas. I suppose the boys were expected to put it over them as they tried to sleep in muddy trenches -- one hand scratching cooties on their backs and the other making passes at scurrying rats. Well, not one of these mosquito nets ever got to France!
  Anyhow, these thoughtful manufacturers wanted to make sure that no soldier would be without his mosquito net, so 40,000,000 additional yards of mosquito netting were sold to Uncle Sam.
  There were pretty good profits in mosquito netting in those days, even if there were no mosquitoes in France. I suppose, if the war had lasted just a little longer, the enterprising mosquito netting manufacturers would have sold your Uncle Sam a couple of consignments of mosquitoes to plant in France so that more mosquito netting would be in order.
  Airplane and engine manufacturers felt they, too, should get their just profits out of this war. Why not? Everybody else was getting theirs. So $1,000,000,000 -- count them if you live long enough -- was spent by Uncle Sam in building airplane engines that never left the ground! Not one plane, or motor, out of the billion dollars worth ordered, ever got into a battle in France. Just the same the manufacturers made their little profit of 30, 100, or perhaps 300 per cent.
  Undershirts for soldiers cost 14½ [cents] to make and uncle Sam paid 30½ to 40½ each for them -- a nice little profit for the undershirt manufacturer. And the stocking manufacturer and the uniform manufacturers and the cap manufacturers and the steel helmet manufacturers -- all got theirs.
  Why, when the war was over some 4,000,000 sets of equipment -- knapsacks and the things that go to fill them -- crammed warehouses on this side. Now they are being scrapped because the regulations have changed the contents. But the manufacturers collected their wartime profits on them -- and they will do it all over again the next time.
  There were lots of brilliant ideas for profit making during the war.
  One very versatile patriot sold Uncle Sam twelve dozen 48-inch wrenches. Oh, they were very nice wrenches. The only trouble was that there was only one nut ever made that was large enough for these wrenches. That is the one that holds the turbines at Niagara Falls. Well, after Uncle Sam had bought them and the manufacturer had pocketed the profit, the wrenches were put on freight cars and shunted all around the United States in an effort to find a use for them. When the Armistice was signed it was indeed a sad blow to the wrench manufacturer. He was just about to make some nuts to fit the wrenches. Then he planned to sell these, too, to your Uncle Sam.
  Still another had the brilliant idea that colonels shouldn't ride in automobiles, nor should they even ride on horseback. One has probably seen a picture of Andy Jackson riding in a buckboard. Well, some 6,000 buckboards were sold to Uncle Sam for the use of colonels! Not one of them was used. But the buckboard manufacturer got his war profit.
  The shipbuilders felt they should come in on some of it, too. They built a lot of ships that made a lot of profit. More than $3,000,000,000 worth. Some of the ships were all right. But $635,000,000 worth of them were made of wood and wouldn't float! The seams opened up -- and they sank. We paid for them, though. And somebody pocketed the profits.
  It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam $52,000,000,000. Of this sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself. This expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits. That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that way. This $16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at. It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few.
  The Senate (Nye) committee probe of the munitions industry and its wartime profits, despite its sensational disclosures, hardly has scratched the surface.
  Even so, it has had some effect. The State Department has been studying "for some time" methods of keeping out of war. The War Department suddenly decides it has a wonderful plan to spring. The Administration names a committee -- with the War and Navy Departments ably represented under the chairmanship of a Wall Street speculator -- to limit profits in war time. To what extent isn't suggested. Hmmm. Possibly the profits of 300 and 600 and 1,600 per cent of those who turned blood into gold in the World War would be limited to some smaller figure.
  Apparently, however, the plan does not call for any limitation of losses -- that is, the losses of those who fight the war. As far as I have been able to ascertain there is nothing in the scheme to limit a soldier to the loss of but one eye, or one arm, or to limit his wounds to one or two or three. Or to limit the loss of life.
  There is nothing in this scheme, apparently, that says not more than 12 per cent of a regiment shall be wounded in battle, or that not more than 7 per cent in a division shall be killed.
  Of course, the committee cannot be bothered with such trifling matters.
  CHAPTER THREE
  Who Pays The Bills?
  Who provides the profits -- these nice little profits of 20, 100, 300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent? We all pay them -- in taxation. We paid the bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00 and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers. These bankers collected $100 plus. It was a simple manipulation. The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us -- the people -- got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and government bonds went to par -- and above. Then the bankers collected their profits.
  But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.
  If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about 50,000 destroyed men -- men who were the pick of the nation eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three times as great as among those who stayed at home.
  Boys with a normal viewpoint were taken out of the fields and offices and factories and classrooms and put into the ranks. There they were remolded; they were made over; they were made to "about face"; to regard murder as the order of the day. They were put shoulder to shoulder and, through mass psychology, they were entirely changed. We used them for a couple of years and trained them to think nothing at all of killing or of being killed.
  Then, suddenly, we discharged them and told them to make another "about face" ! This time they had to do their own readjustment, sans [without] mass psychology, sans officers' aid and advice and sans nation-wide propaganda. We didn't need them any more. So we scattered them about without any "three-minute" or "Liberty Loan" speeches or parades. Many, too many, of these fine young boys are eventually destroyed, mentally, because they could not make that final "about face" alone.
  In the government hospital in Marion, Indiana, 1,800 of these boys are in pens! Five hundred of them in a barracks with steel bars and wires all around outside the buildings and on the porches. These already have been mentally destroyed. These boys don't even look like human beings. Oh, the looks on their faces! Physically, they are in good shape; mentally, they are gone.
  There are thousands and thousands of these cases, and more and more are coming in all the time. The tremendous excitement of the war, the sudden cutting off of that excitement -- the young boys couldn't stand it.
  That's a part of the bill. So much for the dead -- they have paid their part of the war profits. So much for the mentally and physically wounded -- they are paying now their share of the war profits. But the others paid, too -- they paid with heartbreaks when they tore themselves away from their firesides and their families to don the uniform of Uncle Sam -- on which a profit had been made. They paid another part in the training camps where they were regimented and drilled while others took their jobs and their places in the lives of their communities. The paid for it in the trenches where they shot and were shot; where they were hungry for days at a time; where they slept in the mud and the cold and in the rain -- with the moans and shrieks of the dying for a horrible lullaby.
  But don't forget -- the soldier paid part of the dollars and cents bill too.
  Up to and including the Spanish-American War, we had a prize system, and soldiers and sailors fought for money. During the Civil War they were paid bonuses, in many instances, before they went into service. The government, or states, paid as high as $1,200 for an enlistment. In the Spanish-American War they gave prize money. When we captured any vessels, the soldiers all got their share -- at least, they were supposed to. Then it was found that we could reduce the cost of wars by taking all the prize money and keeping it, but conscripting [drafting] the soldier anyway. Then soldiers couldn't bargain for their labor, Everyone else could bargain, but the soldier couldn't.
  Napoleon once said,
  "All men are enamored of decorations . . . they positively hunger for them."
  So by developing the Napoleonic system -- the medal business -- the government learned it could get soldiers for less money, because the boys liked to be decorated. Until the Civil War there were no medals. Then the Congressional Medal of Honor was handed out. It made enlistments easier. After the Civil War no new medals were issued until the Spanish-American War.
  In the World War, we used propaganda to make the boys accept conscription. They were made to feel ashamed if they didn't join the army.
  So vicious was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill, kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side . . . it is His will that the Germans be killed.
  And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill the allies . . . to please the same God. That was a part of the general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and murder conscious.
  Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious adventure."
  Thus, having stuffed patriotism down their throats, it was decided to make them help pay for the war, too. So, we gave them the large salary of $30 a month.
  All they had to do for this munificent sum was to leave their dear ones behind, give up their jobs, lie in swampy trenches, eat canned willy (when they could get it) and kill and kill and kill . . . and be killed.
  But wait!
  Half of that wage (just a little more than a riveter in a shipyard or a laborer in a munitions factory safe at home made in a day) was promptly taken from him to support his dependents, so that they would not become a charge upon his community. Then we made him pay what amounted to accident insurance -- something the employer pays for in an enlightened state -- and that cost him $6 a month. He had less than $9 a month left.
  Then, the most crowning insolence of all -- he was virtually blackjacked into paying for his own ammunition, clothing, and food by being made to buy Liberty Bonds. Most soldiers got no money at all on pay days.
  We made them buy Liberty Bonds at $100 and then we bought them back -- when they came back from the war and couldn't find work -- at $84 and $86. And the soldiers bought about $2,000,000,000 worth of these bonds!
  Yes, the soldier pays the greater part of the bill. His family pays too. They pay it in the same heart-break that he does. As he suffers, they suffer. At nights, as he lay in the trenches and watched shrapnel burst about him, they lay home in their beds and tossed sleeplessly -- his father, his mother, his wife, his sisters, his brothers, his sons, and his daughters.
  When he returned home minus an eye, or minus a leg or with his mind broken, they suffered too -- as much as and even sometimes more than he. Yes, and they, too, contributed their dollars to the profits of the munitions makers and bankers and shipbuilders and the manufacturers and the speculators made. They, too, bought Liberty Bonds and contributed to the profit of the bankers after the Armistice in the hocus-pocus of manipulated Liberty Bond prices.
  And even now the families of the wounded men and of the mentally broken and those who never were able to readjust themselves are still suffering and still paying.
  CHAPTER FOUR
  How To Smash This Racket!
  WELL, it's a racket, all right.
  A few profit -- and the many pay. But there is a way to stop it. You can't end it by disarmament conferences. You can't eliminate it by peace parleys at Geneva. Well-meaning but impractical groups can't wipe it out by resolutions. It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war.
  The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labor before the nations manhood can be conscripted. One month before the Government can conscript the young men of the nation -- it must conscript capital and industry and labor. Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our munitions makers and our shipbuilders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all the other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted -- to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get.
  Let the workers in these plants get the same wages -- all the workers, all presidents, all executives, all directors, all managers, all bankers -- yes, and all generals and all admirals and all officers and all politicians and all government office holders -- everyone in the nation be restricted to a total monthly income not to exceed that paid to the soldier in the trenches!
  Let all these kings and tycoons and masters of business and all those workers in industry and all our senators and governors and majors pay half of their monthly $30 wage to their families and pay war risk insurance and buy Liberty Bonds.
  Why shouldn't they?
  They aren't running any risk of being killed or of having their bodies mangled or their minds shattered. They aren't sleeping in muddy trenches. They aren't hungry. The soldiers are!
  Give capital and industry and labor thirty days to think it over and you will find, by that time, there will be no war. That will smash the war racket -- that and nothing else.
  Maybe I am a little too optimistic. Capital still has some say. So capital won't permit the taking of the profit out of war until the people -- those who do the suffering and still pay the price -- make up their minds that those they elect to office shall do their bidding, and not that of the profiteers.
  Another step necessary in this fight to smash the war racket is the limited plebiscite to determine whether a war should be declared. A plebiscite not of all the voters but merely of those who would be called upon to do the fighting and dying. There wouldn't be very much sense in having a 76-year-old president of a munitions factory or the flat-footed head of an international banking firm or the cross-eyed manager of a uniform manufacturing plant -- all of whom see visions of tremendous profits in the event of war -- voting on whether the nation should go to war or not. They never would be called upon to shoulder arms -- to sleep in a trench and to be shot. Only those who would be called upon to risk their lives for their country should have the privilege of voting to determine whether the nation should go to war.
  There is ample precedent for restricting the voting to those affected. Many of our states have restrictions on those permitted to vote. In most, it is necessary to be able to read and write before you may vote. In some, you must own property. It would be a simple matter each year for the men coming of military age to register in their communities as they did in the draft during the World War and be examined physically. Those who could pass and who would therefore be called upon to bear arms in the event of war would be eligible to vote in a limited plebiscite. They should be the ones to have the power to decide -- and not a Congress few of whose members are within the age limit and fewer still of whom are in physical condition to bear arms. Only those who must suffer should have the right to vote.
  A third step in this business of smashing the war racket is to make certain that our military forces are truly forces for defense only.
  At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals of Washington (and there are always a lot of them) are very adroit lobbyists. And they are smart. They don't shout that "We need a lot of battleships to war on this nation or that nation." Oh no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only.
  Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.
  The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline on the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast.
  The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the united States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.
  The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. Had that been the law in 1898 the Maine would never have gone to Havana Harbor. She never would have been blown up. There would have been no war with Spain with its attendant loss of life. Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can't go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation.
  To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.
  We must take the profit out of war.We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.
  CHAPTER FIVE
  To Hell With War!
  I am not a fool as to believe that war is a thing of the past. I know the people do not want war, but there is no use in saying we cannot be pushed into another war.
  Looking back, Woodrow Wilson was re-elected president in 1916 on a platform that he had "kept us out of war" and on the implied promise that he would "keep us out of war." Yet, five months later he asked Congress to declare war on Germany.
  In that five-month interval the people had not been asked whether they had changed their minds. The 4,000,000 young men who put on uniforms and marched or sailed away were not asked whether they wanted to go forth to suffer and die.
  Then what caused our government to change its mind so suddenly?
  Money.
  An allied commission, it may be recalled, came over shortly before the war declaration and called on the President. The President summoned a group of advisers. The head of the commission spoke. Stripped of its diplomatic language, this is what he told the President and his group:
  "There is no use kidding ourselves any longer. The cause of the allies is lost. We now owe you (American bankers, American munitions makers, American manufacturers, American speculators, American exporters) five or six billion dollars.
  If we lose (and without the help of the United States we must lose) we, England, France and Italy, cannot pay back this money . . . and Germany won't.
  So . . . "
  Had secrecy been outlawed as far as war negotiations were concerned, and had the press been invited to be present at that conference, or had radio been available to broadcast the proceedings, America never would have entered the World War. But this conference, like all war discussions, was shrouded in utmost secrecy. When our boys were sent off to war they were told it was a "war to make the world safe for democracy" and a "war to end all wars."
  Well, eighteen years after, the world has less of democracy than it had then. Besides, what business is it of ours whether Russia or Germany or England or France or Italy or Austria live under democracies or monarchies? Whether they are Fascists or Communists? Our problem is to preserve our own democracy.
  And very little, if anything, has been accomplished to assure us that the World War was really the war to end all wars.
  Yes, we have had disarmament conferences and limitations of arms conferences. They don't mean a thing. One has just failed; the results of another have been nullified. We send our professional soldiers and our sailors and our politicians and our diplomats to these conferences. And what happens?
  The professional soldiers and sailors don't want to disarm. No admiral wants to be without a ship. No general wants to be without a command. Both mean men without jobs. They are not for disarmament. They cannot be for limitations of arms. And at all these conferences, lurking in the background but all-powerful, just the same, are the sinister agents of those who profit by war. They see to it that these conferences do not disarm or seriously limit armaments.
  The chief aim of any power at any of these conferences has not been to achieve disarmament to prevent war but rather to get more armament for itself and less for any potential foe.
  There is only one way to disarm with any semblance of practicability. That is for all nations to get together and scrap every ship, every gun, every rifle, every tank, every war plane. Even this, if it were possible, would not be enough.
  The next war, according to experts, will be fought not with battleships, not by artillery, not with rifles and not with machine guns. It will be fought with deadly chemicals and gases.
  Secretly each nation is studying and perfecting newer and ghastlier means of annihilating its foes wholesale. Yes, ships will continue to be built, for the shipbuilders must make their profits. And guns still will be manufactured and powder and rifles will be made, for the munitions makers must make their huge profits. And the soldiers, of course, must wear uniforms, for the manufacturer must make their war profits too.
  But victory or defeat will be determined by the skill and ingenuity of our scientists.
  If we put them to work making poison gas and more and more fiendish mechanical and explosive instruments of destruction, they will have no time for the constructive job of building greater prosperity for all peoples. By putting them to this useful job, we can all make more money out of peace than we can out of war -- even the munitions makers.
  So...I say,
  TO HELL WITH WAR!
War Is a Racket - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 21:03
  War Is a Racket is the title of two works, a speech and a booklet, by retired United States Marine CorpsMajor General and two time Medal of Honor recipient Smedley D. Butler. In them, Butler frankly discusses from his experience as a career military officer how business interests commercially benefit from warfare.
  After his retirement from the Marine Corps, Gen. Butler made a nationwide tour in the early 1930s giving his speech "War is a Racket". The speech was so well received that he wrote a longer version as a small book with the same title that was published in 1935 by Round Table Press, Inc., of New York. The booklet was also condensed in Reader's Digest as a book supplement which helped popularize his message. In an introduction to the Reader's Digest version, Lowell Thomas, the "as told to" author of Butler's oral autobiographical adventures, praised Butler's "moral as well as physical courage".[1]
  In War Is A Racket, Butler points to a variety of examples, mostly from World War I, where industrialists whose operations were subsidised by public funding were able to generate substantial profits essentially from mass human suffering.
  The work is divided into five chapters:
  War is a racketWho makes the profits?Who pays the bills?How to smash this racket!To hell with war!It contains this key summary:
  "War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."The book is also interesting historically as Butler points out in 1935 that the US is engaging in military war games in the Pacific that are bound to provoke the Japanese.
  "The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon's shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles."Butler explains that the excuse for the buildup of the US fleet and the war games is fear that "the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate 125,000,000 people."
  In his penultimate chapter, Butler argues that three steps are necessary to disrupt the war racket:
  1. Making war unprofitable. Butler suggests that the owners of capital should be "conscripted" before other citizens are: "It can be smashed effectively only by taking the profit out of war. The only way to smash this racket is to conscript capital and industry and labour before the nation's manhood can be conscripted. '... Let the officers and the directors and the high-powered executives of our armament factories and our steel companies and our munitions makers and our ship-builders and our airplane builders and the manufacturers of all other things that provide profit in war time as well as the bankers and the speculators, be conscripted '-- to get $30 a month, the same wage as the lads in the trenches get"
  2. Acts of war to be decided by those who fight it. He also suggests a limited plebiscite to determine if the war is to be fought. Eligible to vote would be those who risk death on the front lines.
  3. Limitation of militaries to self-defence. For the United States, Butler recommends that the navy be limited, by law, to within 200 miles of the coastline, and the army restricted to the territorial limits of the country, ensuring that war, if fought, can never be one of aggression.
  ^OLD GIMLET EYE: Adventures of Smedley D. Butler, Farrar & Rinehart, 1933
DragonFireKai comments on Glenn Greenwald: Snowden Gave Me 15-20,000 Classified Documents
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 20:41
  US news belongs in /r/news, not here!/r/Worldnews is for major news from around the world except US-internal news / US politics.Do not editorialize the titles.News only, no raw images or videos.No link shorteners / all caps / offensive / racist contentNo editorial, opinion, petition, solicitation, poll or advocacy articles.Re-posts / pay-walled / stolen content (blogspam) may be removed.Please use the following reddits for content related to these topics:
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A Creepy Video That Shows How Easily Protest Photos Can Be Staged
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 20:40
  Think the above photo is showing a violent protest in the Middle East? Think again. The photo is in fact a screen grab from a video showing just how easily news photos of a 'violent protest' could be staged.
