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Fifty left sick after wedding party
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  Source: BBC News - Home
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 13:54
  3 October 2013Last updated at08:32 ETAbout 50 people fell violently sick after attending a newlywed couple's homecoming party.
  Public health experts are investigating after complaints from guests at the buffet party at the Globe Inn, Frogmore, in south Devon.
  Plymouth police officers Nick and Anna Burnett threw the party last Saturday for friends and family after getting married in Mauritius.
  The pub said it could not comment until the investigation was complete.
  Mr Burnett, 37, and Mrs Burnett, 34, had returned to England after a honeymoon in South Africa.
  Days off sickAbout 90 people attended the party, which Mr Burnett said had been a "fantastic evening" at a "great venue".
  He added that the mixed buffet had been "excellent".
  But he realised something was wrong on Monday morning when he and his wife, who is a vegetarian, became seriously ill with vomiting and diarrhoea.
  The couple soon realised they were among about 50 guests suffering the same effects.
  Mr Burnett, who was still feeling ill four days after the party, said some people had been forced to take days off work.
  "The pub is devastated, for us and everyone else," he said. "But we must not jump to conclusions until we've got the results."
  A spokeswoman from South Hams District Council said it had received reports from "a number of people" who became ill after the wedding party.
  It is investigating the cases with the government health protection agency Public Health England.
  She said: "We have sent out questionnaires to members of the party who we believe have been affected to assist our investigations.
  "At this stage of the investigation it is too early comment on possible causes of the illness."
  The Globe's landlord John Horsley confirmed that the pub had laid on the buffet, adding: "It is under investigation and until we know what the results are I cannot comment."
France approves 'anti-Amazon' bill
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  Source: Hacker News
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 13:49
  3 October 2013Last updated at09:38 ETFrance has approved a bill to support independent bookstores against competition from online retailers.
  The new laws will restrict companies like Amazon from combining offers of five percent discounts with free deliveries.
  France's 3,000 independent bookshops have complained that they can't compete with the cut-price offers online.
  The opposition right-wing party UMP proposed the bill, but it also has the support of the left.
  It has been approved by the lower house and will now be sent to the Senate.
  The BBC's Paris correspondent Christian Fraser said the bill "might be seen as payback" for Amazon's practices of reporting European sales through a Luxembourg holding company, to take advantage of comparatively low corporate tax rates.
  French Culture Minister Aurelie Filippetti has criticised Amazon's practices in the past, particularly free deliveries or its policy of "tax optimisation."
  Amazon insists the arrangement is legal under the European Union's single market rules.
  In June, Ms Filippetti said: "Today, everyone has had enough of Amazon, which, by dumping, slashes prices to get a foothold in markets only to raise them once they have established a virtual monopoly."
  Britain has a third of the number of France's independent bookshops.
  France is known for being proud of its local stores, considering them essential to bring culture to small villages.
Time for an atomic career change
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  Source: Atomic Insights
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 13:40
  It is time for a career change. For the foreseeable future, I am going to write books and articles for a living. This career move has been a long time in the making.
  During my first interview for a nuclear-related job, Admiral Rickover asked me, ''English major? Why are you an English major?'' I responded ''Because I like to read and write, sir.'' He followed up with ''Write? Have you ever written any books? I have. Three of them. Have you read any of them?'' My response was ''Not yet, sir.'' My entire interview with Admiral Rickover lasted less than 3 minutes.
  At the time, I did not understand that I had answered his questions in exactly the right way. Rickover was a voracious reader and a writer who thought deeply about important, far reaching topics; I think my answers helped him to decide to accept me into his program. In the intervening years, I have learned a great deal about Hyman Godalia Rickover and many other fascinating people who have made impacts, both positive and negative, on the development of nuclear energy technology.
  Aside: I found Rickover's given middle name during a recent rereading of Francis Duncan's Rickover: The Struggle for Excellence, Naval Institute Press, 2001 on page 11. When he filled out the form for his oath of office, Rickover decided to tell the Navy that his middle name was George. End Aside.
  I've gathered an increasingly interesting collection of books, articles, papers, presentations, and notes that are crying out for an effort to weave them into narratives that provide a currently unavailable perspective on how the technology has developed '-- or not '-- how it can develop, and how its continued development will help to make the earth a richer, cleaner, and more comfortable place to live.
  It was not easy to decide to leave my former colleagues at B&W mPower, Inc. It was rewarding to be a part of a growing team that is working diligently and creatively to develop technology that will be able to provide reliable, emission free electricity to millions of people. I realized, however, that there are plenty of people who can accomplish the tasks that I was assigned there, but there is no one else who can organize my collection of energy-related information into a valuable resource.
  Part of my decision process was driven by a recognition that energy markets in the US are developing in a very risky way. Providing reliable power to people is not a sprint; it is not even a marathon. It is a task that will endure far longer than any of us, but decision makers seem to have been hypnotized into thinking that it is okay to build a supply infrastructure with a high level of dependence on natural gas. They forget its volatile nature, both in physical form and in market price behavior.
  In the parable of the tortoise and hare, the slow, steady tortoise beats the jumpy, often distracted hare. The US '-- and Canada '-- seem intent on rewriting the parable. They (we) have allowed financially motivated spectators to influence the race results by actively stepping on the tortoise or erecting seemingly insurmountable barriers to his progress. Fortunately, nuclear fission's energy density is a very tough shell that cannot be broken, even if it seems like the crowd has forced a temporary halt in progress.
  This story begs to be more fully understood and exposed. One or two easily forgotten blog posts will not suffice; successful transmission requires repetition and access to a stronger microphone on a taller soapbox. I've decided to take on the challenge, but the effort will take more time than is available after subtracting a 40-50 hour work week.
  Atomic Insights and the Atomic Show podcast will continue in their present forms as platforms for communications among a growing community of people that are intensely interested in energy-related topics. I continue to gain strength and stamina from our interactions; please continue to contribute.
  Our Creator has endowed us with an incredible reservoir of creativity and also provided us with access to some amazing raw materials. Our capacity for growth is only limited if we collectively decide to limit ourselves. One of my self-assigned missions is to show how we can make a choice to pursue almost infinite development in spite of the long ago decision by bankers and oil interests to spend tons of our money promoting the notion that there are ''Limits to Growth'' as a way to slow nuclear energy development and maintain their current economic dominance.