  The video below, captured by Elbadil TV, shows this fake protest shoot in action. Unfortunately we have no context regarding the ''protest'' itself '-- it could be a legitimate propaganda photo-op or simply a group of students showing how easily these things can be faked '-- but the creepy result speaks for itself:
  In the video, the fake protesters are expressing their support for the recently unseated President of Egypt Mohamed Morsi. Some protesters hoist signs expressing their desire to avoid a coup and keep Morsi in office, while other 'injured' protesters are seen laying on the ground covered in fake blood.
  Some cite this as an example of ''Pallywood,'' a term coined by professor Richard Landes of Boston University that refers to alleged media manipulation by Palestinians and other Arabs. Again, without context, there's no way to know for sure what this is showing, but it certainly acts as proof of concept.
  We already shared the dangers of fake imagery in the news and its psychological effects some time ago, this video simply points out that not all staged press photos require Photoshop.
Why Don't You Try This?: Courts quietly confirm MMR Vaccine causes Autism
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 20:38
  After decades of passionate debate, parents probably missed the repeated admissions by drug companies and governments alike that vaccines do in fact cause autism. For concerned parents seeking the truth, it's worth remembering that the exact same people who own the world's drug companies also own America's news outlets. Finding propaganda-free information has been difficult, until now.At the center of the fifteen-year controversy is Dr. Andrew Wakefield of Austin, Texas. It was Dr. Wakefield that first publicized the link between stomach disorders and autism, and taking the findings one step further, the link between stomach disorders, autism and the Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine.For that discovery way back in 1996, and a subsequent research paper published by the doctor in 1998, Andrew Wakefield has found himself the victim of a world-wide smear campaign by drug corporations, governments and media companies.
  And while Dr. Wakefield has been persecuted and prosecuted to the extent of being unable to legally practice medicine because of his discovery, he has instead become a best-selling author, the founder of the Strategic Autism Initiative, and the Director of the Autism Media Channel.
  But in recent months, courts, governments and vaccine manufacturers have quietly conceded the fact that the Measles Mumps Rubella (MMR) vaccine most likely does cause autism and stomach diseases. Pharmaceutical companies have even gone so far as to pay out massive monetary awards, totaling in the millions, to the victims in an attempt to compensate them for damages and to buy their silence.
  It was a regular reader named Kathleen that brought this ongoing story to our attention here at Whiteout Press. When asked what her connection to the vaccine-autism battle was, the young reader replied, ''I just researched it for a school project a while back and then I stayed on top of it, until I couldn't stand it anymore. I'm not a parent, nor do I belong to any organization '' a mere outside observer.''This reader isn't alone. The news that vaccines cause autism has spread across the US despite a coordinated media black-out. She takes her concerns one step further explaining, ''All I want is to see this information where the public can access it. I've looked everywhere, and no one gives this dire Wakefield situation even ONE small mention.'' She goes on to give us another motivation for her activism, ''In Washington State, where I'm from, vaccines have become mandatory for school children, which is very frightening!''
  In December 2012, two landmark decisions were announced that confirmed Dr. Wakefield's original concern that there is a link between the MMR vaccine, autism and stomach disorders. The news went mostly unreported, but independent outlets like The Liberty Beacon finally began publishing the groundbreaking news.The website wrote last month, 'In a recently published December 13, 2012 vaccine court ruling, hundreds of thousands of dollars were awarded to Ryan Mojabi, whose parents described how ''MMR vaccinations'' caused a ''severe and debilitating injury to his brain, diagnosed as Autism Spectrum Disorder ('ASD').'''
  The Liberty Beacon went on to describe the second court ruling that month, as well as similar previous verdicts writing, 'Later the same month, the government suffered a second major defeat when young Emily Moller from Houston won compensation following vaccine-related brain injury that, once again, involved MMR and resulted in autism. The cases follow similar successful petitions in the Italian and US courts (including Hannah Poling, Bailey Banks, Misty Hyatt, Kienan Freeman, Valentino Bocca, and Julia Grimes) in which the governments conceded or the court ruled that vaccines had caused brain injury. In turn, this injury led to an ASD diagnosis. MMR vaccine was the common denominator in these cases.'
  The report echoes the exact same sentiment that our reader conveyed '' Dr. Wakefield has had his career and reputation destroyed over the past 15 years, but has just been vindicated. The account reports, 'While repeated studies from around the world confirmed Wakefield's bowel disease in autistic children and his position that safety studies of the MMR are inadequate, Dr. Wakefield 's career has been destroyed by false allegations. Despite this he continues to work tirelessly to help solve the autism catastrophe.'
  The article from The Liberty Beacon closes with a direct quote from Dr. Wakefield himself to the independent grassroots outlet, ''There can be very little doubt that vaccines can and do cause autism. In these children, the evidence for an adverse reaction involving brain injury following the MMR that progresses to an autism diagnosis is compelling. It's now a question of the body count. The parents' story was right all along. Governments must stop playing with words while children continue to be damaged. My hope is that recognition of the intestinal disease in these children will lead to the relief of their suffering. This is long, long overdue.''
  Since the world has slowly become aware of the dangers of the MMR vaccine, parents around the globe have refused to get their children vaccinated. Earlier this year, the UK government singled out Dr. Wakefield and blamed him for the rising number of measles outbreaks in the country. In an April 2013 interview, he responded publicly.The website TheRefusers.com published both the video, as well as the written transcript, of Dr. Wakefield's public response. Below are some excerpts of the doctor's remarks:
  ''The important thing to say is that back in 1996-1997 I was made aware of children developing autism, regressive autism, following exposure in many cases to the measles mumps rubella vaccine. Such was my concern about the safety of that vaccine that I went back and reviewed every safety study, every pre-licensing study of the MMR vaccine and other measles-containing vaccines before they were put into children and after. And I was appalled with the quality of that science. It really was totally below par and that has been reiterated by other authoritative sources since.
  All I could do as a parent was to say, 'what would I do for my child?' That was the only honest answer I could give. My position on that has not changed. So, what happened subsequently? At that time the single measles vaccines were available freely on the National Health Service. Otherwise, I would not have suggested that option. So parents, if they were legitimately concerned about the safety of MMR could go and get the single vaccines. Six months later, the British government unilaterally withdrew the importation license for the single vaccines, therefore depriving parents of having these on the NHS; depriving parents who had legitimate concerns about the safety of MMR from a choice; denying them the opportunity to protect their children in the way that they saw fit.
  The news shouldn't be left wing or right wing, conservative or liberal. It should be the news. It should be independent '' Whiteout Press
  And I was astonished by this and I said to Dr Elizabeth Miller of the Health Protection Agency, 'why would you do this, if your principal concern is to protect children from serious infectious disease? Why would you remove an option from parents who are legitimately concerned about the safety of MMR?' And her answer was extraordinary. She said to me, 'if we allow parents the option of single vaccines, it would destroy our MMR program.' In other words, her principal concern seemed to be full protection of the MMR program and not protection of children.''
  Dr. Wakefield himself reiterates the final conclusion of the courts in various countries, but censored by the world's media outlets saying:
  ''Now this question has been answered not by me, but by the courts, by the vaccine courts in Italy and in the United States of America where it appears that many children over the last thirty years have been awarded millions of dollars for the fact that they have been brain-damaged by MMR vaccine and other vaccines and that brain damage has led to autism. That is a fact.''
  Source:Whiteout Press
  Read More:
Google Glass likely to be priced at US$299: researcher - The China Post
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 20:28
  CNAAugust 8, 2013, 12:10 am TWN
  TAIPEI -- Google Inc.'s eyeglass-shaped mobile computing device will likely be priced at an affordable level when it officially goes on sale, a local researcher at the Topology Research Institute said yesterday.The Google Glass is expected to carry an initial price tag to consumers of US$299, Topology researcher Jason Tsai told reporters on the sidelines of a local seminar on wearable devices.
  The device's display component, which will probably be supplied by Taiwan-based Himax Display Inc., will cost between US$30 and US$35 and will account for the biggest share of the total cost in the near term, he said.
  Google announced July 22 that it had agreed to buy a 6.3-percent stake in Himax Display, which produces liquid crystal on silicon (LCOS) chips and modules used in devices such as the Google Glass, head-up displays and handheld projectors.
  ''We believe wearable devices will face the first wave of growth in the coming one to three years due to their innovative features, and will then experience a rapid growth in the next phase when the market becomes more mature,'' Tsai said.
  According to Topology's projections, the global output value of wearable devices will grow from US$1.2 billion in 2011 to US$18.3 billion in 2018.
  Research firm IHS Inc. forecast that shipments of smart glasses might increase by 150 percent to 124,000 units this year, driven mostly by sales to developers. The global market for smart glasses could amount to almost 10 million units from 2012 to 2016.
  In April 2012, Google announced a trial project for Google Glass, a cross between a mobile computer and eyeglasses that can record video, access emails and messages, as well as surf the Internet.
  The eye glass-shaped device is equipped with a camera capable of taking 5-megapixels pictures or recording 720p video, as well as a 12-gigabyte usable memory and Wi-Fi connectivity, according to Google.
  Google began shipping the device in April this year to developers who registered as early backers and paid the US$1,500 price tag, aiming to spur innovations in applications that should take Google Glass from early adopters to the mass market.
  The consumer version of Google Glass is expected to go on sale as early as the end of this year, according to local media reports.
The Lesson of Lavabit | Steve (GRC) Gibson's Blog
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 20:23
  An implication of undeliverable security painted a bullseye'...Post's Permalink
  On Thursday, August 8th, Ladar Levison, the owner and operator of the semi-secure Lavabit.com eMail system, shut down his nearly ten year old service rather than be forced to continue to comply with United States law enforcement demands for the disclosure of personal and private information belonging to his service's clients. The Lavabit web site now simply displays this notice:
  My Fellow Users,
  I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what's going on''the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.
  What's going to happen now? We've already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.
  This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.
  Sincerely,Ladar LevisonOwner and Operator, Lavabit LLC
  Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund here.
  What is the lesson of Lavabit?
  When news first surfaced about Edward Snowden's presumptive use of Lavabit's eMail service for his eMail communication the assumption was that it was somehow ''secure.'' So I researched the nature of the service that was being offered, and I was not impressed. The trouble was, it was making a lot of noise about security, but as an eMail store-and-forward service it didn't (and couldn't) really do anything that was very useful from a security standpoint: Ladar had arranged to encrypt and store incoming eMail to a user's inbox in such a fashion that his service could not then immediately decrypt the eMail. It would not be until the user logged in that the Lavabit servers would be able to derive the decryption key in order to forward the then decrypted eMail to the user.
  As you can see, while this did offer somewhat useful encryption of data-at-rest, it didn't actually offer his users any real protection because both incoming and outgoing eMail would necessarily be transmitted in the clear.
  This architecture would, therefore, inherently expose the Lavabit service, its servers, its owners, and thus its users' data to law enforcement demands. Which, it seems clear, is exactly what happened. Ladar made his service a target by offering ''security'' that wasn't actually secure. (And how very wrong is it that he cannot even share the exact nature of the demands that were made upon him?!)
  I am impressed that Ladar chose to shutdown his service rather than continue to promise something that he now unequivocally knew was no longer secure in the face of law enforcement's quasi-legal incursions. It would have probably been better if he hadn't attempted to offer security that was beyond his ability to provide.
  During my weekly Security Now! podcast with Leo Laporte, we use the acronym ''TNO'' (Trust No One) to refer to any system where readily available cryptographic technology is properly employed in such a fashion that it is not necessary to trust the behavior of any third party. Unfortunately, without going to extraordinary lengths (e.g. S/MIME, PGP, GnuPG, etc.), today's eMail technology is resistant to the TNO principle.
  In coming weeks our Security Now! podcast will be delving deeply into the ways and means of producing true TNO eMail security.
$700k windfall: Russian man outwits bank with hand-written credit contract '-- RT Business
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 19:21
  A Russian man who decided to write his own small print in a credit card contract has had his changes upheld in court. He's now suing the country's leading online bank for more than 24 million rubles ($727,000) in compensation.
  Disappointed by the terms of the unsolicited offer for a credit card from Tinkoff Credit Systems in 2008, a 42-year-old Dmitry Agarkov from the city of Voronezh decided to hand write his own credits terms.
  The trick was that Agarkov simply scanned the bank's document and 'amended' the small print with his own terms.
  He opted for a 0 percent interest rate and no fees, adding that the customer "is not obliged to pay any fees and charges imposed by bank tariffs." The bank, however, didn't read 'the amendments', as it signed and certified the document, as well as sent the man a credit card. Under the agreement, the bank OK'd to provide unlimited credit, according to Agarkov's lawyer Dmitry Mikhalevich talking to Kommersant daily.
  "The opened credit line was unlimited. He could afford to buy an island somewhere in Malaysia, and the bank would have to pay for it by law," Mikhalevich added.
  Agarkov also changed the URL of the site where the terms and conditions were published and hedged against the bank's breaking of the agreement. For each unilateral change in the terms provided in the agreement, the bank would be asked to pay the customer (Agarkov) 3 million rubles ($91,000), or a cancelation fee of 6 million rubles ($182,000).
  However, after two years of active use, the bank decided to terminate Agarkov's credit card because of overdue payments. In 2012, the bank sued Agarkov for 45,000 rubles ($1,363) - an amount that included the remaining balance, fees, and late payment charges, which violated the actual agreement. The court decided that the agreement Agarkov crafted was valid, and required him to settle only his balance of 19,000 rubles ($575).
  The bankers had to admit the mistake, says Agarkov's representative Dmitry Mikhalevich.
  "They signed the documents without looking. They said what usually their borrowers say in court: 'We have not read it,''' says Mikhalevich.
  Despite the victory, Agarkov decided to sue Tinkoff Credit Systems for fines of 24 million rubles ($727,000) for not honoring the terms of the agreement, and the decision to terminate the contract without paying 6 million rubles ($182,000) fee.
  "Our lawyers think, he is going to get not 24 million, but really four years in prison for fraud. Now it's a matter of principle for @ tcsbank,'' founder of the bank Oleg Tinkov tweeted.
  ''We don't have small print, everything is clear and transparent. Try to open a card - then we'll talk. Stealing is a sin - in my opinion, of course. Not all in Russia think so,'' Tinkov tweeted.
  The next hearing will be held in September.
Group 4 (company) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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  Archived Version
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 18:36
  Group 4 was a security business operating primarily in the United Kingdom and latterly worldwide.
  The company was established by J¶rgen Philip-S¶rensen, as a division of Securitas AB in 1968.[1] The name derives from the fact that it brought together four different British security businesses into a single entity which became known as Group 4 Total Security and which was demerged from Securitas AB in 1981.[1] Following the decision by the British Government in 1993 to enter into a contract with Group 4 to provide security for prisons, the company was embarrassed after a series of security blunders, including escaped prisoners.[1] It merged with Falck, a Danish security business, in June 2000 to form Group 4 Falck.[1]
  1993 prisoner escapes in the United Kingdom
  In April 1993 Group 4 held a carefully stage managed press conference to resolve public relations problems after four prisoners were lost in the first seven days of their contract to transport prisoners about. Just after the press conference it was revealed a further two had been lost.[2]
  In 1993 Tony Blair described their performance as a comedy of errors during the first ten days of their contract to transport prisoners.[3][4]
Stephen Fry calls for ban on Winter Olympics in Russia over anti-gay laws | World news | The Guardian
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  Archived Version
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 18:31
  Stephen Fry has joined growing calls for Russia to be stripped of the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics because of concerns over new anti-gay laws, with the actor equating the situation to the staging of the 1936 Berlin Games in Nazi Germany.
  In an open letter to the International Olympic Committee and David Cameron that was also circulated to Fry's 2 million Twitter followers, he said Vladimir Putin "is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews".
  He added: "Putin is eerily repeating this insane crime, only this time against LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender] Russians. Beatings, murders and humiliations are ignored by the police. Any defence or sane discussion of homosexuality is against the law."
  The 2014 Winter Olympics, due to take place next February in the Black Sea resort and costing an estimated £35bn, are the most expensive in history and were planned as a show of strength by the Russian president.
  But the growing backlash against the new laws, passed this year, has now escalated into calls for the IOC to strip Russia of the Games and, in the US, to boycott them.
  Fry said: "An absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics of 2014 in Sochi is simply essential. Stage them elsewhere in Utah, Lillehammer, anywhere you like. At all costs, Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world."
  The new laws, passed by the Duma, prohibit "propaganda" in support of "non-traditional" sexual orientation and threaten heavy fines for anyone "promoting" homosexuality to under-18s.
  They have coincided with a sharp rise in reports of homophobia and attacks on the LGBT community in Russia.
  In the letter, which was also sent to the London 2012 organising committee chairman, Lord Coe, Fry added: "The summer Olympics of 2012 were one of the most glorious moments of my life and the life of my country. For there to be a Russian Winter Olympics would stain the movement forever and wipe away any of that glory."
  The comedian said that despite opposing the prime minister's politics he had the "utmost respect" for Cameron for the way he had pushed gay marriage proposals through parliament and stood up for LGBT rights.
  "For that I will always admire you, whatever other differences may lie between us. In the end I believe you know when a thing is wrong or right. Please act on that instinct now," he said.
  A Downing Street spokesman said it had repeatedly raised the issue with Russia.
  "We remain greatly concerned about the growing restrictions on LGBT freedoms in Russia and have repeatedly raised our concerns, including at the 2013 UK-Russia human rights dialogue in May. The prime minister outlined our concerns with President Putin during a meeting in Downing Street in June ahead of the G8 summit.
  "We are working closely with the IOC and the BOA to ensure that the Games take place in the spirit of the Olympic Charter and are free from discrimination."
  The issue has gained momentum just as Moscow prepares to host the world athletics championships. Four years after the Sochi Games, Russia is scheduled to host the football World Cup.
  President Obama, who has refused to rule out a US boycott of the Games amid strained relations between the two countries over a number of issues, said he had "no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them".
  Asked about the issue by Jay Leno on his Tonight Show, Obama added: "I think they understand that for most of the countries that participate in the Olympics, we wouldn't tolerate gays and lesbians being treated differently."
  Talk of a boycott recalls the 1980 summer Games in Moscow, which were boycotted by the US at the height of the cold war, and the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles, which were boycotted by the Russians.
  Last month the IOC said it would "work to ensure that the Games can take place without discrimination against athletes, officials, spectators and the media".
  It said: "To that end, the IOC has received assurances from the highest level of government in Russia that the legislation will not affect those attending or taking part in the Games."
  An official of Russia's main law enforcement authorities on Wednesday condemned any attempts to politicise the Games.
  Konstantin Dolgov, human rights commissioner of the interior ministry, said: "We are going on the assumption that all guests and participants at the Olympics will be met with hospitality, but that at the same time they will strictly follow Russian law and will respect our country's customs and traditions."
  Lawmakers had previously gone back and forth over whether Russia will enforce the gay propaganda law at the Games.