Obama's Gay Time Lover
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  Source: Lame Cherry
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 13:28
  As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter and anti matter, par dux, as someone shut down my power and wiped this exclusive out.
  The history of the foreign agent Barack Hussein Obama Chin is one of a myriad of layers and written psychopathies in Dreams of my Obama, in which the Chinoid Barry Chin, confesses his deepest secrets. Here on Lame Cherry is a further revelation to the Obama dirtiest secrets.
  When Barry Soetoro was smuggled back into Hawaii, he was gathered to a Chicago pansy, named Frank Marshall Davis by his adoptive Grandfather, Stan Armour Dunham.In this lewd exposure, the young Obama Chin was exposed to debauchery from ribald poetry to the scent of Uncle Frank on him, as his urine stained underwear was on display in an early Barry Obama poem recording the events of his early deviancy and molestation.
  In Dreams, Obama Chin recorded an evening when Uncle Frank shattered his world, and left him isolated. It was at that night when Birther Obama stated he felt completely alone in the world.
  This begins the revelation of Obama Chin's connection to Keith Kakugawa, the older man in Obama's life in high school, in having hisself attached to another Asianoid who was black of Mongoloid ancestry.
  Life of Obama's Childhood Friend Takes Drastically Different Path ...abcnews.go.com 'º GMA'ŽApr 3, 2007 - As first reported by the Wall Street Journal, Ray's real name is Keith Kakugawa. And Kakugawa's life could not have veered more starkly from ...Kakugawa was the man in the feminine Obama's life and it was by his pursuit of this teenage boy which brought about a relationship which pushed the early sexual boundaries of the person known as Barack Hussein Obama.And yes as of 2007, Jake Tapper and the entire press knew of this story and covered it up for the installation of Birther Hussein, which is another scandal as Kakugawa appeared in Dreams as "Ray".
  Obama confessed this in a most bizarre statement for a boy about another boy remembering in Dreams, when this line was utilized to describe the relationship.
  'I enjoyed his company. He had a warmth and brash humor.'
  Normal straight boys would describe another boy of that age as a "nice kid", but Obama focuses upon "warmth" in an intimate relationship and a reality that this male was also one who possessed a brash mouth which appealed to the young Barry.Upon inquiry, the relationship between the two teenage boys in which Obama pursued the older teenager, was one where mutual masturbation was initiated, and degraded to Kakugawa looking at Sears Roebuck, JC Penney and Playboy photos to which Barry Obama reached out and serviced the teenager.It degraded to young Barry actually "kissing it" to which Kakugawa recoiled at it being too fag and this started a distancing of the two.
  There was mutual tasting of semen, and an event where Hawaiian prostututes where hired, but what was begun as intimate pursuit of Chinoid Barry of another black Asian male, became separation which would expand.The smoking of weed to the snorting of coke was the interaction of these two boys. The sexual deviancy was limited to the masturbation phase as Kakugawa looked upon the ultimate prize of white women.
  Mr. Kakugawa was ushered into his own successful life of a broker, but the downward spiral of narcotics took their effects and he was imprisoned.The situation degraded when he reached out to his best friend, the now Barack Hussein Obama, chosen for a meteoric rise in the overthrow of American politics, but as Kakugawa learned, Obama had no time for him, and insulted his old friend, by handing him off to an assistant to dispose of.
  As of 2013, Kakugawa had entered into a worst phase in having taken a woman out on a date, he arrived at her apartment and beat her and then raped her, to which he was arrested and charged.
  Keith Kakugawa, 54, from California, was arrested at his home on Sunday and booked into Humboldt County Jail on suspicion of imprisoning, ...Rumors have been afloat of Kakugawa being very upset and having a list of the skeletons in Obama's closet which could be embarrassing to the Fang Jinn.
  Upon inquiry, the situation involved the sodomy, drugs and whores, but something else appeared and this is the story which would bring down the regime and forever end the legacy of Birther Hussein, as it was a criminal act.It was not theft or murder, but a like act of which Keith Kakugawa has been arrested, as during the final phase of the "pursuit" Kakugawa became aware of an event which Barry Obama had taken part in, as Barry Chin had molested a young boy.
  This is what Kakugawa holds and it would be an explosive detail not just in a book, but in the reality of extortion in getting the charges against him dropped. It is also something which would in logic have him assuming the Andrew Breitbart position, as this regime has a record of silencing those who knew too much, and it started early in Indonesia with the murder of Obama's sister there, who he used to tie up and abuse as was reported here.
  Perhaps Jerome Corsi should have not abandoned the Birther story for his sell out of the disinformation of John Kennedy tuned up at 50, because the information is only beginning. It is a reality though that this has come full circle, and as this blog promised not to forget Lawrence Sinclair in his torture by this Obama regime, due to his revelations of homosexual acts with Mr. Obama Chin, and the revelations of Mr. Sinclair's conversations with another Obama sex partner in the murdered Donald Young, that the exclusives in the coming story are here first as usual.
  You now know more than was intended ever by the cartel. I will watch again the traffic of this site peak as non donors steal from me in not taking responsibility for things in their rich worlds. No one else will bring you this in endangering themselves as you sit in luxury.
  After being destroyed by Uncle Frank, Barack Obama turned to thee only person who appealed to young Barry, and that was a like Asianoid, who Obama could relate to, but Kakugawa had no idea of the Obama Asian mother, who was the anchor wife of Barack Hussein Obama Sr., who upon birthing Barry, sold him to the Dunhams for that forged registration, and she fled back to the Philippines.It is further proof of Obama's heritage as he chose someone just like him in being a black Asian, just as Stan Ann when ridding herself of Barry, went shopping for another black Asian in Korea.
  It is hoped that by placing these realities here, that Keith Kakugawa will survive and not end up puffy pink in his jail sell, unable to tell his story, the criminal contents of it would bring an end to the Obama regime in this Fang Jinn replacement sent packing and the reemergence of the Chicken Entree in the freezer of the executive Doomsday City one mile from the White House.
  All exclusives, all of the time, the Lame Cherry in matter anti matter again.
  Friends reunited: drug dealer haunts Obama - TelegraphApr 5, 2007 - "Ray" - the pseudonym Mr Obama gave his school friend in his first book - is Keith Kakugawa, 47, divorced and recently released from prison ...It is more than drugs in this, it is what Obama did with little boys.Kakugawa's Face Book Page
  nuff said
  agtG 287YY
  Day Tripper- The Beatles - YouTubewww.youtube.com/watch?v=jhdPDI9OeY8'ŽApr 5, 2008 - Uploaded by Brad DilonGot a good reason for taking the easy way out Got a good reason for taking the easy way out now She was a ...