  The IOC said last month it had received assurances from the Russian government that athletes and spectators would be exempt from the law, and Igor Anansky, the chairman of the state Duma committee on physical culture, sports and youth affairs, said in August the law would not be invoked during the event.
  But the sports minister, Vitaly Mutko, said on 1 August the law would apply to athletes in Sochi in a statement that is likely to set the state's policy. "No one is forbidding an athlete with non-traditional sexual orientation from coming to Sochi, but if he goes on to the street and starts propagandising it, then of course he will be held accountable," Mutko said.
  Russia's recent crackdown on homosexuality has seen it ban gay pride parades in Moscow and outlaw adoptions by same-sex couples and the "propaganda of non-traditional sexual orientations" among minors.
  The gay propaganda law, as it is widely known, imposes fines for virtually any public discussion of LGBT issues, and foreigners face larger fines, detention for up to 15 days and deportation for violating it. Four Dutch activists who were filming a documentary about LGBT people in Murmansk were arrested under the law in July and banned from Russia for three years.
  A prominent gay rights activist, Nikolai Alexeev, said although Fry's letter "won't change anything" at the Olympics, it would help raise awareness of the plight of LGBT Russians. "When respected people around the world call this out, it highlights what's going on in Russia," Alexeev said.
  He said the parallels Fry draws between Russia's crackdown on LGBT rights and the start of Jewish persecution in Nazi Germany are "ever more relevant as of late", adding: "Today it's just laws, but these laws can lead to more repression and persecution of homosexual people in the future."
  In March, Fry met the St Petersburg politician Vitaly Milonov, who authored a citywide ban on gay propaganda last year that helped lead to the federal ban enacted in June.
  After a private discussion that was filmed for Fry's BBC2 documentary Out There, which will be screened later this year, Milonov promised to pray for Fry's soul, and the comedian referred to the meeting in his letter, describing it as an encounter with what Hannah Arendt called the "banality of evil".
  On Wednesday, Russia's investigative committee questioned television host Ksenia Sobchak over accusations of slander against Duma deputy Yelena Mizulina, a sponsor of the gay propaganda law. Mizulina has asked the committee to charge Sobchak and Alexeev with slander for their criticism of her on Twitter.
GLOBAL LOOTING: The new EU bailin law was passed 8 days ago'....did you notice? | The Slog. 3-D bollocks deconstruction
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  Archived Version
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 18:21
  Are you a citizen with rights, or just a helpless crustacean?
  Three beaming eurocrats '' Barroso, Van Rompuy and Lithuanian Dalia Grybauskaite '' emerged triumphant from a session two days ago, in which they mapped out the biggest bank heist in world history. This is to put flesh on the eurozone law hastily passed on August 1st (while EU citizens were on holiday) to deal with the inevitability event of a bank collapse. Under this draft proposal '' which many expect to be applied to the entire EU '' no depositor big or small will in future be able to feel safe with money deposited in a bank. The Slog now calls for those who represent us, across the entire cultural spectrum of European society '' to do something.
  In a barely read piece a month ago, the International Business Times reported on the rapidly drafted new EU law for ''overhauling its policy on how banks receive bumper bailouts''. Be aware: this is an EU move, not a eurozone move: it is already law (it passed on August 1st) and although for now it applies only to the eurozone, it is an EU law. Hardly anyone has commented on this, but the approach being taken matches word for word the 3-card trick George Osborne used six weeks ago when he said:
  ''In future, taxpayers will not be called upon to bail banks out. It will be down to the creditors and the owners''.
  The most remarkable example of double-speak to date, at the time I pointed out that creditors are taxpayers (they're account holders, simple as that) and so as the Establishments daren't ask us for higher taxes to bail out their mates in the banking system, they will take it via, if you like, Direct Debit. It is exactly the same principle of stealing the Troika wishes to apply to Greek private pension funds.
  The initial piece at the IBT website noted that 'Eurozone leaders agreed upon the major policy shift and also confirmed that the new rules will help protect the taxpayer and move the burden of bailing out the banks onto shareholders and junior debt holders.'' Again, more bollocks: how will ripping your money out protect you? And note '' junior debt holders'...aka, you and I.
  But yesterday from the German site Deutsche Wirtschafts Nachrichten (German Economic News) came a piece reporting that all bets are off as far as the 'guarantee of all funds under '‚¬100,000'² pledge is concerned. Under the current Lithuanian Presidency of Dalia Grybauskaite (seen left between a Trot and a poet), the proposal as drafted '' and almost entirely ignored by the Western media '' states as follows:
  * Treatment will not be the same regardless of size of deposit, BUT small account holders will have to wait up to four weeks to get their money'....'depending on how serious the insolvency is'. During that time, there will be a maximum withdrawal of '‚¬100-200 per day '' again, perhaps less depending on the seriousness of the failure. (Based on the Cyprus experience, the haircut in the end will be at least 60%).
  * The EU Parliament '' allegedly '' is demanding that deposits of '‚¬100,000+ euros should be confiscated within five days. (So much for MEPs offering us some kind of protection from the Sprouts).
  * In the event of a banking collapse, all previous government commitments are null and void. The force majeur of ''exceptional circumstances'' can lead to ways round such pledges. Part of the new plan suggests savers could also be subject to a 'penalty tax' if they have less than '‚¬ 100,000 in the bank. (So much for Merkel's promise to the German people).
  George Orwell could've dropped acid and still not come up with a scheme quite so assumptive and brazenly deranged as this one. It is based on the following insane principles:
  1. Putting money in a bank makes every citizen a creditor of that bank, equally prone to confiscation in order to repay'....who exactly? The answer is, other banks it owed money. So it's not really our money after all, it's the banking sector's money. After it's been taxed by the Government, despite the fact that we earned it'...it's really all bankers' money after all. Unbelievable.
  2. If we are prudent enough to keep money in smaller amounts in lots of accounts, we will have to pay a 'penalty tax' '' well of course we will: I mean, given it's never our money really '' we're just borrowing it, or something '' then quite right too. And because it isn't really our money, we shall be given strictly limited spending money per day. The brass neck is beyond belief.
  3. If you have been seditious enough in your life to actually make quite a lot of money legally, then within five days the money that was never really yours will be taken back by its rightful owners'...the bankers'....or the Government rescuing the bankers but without doing it in our taxes. Why five days '' why not five seconds? I mean, it's their money: we were just earning it for safe keeping, right? Of course we were.
  4. Anything is an exceptional circumstance if they say it is. Even the Nazis in 1933 had to burn down the bloody Reichstag to declare a State of Emergency. In 2013, it requires just one dumb, over-leveraged, f**kwitted bank to collapse under the weight of its CEO's ego, and we're all pauperised by Law.
  I think the time has finally come when we must give our legislators and 'leaders' here in the UK a gigantic kick up the jacksy. And I think the time has come for every decent organisation to mobilise even Wayne and Waynetta to GTF off the sofa and start making it clear to the scheming Wankers of Westminster that we're not having any of this crap here in Britain.
  As I tried to point out two years ago, this is no longer a political issue. This is a case of one simple rule by which decent citizens must abide: stealing things is wrong'...especially when it's done to repair your own stupid decisions in the past.
  These are the questions we should address to everyone supposed to represent us, starting today:
  1. To German Sloggers, demand Angela Merkel make the safety of ALL EU citizens' bank money a solid Election pledge next month.
  2. To the Christian, Jewish, Muslim and humanist leaderships of Britain: start an outcry in the media. Why aren't you giving your parishioners more support? Where is the outcry about pilfering from innocent citizens? Where is the condemnations of illegal, amoral confiscation?
  3. To the anti-EU Conservative Right, to UKip and its leader Nigel Farage, to our MEPs '' especially Dan Hannan: do you realise the delayed referendum on EU membership will come far too late to stop this? When are you going to start spelling this out to your supporters and media contacts that this is now a matter of citizen survival? Why hasn't there been uproar in the European Parliament about this? You guys talk a good game, but where's the line in the sand?
  4. To the TUC: Your members are about to be fleeced by the Co-op's management, and stand to be ruined by the EU's ECB-driven policy of slashing both the wages and assets of the European workforce. Can we have less political point-scoring, and more ecumenical organising action?
  5. To the Labour Party leadership: show that you truly are our friend in tough times. Stop doing bloody focus groups and poncing about between the lines of bland policy statements designed to make you look harmlessly voteworthy. Come back off your holidays and take a stand '' when are you going to start hounding Camerlot bigtime on this iniquitous policy? Or are you complicit in it? Please tell us.
  6. To the whingers and it-won't-make-any-difference-it's-nothing-to-do-with-me brigade: sorry, but you just ran out of road. Like it or not, you're involved. Start a movement now to remove every penny of current account and deposit monies from the bank. Are you a live Homo sapiens, or a braindead lobster?
  The Co-operative scandal is just the beginning. They are going to take our money and leave us all penniless'....at their mercy. To combat this, we really don't need any slogan beyond this one:
  Last night at The Slog: How hype took over from hope
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Open letter to Jeff Bezos - The Washington Post
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  Archived Version
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 15:04
  Dear Jeff,
  Welcome to The Post. I have read that the $250 million you paid for this newspaper is roughly 1 percent of your net worth, making it about as risky and consequential a purchase for you as a used 2003 Honda Civic might be for me. Still, I hope and strongly suspect you will not see it as a plaything, or, to extend the already shaky metaphor, a vehicle for promoting your bigger enterprises. I am presuming that despite the chump-change numbers, this is a big deal for you, and that you plan to roll up your sleeves and be the guy who finds a way to make conventional journalism succeed financially. I'd like to offer some advice.
  Back in 1982, when I was an editor at Tropic, the Miami Herald's Sunday magazine, the publisher asked us to run a story on our cover about the winners of The Silver Knight award, which was given out every year at a gala to the most promising high school seniors in the Miami area. The Silver Knights were a fine and noble enterprise, but the event was run and financed by Knight-Ridder, the corporate owners of The Miami Herald; Herald stories about the Silver Knight awards were inevitably uncritical, nakedly celebratory, and drenched in self-promotion. We at Tropic declined to run the story of the awards on the grounds that we were a small magazine trying to establish a feisty, pugnacious identity, and being a corporate suckup toady lickspittle didn't fit in with our plans. The publisher glowered, muttered something about insubordination, and steered the story to another, less visible section of the paper. We went unpunished.
  Wikipedia tells me that one of the Silver Knight winners that year was little Jeffrey Bezos of Miami Palmetto High School. Haha.
  You and I briefly crossed paths as younger men, and I dissed you. I guess it's clear who won that race.
  Here's the thing: We were right to decline that story, Jeff, but, more to the point, our publisher was wise to LET us decline. In the next 10 years, freed to robustly experiment with an outsize personality, Tropic would develop a fanatic following in Miami, and our writers and photographers would win two Pulitzers and be finalists for two more. That happened because the people above us trusted us, if grudgingly, and -- more important -- had our backs.
  I was telling this tale of tolerated impertinence to Howard Simons, the brilliant newspaper editor at the Washington Post, shortly before he died of cancer in 1990. He smiled and said that it embodied his most important principle as a newspaper manager: ''Kick up, kiss down.'' Aggravate your bosses, but make the people below you love and respect you. Katharine Graham and Don Graham were brilliant at this -- they must have given their board of directors fits, because during the great years they chose aggressive journalism over pennypinching every time -- and we loved them for it. It's an irreplaceable advantage, loyalty drawn from affection and respect.
  My father once told me that he felt grief-stricken at the sudden death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1945, but not fear that the country was now in the hands of some obscure haberdasher named Truman. My father knew only one thing about Truman, really -- that in failing health, and in the middle of a world war, F.D.R. had chosen him, and so Truman must be a good man. That was enough for my father.
  I think I speak for more than myself when I say that the main reason I have high hopes for your stewardship is that Don Graham said it was the right thing for the paper. He said you are the right guy. That was enough for me.
  ''Great'' is an overused term, and sports has rendered it almost meaningless, so I won't say you have just bought a ''great'' newspaper. I'm not even sure you've bought a ''newspaper'' in any understood sense. You have bought a place filled with enormously talented and dedicated journalists who are, at the moment, terrified at the prospect of change we don't really understand. We've already lost some fine people to that terror.
  You are obviously a good businessman, and you are said to be a visionary. I hope you have a clear vision of where to take this remarkable enterprise. As you go there, please remember to kick up, and kiss down.
  And sorry about the Silver Knight. But we were right.
Amazon's Bezos pays hefty price for Washington Post | Reuters
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 14:56
  Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos arrives at the annual Allen and Co. conference at the Sun Valley, Idaho Resort in this July 12, 2013 file photo.
  Credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking/Files
  By Jennifer Saba
  Wed Aug 7, 2013 7:02am EDT
  (Reuters) - Jeff Bezos has just shown how valuable one-of-a-kind newspaper properties can still be in the United States.
  The multibillionaire founder of online retailer Amazon.com Inc may have paid more than four times the price that the financial results of the Washington Post suggests it is worth.
  In Monday's deal, Bezos agreed to buy the Post and a handful of other newspaper assets from the Washington Post Co for $250 million. Going by the valuations of other newspaper deals and publicly traded media companies, though, the Washington Post would have been worth closer to $60 million.
  The average sale of a metro U.S. newspaper has commanded a valuation of 3.5 to 4.5 times earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), according to Reed Phillips, managing partner of the media investment bank DeSilva and Phillips.
  Morningstar analyst Liang Feng estimated that the Washington Post's newspaper division posted EBITDA of $15 million last year, not including pension liabilities. Washington Post CEO Donald Graham said the newspaper division was profitable last year but declined to give a figure.
  Based on those estimates, Bezos paid about 17 times 2012 EBITDA.
  Washington Post Co's shares rose more than 4 percent on Tuesday.
  Such a large premium, which essentially pays for intangible assets like the brand name, may mean that any future sellers of prestigious newspapers will raise their price expectations. Other major newspapers that are in the sights of potential buyers include the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune.
  Analysts and bankers said that when it came to newspapers such as the Washington Post, the usual financial metrics did not apply. The price, as in the case of other trophy assets like sports teams, depended on what a buyer was willing to pay.
  "The reality for newspapers like the Washington Post is it's impossible to use traditional financial metrics," said Paul Zwillenberg, a partner at The Boston Consulting Group. "These are trophy assets whose value is in the eye of the beholder."
  The deal could be one bright spot in an otherwise dour outlook for the newspaper industry, which faces declining advertising revenue and subscribers as people increasingly get their news online and on handheld devices. Over the past five years advertising revenue - still the major vein of revenue for most newspapers - fell by half to $22.3 billion.
  The New York Times Co, for example, faces many of the same headwinds as the Washington Post.
  If the New York Times, which is controlled by the Ochs-Sulzberger family, were to decide to sell its flagship newspaper and demanded a similar premium as the Washington Post, it could be worth nearly $5 billion, based on the Reuters analysis. Currently, the New York Times Co's market value is $1.8 billion.
  But Bezos' bet is relatively small compared with his fortune of around $25 billion, and the chances of any buyer paying a premium like that for the Times are remote. The last blockbuster deal of that size for a prestigious newspaper was News Corp's deal to buy Dow Jones, the publisher of The Wall Street Journal, for $5.6 billion in 2007. The following year it took a $2.8 billion non-cash charge on the purchase.
  "The New York Times is not for sale," said a New York Times spokeswoman.
  New York Times Co last weekend announced it would sell The Boston Globe and other New England properties to financier and Red Sox baseball team owner John Henry for $70 million. Boston Globe has a daily circulation of 245,572, roughly half of the Washington Post's 474,767.
  Graham, whose family plucked the Washington Post out of bankruptcy in 1933, said in an interview on Monday that he based his price expectations partly on what other buyers had offered.
  Graham said that the Post's investment bank Allen & Co reached out to no more than a dozen parties at the beginning of the year to gauge interest.
  He hatched the deal with Bezos less than a month ago during the annual media mogul fest in Sun Valley, Idaho. The Amazon founder did not haggle over the price.
  "I named a price and Jeff agreed to pay it," Graham said.
  (Editing by Paritosh Bansal and Stephen Coates)
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Car phone use 'not linked' to crashes
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  Archived Version
  Source: BBC News - Home
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 14:52
  9 August 2013Last updated at10:18 ETResearchers have found no link between the number of US drivers making phone calls while on the road and the number of accidents recorded.
  A team at Carnegie Mellon University and the London School of Economics analysed more than eight million incidents of car crashes and all fatalities on roads in eight US states.
  They examined data before and after 9pm local time over a three-year period.
  However they say their results do not include texting or internet browsing.
  The timeslot was chosen because during the period studied (2002 - 2005) many American mobile phone operators offered free calls after 9pm during the week.
  Prof Saurabh Bhargava from Carnegie and Dr Vikram Pathania from the LSE found that while there was an increase in callers using multiple phone masts after 9pm, there was no corresponding increase in the number of road accidents.
  Dr Pathania told the BBC they were "very surprised" by the results.
  "At first we thought the numbers were wrong. We went back and checked everything - but there was nothing going on at all," he said.
  "We just know that we saw a big jump in cellphone use and there was no impact on the crash rate."
  Further workDr Pathania added that the findings, published in the American Economic Journal, came with a number of caveats.
  Continue reading the main storyAt first we thought the numbers were wrong. We went back and checked everything - but there was nothing going on at all''
  End QuoteDr Vikram Pathania"We were only looking at talking, not texting or internet use. And it may be that the traffic conditions on the road at that time [9pm] are such that moderate use of cellphones does not present a hazard."
  Further research should focus on smartphone use, and also overall phone use among different driver demographics, Dr Pathania added.
  "It may look different if you focus on young males or new drivers," he said.
  "Rash drivers will always find a way to distract themselves."
  UK banWith the exception of calls to the emergency services, using a mobile phone while driving was officially banned in the UK in 2003.
  The Highway Code states that while hands-free sets are legal, drivers can still face penalties starting with three licence points and a £60 fine "if the police think you're distracted".
  "Using a phone at the wheel increases the risk of a crash by four times," said Kevin Clinton, head of road safety at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA).
  "Sadly, despite legislation which makes it illegal to do so, many people still use a mobile phone whilst driving."
Carlos Slim firm bids for KPN stake
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  Source: BBC News - Europe
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:44
  9 August 2013Last updated at07:17 ETAmerica Movil, which is owned by the world's richest man Carlos Slim, has offered 7.2bn euros ($9.6bn; £6.2bn) for the 70% of Dutch telecoms company KPN it does not already own.
  The bid is widely seen as a challenge to last month's offer from Telefonica for KPN's German arm E-Plus.
  E-Plus has a 15% stake in the German mobile market. The bid for it was backed by KPN's management.
  Movil's 2.40 euros-a-share offer is 20% above Thursday's closing share price.
  It is much lower than the 8 euros per share that Mr Slim paid in May last year for his original stake.
  But it is considerably higher than the 1.60 euros at which the shares were trading in July before Telefonica announced its bid.
  A KPN spokesman said the company was studying America Movil's offer.
  European assetsKPN's shares have been falling sharply in recent years as the introduction of smartphones has eaten into its margins in the Netherlands, where it has a 40% share of the market.
  The company has taken on a lot of debt as a result of paying more than expected to the Dutch government in an auction of fourth generation mobile phone licences.
  Mr Slim has topped the Forbes list of the world's richest people for the past four years, with an estimated wealth of $73bn (£49bn).
  America Movil, the Latin America mobile phone operator, is his most valuable asset, but he also has industrial, mining, financial, retail and real estate assets.
  Buying the KPN stake was America Movil's first venture into Europe. It has since bought a 24% stake in Telekom Austria.
Cyber attack blackmail charges
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  Archived Version
  Source: BBC News - Home
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:44
  9 August 2013Last updated at05:04 ETTwo men have been charged in connection with an attempt to blackmail a Manchester internet company with a cyber attack.
  Police described it as a multi-million pound plot.
  Patryk Surmacki, 35, of Szezecin and Piotr Smirnaw, 31, of Tawerny, Warsaw each face two charges of blackmail and one of unauthorised acts on a computer.
  They were arrested at Heathrow Airport on Wednesday and are due at Uxbridge Magistrates' Court in London later.
  The investigation is being led by Greater Manchester Police and supported by the Serious and Organised Crime Agency. It centres on a reported cyber attack on the online company's website.
  Police said they could not confirm the identity of the internet firm that was targeted.
How Will Historians of the Future Run MS Word 97?
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  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:43
  Boxes of software at the Library of Congress' Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation
  Photo by Dave Gibson
  Visitors to Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., can avail themselves of free shuttle cars to help them make their way about the sprawling suburban campus. The cars are clean and quiet and always appear within minutes of being summoned, and the drivers always know where they are going. Or almost always: During my weeklong stay my drivers repeatedly told me this was their first trip to Building 126, Microsoft's corporate archives. One or two had to look it up on Bing Maps.
  Nonetheless, the facility is impressive: a dedicated building with 6,600 shelf-feet of cold storage, all holdings duly packaged in the archive world's ubiquitous soft gray Hollinger boxes, as well as earthquake safeguards and redundant off-site storage at Iron Mountain in Pennsylvania. I had come to Microsoft to do research for the book I am writing on the literary history of word processing. Microsoft Word, I reasoned, was the most widely used piece of writing software in the world, the No. 2 pencil of the digital age. Outside researchers here are scarce indeed, but I was lucky enough to get in thanks to assistance from Microsoft Research Connections, where there are people who understand why an English professor might be interested in what they do. Over the course of a week spent sequestered in the remote archives building on the edge of the Microsoft campus, I came to appreciate exactly what it means to think about software as an artifact: not some abstract, ephemeral essence, not even as lines of code, but as something made, something that builds up layers of tangible history through the years, something that contains stories and subplots and dramatis personae. And I started thinking anew about how we preserve software for the future: future users, future programmers, and future historians. If, hundreds of years from now, a literary scholar wanted to run Word 97, the first consumer version to implement the popular ''track changes'' feature, how would she find it? What machine would accommodate this ancient artifact of textual technology?
  Just as early filmmakers couldn't have predicted the level of ongoing interest in their work more than 100 years later, who can say what future generations will find important to know and preserve about the early history of software? While the notion that someone might go diving into some long outmoded version of Word might seem improbable, knowledge of the human past turns up in all kinds of unexpected places. Historians of the analog world have long known this: Writing, after all, began as a form of accounting'--would the Sumerian scribes who incised cuneiform into wet clay have thought their peculiar angular scratchings would have been of interest to a future age?
  We tend to conceptualize software and communicate about it using very tangible metaphors. ''Let's fork that build.'' ''Do you have the patch?'' ''We can use these libraries.'' ''What's the code base?'' Software may be, as David Gelernter once wrote, stuff unlike any other, but it is still a thing, tangible and present for all of its supposed virtual ineffability. Software developers themselves have a name for the way in which software tends to accrete as layers of sedimentary history, fossils and relics of past versions and developmental dead ends: cruft, a word every bit as textured as crust or dust or fluff, all of which refer to physical rinds and remainders.
  And even outside the program itself, what else is the software? Is it just the code, or is it also the shrink-wrapped artifact, complete with artwork, documentation, and ''feelies,'' extras like faux maps or letters that would become part of the play of a game? Is it the program or the operating system? What about the hardware? The firmware? What about controllers and other peripherals integral to the experience of a given piece of software? How to handle all the different versions and iterations of software? What about fan-generated add-ons like mods and macros? What about discussion boards and strategy guides and blogs and cheat sheets, all of which capture the lively communities around software?
  More simply: What do we save, and how do we save it?
  In the green hills west of Washington, D.C., sits the Library of Congress' Culpeper, Va., campus, properly known as the Packard Campus for Audio-Visual Conservation. Built with support from David Woodley Packard, it's a state-of-the-art facility whose sweeping lines and aery interiors seem more characteristic of its Silicon Valley patronage than the Virginia countryside or federal bureaucracy. The 45-acre Packard campus is charged with the long-term safekeeping of the nation's films, television programs, radio broadcasts, and sound recordings'--the largest audio and moving-image collection in the world.
  For decades the library has also been receiving computer games, and in 2006 the games became part of the moving-image collections at the Packard campus. While the library registers the copyrights, what it means to preserve and restore vintage computer games'--or any kind of computer software'--is less clear. What kind of intervention is necessary to keep computer games from meeting the fate of the 80 percent of pre-1930 American films now lost forever thanks to their volatile nitrate film stock?
  That question was recently explored at a two-day meeting dubbed ''Preserving.exe'' at the Library of Congress' Madison building in Washington. A roomful of computer historians, technical experts, archivists, academics, and industry representatives discussed what role the nation's cultural-heritage institutions, from the library and the Smithsonian to the Internet Archive, ought to play in gathering and maintaining collections of games and other software for posterity. While libraries, archives, and museums now routinely confront the challenges of massive quantities of files and records in digital format, actual software'--''executable content'' in the parlance of the meeting'--raises some especially vexed problems for preservation.
  Fans of vintage computer games will be familiar with emulators, software programs that create a virtual simulation of some bygone computer, allowing one to actually execute legacy code in a kind of Potemkin environment. The experience of using an emulator can be uncanny, with sounds, graphics, and the behavior of the original system all instantly recreated on a modern machine. Emulators, moreover, are not only duplicates of the original system; they also allow for forms of study'--a peek into the underlying state of the program's machine code, for example'--that the original software running on original hardware couldn't. Examples of this approach were well represented at the Library of Congress meeting. The Olive project at Carnegie Mellon is investigating streaming virtualization technologies, allowing users to configure legacy hardware as needed from the cloud; Jason Scott, the flamboyant archives populist and activist, demoed a browser-based system that would allow users to embed vintage computers like they do YouTube videos.
  Still, others at the meeting emphasized the need to retain actual exemplars of old systems, in order to allow users the most complete experience of the original look and feel. While a good emulator can work marvels'--duplicating the processor speed of the original hardware, for example'--the impossibility of recapturing the fullness of the original experience was brought home again and again during the meeting. Sometimes the interaction between software and hardware can be especially subtle. I well remember the frustration of banging away at the keyboard while playing old-school interactive fiction games like Wishbringer or Zork, only to be told by the parser ''I DON'T UNDERSTAND THAT'' or ''YOU CAN'T DO THAT HERE.'' But when I hit upon the right solution, I'd know it immediately: The program would pause, the disk would audibly spin up, and a new text description would be loaded as the progress of the game advanced. This sort of pacing and rhythm established the tempo of the experience, in the same way that processor speeds do for more kinetic forms of game play.
  But in a world with limited shelf space (and even more limited funding for archives), perhaps my experience of playing Adventure as a 14-year-old can't make the historical cut. ''We don't want to be a computer history museum,'' presenters repeated over and over again at the meeting. After all, machines are fickle, temperamental, and take up space. Replacement parts have to be purchased on eBay or Craigslist, a red flag for certain kinds of institutions. As Clifford Lynch, director of the Coalition for Networked Information observed, libraries provide access to 18th-century books, but they don't promise to recreate the conditions'--flickering candlelight, inadequate ventilation, smallpox'--that might have accompanied reading it in the 18th century.
  There is no preservation without loss. Archivists know this better than anyone. Emulation and hardware conservation, as well as other approaches'--even printing out the source code'--all have their partisans and proponents. Each entails trade-offs and compromises, and there will never be a one-size-fits-all solution. But one thing I've learned in my travels in software preservation is that the most important issues are not technical; they are social and cultural. Many early computer magazines in fact preserved software precisely by printing the source code'--which readers could then manually transcribe'--but the Library of Congress routinely discarded such magazines as mere ephemera before around 1990. That was a policy decision based on perceived value, not technical considerations. Whatever the details of the technical challenges and solutions for software preservation may turn out to be, first and foremost must be our human desire to harvest historical memory and understanding wherever it may lie.
  At the Library of Congress meeting, a representative from GitHub, the massive open-source online repository, made the connection to such ideals all but explicit, declaring the software culture on the Web the new cultural canon and invoking Emerson, Beowulf, and Adam Smith. Rachel Donahue, an information studies doctoral student at the University of Maryland, suggested (only partially in jest) that sentient machines might one day demand a record of their computational past. One preserves software not because its value to the future is obvious, but because its value cannot be known.
  Near the end of the meeting Lynch was called upon to give a summary of the proceedings. He pointed out that ''software'' was a far broader category than had even been discussed, with implications for everything from kitchen appliances to Boeing 777s. He then paused and wondered whether perhaps the Library of Congress ought to be compiling canonical lists of the most culturally significant computer software, just as it now does for books and movies. Such lists are powerful collective motivators, spurring discussion and argument. Could one be made for software? If so, what should be on it?
Glenn Greenwald offered Brazilian protection from U.S.
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  Archived Version
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:42
  A Brazilian official has taken the unusual step of publicly announcing that the Brazilian government will offer Guardian writer Glenn Greenwald protection from the U.S. government after determining he risks facing legal action if he returns to the U.S.
  To receive protection from Brazil, Greenwald would have to officially request it. But though he takes the risk of prosecution seriously, Greenwald tells me he has no intention of taking the Brazilian government up on the offer '-- and that he plans to return to the U.S. sooner than later, come what may.
  ''I haven't requested any protection from the Brazilian government or any other government because, rather obviously, I've committed no crime '-- unless investigative journalism is now a felony in the U.S.,'' Greenwald said via email. ''But the fact that Brazilian authorities believe there is a real possibility that the U.S. would unjustly prosecute journalists for the 'crime' of reporting what the U.S. government is doing is a powerful indictment of the U.S.'s current image in the world '-- just as was the requirement that the U.S. promise it will not torture or kill Snowden if he's returned. It's an equally potent reflection of the massive gap in opinion between the U.S. Government and the rest of the world when it comes to how the NSA disclosures, my reporting, and Snowden are perceived.''
  The offer, published in the Sao Paulo newspaper Estadao, doesn't indicate in any way that the U.S. government is pursuing or will pursue legal action. It also doesn't mean that the Brazilian officials genuinely believe Greenwald would be arrested or tried for violating U.S. laws if and when he returns stateside. But it at least suggests that people in Brazil and other countries believe it's a plausible enough scenario that government officials can credibly validate it.
  A Department of Justice official did not respond to requests for comment on the Estadao article.
  Greenwald '-- who once wrote for Salon '-- has published several articles based on classified surveillance documents he received from National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. Prominent elected officials in the United States have accused Greenwald of being complicit in the crimes they accuse Snowden of committing, which feeds suspicions, both domestically and abroad, that Greenwald might face legal action if he returns to the U.S. That's part of the reason why Greenwald himself '-- a former appellate lawyer '-- isn't shrugging off the possibility.
  ''Given that the Obama DOJ has adopted theories that would criminalize journalism in both the WikiLeaks Grand Jury proceeding and the investigation of James Rosen, given that it has waged what most observers agree is an unprecedented war on whistle-blowers, and given that several prominent political figures and journalists have called for my prosecution, I obviously take the risk seriously,'' Greenwald adds. ''But I take more seriously the Constitution's guarantee of a free press in the First Amendment. So I have every intention of entering the U.S. as soon as my schedule permits and there's a reason to do so.''
Time Warner CEO Says Having Game Of Thrones As 'Most Pirated' Is 'Better Than An Emmy'.
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  Archived Version
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:42
  Because it's so popular -- and so pirated (in part because you can't view it legally online if you're not an HBO subscriber via cable/satellite) -- the question of Game of Thrones and piracy is a story that just never dies. Many people have argued that it's ridiculous that there are no legal options for cord cutters, and that just leads to more infringement -- and, in turn, that's resulted in people arguing that a good part of the show's popularity is likely due to infringement. Of course, for those associated directly with the show, it seems like they're a bit conflicted about this. Director David Petrarca first said that unauthorized downloads were great because they added to the cultural buzz that made the show thrive... and once that story got attention, he quickly walked it back, suddenly saying he was opposed to unauthorized watching. And, bizarrely, we've even seen the US ambassador to Australia argue that stopping infringement of Game of Thrones is a major priority.Well, Ambassador Jeffrey Bleich might want to chat with Jeff Bewkes, CEO of Time Warner (owners of HBO), who just pointed out that unauthorized watching leads to more subscribers and is "better than an Emmy."
  Yes, in response to a question about whether the network kinda-sorta regards the extensive theft of HBO's flagship show, Game of Thrones, as a compliment, Bewkes said, "I have to admit it, I think you're right." The much-discussed fantasy series is HBO's most popular, and "if you go to people who are watching it without subs, it's a tremendous word-of-mouth thing," the exec told investors. "We've been dealing with this for 20, 30 years'--people sharing subs, running wires down the backs of apartment buildings. Our experience is that it leads to more paying subs. I think you're right that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world," he said. "That's better than an Emmy."
  Of course, plenty of people have been pointing out for years and years and years that infringement is a signal of unmet demand, so it's nice to see them catching up. Of course, now let's see if Time Warner still backs the next ridiculous and draconian copyright enforcement expansion...
MSNBC: Obama Praises "9/11 Generation"
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:41
Amsterdam verbiedt Russisch galaconcert niet
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  Source: VK: Home
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:37
  Bewerkt door: redactie '' 09/08/13, 13:32 '' bron: ANP
  (C) ANP. Burgemeester van Amsterdam, Eberhard van der Laan
  Het Russische galaconcert Constellation of Russia dat op 25 augustus in Amsterdam wordt gehouden, moet gewoon doorgaan. De gemeente trekt de vergunning voor het evenement niet in na een oproep hiertoe van homobelangenorganisaties COC Nederland en Pride United.
  Wel wil burgemeester Eberhard van der Laan op korte termijn in gesprek met de organisaties. Het stadsbestuur deelt de zorgen over ontwikkelingen in Rusland, waar de homorechten onder grote druk staan. Daarover heeft het zich de afgelopen tijd ook uitgesproken, onder meer tijdens het bezoek van de Russische president Poetin aan de Hermitage en op de Gay Pride.
  De vergunning voor het evenement op het Museumplein blijft echter in stand. 'Juist omdat Amsterdam een naam heeft hoog te houden als stad waar w(C)l ruimte bestaat voor verschillende geluiden.' Een verbod past daarom niet bij de stad, liet de gemeente vrijdag weten.
  'Vanzelfsprekend geldt deze vrijheid van meningsuiting ook voor tegengeluiden. Deze hebben in Amsterdam, ook in het Ruslandjaar, alle ruimte.' Hierover wil de burgemeester dan ook spreken met beide organisaties.
  Tijdens het evenement is er muziek, dans en ballet van artiesten uit verschillende Russische regio's. Het gratis toegankelijke festival vindt plaats in het kader van het Nederland-Ruslandjaar 2013 en de organisatie is in handen van Rossotrudnichestvo. Dat is een onderdeel van het Russische ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken.
CNN Anchor Says Zoos 'Feel Like a Stone Age Thing': They Had Zoos Then?
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  Archived Version
  Source: Tim Graham's blog
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:36
  CNN anchor Erin Burnett ended her evening news show Upfront on Thursday night with a commentary suggesting America should close its zoos. "It feels absolutely wrong to cage" animals. "It feels like a Stone Age thing."
  They had zoos in the Stone Age? Isn't it more likely they just killed and ate animals rather than put them on display? She began her commentary by relaying how a Sumatran tiger had cubs at the National Zoo in D.C., but then shifted to the zoo-cruelty line:
  BURNETT: Costa Rica, known for its incredible biodiversity, is closing its zoos because cages are bad for animals.Costa Rica's minister of the environment says the decision was based on a childhood experience. He said, "One day, we took the parrot out to the patio and a flock of wild parrots passed. And the parrot went with them. We fed them with food and affection, all these things that we as humans thought she liked, and when she had a chance, she left."
  She, after all, is wild and wants to be with her own kind.
  I always thought zoos were important, inspiring children to respect animals. But after reading the Costa Rica story, I'm not sure. The quarters the tiger cubs are kept in are very small. Some animals in the zoo seem lonely and forlorn. It feels absolutely wrong to cage them. It feels like a Stone Age thing.
  We want to know what you think. Should America close its zoos? Let us know at Twitter @ErinBurnett and @OutFrontCNN.
  In her defense, Burnett's on a "Stone Age" kick. She ended her show Wednesday night marveling at the know-how of the North Koreans, despite their dictatorship. "It's easy to dismiss a place like North Korea and imagine that it's in the Stone Age. But while it's regime is a tragedy, here is to what the country can add to the world when its people are finally free."
Adam Curtis: Real state secret is that spies aren't good at their jobs
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  Archived Version
  Source: Hacker News
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:34
  The recent revelations by the whistleblower Edward Snowden were fascinating. But they - and all the reactions to them - had one enormous assumption at their heart.
  That the spies know what they are doing.
  It is a belief that has been central to much of the journalism about spying and spies over the past fifty years. That the anonymous figures in the intelligence world have a dark omniscience. That they know what's going on in ways that we don't.
  It doesn't matter whether you hate the spies and believe they are corroding democracy, or if you think they are the noble guardians of the state. In both cases the assumption is that the secret agents know more than we do.
  But the strange fact is that often when you look into the history of spies what you discover is something very different.
  It is not the story of men and women who have a better and deeper understanding of the world than we do. In fact in many cases it is the story of weirdos who have created a completely mad version of the world that they then impose on the rest of us.
  I want to tell some stories about MI5 - and the very strange people who worked there. They are often funny, sometimes rather sad - but always very odd.
  The stories also show how elites in Britain have used the aura of secret knowledge as a way of maintaining their power. But as their power waned the "secrets" became weirder and weirder.
  They were helped in this by another group who also felt their power was waning - journalists. And together the journalists and spies concocted a strange, dark world of treachery and deceit which bore very little relationship to what was really going on. And still doesn't.
  PROLOGUE - SALISBURY PLAIN 1991
  In January 1991, as the Gulf War began, MI5 became convinced they had discovered a secret Iraqi terror organisation based in Britain.