The Common Law: Strange Brew '' Interesting New Texas Laws: New Texas laws affect eating, drinking, weapons, and tanning - Columns - The Austin Chronicle
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 13:25
  Hundreds of new Texas laws took effect on Sept. 1. Some of the new laws address topics that impact all of us, including traffic and driving (see last month's column). Other laws are more targeted and unique. Here's a summary of interesting, unusual, and downright strange topics our elected officials saw fit to address this past legislative session.
  Farmers' Markets. Not quite restaurants and not quite food trucks. Farmers' markets and their related food and cooking demonstrations had previously fallen into a gray and murky area of food regulation. The Texas Legislature promulgated a variety of different regulations intended to address health and safety compliance at farmers' markets.
  Home Bakery. Aspiring Rachael Rays take notice. Regulations on selling home-baked goods to the public have been relaxed. Items home bakers can make and sell from their homes have been expanded to include candy, coated and uncoated nuts, fruit butters, dehydrated fruits and vegetables, popcorn, cereal, granola, mustard, coffee and a host of others.
  Wineries and New Year's Eve. Like chicken-fried steak and mashed potatoes, the Texas Legislature has endorsed another classic combination '-- wine and New Year's Eve. The curfew for wineries on New Year's Eve has been extended to 2am.
  Bring a knife to a gunfight. Since the Fifties it's been against the law in Texas to have, make, repair, or sell a switchblade in Texas. The Legislature finally got around to repealing this law, which gives Texans free reign to carry switchblades.
  Tanning Kids. Further distinguishing Texas from the likes of New Jersey, minors under 18 years old may no longer use indoor tanning beds (previously minors aged 16-18 could with parental approval). The move is designed to protect kids from ultraviolet radiation, and ultimately, skin cancer.
Chinese tourists warned not to pick noses or urinate in public - CNBC
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 13:03
  The guide was issued ahead of China's "Golden Week" of public holidays in which millions of Chinese people take vacations, which begun on October 1. The guide Is designed to instruct people how to behave in their own country as well as abroad, and comes as an increasing number of affluent Chinese travel abroad.
  (Read more:A nation on vacation: China's Golden Week holidays begin)
  In April, the World Trade Organisation named China the new number one nation for expenditure when traveling abroad. Chinese expenditure abroad reached $102 billion in 2012 and the volume of international trips by Chinese travelers reached 83 million, up from 10 million in 2000.
  But despite the boon for economically struggling countries in Europe and elsewhere that rely on tourism, the Chinese have nonetheless developed something of a reputation for uncouth behaviour while abroad.
  (Read more: Greece:'Tourism bonanza' to give economy a boost?)
  In May, a mainland Chinese woman who let her son relieve himself in a bottle in a crowded Hong Kong restaurant sparked an outpour of anger. Plus, there was outrage when a 15 year-old tourist from Nanjing recently carved his name into an ancient temple in Luxor, Egypt.
  The guide came as China introduced its first ever tourism law on Tuesday, showing that authorities are keen to get a grip on the tourism trade. The law banned tour companies from hiding costs such as mandatory shopping trips, state news agency Xinhua reported on Wednesday.
  Furthermore, it is not the first time the image-conscious government has tried to "civilize" its nascent tourist sector. In May, the authorities tried to appeal to national pride, telling people that "being a civilized tourist is the obligation of each citizen," Xinhua stated.
  - BY CNBC's Holly Ellyatt, follow her on Twitter @HollyEllyatt
Japan-US foreign and defense talks end -NHK WORLD English-
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 12:27
  Japanese and US foreign and defense chiefs have agreed to revise bilateral defense cooperation guidelines by the end of 2014. The revision would be the first of its kind in 17 years.
  The deal was part of a joint statement released at the end of the so-called 2-plus-2 meeting on Thursday in Tokyo. Attending the talks were Japan's Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera, and US Secretary of State John Kerry and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.
  The statement says the US welcomes Japan's ongoing reexamination of the legal basis for exercising the right to collective self-defense and the drafting of a new national security strategy. Japan is also increasing its defense budget.
  The statement says the ministers agreed on the revision of the 1997 bilateral defense guidelines to maintain the credibility of the Japan-US alliance in a changing security environment. The agreement came amid an increase in China's maritime activities and North Korea's nuclear and missile development.
  The ministers also agreed to decrease hours of training flights and stationing of MV-22 Osprey transport aircraft in Okinawa to reduce the prefecture's burden of hosting US bases.
  The deal includes the start of transferring US Marines stationed in Okinawa to Guam in the first half of the 2020s.
  The ministers also agreed to proceed with a planned relocation of the US Marines' Futenma Air Station in Okinawa to Nago, also in the prefecture.
  The statement calls the plan the only viable solution to avoid continued use of the base located in a densely populated area.
  Oct. 3, 2013 - Updated 09:02 UTC
BREAKING: CALIFORNIA NULLIFIES NDAA INDEFINITE DETENTION | Ben Swann Truth In Media
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 04:57
  13 hours ago | Politics, US | Posted by Michael LotfiCalifornia Governor Jerry Brown Signs NDAA Indefinite Detention Nullification Bill Into Law
  Assembly Bill (AB) 351 was signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown yesterday. California is the third state to have passed legislation, which nullifies the unpopular federal provision. A selection of AB 351 reads:
  The United States Constitution and the California Constitution provide for various civil liberties and other individual rights for a citizen of the United States and the State of California, including the right of habeas corpus, the right to due process, the right to a speedy and public trial, and the right to be informed of criminal charges brought against him or her.
  Certain provisions of federal law affirm the authority of the President of the United States to use all necessary and appropriate force to detain specified persons who engaged in terrorist activities.
  This bill would prohibit an agency in the State of California, a political subdivision of this state, an employee of an agency or a political subdivision of this state, as specified, or a member of the California National Guard, on official state duty, from knowingly aiding an agency of the Armed Forces of the United States in any investigation, prosecution, or detention of a person within California pursuant to (1) Sections 1021 and 1022 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA), (2) the federal law known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force, enacted in 2001, or (3) any other federal law, except as specified, if the state agency, political subdivision, employee, or member of the California National Guard would violate the United States Constitution, the California Constitution, or any law of this state by providing that aid. The bill would also prohibit local entities from knowingly using state funds and funds allocated by the state to those local entities on and after January 1, 2013, to engage in any activity that aids an agency of the Armed Forces of the United States in the detention of any person within California for purposes of implementing Sections 1021 and 1022 of the NDAA or the federal law known as the Authorization for Use of Military Force , if that activity would violate the United States Constitution, the California Constitution, or any law of this state, as specified.