  They had found a list of thirty three Iraqis who were studying for PhDs in London. The list had been sent by the Iraq embassy in London to the Bank of England to ask the Bank not to freeze the grants the students lived on. The Bank sent the list to MI5 and the agents quickly realised that actually they were looking at something far worse - a nationwide Iraqi military terror cell.
  The reason they knew this was because the person who sent the list was the deputy military attache at the embassy.
  Immediately the police were told to swoop on the 33 "students" - and they were taken to a disused military camp at Rollestone in the middle of Salisbury plain and interned as prisoners of war. They were surrounded by two levels of high security razor wire and guarded by a hundred heavily armed soldiers.
  It was the first time anyone had been held like this in Britain since the Second World War.
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  In fact the letter showed nothing of the kind. The Iraqi military attache was also in charge of administering student grants for Iraqis studying in Britain.
  Some of them did get funding from the Iraqi military - for studying things like the structure of polymers. But, as a British professor pointed out, if that same interpretation were applied to British science students, over half of them would be immediately re-classified as terrorists.
  Here is part of a programme made later that year about the absurdity of what happened. It shows how neither the detainees or their lawyers were even allowed to know what the evidence was that had led to them being imprisoned.
  The man who defends MI5 with such fervor will turn up later in this story - playing a very odd role. he is called Nigel West - but his real name is Rupert Allason.
  I've added on the news reports of the same Iraqis suddenly being released from the heavily fortified camp. But now everyone is referring to them as "students".
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  An inquiry was held later that year into the scandal. It asked MI5 to produce its evidence. Other than the letter, the secret agents came up with nothing.
  They had imagined the whole thing. But they justified it by saying
  "It was best to err on the side of caution".
  NEARLY A HUNDRED YEARS EARLIER
  THE DAILY MAIL CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT 1906
  William Le Queux was a popular novelist in the early part of the twentieth century. He was half French, half British and he wrote books with wonderful titles like Strange Tales of a Nihilist.
  Le Queux had started off as a journalist on the Daily Mail - but then had travelled around Europe getting to know lots of famous and infamous people. But as he did so he became convinced that many of the European countries, but most of all Germany, envied Britain and wanted to get their hands on the wealth of the Empire.
  The trouble was that the British people didn't realise this. So Le Queux set out to warn them - above all by telling them that the Germans were sending spies to Britain to prepare for an invasion.
  But the ruling classes in Britain laughed at Le Queux. They said it was just fiction - which it was. Plus he wasn't really British and he hadn't been to a proper school, he was far too vulgar and insistent in his patriotism. In short he was a bore.
  So Le Queux did what anyone in their right mind would do in such a situation. He turned to the Daily Mail.
  He wrote a gripping account of a future German invasion of Britain and took it to Lord Northcliffe who ran the Mail. It was called "The Invasion of 1910" and it described how the Germans landed in East Anglia and marched on London.
  Northcliffe loved it - but the Mail's circulation department said that many of the towns on Le Queux's invasion route didn't have many actual or potential Daily Mail readers in them.
  So Lord Northcliffe changed the route of the invasion to make sure that all the towns that were sacked and pillaged had lots of Daily Mail readers. Here is the map of the invasion as agreed with the circulation department.
  The serialisation was an enormous success. The prime minister got up in the House of Commons and said Le Queux was "a pernicious scaremonger" and that the story was "calculated to alarm the more ignorant public opinion at home."
  Result.
  Then things started getting out of control. Thousands of Daily Mail readers sent Le Queux letters telling him that they had spotted people acting suspiciously - which meant they must be German spies.
  The letters were mirror images of what Le Queux had written in his books. But rather than making him suspicious, Le Queux decided that this proved that what he had written as fiction must actually be true. There was a gigantic German spy ring in Britain.
  Thousands of Daily Mail readers couldn't be wrong.
  The man whose job it was to uncover spies in Britain was very excited by all this. he was called Colonel Edmonds. He had a tiny budget and two assistants - and noone on the General Staff bothered with him.
  But now Col. Edmonds saw his chance. He teamed up with Le Queux and together they bombarded the Committee for Imperial Defence with the evidence from the Daily Mail readers. Edmonds said that the government should set up a "secret service bureau" to combat the threat.
  The head of the Committee - Lord Haldane - said this was ridiculous. But even he couldn't stand against the wave of spy fever that was sweeping the country. He gave in - and MI5 was set up - created in large part by the dreams of a socially excluded novelist, and the paranoid imaginings of the readers of the Daily Mail.
  But the problem for MI5 was that the spy network didn't exist. The Germans did have some agents in Britain - but nothing like the 5000 that Le Queux had described.
  When war against Germany was declared in 1914 - MI5 immediately rounded up 21 alleged German spies and proudly announced they had broken the network. But a brilliant piece of historical research by the historian Nicholas Hiley has shown that this wasn't true.
  Hiley doesn't mince his words. Here are his conclusions (Kell and Holt Wilson were the director and deputy directors):
  "One of the most famous successes of the British Security Service was its great spy round-up of August 1914. The event is still celebrated by MI5, but a careful study of the recently-opened records show it to be a complete fabrication - MI5 created and perpetuated this remarkable lie.
  The great spy round-up of August 1914 never took place - as it was a complete fabrication designed to protect MO5(G) from the interference of politicians or bureaucrats.
  The claim made next day that all but one had been arrested was false, and its constant repetition by Kell and Holt-Wilson was a lie."
  In other words - MI5 had followed the shining example of William Le Queux and made it all up.
  But that didn't matter - because it made a great story, and journalists loved it. Even in 1997 the BBC made a breathless documentary - using the recently released files - about how in 1914 MI5 had brilliantly rounded up the Kaiser's spy network on the eve of the first world war.
  Aside from perpetuating a fiction, the film has two great moments - one is an interview with the grandson of the deputy head of MI5 who has an immortal line about his grandfather - "of course he was very private about MI5 - so the family knew nothing".
  And the end the programme has some wonderful stills of the party MI5 held to celebrate the end of the war - it's on their rooftop. Their faces are great.
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  After the first world war MI5 declined in importance. But with the growing fears of communism in the 1920s and 30s a new threat emerged - not just communist agents from abroad, but British communists who might betray their own country.
  In many cases they came from the same upper classes as those running the secret services. And a strange dance began - of toffs suspecting toffs.
  But even then MI5 couldn't get it right.
  Take the case of Cecil Day Lewis - who was Daniel Day Lewis' father. Back in the 1930s he was a teacher at Cheltenham College - one of the great Victorian public schools.
  But, despite his job, Cecil was convinced that he was really a revolutionary. And in 1933 he decided to foment revolutionary action in Britain - by writing a poem. It was an epic he called "The Magnetic Mountain". He said his aim was to create
  "A violently revolutionary poem with abundant images (for example) of a barren, cancerous land led by 'getters not begetters', demanding 'It is now or never, the hour of the knife/ The break with the past, the major operation."
  Here is Cecil Day-Lewis looking both poetic and radical - alongside some of the poem - (you can see where Daniel Day Lewis gets it all from).
  But Day-Lewis was disappointed by the lack of reaction. He admitted that the poem "did not create the slightest ripple of outrage amongst the guardians of Cheltenham."
  Even though the communist magazine - the Partisan Review - had said that it was "perhaps the most important revolutionary poem as yet written by an Englishman".
  And then MI5 noticed Cecil Day-Lewis. Not because of the poem - but because he had sent £5 as a donation to the headquarters of the Communist Party in London. So MI5 decided to put Day-Lewis under intense surveillance.
  The historian James Smith has written a wonderful book about how MI5 spent a lot of time covertly watching many upper class British writers between 1930 and 1960. It is a great book because what it records is a strange and confused dance of manners among different parts of the British elite.
  Smith describes how MI5 got the local police to spend weeks watching Day-Lewis' house and intercepting his post. But they found nothing suspicious. Their report said that:
  "Day-Lewis seldom wears a hat, and is not altogether of smart appearance in dress. He is a good singer. He has moved into his cottage after having considerable structural improvements done there."
  MI5 were completely incompetent. They didn't discover the poem that Day-Lewis hoped would help to bring about a communist uprising in Britain.
  And not only did they miss the poem - they didn't even realise he was a poet. All in all MI5 found nothing dangerous or revolutionary about Cecil Day-Lewis. It was humiliating.
  But they might have been right. James Smith describes how a few years later in 1940 Cecil Day Lewis was getting his mistress Rosamund Lehmann to pull strings in the British establishment so he could avoid getting called up to go and fight the fascists.
  But in 1940 MI5 had its greatest success. It not only found a real German spy network in Britain - but managed to persuade many of the German agents to switch sides.
  It was called the Double-Cross system - and it is celebrated in histories of MI5 as a brilliant use of espionage. The German agents carried on spying for their masters in Berlin - sending back detailed reports. But the information was all fake, designed to mislead and confuse the Nazis.
  But something else happened to all the intelligence agencies during the war - MI6 as well as MI5. As they grew massively in size they became riddled with factions and infighting. And because all this happened behind a wall of secrecy, there was little to stop things becoming vicious and poisonous.
  The journalist Phillip Knightley has written a really good history of spies - called The Second Oldest Profession. In it he quotes an agent describing what happened during the war years:
  "The whole organisation was riddled with nepotism - dim, dreary people of utter unmemorability; sub-men who were doubled up with other sub-men to create an illusion of strength and only doubled the weakness; others made memorable only by poisonous, corrupt malevolence or crass, mulish stupidity; the whole run by a chain of command remarkable for its feebleness. The entire service was decrepit and incompetent."
  At the end of the war the new Labour government knew that something had to be done to sort out MI5. So they went and found Percy Sillitoe - who was running a sweet shop in Eastbourne
  Sillitoe had retired after being Chief Constable of Glasgow - where he had become famous as the only policeman brave enough to take on the "Razor Gangs" in the eastern part of the city.
  The gangs had names like The Bingo Boys and The Baltic Fleet - and they terrorised Glasgow as they fought each other with hatchets, swords, open razors - and razor blades stitched into the brims of their hats.
  You can get a sense of Sillitoe from this short film where he shows the BBC a new kind of armoured car he has invented to stop criminals holding up vans carrying cash. He invented the security van.
  I very much like how he says he is "concerned for the little man".
  I've also added an odd bit from a BBC film about graphology where the expert - a "psycho-graphologist" - analyses Percy Sillitoe's signature, and compares it to J Edgar Hoover's signature. Hoover was Sillitoe's American counterpart.
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  The government asked Sillitoe to come and sort out the chaos in MI5 - and he agreed. But he quickly found that it was a very odd place - all the insiders hated him, and they ridiculed him by speaking in Latin (which he didn't understand) in front of him. Plus they deliberately gave him the wrong papers when he went to see the Prime Minister.
  Sillitoe came back and told his wife - "I sometimes think I am working in a madhouse." But he realised that he was dealing with very much the same situation that he had found in the slums of Glasgow - different factions locked together in a strange, poisonous bubble.
  Here is a section of a very good film, made much later, about the successors to the razor gangs of Glasgow - the gangs that Sillitoe had tried to suppress in the 1930s. And you can see the similarity to the world of the spies - as one of the gang members puts it, "it's two ends of the same street at war with each other".
  I also love the pigeon-fancier who shows off the most high-security pigeon loft you have ever seen. He then reveals that he doesn't breed the pigeons for racing. Their job is to go and kidnap the pigeons from the other gangs.
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  But before Sillitoe could do anything, it all went terribly wrong. Suddenly traitor after traitor was revealed in the very heart of the British establishment. It wasn't just pretentious radical poets who were a threat - it was spies, diplomats and nuclear scientists within the system itself who had been giving away secrets to the Russians.
  There was a high-flying diplomat called Donald McLean, a nuclear scientist at the heart of Britain's atomic bomb project called Klaus Fuchs, plus two of MI6's top agents - Guy Burgess and Kim Philby.
  One of MI5's main jobs was to find traitors - but the awful truth was that it had failed to spot any of them.
  Percy Sillitoe was booted out. But things got even worse. In 1964 MI5 were told that one of their own men had been a spy for the Russians. He was called Sir Anthony Blunt - and not only had he been high-up in MI5 - but he had gone on to work in Buckingham Palace looking after the Queen's art collection. And even worse than that he was the Queen Mother's cousin.
  MI5 interrogated Sir Anthony and he calmly said that it was all true - he had been a traitor. MI5 was so embarrassed that they kept it all quiet, gave Blunt immunity from prosecution, and he carried on working at Buckingham Palace.
  The Daily Mail later said that the Royal Family had known all along anyway. That as far back as 1948 Sir Alan Lascelles - the most senior aide to the Royal family -had whispered "that's our Russian spy" to someone else as they passed Blunt in the palace.
  But that could have been a misinterpretation. Blunt had shocked the Queen Mother by telling her that he was an atheist - and she had immediately assumed that meant he must be a communist.
  Clever Queen Mother - wrong but right.
  Blunt had also become a bit of a TV star. Starting in the early 60s the BBC went to him regularly to take the viewers on a tour of the treasures of Buckingham Palace - a sort of early Fiona Bruce.
  Here is part of one programme from 1962 - two years before he was exposed as a traitor. Followed by a bit of another programme from 1972 - when a self-confessed KGB agent takes the viewers round Buckingham palace. Spot the difference.
  And at the end there is footage from 1979 - when Blunt was exposed as a traitor. t's from some rushes I found in the library. The press chasing Sir Anthony are straight out of a British movie. And I love the interviewer's obsession that it was Blunt's "homosexual leanings" that made him betray his country.
  Blunt, though, doesn't bat an eyelid. It's as though he is still talking about some painting.
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  Then, in 1971, MI5 got another big shock to the system. Most of their opponents - Russian secret agents in Britain - were kicked out, leaving MI5 with little to do. The irony was that it happened as a result of one of their few successes.
  In August 1971 an ordinary London policeman arrested a man who was driving drunkenly down Tottenham Court Road. He turned out to be Oleg Lyalin who was a KGB agent. Lyalin spent a lot of his time buying socks in the West Midlands - pretending to be a member of the Soviet Trade delegation. But really he was spying.
  Lyalin panicked and offered to tell MI5 the names of all the Russian spies in Britain. In return he wanted to stay and live in Britain with his mistress. MI5 agreed - and the Home Secretary expelled 105 other members of the trade delegation, because Lyalin said they were spies.
  Here are the reports - plus a "News Special" which is an early example of the way TV journalism would report the hidden world of spying. It's got an anonymous British "research scientist" called "Jim Walker" who got caught up in all this - and has some great MI5 surveillance footage of Jim and his controller Viktor leaving information at a "dead letter drop."
  Plus a very good telephone non-interview with the British Ambassador in Moscow.
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  But the problem for MI5 is that the expulsions pretty much destroyed the KGB presence in Britain.
  The historian Stephen Dorril who has written a series of brilliant detailed histories of the intelligence agencies says that a later KGB defector called Oleg Gordievsky admitted that "the London residency never recovered from the expulsions".
  Dorril also says that the British government and its civil servants were well aware of this, and they became deeply suspicious of claims from MI5 and it's K Branch - whose job was to monitor foreign agents - that there was still a big Soviet threat in Britain:
  "Senior civil servants dealing with the intelligence community were therefore aware that K Branch claims about the penetration of British political life and the threat to security from Soviet bloc operations were generally exaggerated."
  The brutal fact was that by the early 1970s MI5 not only had very little to do - but also it's political masters were beginning to question whether it might be seriously incompetent.
  Edward Heath - who had been Prime Minister when all this was happening - later got up in the House of Commons and said bluntly what he had discovered about MI5 officers:
  "They talked the most ridiculous nonsense, and their whole philosophy was ridiculous nonsense.
  If some of them were on the tube and saw someone reading the Daily Mirror they would say - 'Get after him, that man is dangerous, we must find out where he bought it.' "
  But those in charge in Britain also realised that there was nothing they could do to question or control the spies. The next prime minister in the 1970s - Harold Wilson - wrote a very serious book called The Governance of Britain full of long serious chapters.
  But when he got to chapter nine - about
  THE PRIME MINISTER AND NATIONAL SECURITY
  This is what it looked like.
  There are two paragraphs explaining that the prime minister has ultimate responsibility for the security agencies. And it ends with two more that simply say this:
  "The prime minister is occasionally questioned on matters arising out of his responsibility. His answers may be regarded as uniformly uninformative.
  There is no further information that can usefully or properly be added before bringing this Chapter to an end."
  In response to these kind of doubts and attacks MI5 turned inwards.
  The problem for the MI5 men - stuck in their secret bubble - was that they just couldn't believe that their failure was due to them being useless at their job. Not only had they failed to find any of the traitors, but operation after operation had ended in failure. And they convinced themselves that this meant there had to have been another traitor lurking somewhere in their building - the MI5 HQ in Mayfair.
  They began a mad search for enemies inside the organisation itself - seeking to find more hidden traitors who could be used to explain why MI5 kept failing to do its job properly.
  It was the search for "Fifth Man" - to go with the other four already exposed, Burgess, McLean, Philby and Blunt
  A small group of MI5 men went to their boss and said they wanted to investigate all the past failures looking for evidence of treachery. Their boss was called Sir Roger Hollis - and he said no. His argument was that operations often went wrong because of simple human failure, and to re-examine them on the basis that failure was evidence of treachery would tear the agency apart.
  Imagine what it would feel like he said to know you are being watched because a past operation you were involved with had gone wrong. "It's like the Gestapo" he said.
  So the small group of Mi5 agents decided he must be the traitor.
  Here is a picture of Roger Hollis.
  The small group in MI5 now became convinced that their organisation was not just penetrated by the Russians, it was actually run by a Soviet agent. They knew they had to get the truth out somehow even if it meant breaking the law. So they found a friendly journalist called Chapman Pincher and told him the hidden truth.
  Here is Chapman Pincher being interviewed on the Wogan programme about what then happened. Up to this point Pincher had been the Defence correspondent on the Daily Express. He was successful for getting "scoops" from "inside sources" - although the historian EP Thompson said that really Chapman Pincher was:
  "A kind of official urinal in which ministers and intelligence and defence chiefs could stand patiently leaking."
  What the dissident MI5 agents now told Pincher was like super high-grade piss. Or, as he puts it in the Wogan interview, "it was like walking into an Aladdin's Cave". But what Pincher wrote was going to open the floodgates to a new kind of conspiracy journalism that still holds sway over large parts of the media imagination.
  Have a look at him and decide yourself - high grade toilet or investigative journalist? Or maybe often they are the same thing?
  I've also included Pincher being interviewed on the TV news reports as the scandal unfolded. Everyone tries to get in on the act. The BBC presenter quotes Kim Philby as saying that Hollis wasn't very good at his job. But the presenter says that this is "ambiguous" - and might be proof that Hollis really was a Soviet agent.
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  The leading MI5 dissident who was leaking the information to Pincher was called Peter Wright. He was one of the most senior members of MI5 but he was also somewhat paranoid.
  To get a sense of Peter Wright and how he saw the world I have put together some bits of him being interviewed in the 1980s about another of his conspiracy theories. This was that the Prime Minister - Harold Wilson - had also been a Soviet agent.
  In Wright's mind much of the British establishment had been directly or indirectly taken over by the Soviet Union. He had no hard evidence for this - but he was driven by an underlying mind-set that was going to spread throughout much of the intelligence agencies - and journalism - over the next twenty years.
  This said that if you imagined the other side was doing something devilish and deceptive - then they probably were. It meant that in the dark world of intelligence, imagination was more powerful than obvious facts. Because if you couldn't find the evidence it proved how clever the enemy had been at covering their tracks.
  It was a fevered romantic view of the world that would both entrance the readers of newspapers - but would also lead the intelligence agencies into the disaster of the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003
  Here is the grandaddy of that conviction - Peter Wright. The person called Angleton he refers to was an even odder American equivalent of Wright who was high up in the CIA - and who also was convinced Wilson was a Soviet agent.
  The tone of Wright's plaintive child like statement about Angleton - "he believed it - he did" tells you a great deal about the emotions driving these strange men in their spy-bubbles.
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  But as in all organisations - egos started to come into play. Other MI5 agents started leaking other names to other journalists. Pincher's main rival was a writer called Nigel West.
  Nigel upped the stakes. He began to publish books and articles alleging that all sorts of other people had been traitors. Here he is on Nationwide in 1981 in full flow. He says that a man called Leo Long was a traitor, and then goes on to suggest that others - including even the former Governor of Uganda, Sir Andrew Cohen - might be traitors.
  It's worth looking closely at what Nigel West says about Sir Andrew Cohen - because it shows how weird this paranoid outpouring from the secret world was becoming. When he was an undergraduate at Cambridge in the 1930s Cohen had been a member of an intellectual society called The Apostles. So had two of the spies - Burgess and Blunt.
  The interviewer asks Nigel how he knows Sir Andrew might be a traitor. Nigel says:
  "I haven't named him (Sir Andrew) up to now because it's not known whether he was a Soviet agent. But I think it's worth saying that anybody, if you are talking about the Apostles, many of them were Soviet agents. And he would undoubtedly have been questioned since he rose to a very senior position in the Department of Overseas Development"
  That's it. But Nigel does have a fabulous haircut.
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  In the early to mid 80s more and more names poured out - all accused of being KGB agents in the heart of the British establishment.
  One newspaper grouped them under headings
  "CONFESSED" - "PARTIALLY CONFESSED" - "UNRESOLVED"
  There was one great apology
  "Our list of MI5 spy suspects included Cedric Belfrage who MI5 officers said had made a partial confession and we said was dead.
  We are glad to make it clear he is alive, never made any confession and maintains he should not have been on the MI5 list at all."
  And Mrs Thatcher also got involved. Because it seemed to prove to her the thing she had believed all along - that the British establishment were weak, spineless and easily corruptible. She happily admitted in Parliament that Anthony Blunt had been a traitor. And here she is in 1986 merrily joining in with the latest accusation - that Lord Rothschild had been the 5th Man.
  It later turned out that he wasn't.
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  It became farce. The journalists who had started the mole-hunt went to war. Nigel West wrote a whole book announcing that he had discovered that the 5th man wasn't really Hollis, but was actually Hollis' deputy. He was a man called Graham Mitchell who in his spare time was a grand master in correspondence chess.
  Apparently the dissidents in MI5 were convinced that the letters he sent his chess-friends were his way of contacting his Soviet controllers. The moves he typed out were actually secret codes that disguised his treachery.
  Here is one of Graham Mitchell's games that he played in 1950. You are looking at a complicated code, whether it was secret messages to the Russians has never been proved.
  Another writer then found a letter in an old government file that had been written by Roger Hollis in the 1940s saying that the Russians shouldn't be trusted. Some journalists said that this proved he wasn't a traitor. But others said that Hollis had put the letter there deliberately so it could be found and throw MI5 off the scent.
  Here are the TV reports - both of the Graham Mitchell "revelation", and the Hollis letter. The leader of the pack - Chapman Pincher - still insists Hollis is the 5th man. Nigel West says he is innocent.
  But Nigel now has a very good late 80s haircut.
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  Then another writer called W. J. West wrote a book saying that the 5th man was Hollis after all.
  W J West turns out to have been an ex-hippie whose early years were memorably captured in a semi-autobiographical novel by another ex-hippie - called "Ten Men". She describes a road trip across America as she desperately but unsuccessfully tries to shag him.
  Here's his book about the Fifth Man.
  But then - in the midst of all these weirdos - a dissenting voice emerged.
  James Rusbridger had been a spy back in the 50s and 60s - and he now wrote a book called The Intelligence Game arguing that all this was rubbish - and that all the journalists had been conned by a crazy gang of right-wing nutters in MI5.
  Rusbridger said that the newspapers and TV were being used to promote the obsessive belief of MI5 officers that their failure to do anything worthwhile for a quarter of a century was the consequence of there being a Russian spy in MI5.
  They couldn't face the fact that they were completely useless and incompetent.
  At last a voice of sanity.
  But unfortunately James Rusbridger was then found dead in his garden shed - apparently the victim of an auto-erotic game that had gone wrong. He was naked apart from a rubber coat and a gas mask - and his feet and legs were attached to the wall by a complicated system of pulleys.
  Of course it might have been a fiendishly clever assassination.
  Or just another spy-world weirdo.
  But this crazed witch hunt didn't harm MI5 at all. Quite the opposite - because together the spies and the journalists created an image in the public imagination of a dark world full of hidden treachery. The spy world became a fascinating other universe that was full of layer upon layer of deception, where the men who inhabited it spent their time trying to penetrate through the circles of falsehood to the inner sanctum of truth.
  It was an image that was powerfully helped by John Le Carre's novels - and his anti-hero George Smiley. Le Carre's novels were a clever piece of PR - because they appeared to be more gritty and realistic than the glamourised James Bond image.
  But it was just another layer of deception - because Smiley and his search for a hidden mole expressed powerfully the paranoid and unfounded fantasies of the dissident MI5 agents.
  But it was a world that was all made-up. Le Carre - who had himself been a spy - admitted this, and described what the true reality of the spy world was:
  "For a while you wondered whether the fools were pretending to be fools as some kind of deception, or whether there was a real efficient service somewhere else.
  Later in my fiction, I invented one.
  But alas the reality was the mediocrity. Ex-colonial policemen mingling with failed academics, failed lawyers, failed missionaries and failed debutantes gave our canteen the amorphous quality of an Old School outing on the Orient express. Everyone seemed to smell of failure."
  But this new image couldn't conceal MI5's incompetence for long.
  Because at the very same time that everyone was talking excitedly about completely invented moles, MI5 missed the real moles at the heart of the intelligence services - even though they were completely obvious, and almost screaming to be noticed.
  Michael Bettaney worked in counter-espionage in MI5. He had been recruited when he was at Oxford university - where he had been an admirer of Adolf Hitler and had a habit of singing the Nazi Party anthem in local pubs.
  Here is Bettaney back then.
  MI5 did a thorough check on him - called positive vetting - and decided he was fine. Perfect MI5 material. Bettaney was then sent off to Northern Ireland to fight terrorism where he was wounded by a car bomb. He then had a horrible experience. Hidden in a cupboard he had to watch in silence as one of his informants was shot through the kneecaps boy other terrorists.
  Here is Bettaney later - after he had been working for MI5.
  Bettaney came back to London a changed man. He decided that MI5 was both corrupt and incompetent. He started drinking heavily and told his colleagues loudly that he was no longer a fascist - but he had become a communist.
  So MI5 decided to promote him. He was positively vetted again - found to be perfect MI5 material, and sent to the Russian desk.
  Bettaney became more and more unstable. In October 1982 he was convicted of being drunk and disorderly. The next week he was convicted for fare-dodging. Finally MI5 did begin to notice - and two separate inquiries were set up to look into Bettaney's behaviour. But each was unaware of the other's existence.
  Neither of them noticed that he had been stealing a huge amount of MI5 top secret documents and stashing them at his home. Bettaney was only caught when he took some of the best of these secrets and tried to stuff them into the letter box of the Second Secretary of the Russian Embassy - Mr Gouk.
  This is a picture of Mr Gouk.
  Mr Gouk was so confused by this that, instead of passing them on to the KGB, he went round to MI5 and gave them back, and told them where they had come from. MI5 arrested Bettaney and he was put on trial.
  The man who was in charge of the vetting of government employees - like Michael Bettaney - was then allowed to vet the members of the jury at Bettaney's trial. Luckily this time he got it right - and Bettaney was sent to prison on the Isle of Sheppey for 23 years.
  Here are some of the reports. Including Nigel West turning up yet again on Breakfast Time. Even Nigel is shocked by how MI5 didn't spot Bettaney. And he's having a bad hair day.
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  The terrible truth that began to dawn in the 1980s was that MI5 - whose job it was to catch spies that threatened Britain - had never by its own devices caught a spy in its entire history.
  The case that really shocked Mrs Thatcher was the traitor Geoffrey Prime. In the 1970s he had worked at the top secret listening centre GCHQ and had been selling all it's secrets to the Russians.
  And yet again it wasn't MI5 who uncovered his treachery - it was the local police in Cheltenham.
  In 1982 a policeman came to his house enquiring about his car - a rather distinct two-tone brown and white Mk IV Cortina - a which had been seen in the vicinity of an assault on a young girl.
  Prime told the policeman that he had been at home all day. But that evening he and his wife Rhona went for a drive to the top of Cleeve Hill. As they sat in the twilight Prime told Rhona that he was the man the police were looking for. And not only that, he was also a Russian spy.
  Here is part of a very powerful interview Rhona Prime gave to the BBC where she describes that day - and what she then did.
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  Prime was a paedophile - and had used spying techniques to monitor the activities of thousands of young girls around Cheltenham. He had created a vast set of index cards which showed when the girls were most likely to be alone at home. He then went round to their houses in his two tone Cortina and sexually assaulted them.
  Despite this Prime had been positively vetted six times.
  Even the Russians got worried about his paedophile activities and seemed to want to dump him. In 1980 Prime had gone to Vienna to meet the KGB. Instead of meeting him secretly as they normally did, the Russians took him openly to the best restaurants where they knew Western intelligence agents would recognise them as KGB agents.
  But even then noone noticed them - or Prime.
  Prime's wife Rhona wrestled with her conscience - and in the end went to the police and told them everything about Prime. He was sent to jail for 35 years for spying and 3 years for the assaults on young girls - which says a lot about the priorities of the British establishment at that time.
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  The cases of Bettaney and Prime revealed not only just how incompetent MI5 was - but also how sad and seedy the secret world of spies really was.
  But even in the midst of all this treachery - a surprising thing happened.
  Rhona Prime decided to stand by her husband. Here is Rhona describing how her deep christian beliefs gave her the strength to stand by her husband. She is very calm and composed, and somehow her dignity makes you realise just how odd the whole spy thing was. A strange hysteria driven by totally inadequate men - both agents and journalists - who were incapable of dealing with real human emotions like love and loyalty.
  Rhona talks about something else - unconditional love. Receiving unconditional love, she says, makes us whole and beautiful people because we are totally accepted. The very opposite of treachery.
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  At the same time, one of the original traitors - Kim Philby - died in the Soviet Union. The BBC cameraman Phil Goodwin has given me the unedited rushes recording Philby's funeral in Moscow. He found it in the back of a cupboard in the BBC's Moscow office.
  It's an amazing record of a weird communist state funeral - held for an upper class Englishman in a Moscow graveyard in 1987. Standing all around are the faces of the Russian side of the spy world - and it is great to look at their faces, peeking out for a moment from their traditional secrecy.
  Then Philby's coffin arrives accompanied by a military band and members of the KGB holding all Philby's Soviet medals on orange cushions. It's an extraordinary scene. But also watch the woman with red hair. She is Philby's widow - Rufina - who had lived with him and helped him through alcoholism and depression.
  Watch what Rufina does. It's really moving. Love and loyalty breaking through again into this narrow, nasty world.
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  And even Michael Bettaney found love. Marion Johnstone, who was a research scientist and also a communist, wrote to him in prison in 1985. She began to visit him - and they became engaged.
  But in 1995 there was a security scare that reawakened all the spy journalists on papers like the Mail - and made them huff and puff again. Marion was found to have taken some photos and made some drawing of the landscape on Sheppey around the prison and given them to Bettaney.
  The prison authorities confiscated them, and the journalists immediately said that this was part of an escape plan to spring the traitor from jail. Marion denied this - she insisted that because Bettaney was kept in solitary confinement she just wanted to show him how beautiful the landscape was outside.
  And she is right. The landscape around Bettaney's prison, Swaleside, is extraordinary and beautiful. A little while ago I managed to get onto Deadman's Island which is nearby on the river Swale.
  It is a moody place because it is where prisoners from a long time ago - the Napoleonic wars of the 1800s - were buried. They had been held on the "hulks", floating prisons off the coast of Sheppey.
  What makes the island so strange is that it is covered by water every high tide - and that washes away the mud and opens up the prisoners' graves. It means that the island is littered with human bones.
  The warden of Deadman's Island very kindly showed me round - and here he is showing me the open graves and the bones of prisoners, other kinds of traitors, from a very different war of long ago.
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  But what really did for all of the intelligence agencies at the end of the eighties is that none of them predicted the collapse of communism.
  Mrs Thatcher's advisor - Charles Powell - summed up the extraordinary failure:
  "The biggest single failure of intelligence of that era was the failure of almost everybody to foresee the end of communism. it caught us completely on the hop. All that intelligence about their war-fighting capabilities was all very well, but it didn't tell us the one thing we needed to know - that it was all about to collapse.
  It was a colossal failure of the whole Western system of intelligence assessment and political judgement."
  But the real reason that the intelligence agencies didn't predict the collapse of the Soviet system was because many of the people at the top of the agencies couldn't believe it was true.
  Sir Percy Cradock was one of the most powerful figure in the British establishment. He was the chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee - which co-ordinated the activities of MI5, MI6 and other intelligence groups. Even at the end of the eighties when everyone else was realising that the Soviet Union was collapsing, Sir Percy remained convinced that this was all a trick. That the Soviet Union was still aiming for communist domination of the world.
  Here is Sir Percy
  Cradock - along with a number of others high up in the intelligence agencies - really believed that Gorbachev's reforms were just a cunning ruse to deceive the West. And - as Mark Urban has pointed out in his book UK Eyes Alpha - Sir Percy used his position to make sure that this view dominated the Joint Intelligence Committee.
  But as Urban also points out - Sir Percy and his allies had no secret evidence for this. They relied on what was pompously called "analysing open source data". Otherwise known as reading the newspapers and watching TV. Except they interpreted that data in a mad way - driven by their own fevered imaginings of a world completely possessed by infinite levels of deception
  Mrs Thatcher realised this was bonkers - and she finally gave up on the spies.
  And that really should have been that for MI5.
  Except ten years later it was saved by the War on Terror - and since then MI5 has grown massively. But what no-one seems to know is whether MI5 has changed.
  For most of the twentieth century the combination of ineptitude and secrecy created an organisation that retreated more and more into a world of fictional conspiracies in order to disguise it's repeated failures. The question is whether the same is true today?
  Disasters like the total intelligence failure over the WMD in Iraq would suggest that nothing much had changed. But the trouble is there is no way we can ever find out. The spies live behind a wall of secrecy and when anyone tries to criticise them, the spies respond by saying that they have prevented attacks and saved us from terrible danger. But they can't show us the evidence because that is secret.
  It was recently revealed that back in the 1970s - at the height of the obsession with traitors - MI5 trained a specially bred group of Gerbils to detect spies. Gerbils have a very acute sense of smell and they were used in interrogations to tell whether the suspects were releasing adrenaline - because that would show they were under stress and lying.
  Then they tried the Gerbils to see if they could detect terrorists who were about to carry a bomb onto a plane. But the gerbils got confused because they couldn't tell the difference between the terrorists and ordinary people who were frightened of flying who were also pumping out adrenaline in their sweat.
  So the gerbils failed as well.
  Perhaps MI5 shouldn't have given up so easily. Maybe what we need is a better class of gerbil to find out the truth? But maybe we have them already - they're called journalists.
  But the saddest thing in this whole story is that Rhona Prime did not stay with her husband Geoffrey. In 1995 she met and fell in love with someone else.
New Obama Disclosure Block
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: WhoWhatWhy
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:30
  By Russ Baker on Aug 9, 2013
  Washington's hunger to know everything about its citizens seems to be matched only by its reticence in revealing its own activities to its citizens.
  This was true of George W. Bush, and it is no less true of his successor, Barack Obama. At first, Obama promised reform. As a candidate, he criticized the Bush administration's ''none of your business'' approach toward public inquiries into government decisions. And as a new president, Obama proposed to dramatically open up the process and to let transparency be the norm.
  Yet, as his ''information czar,'' Obama chose his friend Cass Sunstein'--a Harvard professor who seemed less interested in fostering debate than in suppressing it. In fact, while in academia, Sunstein had written a controversial paper calling for government agents to ''cognitively infiltrate'' Internet chat rooms to discourage speculation about ''conspiracies.''
  One consequence of this desire to discourage dark thoughts about power is seen in the Obama Administration's foot-dragging on the release of JFK assassination records in the months and years approaching the 50th anniversary of that event. The Obama administration even put a CIA person with ties to that agency's disastrous 9/11 intelligence in charge of the overall document declassification process.
  At WhoWhatWhy, we wrote on several occasions about Sunstein and the Orwellian double sword of a disclosure mandate that worked against disclosure. Sunstein attracted his share of criticism, and in the summer of 2012, as Obama was trying to rally his base for the re-election campaign, the ''czar'' quietly left the administration. But even with Sunstein gone, the Administration continues to delay declassifying key JFK assassination documents.
  But there is more.
  The latest move to prevent us from knowing what is going on relates to so-called transparency policies whose fine print instead does the opposite'--by effectively blunting the stated intent of the regulations.
  Meet ''The Mosaic Effect''
  The new policy is presented as an entirely forward-looking one. Government agencies are ordered to make life easier for those seeking federal data, by releasing it in a form that makes it easier to analyze it. And that, of course, sounds great.
  But buried in the middle of a section on ''definitions'' is something that most might miss'--and that might turn out to be the real purpose of the new policy. It reminds us of how vigilant you need to be in reading notices from all manner of institutions'--whether your bank or your power company'--on changed terms and conditions.
  The suspect phrase refers to something called ''the mosaic effect.'' Government officials are told that they must consider this ''effect'' when deciding what to release and what to withhold.
  The mosaic effect occurs when the information in an individual dataset, in isolation, may not pose a risk of identifying an individual (or threatening some other important interest such as security), but when combined with other available information, could pose such risk.
  Before disclosing potential personally identifiable information (PII) or other potentially sensitive information, agencies must consider other publicly available data '' in any medium and from any source '' to determine whether some combination of existing data and the data intended to be publicly released could allow for the identification of an individual or pose another security concern.''
  Get Those Black Markers Out
  Is this an ominous development? You bet your black marker.