  The bill's common name is ''The California Liberty Preservation Act.'' California's legislation takes things a step further than other states, which have implemented nullification legislation with regard to the NDAA.
  The bill specifically states:It is the policy of this state to refuse to provide material support for or to participate in any way with the implementation within this state of any federal law that purports to authorize indefinite detention of a person within California. (emphasis added)
  This meaning the legislation takes aim at not only the NDAA provision, but any federal law, which seeks to disregard one's constitutional rights.
  Democrats and republicans worked together to sponsor and pass the legislation. The bill was introduced by ultra-conservative Tim Donnelly, and managed by San Francisco liberal-democrat Mark Leno.
  Nullification has broken barriers in the political world not seen since Reagan won every state in the country in 1984 except Minnesota, home of challenger Mondale (D).
  Nullification is able to do this because the federal government has put its hands in far too many pies. Liberals passionate about marijuana legalization and privacy rights find refuge in nullification. Meanwhile, conservatives passionate about the federal reserve, taxes and guns find refuge as well.
  The Tenth Amendment Center stands in as the moderator working to nullify all unconstitutional laws in every state. They have provided model legislation to nullify indefinite detention in each state.
  Tenth Amendment Center's national communications director Mike Mike Maharrey tells us-''Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle came together and passed legislation to protect against federal kidnapping,'' adding that, ''by saying, 'No!' to indefinite detention and refusing any state cooperation, the California legislature and Gov. Brown just ensured it will be very hard to whisk somebody away in the dead of night and hold them without due process.''
  Michael Lotfi is a Persian, American political commentator and adviser living in Nashville, Tennessee where he works as the associate director for the Tenth Amendment Center. Lotfi founded TheLibertyPaper.org, which is an online news source that is visited daily by readers in over 135 countries. Lotfi graduated in the top 5% of the country with top honors from Belmont University, an award winning, private university located in Nashville, Tennessee.
  Tags: California, Indefinite Detention, ndaa, nullification, Nullifies, nullify, Tenth Amendment Center
America's Drug Empire | Veterans Today
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 04:54
  Container trucks carrying NATO supplies are seen parked at the Pakistani town of Chaman, before being moved to Afghanistan, July 27, 2012.
  It was only a week ago that the US government released Eric Harroun, a former soldier who had been fighting with foreign backed al-Qaeda terrorists and the CIA against the Assad government in Syria.
  This week, former Army sergeant Joseph Hunter and a group of other veterans, one from Germany's armed forces, were arrested for much the same thing, offering ''security services'' for Colombian drug cartels.
  Were worldwide press censorship to ease, the public would learn that America's drone program is used more for maintaining control of drug production and distribution than terrorism. In fact, according to Russian officials, heroin from Afghanistan, all produced and exported under unspoken but very public approval of US officials, killed over one million people last year.
  Drug production, when examined using economic modeling, makes oil racketeering and arms trafficking seem primitive in comparison.
  No technology is used, fertilizer financed through IMF programs, poppy fields irrigated through USAID programs, heroin processed in German-built labs, shipped on American truck convoys or CIA-leased aircraft, distributed around the world at 10,000% profit.
  The CIA has been doing this since the early 1980s and, as every sane person in the world knows, built the drug empire in Afghanistan, the largest in the world.
  THE GAME
  By ''security,'' we mean killings, in this case, the group had actually been hired by Americans law enforcement posing as Colombian drug dealers. (usually, such ''busts'' are intended to rectify marketing ''irregularities'' through eliminating competition)
  Their job was to murder anyone, including drug enforcement officers, public officials and their family members, even the president of the United States, if asked.
  There is a problem with all of this, perhaps more than one problem.
  Isn't this exactly what thousands of Americans, members of the military, the intelligence services, thugs working for USAID and NGOs, have been doing all along.
  Political power of the drug
  America's government faces a shutdown, this time because powerful banks and insurance companies feel their profits and political power threatened by health care laws that regulate their long despicable practices.
  The members of congress paid by the insurance and health care racketeers were, in dozens of cases, put into office by drug money laundered through offshore accounts controlled for them by former presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
  This marriage of power, the narcotics lobby, the pro-war lobby, particularly McCain, Graham and Lieberman, is also the heart of the Israel lobby.
  Before the last election, in meetings with the former head of the FBI's drug task force, I was given documents outlining ties between top Republican Party officials and the Mexican drug cartels, which are currently terrorizing over a dozen American states.
  OUR MORMON BROTHERS
  Gangs of killers employed by these cartels, fully supported by the Republican Party, control most of America's southwest region and are closely partnered with the LDS (Latter Day Saints) religious sect.
  They have set up their own ''kingdom,'' called ''Deseret'' inside the United States where they have married religious rule with organized crime.
  The Kingdom of Deseret still exists, a region covering nearly 18% of the United States, extending from the Mexican border to the snowy peaks of Idaho.
  Citizens of Deseret control much of the FBI and CIA, gambling operations in Las Vegas and have enjoyed over a century of partnership with lawless elements in Mexico.
  Extremists among the Deseret hierarchy boast of controlling America's naval vessels operating in the Mediterranean and Persian Gulf and of their ability to access nuclear weapons.
  This is the group that controls the NSA. The NSA's $4 billion ''fusion center'' is being constructed in Utah, an LDS-controlled region, ''ground zero'' for the Kingdom of Deseret.
  Background
  As early as the 1840s, the LDS terrorized wagon trains heading across the west, kidnapping women, murdering all others.
  Within their own community, they maintained control through ''Avenging Angels,'' assassins that enforced religious doctrine and hierarchical control, though murder. This system still exists.
  It was the model for America's current privatization model, with mercenary groups answerable to extremist organizations and racketeers, all paid for by American taxpayers, running drugs, delivering poison gas to al-Qaeda and orchestrating terror attacks.
  In the late 1800s, the LDS or ''Mormons'' as they are called, fled to Mexico after an unsuccessful war against the United States. There, they formed alliances with bandits and revolutionaries along the border, groups that have now ''morphed'' into the drug cartels of today.