  Have you ever seen documents released in redacted form, i.e., with certain names blocked out? Well, under the new rules, someone inside the government could argue that certain documents ought not to be released because someone outside the government, using other information sources, could put two and two together and figure out the information that was blocked out.
  The result? Documents that were previously released, either in full or in redacted form, might now never see the light of day.
  Let's imagine that, say, the government's failure to release documents related to the JFK assassination rouses public anger to such a pitch that media pressure (this really takes imagination) finally forces the government to consider opening up the fifty-year-old files to public scrutiny, with names and other identifying info blacked out, purportedly to protect ''sources and methods'' from half a century ago.
  But wait '-- under the newly articulated Mosaic Doctrine, if there is even the remotest chance that some enterprising citizen or sleuth could use the unredacted material, along with other information already available, to figure out some of those names, a bureaucrat could simply withhold all the information.
  Indeed, government officials could pretty much withhold anything they wanted to.
  Is this progress? Are we glad that the forces of ''change'' are now in charge?
  Not so much.
  The Homeland Security Mosaic
  This latest development came to our attention via the IRE Journal, the magazine of the national organization Investigative Reporters and Editors, of which WhoWhatWhy is a member. (That article is not linkable.)
  But what the fine article in the IRE Journal did not point out is who exactly is behind this little clause'--and what it might actually be about. The people nominally in charge of transparency are the folks at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, which is part of the White House's Office of Management and Budget. But was this clause their idea?
  The answer can be teased out of the following paper, which we found at Data.Gov, an official government site whose motto is ''empowering people''.
  The title of the paper is ''National/Homeland Security and Privacy/Confidentiality Checklist and Guidance,'' and the key paragraphs are:
  The Open Government Initiative Privacy and Security Working Group (''Working Group'') is an interagency group led by the National Security Staff. The Working Group is composed of Executive Branch agencies with specialization in the security and privacy realms. It developed the screening procedures outlined in this document to help reduce the risk associated with the mosaic effect, in which datasets that pose no disclosure threat by themselves can create a national/homeland security concern or produce identifiable information when combined with other datasets. This is of particular concern for datasets available in formats that are conducive to mash-ups, as are the datasets at sites such as Data.gov.
  The Working Group will continue to evaluate, and where appropriate, enhance Federal data dissemination guidelines to guard against intentional and unintentional unmasking of sensitive or personally identifiable information and/or national/homeland security-sensitive information. As additional opportunities to enhance policies and procedures for evaluating datasets for mosaic effect concerns are developed, agency training will be provided.
  What is the possibility that the same agencies which are increasingly conducting surveillance of American citizens are sympathetic to our privacy concerns? That these agencies want to urge caution in the release of documents so that the public is protected?
  Isn't it more likely that they would act instead in a way consistent with defending their own interests, as demonstrated over not just years but decades? That is, collect as much information as possible, and tell the public as little as possible.
  We've been asked for an awfully long time to accept on faith that these people are looking out for our safety. But when the end of the Cold War brought no more transparency to Washington's behavior, thoughtful folks began to wonder. Two decades later, the question remains: whose interests, really, are being protected under the current system?
  ***
  To get some answers, I did what every concerned citizen in an open democracy is free to do: I called Washington. I spoke to a fellow named Jamal at the Office of Management and Budget, who suggested I send an email. So I did:
  To: FN-OMB-Communications OfficeSubject: Media Inquiry
  Jamal,
  I wonder if someone can speak to me'--phone or email'--about information policy? I'm particularly interested in administration guidelines mandating that governmental agencies release data in a form that is easily usable by the public and media. Am also interested in learning more about the Open Government Initiative Privacy and Security Working Group.
  Best,
  Russ Baker
  Editor-in-Chief, WhoWhatWhy
  To this, I got the following super fast reply from another staffer, named Ari:
  Hi Russ,
  On background, please see http://whitehouse.gov/open and http://whitehouse.gov/digitalgov .
  Warm regards,Ari
  This pretty much blew my mind, because Ari was using the journalistic term ''on background'''--which typically refers to confidential material being provided to journalists in return for their not identifying the source. But here Ari was invoking it for links to publicly available material. I wrote Ari back, asking him if this was some kind of joke.
  He wrote me right back, not to address my question, but to ask me how he might help.
  Hi Russ '' if you have specific questions that aren't addressed by the policies on those pages, feel free to send them over. Thanks !
  I replied to ask whose idea it was to frame the ''mosaic effect.''
  That was July 25. And I have not heard back.
  WhoWhatWhy plans to continue doing this kind of groundbreaking original reporting. You can count on it. But can we count on you? We cannot do our work without your support.Please click here to donate; it's tax deductible. And it packs a punch.
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Amsterdam van negentig naar vijftien bouwregels
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: VK: Home
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:29
  Door: Redactie '' 09/08/13, 13:54
  (C) anp. De stad wordt ingedeeld in bouwstijlen (binnenstad, 19e eeuwse ring, de gordel uit de jaren 20, 30 etc.).
  De gemeente Amsterdam snijdt flink in de bouwregels in de stad. Hiermee willen zij de regeldruk verminderen en meer ruimte creren voor initiatieven van burgers en bedrijven.
  Het gaat om regelingen op het gebied van welstand, monumentenzorg, brandveiligheid en bouwtechniek. De 15 stadsdeelnota's en 25 reclamerichtlijnen worden vervangen door (C)(C)n welstandsnota. De stad wordt ingedeeld in bouwstijlen (onder andere binnenstad, 19e eeuwse ring, de gordel uit de jaren 20, 30) en niet langer in stadsdeelgrenzen.
  Ook wordt het aantal vergunningen die nodig zijn om te (ver)bouwen teruggebracht. Wethouder van Poelgeest: 'Wie in Amsterdam wil bouwen of verbouwen kan voortaan van tevoren op de gemeentelijke website zien welke documenten moeten worden ingediend en of een advies van de Welstandscommissie nodig is. De verbouwing zal daardoor vaak vier weken eerder kunnen beginnen.'
Is This Real Or Just A Television Show?
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Northeast Intelligence Network
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:23
  Written by Mitch Santell Producer, The Hagmann and Hagmann Report.
  Hollywood through the big banks and the global elite like to show us through entertainment what is going to happen next. If you want to see what is really going on, I've placed a number of Hollywood Movies from the past that are all happening in some form right now. Many times you may hear some person ask you: ''Does Life Imitate Art or Does Art Imitate Life?'' Have you ever wondered if the things happening now may have happened before? Do you feel like you have seen this before? Answer: You have in major Hollywood films. Read the rest: here.
  Click here to save this article in PDF format
Just another 33 years to an ice free arctic
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  Archived Version
  Source: 33 World News
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:22
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President Obama Names Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipients
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:20
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  August 08, 2013
  2013 Marks 50th Anniversary of President Kennedy's Establishment of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
  WASHINGTON '' Today, President Barack Obama named sixteen recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the Nation's highest civilian honor, presented to individuals who have made especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors. The awards will be presented at the White House later this year.
  This year marks the 50th Anniversary of the Executive Order signed by President John F. Kennedy establishing the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as well as the first ceremony bestowing the honor on an inaugural class of 31 recipients. Since that time, more than 500 exceptional individuals from all corners of society have been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
  President Obama said, ''The Presidential Medal of Freedom goes to men and women who have dedicated their own lives to enriching ours. This year's honorees have been blessed with extraordinary talent, but what sets them apart is their gift for sharing that talent with the world. It will be my honor to present them with a token of our nation's gratitude."
  The following individuals will be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom:
  Ernie Banks
  Known to many as ''Mr. Cub,'' Ernie Banks is one of the greatest baseball players of all time. During his 19 seasons with the Chicago Cubs, he played in 11 All-Star Games, hit over 500 home runs, and became the first National League player to win Most Valuable Player honors in back-to-back years. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1977, his first year of eligibility.
  Ben Bradlee
  Ben Bradlee is one of the most respected newsmen of his generation. During his tenure as executive editor of The Washington Post, Mr. Bradlee oversaw coverage of the Watergate scandal, successfully challenged the Federal Government over the right to publish the Pentagon Papers, and guided the newspaper through some of its most challenging moments. He also served in the Navy during World War II.
  Bill Clinton
  President Clinton was the 42nd President of the United States. Before taking office, he served as Governor and Attorney General of the State of Arkansas. Following his second term, President Clinton established the Clinton Foundation to improve global health, strengthen economies, promote health and wellness, and protect the environment. He also formed the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund with President George W. Bush in 2010.
  Daniel Inouye(posthumous)
  Daniel Inouye was a lifelong public servant. As a young man, he fought in World War II with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, for which he received the Medal of Honor. He was later elected to the Hawaii Territorial House of Representatives, the United States House of Representatives, and the United States Senate. Senator Inouye was the first Japanese American to serve in Congress, representing the people of Hawaii from the moment they joined the Union.
  Daniel Kahneman
  Daniel Kahneman is a pioneering scholar of psychology. After escaping Nazi occupation in World War II, Dr. Kahneman immigrated to Israel, where he served in the Israel Defense Forces and trained as a psychologist. Alongside Amos Tversky, he applied cognitive psychology to economic analysis, laying the foundation for a new field of research and earning the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2002. He is currently a professor at Princeton University.
  Richard Lugar
  Richard Lugar represented Indiana in the United States Senate for more than 30 years. An internationally respected statesman, he is best known for his bipartisan leadership and decades-long commitment to reducing the threat of nuclear weapons. Prior to serving in Congress, Senator Lugar was a Rhodes Scholar and Mayor of Indianapolis from 1968 to 1975. He currently serves as President of the Lugar Center.
  Loretta Lynn
  Loretta Lynn is a country music legend. Raised in rural Kentucky, she emerged as one of the first successful female country music vocalists in the early 1960s, courageously breaking barriers in an industry long dominated by men. Ms. Lynn's numerous accolades include the Kennedy Center Honors in 2003 and the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.
  Mario Molina
  Mario Molina is a visionary chemist and environmental scientist. Born in Mexico, Dr. Molina came to America to pursue his graduate degree. He later earned the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for discovering how chlorofluorocarbons deplete the ozone layer. Dr. Molina is a professor at the University of California, San Diego; Director of the Mario Molina Center for Energy and Environment; and a member of the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.
  Sally Ride(posthumous)
  Sally Ride was the first American female astronaut to travel to space. As a role model to generations of young women, she advocated passionately for science education, stood up for racial and gender equality in the classroom, and taught students from every background that there are no limits to what they can accomplish. Dr. Ride also served in several administrations as an advisor on space exploration.
  Bayard Rustin(posthumous)
  Bayard Rustin was an unyielding activist for civil rights, dignity, and equality for all. An advisor to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he promoted nonviolent resistance, participated in one of the first Freedom Rides, organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, and fought tirelessly for marginalized communities at home and abroad. As an openly gay African American, Mr. Rustin stood at the intersection of several of the fights for equal rights.
  Arturo Sandoval
  Arturo Sandoval is a celebrated jazz trumpeter, pianist, and composer. Born outside Havana, he became a prot(C)g(C) of jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie and gained international acclaim as a dynamic performer. He defected to the United States in 1990 and later became an American citizen. He has been awarded nine Grammy Awards and is widely considered one of the greatest living jazz artists.
  Dean Smith
  Dean Smith was head coach of the University of North Carolina basketball team from 1961 to 1997. In those 36 years, he earned 2 national championships, was named National Coach of the Year multiple times, and retired as the winningest men's college basketball coach in history. Ninety-six percent of his players graduated from college. Mr. Smith has also remained a dedicated civil rights advocate throughout his career.
  Gloria Steinem
  Gloria Steinem is a renowned writer and activist for women's equality. She was a leader in the women's liberation movement, co-founded Ms. magazine, and helped launch a wide variety of groups and publications dedicated to advancing civil rights. Ms. Steinem has received dozens of awards over the course of her career, and remains an active voice for women's rights.
  Cordy Tindell ''C.T.'' Vivian
  C.T. Vivian is a distinguished minister, author, and organizer. A leader in the Civil Rights Movement and friend to the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., he participated in Freedom Rides and sit-ins across our country. Dr. Vivian also helped found numerous civil rights organizations, including Vision, the National Anti-Klan Network, and the Center for Democratic Renewal. In 2012, he returned to serve as interim President of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
  Patricia Wald
  Patricia Wald is one of the most respected appellate judges of her generation. After graduating as 1 of only 11 women in her Yale University Law School class, she became the first woman appointed to the United States Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, and served as Chief Judge from 1986-1991. She later served on the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague. Ms. Wald currently serves on the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.
  Oprah Winfrey
  Oprah Winfrey is one of the world's most successful broadcast journalists. She is best known for creating The Oprah Winfrey Show, which became the highest rated talk show in America for 25 years. Ms. Winfrey has long been active in philanthropic causes and expanding opportunities for young women. She has received numerous awards throughout her career, including the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award in 2002 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2010.
Letter -- Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to Export Control Regulations
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:19
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  August 08, 2013
  Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)
  Section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)) provides for the automatic termination of a national emergency unless, within the 90-day period prior to the anniversary date of its declaration, the President publishes in the Federal Register and transmits to the Congress a notice stating that the emergency is to continue in effect beyond the anniversary date. In accordance with this provision, I have sent to the Federal Register for publication the enclosed notice, stating that the emergency caused by the lapse of the Export Administration Act of 1979, as amended, is to continue in effect for 1 year beyond August 17, 2013.
  Sincerely,
  BARACK OBAMA
CNN Joins The Choom Gang
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  Source: JustOneMinute
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:19
  Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN savant and former future Surgeon General, comes out swinging in favor of medical marijuana. A sign of the New Times? I Boldly Predict that gay marriage will become yesterday's cause and weed will be tomorrow's. Especially with the phony race war connection (We are all Trayvon and we are all high...).
  The good doctor does include this important caveat:
  I do want to mention a concern that I think about as a father. Young, developing brains are likely more susceptible to harm from marijuana than adult brains. Some recent studies suggest that regular use in teenage years leads to a permanent decrease in IQ. Other research hints at a possible heightened risk of developing psychosis.
  Much in the same way I wouldn't let my own children drink alcohol, I wouldn't permit marijuana until they are adults. If they are adamant about trying marijuana, I will urge them to wait until they're in their mid-20s when their brains are fully developed.
  Obama's personal history makes his inevitable evolution on this one a bit tougher, but, as with gay marriage, he will 'lead' once there are enough people out in front of him.
  THAT WAS QUICK: My Bold Prediction may be more in the way of a 'what else is new?'. Andrew Sullivan:
  That the Obama administration has done nothing to reclassify the drug to conform to minimal medical standards of accuracy can only be called extreme cowardice. At some point, in my view, this president needs to say about marijuana what he said about marriage equality: that he's for legalization, taxation and regulation. But Gupta is a helpful stepping stone '' a mainstream celebrity acknowledging that the US government is engaged in misleading and lying repeatedly to the American people.
Fukushima zone fully redesignated
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 12:18
  Preparations can begin for residents to return to the town of Kawamata near the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The town was the final evacuated municipality to be redesignated.
  Separate from the evacuation area defined by a 20 kilometre radius from Fukushima Daiichi, the area near Kawamata was evacuated once it was known that radioactive particles had been carried by the wind from the damaged power plant. While limited access to the town has been permitted, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) has now announced that controls on entry to most of Kawamata town, northwest of the plant, have been relaxed today.
  The redesignation will allow decontamination work to begin and for essential infrastructure and services to be reconstructed. Residents may return at will to visit and work without the use of protective equipment. The only restriction is that they may not stay overnight. The radiation dose rate for a person living in these areas would be less than 20 millisieverts per year - the government's benchmark for permanent return.
  "I believe the restoration process of Fukushima has now reached a new starting point towards realization of the return of residents."
  Japanese prime ministerShinzo Abe
  Restricted access will remain in just a small part of Kawamata as dose levels in that area could exceed 20 mSv. People will be permitted to these 'restricted' areas to carry out specific jobs without being monitored or using protective equipment. People entering these zones are advised to avoid doing so unnecessarily, to refrain from working outdoors, to use cars rather than to walk for more than a short period and to wash upon re-entering a building.
  Speaking at a meeting of the Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters, prime minister Shinzo Abe said, "Taking this opportunity of the completion of the revisions of the areas, I would like to ask all ministers to once again listen carefully to the opinions of the people in the area. Based on this, I would like specific measures to be examined with urgency for the restoration of Fukushima."
  However, Abe noted that decontamination and interim storage remain "especially critical" issues. He said, "Together with strengthening the system for accelerating these measures, I would like to ask that the progress of the decontamination program be fully reviewed and that decontamination work is advanced in coordination with the reconstruction efforts."
  Researched and writtenby World Nuclear News
To Our Customers | Silent Circle Blog
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 11:59
  We designed our phone, video, and text services (Silent Phone and Silent Text) to be completely end-to-end secure with all cryptography done on the clients and our exposure to your data to be nil. The reasons are obvious '-- the less of your information we have, the better it is for you and for us.
  Silent Mail has thus always been something of a quandary for us. Email that uses standard Internet protocols cannot have the same security guarantees that real-time communications has. There are far too many leaks of information and metadata intrinsically in the email protocols themselves. Email as we know it with SMTP, POP3, and IMAP cannot be secure.
  And yet, many people wanted it. Silent Mail has similar security guarantees to other secure email systems, and with full disclosure, we thought it would be valuable.
  However, we have reconsidered this position. We've been thinking about this for some time, whether it was a good idea at all. Today, another secure email provider, Lavabit, shut down their system lest they ''be complicit in crimes against the American people.'' We see the writing the wall, and we have decided that it is best for us to shut down Silent Mail now. We have not received subpoenas, warrants, security letters, or anything else by any government, and this is why we are acting now.
  We've been debating this for weeks, and had changes planned starting next Monday. We'd considered phasing the service out, continuing service for existing customers, and a variety of other things up until today. It is always better to be safe than sorry, and with your safety we decided that the worst decision is always no decision.
  Silent Phone and Silent Text, along with their cousin Silent Eyes are end-to-end secure. We don't have the encrypted data and we don't collect metadata about your conversations. They're continuing as they have been. We are still working on innovative ways to do truly secure communications. Silent Mail was a good idea at the time, and that time is past.
  We apologize for any inconvenience, and hope you understand that if we dithered, it could be more inconvenient.
  Like this:LikeLoading...
  .
AP Pressured Into Issuing Correction Over 'Interpretive Phrase' Added to Obama's Embarrassing Gaffe | TheBlaze.com
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 11:42
  After being widely criticized for editing out President Barack Obama's geography gaffe made during his late-night TV interview with Jay Leno, the Associated Press has responded to public pressure and issued a thorough correction regarding its initial story.
  ''In an Aug. 7 story on President Barack Obama's comments on the need to deepen U.S. harbors, The Associated Press wrongly inserted an interpretive phrase in parentheses into a quote by Obama,'' the AP writes.
  Here is the altered quote in question:
  ''If we don't deepen our ports all along the Gulf '' (and in) places like Charleston, S.C., or Savannah, Ga., or Jacksonville, Fla. '' if we don't do that, these ships are going to go someplace else and we'll lose jobs.''