  Those relationships are alive and well today and extend through the heart of America's financial centers and controlling America's lower legislative body, the House of Representatives.
  Key members of that organization enjoy huge financial benefits from offshore accounts that were made public during the last election, made public and then forgotten.
  CARTEL PARTNERS
  This power is used in combination with the Israeli AIPAC lobby to support NSA spying and widespread manipulation of financial markets, particularly using the mass of proprietary data gleaned through spying and given to Israel through the recently publicized Memorandum of Understanding.
  Call this a ''front row ticket'' to controlling all financial transactions, technology and intellectual property of the United States, controlling and peddling around the world through open and legalized ''piracy.''
  YouTube - Veterans Today -
  Afghanistan
  The war in Afghanistan has made the power of the narcotics lobby over America's military, intelligence and governmental organizations more than obvious.
  The narcotics cartels obviously control America's media.
  During the 12 years of American rule, Afghanistan has gone from a nearly drug free nation under the Taliban to a country of addicts and the producer of over 95% of the world's refined heroin.
  Even the United Nations has been warned off, no longer even reporting heroin production in Afghanistan. America talks about its anti-drug efforts though former US envoy, Richard Hollbrooke, openly admitted that narcotics production was key to America's policy in Afghanistan.
  No one has spoken of it since.
  Invisible drug empire
  Two weeks ago, the US government sentenced an African American soldier, a West Point graduate, to prison for involvement in the heroin trade in Afghanistan. From Navy Times:
  ''A West Point graduate and former Army captain busted for trafficking heroin from Afghanistan to the U.S. was sentenced Sept. 4 to 10 years in a federal prison.Saleem Akbar Sharif, 36, of Johns Island, S.C., also agreed to surrender $100,000 in drug profits. He pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy and possession with intent to distribute heroin.''
  There is a problem here.
  The US government has never admitted that heroin is produced in Afghanistan. They claim only opium paste is produced.
  For a West Point graduate to be arrested for making only $100,000 selling narcotics, the crime should have been laziness and inefficiency.
  No document has ever admitted any heroin production in Afghanistan, there are no records, and, in particular, not one photograph of any heroin production facility.
  The US has never found one, in its ''war on drugs.'' Similarly, the US never found WMD's in Iraq or the dozen or more massive underground bunker complexes Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld cited when advocating an American invasion of Afghanistan.
  In a televised interview with Tim Russert, Rumsfeld spoke of facilities that housed thousands, underground monorails, storage of armored vehicles, entire cities underground.
  YouTube - Veterans Today -
  He supplied a graphic, not entirely unlike the cartoon Netanyahu held in his hands while humiliating himself before the UN general assembly in his diatribe about Iran's nuclear energy program.
  But heroin production does exist.
  Yet, chemicals used to produce heroin are shipped into Afghanistan at US government expense labeled ''dry cleaning supplies.''
  The same containers leave through the Pakistani port of Karachi, laden with processed heroin, or so top security officials in Pakistan have told me.
  These containers, unnumbered and unregistered, move under the full authority of the United States government.
  If you check the Internet, looking for news of anti-drug operations or photographs posted on social network sites, you will never see opium transported, never see heroin processing facilities, never see a container loaded or a plane packed with heroin flown out to NATO headquarters in Brussels to be unloaded.
  In a dozen years, there has been no evidence published, none sought and much suppressed.
  This is the power of the private and not so private armies that protect and defend the world's narcotics traffickers, a group which includes political leaders, the US, Canada, Britain, France, Israel, Switzerland, Turkey, certainly Afghanistan but more, so many more.
  Heroin trafficking is the lubrication that keeps the wheels of Western politics moving as intended.
Silk Road drug kingpin tried to kill witness, authorities in Maryland say - baltimoresun.com
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 04:38
  An undercover federal agent in Maryland played a key role in the shutdown Wednesday of what authorities describe as a massive online drug marketplace, owned by a 29-year-old engineer who authorities say schemed to kill perceived rivals.
  Authorities say Ross William Ulbricht built his Silk Road site into a Deep Web marketplace where buyers and sellers traded more than $1 billion in illegal narcotics using the virtual '-- and virtually untraceable '-- currency called Bitcoin.
  Ulbricht is accused of serving "several thousand drug dealers" since January 2011.
  The site also offered tutorials on hacking ATM machines, contact lists for black-market connections, and guns and hit men for hire, authorities say.
  "Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today," FBI agent Christopher Tarbell said in the criminal complaint.
  Ulbricht, the target of parallel but separate federal investigations, was charged by a grand jury in Maryland with conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance and attempted witness murder, among other charges. The indictment was unsealed Wednesday as related charges in New York became public.
  Court documents in the two cases lay out how authorities believe Ulbricht became increasingly comfortable targeting for violence those whom he believed could bring down the complex and lucrative online network he had built.
  Ulbricht's family in Texas said he was a "good person," who would not hurt anyone. He was held after a brief appearance Wednesday in a San Francisco courtroom. An attorney assigned to his case declined to comment.
  The Maryland grand jury indictment covers alleged interactions starting in April 2012 with an undercover agent here. According to prosecutors, the agent told Ulrich that he was a high-level drug smuggler who wanted to move inventory on Silk Road.
  Their chats took a turn when one of Ulbricht's employees was arrested in January, authorities say. They say Ulbricht worried that the employee would blow his cover and asked the undercover agent to have him killed.
  Ulbricht said he had "never killed a man or had one killed before, but it is the right move in this case," an agent wrote in court papers.
  The agent led Ulbricht to believe that the killing had been carried out, including sending staged photos of the employee being tortured, authorities say. On March 1, they say, Ulbricht wired $80,000 from an account in Australia to an account controlled by authorities.
  Later in March, authorities say in documents filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, private messages reviewed by federal agents show a Silk Road vendor threatened to blackmail Ulbricht by exposing information about the site's users and transactions.
  They say Ulbricht then reached out to a user to take care of the problem.
  "I would like to put a bounty on his head if it's not too much trouble for you," he wrote in a message on March 29, authorities say in court documents. "Necessities like this do happen from time to time for a person in my position."
  In bartering with the user, they say, Ulbricht wrote: "Not long ago, I had a clean hit done for $80k. Are the prices you quoted the best you can do?"
  On April 1, the user told Ulbricht that his problem had been "taken care of" and sent a picture of the victim, records show.