  Many sharp viewers were quick to point out that neither Charleston, S.C., nor Savannah, Ga., or even Jacksonville, Fla., are located along the Gulf. Clearly, adding the ''(and in)'' alters the statement in a fundamental way, making the statement seem like it wasn't a gaffe at all.
  ''The [AP]'...parenthetical Obama Gulf gaffe rescue would be akin to putting an ''(s)'' after ''potatoe'' to cover for Dan Quayle,'' Michelle Malkin said, as previously reported by TheBlaze.
  The AP now admits: ''Charleston, Savannah and Jacksonville are not Gulf ports. It wasn't known if the president was suggesting they were. The AP should not have added the phrase in an effort to clarify his statement.''
  Here's how the quote as it now appears in the news agency's updated post:
  ''If we don't deepen our ports all along the Gulf '' places like Charleston, S.C., or Savannah, Ga., or Jacksonville, Fla. '' if we don't do that, these ships are going to go someplace else and we'll lose jobs,'' Obama said.
  The story was written by Associated Press reporter Russ Bynum.
  ''
The NSA Intends To Fire 90% Of Their System Administrators To Eliminate Future Leaks - Business Insider
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 04:38
  (Reuters) - The National Security Agency, hit by disclosures of classified data by former contractor Edward Snowden, said Thursday it intends to eliminate about 90 percent of its system administrators to reduce the number of people with access to secret information.Keith Alexander, the director of the NSA, the U.S. spy agency charged with monitoring foreign electronic communications, told a cybersecurity conference in New York City that automating much of the work would improve security.
  "What we're in the process of doing - not fast enough - is reducing our system administrators by about 90 percent," he said.
  The remarks came as the agency is facing scrutiny after Snowden, who had been one of about 1,000 system administrators who help run the agency's networks, leaked classified details about surveillance programs to the press.
  Before the change, "what we've done is we've put people in the loop of transferring data, securing networks and doing things that machines are probably better at doing," Alexander said.
  Using technology to automate much of the work now done by employees and contractors would make the NSA's networks "more defensible and more secure," as well as faster, he said at the conference, in which he did not mention Snowden by name.
  These efforts pre-date Snowden's leaks, the agency has said, but have since been accelerated.
  Alexander's remarks largely echoed similar comments made to Congress and at other public appearances over the past two months since his agency came under fire from civil liberties advocates and lawmakers concerned by Snowden's revelations.
  Snowden leaked documents to the Guardian and the Washington Post, which published stories revealing previously secret telephone and internet surveillance programs run by the U.S. government.
  Snowden now faces criminal charges but has since been granted temporary asylum in Russia.
  Other security measures that Alexander has previously discussed include requiring at least two people to be present before certain data can be accessed on the agency's computer systems.
  "At the end of the day it's about people and trust," Alexander said. He again defended his agency's conduct, much of which he said had been "grossly mischaracterized" by the press.
  "No one has willfully or knowingly disobeyed the law or tried to invade your civil liberties or privacies," he said. "There were no mistakes like that at all."
  He told his audience to "get the facts" and make up their own minds, adding that the agency itself could do more to enable this: "We've got to push out more, I recognize that," he said.
  (Reporting By Jonathan Allen; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
The New Adventures of Stephen Fry >> An Open Letter to David Cameron and the IOC
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  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 04:24
  Dear Prime Minister, M Rogge, Lord Coe and Members of the International Olympic Committee,
  I write in the earnest hope that all those with a love of sport and the Olympic spirit will consider the stain on the Five Rings that occurred when the 1936 Berlin Olympics proceeded under the exultant aegis of a tyrant who had passed into law, two years earlier, an act which singled out for special persecution a minority whose only crime was the accident of their birth. In his case he banned Jews from academic tenure or public office, he made sure that the police turned a blind eye to any beatings, thefts or humiliations afflicted on them, he burned and banned books written by them. He claimed they ''polluted'' the purity and tradition of what it was to be German, that they were a threat to the state, to the children and the future of the Reich. He blamed them simultaneously for the mutually exclusive crimes of Communism and for the controlling of international capital and banks. He blamed them for ruining the culture with their liberalism and difference. The Olympic movement at that time paid precisely no attention to this evil and proceeded with the notorious Berlin Olympiad, which provided a stage for a gleeful F¼hrer and only increased his status at home and abroad. It gave him confidence. All historians are agreed on that. What he did with that confidence we all know.
  Putin is eerily repeating this insane crime, only this time against LGBT Russians. Beatings, murders and humiliations are ignored by the police. Any defence or sane discussion of homosexuality is against the law. Any statement, for example, that Tchaikovsky was gay and that his art and life reflects this sexuality and are an inspiration to other gay artists would be punishable by imprisonment. It is simply not enough to say that gay Olympians may or may not be safe in their village. The IOC absolutely must take a firm stance on behalf of the shared humanity it is supposed to represent against the barbaric, fascist law that Putin has pushed through the Duma. Let us not forget that Olympic events used not only to be athletic, they used to include cultural competitions. Let us realise that in fact, sport is cultural. It does not exist in a bubble outside society or politics. The idea that sport and politics don't connect is worse than disingenuous, worse than stupid. It is wickedly, wilfully wrong. Everyone knows politics interconnects with everything for ''politics'' is simply the Greek for ''to do with the people''.
  An absolute ban on the Russian Winter Olympics of 2014 on Sochi is simply essential. Stage them elsewhere in Utah, Lillyhammer, anywhere you like. At all costs Putin cannot be seen to have the approval of the civilised world.
  He is making scapegoats of gay people, just as Hitler did Jews. He cannot be allowed to get away with it. I know whereof I speak. I have visited Russia, stood up to the political deputy who introduced the first of these laws, in his city of St Petersburg. I looked into the face of the man and, on camera, tried to reason with him, counter him, make him understand what he was doing. All I saw reflected back at me was what Hannah Arendt called, so memorably, ''the banality of evil.'' A stupid man, but like so many tyrants, one with an instinct of how to exploit a disaffected people by finding scapegoats. Putin may not be quite as oafish and stupid as Deputy Milonov but his instincts are the same. He may claim that the ''values'' of Russia are not the ''values'' of the West, but this is absolutely in opposition to Peter the Great's philosophy, and against the hopes of millions of Russians, those not in the grip of that toxic mix of shaven headed thuggery and bigoted religion, those who are agonised by the rolling back of democracy and the formation of a new autocracy in the motherland that has suffered so much (and whose music, literature and drama, incidentally I love so passionately).
  I am gay. I am a Jew. My mother lost over a dozen of her family to Hitler's anti-Semitism. Every time in Russia (and it is constantly) a gay teenager is forced into suicide, a lesbian ''correctively'' raped, gay men and women beaten to death by neo-Nazi thugs while the Russian police stand idly by, the world is diminished and I for one, weep anew at seeing history repeat itself.
  Published on August 7th, 2013
  Written by: Stephen Fry
Godwin's law - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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  Archived Version
  Fri, 09 Aug 2013 04:24
  Godwin's law (also known as Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies[1][2]) is an assertion made by Mike Godwin in 1990[2] that has become an Internet adage. It states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitlerapproaches1."[2][3] In other words, Godwin said that, given enough time, in any online discussion'--regardless of topic or scope'--someone inevitably makes a comparison to Hitler or the Nazis.
  Although in one of its early forms Godwin's law referred specifically to Usenetnewsgroup discussions,[4] the law is now often applied to any threaded online discussion, such as forums, chat rooms and blog comment threads, and has been invoked for the inappropriate use of Nazi analogies in articles or speeches.[5] The law is sometimes invoked prescriptively to mark the end of a discussion when a Nazi analogy is made, with the writer who made the analogy being considered to have lost the argument.
  In 2012, "Godwin's Law" became an entry in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.[6]
  There are many corollaries to Godwin's law, some considered more canonical (by being adopted by Godwin himself)[3] than others.[1] For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.[7] This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin's law. It is considered poor form to raise such a comparison arbitrarily with the motive of ending the thread. There is a widely recognized corollary that any such ulterior-motive invocation of Godwin's law will be unsuccessful.[8]
  Godwin's law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Nazis '' often referred to as "playing the Hitler card". The law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering known mainstays of Nazi Germany such as genocide, eugenics, or racial superiority, nor, more debatably, to a discussion of other totalitarian regimes or ideologies, if that was the explicit topic of conversation, since a Nazi comparison in those circumstances may be appropriate, in effect committing the fallacist's fallacy. Whether it applies to humorous use or references to oneself is open to interpretation, since this would not be a fallacious attack against a debate opponent.
  While falling afoul of Godwin's law tends to cause the individual making the comparison to lose his argument or credibility, Godwin's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate.[9] Similar criticisms of the "law" (or "at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes") have been made by Glenn Greenwald.[10]
  Godwin has stated that he introduced Godwin's law in 1990 as an experiment in memetics.[2]
  Godwin's law does not claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons. "Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust", Godwin has written.[11]
  ^ abTim Skirvin (1999-2009). "How to post about Nazis and get away with it'--the Godwin's law FAQ". Skirv's Wiki. Retrieved 2006-05-07. ^ abcdGodwin, Mike (October, 1994). "Meme, Counter-meme". Wired. Retrieved 2006-03-24. ^ abGodwin, Mike (January 12, 1995). "Godwin's law of Nazi Analogies (and Corollaries)". EFF.org. Electronic Frontier Foundation. pp. "Net Culture '' Humor" archive section. Retrieved 2012-06-19. ^Godwin, Mike (August 18, 1991). "Re: Nazis (was Re: Card's Article on Homosexuality". rec.arts.sf-lovers. Web link.^Ben Goldacre (16 September 2010). "Pope aligns atheists with Nazis. Bizarre. Transcript here.". bengoldacre - secondary blog. ^"Oxford English Dictionary Online version December 2012". Oxford University Press. ^"Internet rules and laws: the top 10, from Godwin to Poe". The Daily Telegraph (London), 23 October 2009.^Eric Raymond. "Godwin's law". The Jargon File (4.4.7). Self-published. Retrieved 2007-03-01. ^David Weigel, "Hands Off Hitler! It's time to repeal Godwin's Law" Reason Magazine, July 14, 2005^Greenwald, Glenn (2010-07-01) The odiousness of the distorted Godwin's Law, Salon.com^"I Seem To Be A Verb: 18 Years of Godwin's Law". Jewcy.com. 2008-04-30. Retrieved 2010-04-16. This audio file was created from a revision of the "Godwin's law" article dated 2005-07-01, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)
Obama Slams Kanye West And Kim Kardashian About The American Dream - Business Insider
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  Thu, 08 Aug 2013 22:49
  Victor Decolongon/Getty
  President Obama says access to celebrities like Kanye West and Kim Kardashian is warping young Americans' ideas of success.
  President Obama isn't the biggest Kanye West fan.In fact, he's even called the rapper a "jacka--" on two separate occasions.
  So it shouldn't come as a surprise that Obama used Kanye and his girlfriend, Kim Kardashian, as examples of a warped American dream.
  In a recent interview with David Blum for Kindle Singles, Blum asks the president about the American dream, saying, "Part of the American dream -- even if you're poor, or lower-middle class -- involves yearning for tangible things you can't afford. Were there things, when you were growing up, that you yearned for that you couldn't afford?"
  Obama responded that the American dream used to be simpler: an education, a steady job, a home, and family. "There was not that window into the lifestyles of the rich and famous."
  The president recalled a simpler time when "kids weren't monitoring every day what Kim Kardashian was wearing, or where Kanye West was going on vacation, and thinking that somehow that was the mark of success."
  Obama continued to argue that with more access to celebrities and fame, a ''change in culture'' has occurred, distorting how many young Americans view success.
  Way to go, Kimye.
Apple Turns Tables Seeking U.S. Samsung Phone Sales Ban - Bloomberg
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  Archived Version
  Thu, 08 Aug 2013 20:49
  Apple Inc. (AAPL) is trying to force Samsung Electronics Co.'s mobile devices off U.S. store shelves a week after dodging an iPhone 4 ban by a rare White House veto.
  The company will ask a U.S. appeals court tomorrow to block sales of Samsung models a California jury found violated patents for the iPhone's look and features. Later, a U.S. trade agency is expected to say if it will halt some Samsung imports based on other Apple patent-infringement claims.
  For Cupertino, California-based Apple, making Samsung change or stop selling some smartphones and tablet computers is more important than money. The $1 billion verdict it won at trial last year equals less than two weeks' worth of iPhone sales and one-seventh of Samsung's second-quarter profit.
  ''Sometimes, the money's not enough,'' said Ray Van Dyke, a technology-patent lawyer with the Van Dyke Firm in Washington. ''Between Apple and Samsung, it's about who's going to be the top dog. You want to shut them down. This is the club. You can beat them into submission with a club and maintain your top dog status.''
  Apple and Samsung together make almost half of all smartphones sold, with Samsung holding the title of world's biggest and the two companies vying to be No. 1 in the U.S.
  The two companies are spending millions of dollars in legal fees battling across four continents. Neither has been able to strike a crippling blow. An import ban that could have halted some of Apple's older iPhone 4 and iPad 2 3G models at the U.S. border was vetoed by President Barack Obama's administration last week.
  1 PercentSlowing Samsung's momentum will be hard -- most of the models named in Apple's patent cases are no longer sold as Samsung regularly introduces new devices in different price ranges. The company said it has designed around the Apple patents in newer products.
  ''Samsung's U.S. sales of the older products in question are very small, which accounts for even less than 1 percent of the company's total handset sales there,'' said Kim Young Chan, a Seoul-based analyst at Shinhan Investment Corp.
  Based on Samsung's filings with the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, the impact will depend on the wording of any import ban imposed by the agency. A broadly worded order finding infringement of Apple's patent for the phone's front design ''could create an immediate shortage of millions of mobile devices,'' the filing said.
  Koreans WatchingThe trade commission, which investigates unfair trade practices, is scheduled tomorrow to announce results of its review of a judge's findings that some Samsung models infringed four Apple patents.
  If there is a violation, the commission could order a ban on imports. That too would be subject to review by the Obama administration, and the Korean Ministry of Trade said Aug. 5 it would be watching the case.
  ''Obama may issue the reprieve again for Samsung, and if not, it will only bring up even bigger international conflict,'' said Lee Sun Tae, an analyst at Seoul-based NH Investment & Securities said by phone. ''Consumers no longer care about Samsung's 'copycat' image any more as it has somewhat vanished, because even with the ongoing litigation, the Galaxy S sales have continued to rise.''
  While the patents in the two cases aren't the same, some of the products overlap, including the Epic 4G and the Indulge that are now available only in pre-owned models. The Galaxy S II, the precursor to the company's top-selling Galaxy S4, was cleared by the ITC judge of infringing Apple's design patent.
  'Meticulous Copying'The cases tomorrow involve different legal standards over the same basic issue -- Apple's ability to halt Samsung's sales.
  Apple will ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, which specializes in patent law, to overturn District Judge Lucy Koh's 2012 order that lets Samsung continue selling devices found to infringe Apple patents. Koh said Apple didn't prove patented features and designs drove consumer sales, so Apple could be made whole with money.
  ''Samsung has chosen to compete not through innovation, but through calculated and meticulous copying of Apple's popular iPhone and iPad,'' Apple said in a filing with the appeals court. ''After the iPhone's success, Samsung's phones became iPhone clones.''
  'Limited Features'Samsung, which denies infringing the patents, will urge the appeals court to uphold the ruling as it hasn't even yet determined whether the jury was right in finding infringement.
  ''The most Apple did was to introduce evidence that some consumers value 'design' and 'ease of use' in general, a far cry from a showing that the limited features covered by Apple's design and utility patents drive consumer demand for Samsung products,'' Samsung said in its own filing with the court.
  The ruling could have broad implications for any company that owns patents for features or components of complex products, like a smartphone or computer.
  Google Inc. (GOOG), which owns the Android operating system that Samsung phones use, urged the appeals court to uphold Koh's ruling. ''The owner of a trivial patent has no reasonable expectation of more than trivial compensation,'' Google said in a filing that was joined by Rackspace Hosting Inc. (RAX), HTC Corp. (2498)Red Hat Inc. (RHT) and SAP Inc.
  Nokia Oyj (NOK1V), which was supplanted as the world's biggest maker of mobile phones by Samsung, said Koh's ruling ''threatens to turn the traditional purpose of patent law on its head'' and force patent owners to accept compulsory licenses for differentiating features.
  The Apple ITC case against Samsung is In the Matter of Electronic Digital Media Devices, 337-796, and Samsung's case is In the Matter of Electronic Devices, Including Wireless Communication Devices, Portable Music and Data Processing Devices, and Tablet Computers, 337-794, both U.S. International Trade Commission (Washington).
  The Apple appeal is Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. (005930), 13-1129, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (Washington). The lower court case is Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., 11-cv-01846, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Jose).
  To contact the reporters on this story: Susan Decker in Washington at sdecker1@bloomberg.net; Jungah Lee in Seoul at jlee1361@bloomberg.net
  To contact the editor responsible for this story: Bernard Kohn at bkohn2@bloomberg.net; Michael Tighe at mtighe4@bloomberg.net
  Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co. together make almost half of all smartphones sold, with Samsung holding the title of world's biggest and the two companies vying to be No. 1 in the U.S. Photographer: SeongJoon Cho/Bloomberg
  3:44
  Aug. 5 (Bloomberg) -- Richard Windsor, founder of radiofreemobile.com and an independent technology consultant, talks about the U.S. decision to overturn an import ban on Apple Inc.'s older iPhones and iPads, allowing the company to continue selling the iPhone 4. He speaks from Dubai with Francine Lacqua on Bloomberg Television's "On the Move." (Source: Bloomberg)
Lavabit, email service Snowden reportedly used, abruptly shuts down - Boing Boing
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  Thu, 08 Aug 2013 19:42
  Remember when word circulated that Edward Snowden was using Lavabit, an email service that purports to provide better privacy and security for users than popular web-based free services like Gmail? Lavabit's owner has shut down service, with a mysterious message posted on the lavabit.com home page today. Below, the full message: My Fellow Users,
  I have been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly ten years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit. After significant soul searching, I have decided to suspend operations. I wish that I could legally share with you the events that led to my decision. I cannot. I feel you deserve to know what's going on--the first amendment is supposed to guarantee me the freedom to speak out in situations like this. Unfortunately, Congress has passed laws that say otherwise. As things currently stand, I cannot share my experiences over the last six weeks, even though I have twice made the appropriate requests.
  What's going to happen now? We've already started preparing the paperwork needed to continue to fight for the Constitution in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. A favorable decision would allow me resurrect Lavabit as an American company.
  This experience has taught me one very important lesson: without congressional action or a strong judicial precedent, I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.
  Sincerely,Ladar LevisonOwner and Operator, Lavabit LLC
  Defending the constitution is expensive! Help us by donating to the Lavabit Legal Defense Fund here.
  [HT: dd_toronto]