  It's not clear whether such a killing occurred. Agents wrote that they could find no record of someone with the name of Ulbricht's alleged target. They said they contacted authorities in White Rock, British Columbia, about a possible homicide on March 31, but the Canadians were unaware of such a killing.
  Authorities say more than 900,000 registered users bought and sold drugs using Bitcoin on Silk Road. They say they seized about $3.6 million worth of Bitcoin, which they say is the largest seizure ever of the virtual currency.
  Bitcoin, which can be obtained through online exchanges, is used to buy real and virtual products from Internet merchants anonymously.
Marketplace of vice, 'Silk Road' meets its end | Reuters
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 04:17
  By Jim Finkle
  BOSTON | Wed Oct 2, 2013 7:08pm EDT
  BOSTON (Reuters) - Before it was shut down by U.S. agents this week, people looking to buy street drugs, hire hackers or hitmen, and acquire stolen e-commerce accounts anonymously online could go to Silk Road, the Amazon.com of vice.
  For more than two years, according to U.S. authorities, the website allowed users to buy and sell illegal goods and services on the assumption that they were safe from the law. The buyers were cloaked by technology designed to keep identities secret and transactions were processed with bitcoin digital currency.
  Silk Road's alleged creator, 29-year-old Ross William Ulbricht, was arrested in San Francisco by FBI agents on Tuesday after investigators apparently linked his personal email address to the website, which has been shut down.
  Ulbricht's lawyer Brandon LeBlanc, a public defender, declined to comment.
  The crackdown on Silk Road is the latest in a series of moves by law enforcement against digital currencies, which critics say are a magnet for drug transactions, money-laundering and other illegal activities.
  "Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminal marketplace on the Internet today," FBI agent Christopher Tarbell said in the criminal complaint.
  Based on court documents filed since the arrest, Silk Road -named for the ancient trade routes between China and the West - offered a wide array of wares.
  Customers could buy a gram of cocaine for 0.8956 bitcoin, or about $127 at an exchange rate of $142 per bitcoin. That exchange rate fell to as low as $110 per bitcoin on Tuesday, after the Silk Road bust was announced.
  A half pound of "hydroponic bud" was running about 17.2 bitcoins and 25 LSD blotters were on offer for 1.48 bitcoins, according to court filings that included screen shots of the product listings. Vendors showed photos of crushed white powder, marijuana, pills and other illicit-looking substances.
  The website included nearly 13,000 listings for controlled substances as of September 23, according to the court documents.
  "Quality is superb ... Best stuff I've seen in a while," one user reported, according to the documents, saying he received a shipment of heroin overnight from a dealer known as "gotsitall 5.0."
  Gotsitall 5.0 charged an extra $12 to insure his product, which he described as "high quality #4 heroin all rock," according to the documents.
  Another vendor offered the services of "hitmen" operating in more than 10 countries, according to the FBI. Tarbell said in the complaint that buyers could also purchase firearms and the services of hackers offering to break into ATMs and social networking accounts on Facebook or Twitter.
  They also sold computer viruses that could be used to attack personal computers, as well as access to compromised accounts on online services such as Amazon.com Inc and Netflix Inc, he said.
  CAUGHT IN A LIBRARY
  The end for Silk Road came in the small Glen Park branch of the San Francisco public library system on Tuesday afternoon.
  At least six plainclothes FBI agents seized Ulbricht as he lingered at a corner table on the second floor near the science fiction section, pressing him up against a window and announcing he was under arrest, a library spokeswoman said.
  A Silk Road wiki had offered advice on how to avoid getting caught by authorities. A seller's guide advised sellers to vacuum seal packages containing narcotics to avoid detection by dogs or electronic sniffers, according to the complaint.
  The court documents allege that altogether bitcoins worth some $1.2 billion changed hands through the Silk Road site, which charged commissions of between 8 and 15 percent before it was shut down after a 2 1/2-year run.
  Silk Road processed all transactions with bitcoin, which leaves no traditional money trail for investigators to follow.
  The site also routed traffic through a no-cost, anti-surveillance service known as the Tor network.
  Tor sends traffic through multiple virtual "tunnels" and relays in a bid to keep Web users' identities secret. It also provides "hidden services" to help websites keep the locations of their servers confidential by routing traffic to them from other locations.
  Tor, which was originally developed with a seed grant from the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, is an open source project backed by people who say they are concerned about internet surveillance. It is accessible to anybody, including criminals.
  The complaint describes some of the steps by which investigators came to the conclusion that Ulbricht was the owner of the site, known online as "Dread Pirate Roberts."
  It said the mistakes included using a Google email address, rossulbricht@gmail.com, for communications linked to Silk Road, such as promotional material about the website dating back to January 2011.
  (Reporting by Emily Flitter; Additional reporting by Joseph Menn; Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Jim Loney)
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Trailblazer Project - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 04:03
  Trailblazer was a United States National Security Agency (NSA) program intended to develop a capability to analyze data carried on communications networks like the Internet. It was intended to track entities using communication methods such as cell phones and e-mail.[1][2] It ran over budget, failed to accomplish critical goals, and was cancelled.
  NSA whistleblowers J. Kirk Wiebe, William Binney, Ed Loomis, and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence staffer Diane Roark complained to the Department of Defense's Inspector General (IG) about waste, fraud, and abuse in the program, and the fact that a successful operating prototype existed, but was ignored when the Trailblazer program was launched. The complaint was accepted by the IG and an investigation began that lasted until mid-2005 when the final results were issued. The results were largely hidden, as the report given to the public was heavily (90%) redacted, while the original report was heavily classified, thus restricting the ability of most people to see it.
  The people who filed the IG complaint were later raided by armed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents. While the Government threatened to prosecute all who signed the IG report, it ultimately chose to pursue an NSA Senior Executive '-- Thomas Andrews Drake '-- who helped with the report internally to NSA and who had spoken with a reporter about the project. Drake was later charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. His defenders claimed this was retaliation.[3][4] The charges against him were later dropped, and he agreed to plead guilty to having committed a misdemeanor under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, something that Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project (which helped represent him) called an "act of civil disobedience".[5]
  Background[edit]Trailblazer was chosen over a similar program named ThinThread, a less costly project which had been designed with built-in privacy protections for United States citizens.[3][4] Trailblazer was later linked to the NSA electronic surveillance program and the NSA warrantless surveillance controversy.[3]
  In 2002 a consortium led by Science Applications International Corporation was chosen by the NSA to produce a technology demonstration platform in a contract worth $280 million. Project participants included Boeing, Computer Sciences Corporation, and Booz Allen Hamilton. The project was overseen by NSA Deputy Director William B. Black, Jr., an NSA worker who had gone to SAIC, and then been re-hired back to NSA by NSA director Michael Hayden in 2000.[6][7][8] SAIC had also hired a former NSA director to its management; Bobby Inman.[9] SAIC also participated in the concept definition phase of Trailblazer.[10][11]
  The NSA Inspector General issued a report on Trailblazer that "discussed improperly based contract cost increases, non-conformance in the management of the Statement of Work, and excessive labor rates for contractor personnel." [13]
  In 2004 the DoD IG report criticized the program (see the Whistleblowing section below). It said that the "NSA 'disregarded solutions to urgent national security needs'" and "that TRAILBLAZER was poorly executed and overly expensive ..." Several contractors for the project were worried about cooperating with DoD's audit for fear of "management reprisal."[5] The Director of NSA "nonconcurred" with several statements in the IG audit, and the report contains a discussion of those disagreements.[14]
  In 2005, NSA director Michael Hayden told a Senate hearing that the Trailblazer program was several hundred million dollars over budget and years behind schedule.[15] In 2006 the program was shut down,[3] after having cost billions of US Dollars.[16] Several anonymous NSA sources told Hosenball of Newsweek later on that the project was a "wasteful failure".[17]
  The new project replacing Trailblazer is called Turbulence.[3]
  Whistleblowing[edit]According to a 2011 New Yorker article, in the early days of the project several NSA employees met with Diane S Roark, an NSA budget expert on the House Intelligence Committee. They aired their grievances about Trailblazer. In response, NSA director Michael Hayden sent out a memo saying that ''individuals, in a session with our congressional overseers, took a position in direct opposition to one that we had corporately decided to follow ... Actions contrary to our decisions will have a serious adverse effect on our efforts to transform N.S.A., and I cannot tolerate them."[3]
  In September 2002, several people filed a complaint with the Department of Defense IG's office regarding problems with Trailblazer: they included Roark (aforementioned), ex-NSA senior analysts Bill Binney, Kirk Wiebe, and Senior Computer Systems Analyst Ed Loomis, who had quit the agency over concerns about its mismanagement of acquisition and allegedly illegal domestic spying.[3][18][19] A major source for the report was NSA senior officer Thomas Andrews Drake. Drake had been complaining to his superiors for some time about problems at the agency, and about the superiority of ThinThread over Trailblazer, for example, at protecting privacy.[19] Drake gave info to DoD during its investigation of the matter.[19] Roark also went to her boss at the House committee, Porter Goss, about problems, but was rebuffed.[20] She also attempted to contact William Renquist, the Supreme Court Chief Justice at the time.[19]
  Drake's own boss, Maureen Baginski, the third-highest officer at NSA, quit partly over concerns about the legality of its behavior.[3]
  In 2003, the NSA IG (not the DoD IG)[19] had declared Trailblazer an expensive failure.[15] It had cost more than $1 billion.[8][21][22]
  In 2005, the DoD IG produced a report on the result of its investigation of the complaint of Roark and the others in 2002. This report was not released to the public, but it has been described as very negative.[18] Mayer writes that it hastened the closure of Trailblazer, which was at the time in trouble from congress for being over budget.[3]
  In November 2005, Drake contacted Siobhan Gorman, a reporter of The Baltimore Sun.[17][23][24] Gorman wrote several articles about problems at the NSA, including articles on Trailblazer. This series got her an award from the Society of Professional Journalists.[17]
  In 2005, President George W. Bush ordered the FBI to find whoever had disclosed information about the NSA electronic surveillance program and its disclosure in the New York Times. Eventually, this investigation led to the people who had filed the 2002 DoD IG request, even though they had nothing to do with the New York Times disclosure. In 2007, the houses of Roark, Binney, and Wiebe were raided by armed FBI agents. According to Mayer, Binney claims the FBI pointed guns at his head and that of his wife. Wiebe said it reminded him of the Soviet Union.[3][18] None of these people were ever charged with any crime. Four months later, Drake was raided in November 2007 and his computers and documents were confiscated.
  In 2010 Drake was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice on charges of obstructing justice, providing false information, and violating the Espionage Act of 1917,[17][25][26] part of President Barack Obama's crackdown on whistleblowers and "leakers".[17][18][23][27] The government tried to get Roark to testify to a conspiracy, and made similar requests to Drake, offering him a plea bargain. They both refused.[3]
  In June 2011, the ten original charges against Drake were dropped, instead he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.[5]
  See also[edit]Gorman's Baltimore Sun series[edit]Little-known contractor has close ties with staff of NSA January 29, 2006System Error, January 29, 2006GAO head stymied in quest to audit anti-terror efforts, February 4, 2006Computer ills hinder NSA, February 26, 2006Freshly briefed lawmakers to question Hayden today, May 18, 2006, with Gwyneth K. ShawSecond-ranking NSA official forced out of job by director May 31, 2006^"NSA killed system that sifted phone data legally". baltimoresun.com. 2006-05-17. Retrieved 2008-08-14. ^"NSA datamining pushes tech envelope". PhysOrg.com. May 25, 2006. ^ abcdefghijkMayer, Jane (May 23, 2011). "The Secret Sharer". The New Yorker. Retrieved June 23, 2011. ^ abJames Bamford, The Shadow Factory, Doubleday, 2008, chapter "Trailblazer".^ abcdToo Classified to Try Myth in Failed Drake Prosecution, Jesselyn Radack, DailyKos, 6/11/11^"Search Top Secret America's Database of Private Spooks". Wired. 2010-07-19. Retrieved 2010-07-19. ^Gorman, Siobhan (2006-05-31). "Second-ranking NSA official forced out of job by director". Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 2011-01-01. ^ ab"Little-known contractor has close ties with staff of NSA". The Baltimore Sun. 2006-01-29. Retrieved 2010-07-19. ^Bamford, Shadow Factory, Doubleday, 2008, p201^Patience Wait (October 21, 2002). "SAIC team gets demonstration phase of Trailblazer". Washington Technology. ^"SAIC Team Wins National Security Agency TRAILBLAZER Contract". SAIC. October 21, 2002. ^POGO Obtains Pentagon Inspector General Report Associated With NSA Whistleblower Tom Drake, By Nick Schwellenbach, Project on Government Oversight, 2011 6 22, http://pogo.typepad.com^Please see the DoD audit of the Trailblazer program, available here: File:Redacted-dod-oig-audit-requirements-for-the.pdf on Page 38 of the report.^See the IG report, linked in the article.^ abMartin Sieff (August 18, 2005). "NSA's New Boss Puts Faith In Hi Tech Fixes". Space War. ^Government Accountability Project website http://www.whistleblower.org/program-areas/homeland-security-a-human-rights/surveillance/nsa-whistleblowers-bill-binney-a-j-kirk-wiebe, accessed June 9, 2013.^ abcdeMark Hosenball (April 16, 2010). "Exclusive: House Republican Staffer Introduced Alleged NSA Leaker to Reporter". Declassified. Newsweek.com. Retrieved Apr 17, 2010. ^ abcdIndictment Continues Obama Administration's War on Leaks ,Shane Harris, washingtonian, 01/25/2011, retrieved 3/9/11^ abcdeEllen Nakashima, with Greg Miller & Julie Tate (2010-07-14). "Former NSA executive Thomas A. Drake may pay high price for media leak". Washington Post. Retrieved 2011-01-11. ^Greg Miller, Spencer S. Hsu and Ellen Nakashima, with Carol D. Leonnig, Howard Kurtz and staff researcher Julie Tate (April 16, 2010). "Former NSA official allegedly leaked material to media". Washington Post. Retrieved April 17, 2010. ^"Eight questions for Daniel Ellsberg". The Economist. 2010-07-31. Retrieved 2010-08-03. ^Scott Shane,Obama Steps Up the Prosecution of Media Leaks, New York Times, June 12, 2010, A1.^ abScott Shane (11 June 2010). "Obama Takes a Hard Line Against Leaks to Press". The New York Times. ^Wired News (14 July 2010). "NSA Executive Leaked After Official Reporting Process Failed Him". Wired News. Retrieved 28 December 2010. ^Why WikiLeaks? Exhibit A: Thomas Drake - Government Accountability Project Jesselyn Radack, retrieved from www.whistleblower.org on 2011 03 10^"Former NSA Senior Executive Charged with Illegally Retaining Classified Information, Obstructing Justice and Making False Statements". Justice News (United States Department of Justice). April 15, 2010. Retrieved April 17, 2010. ^Checkpoint Washington - Setback in case against accused NSA leaker, Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, 2010 Nov, retrieved from voices.washingtonpost.com on 2011 03 10
VIDEO-NSA Whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe Testifies Before EU Committee - Government Accountability Project
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 04:02
  GAP client and NSA whistleblower J. Kirk Wiebe testified before the EU Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties (LIBE) which has opened on inquiry into the impact of NSA surveillance on EU citizens. The session was recorded on September 30, 2013. Please find a video of Wiebe's testimony below:
  The Government Accountability Project is the nation's leading whistleblower protection and advocacy organization.
American charged in Russia Greenpeace protest '' CNN Security Clearance - CNN.com Blogs
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 03:59
  By Jill Dougherty
  When Greenpeace activists tried to scale an oil platform in the Barents Sea owned by the Russian energy giant Gazprom on September 19, the group called it a peaceful protest against the "slow but unrelenting destruction of the Arctic."
  Russian prosecutors, however, did not agree and Wednesday they began charging the protesters with piracy, which could mean up to 15 years in prison.
  The State Department confirms that one of the activists charged is an American, Dmitry Litvinov. Greenpeace says he has dual U.S. and Swedish citizenship.
  One other American, according to the State Department, has not been charged. Greenpeace said his name is Peter Willcox, the captain of the Greenpeace boat.The organization says he also was the captain of the Rainbow Warrior when it was bombed by the French Government in Auckland, New Zealand in 1985.
  The State Department says the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg has met with both of the detained U.S. citizens and it understands they have access to legal counsel.
  Twenty eight activists from 18 countries, along with an independent journalist and a videographer, were aboard the Greenpeace ship, the Arctic Sunrise.
  They were arrested after two of the protesters tried to climb the side of the oil platform. Russian authorities accuse them of trying to commandeer the platform. Greenpeace says they were trying to hang a protest banner from the side of the rig.
  Armed Russian Coast Guard officers descended onto the deck of the boat from helicopters and detained the protesters at gunpoint.
  Their boat was towed to the northern Russian port of Murmansk September 24 and the protesters are being held in three different facilities.
  The charge of piracy is "over the top," Phil Radford, executive director of Greenpeace USA, tells CNN.
  "I think they (Russian prosecutors) will take it all the way to trial. I think Gazprom is using its political muscle to have the courts really crack down on these peaceful protesters. It's a serious and overblown charge. They need to have the piracy charge because it's the only way they can save face from illegally arresting these activists and journalists."
  Russian authorities and Gazprom, however, say the activists endangered the lives of the company's employees and their action could have led to an environmental disaster.
  Russian President Vladimir Putin has indicated he does not consider the protesters pirates but Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, quoted in the Russian media, said Wednesday: "Environmental concerns cannot be used as a cloak for illegal acts no matter what lofty considerations such acts are based on. They cannot manifest themselves in illegal methods or methods that are eventually unsafe for people and technological facilities."
  Greenpeace says it expects charges to be brought against other Greenpeace campaigners. Radford said that, as of Wednesday, nine men and five women protesters had been charged.
Papers shed light on shutdown of 'Snowden' e-mail provider | Politics and Law - CNET News
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  Archived Version
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 03:53
  Newly unsealed court papers reveal the circumstances behind the sudden closure of the encrypted e-mail service said to have been used by NSA leaker Edward Snowden.
  A screen capture of Lavabit's home page from the end of July 2013.
  (Credit: Screenshot by Seth Rosenblatt/CNET)When the encrypted e-mail service reportedly used by NSA leaker Edward Snowden suddenly closed its doors in August, its founder mysteriously said he'd "been forced to make a difficult decision: to become complicit in crimes against the American people or walk away from nearly 10 years of hard work by shutting down Lavabit."
  Ladar Levison couldn't provide further info, he said, because "Congress has passed laws that say otherwise." On Wednesday, however, the mystery was solved.
  Drawing from newly unsealed court records, Wired's Kevin Poulsen reports that the FBI had, in its desire to trace a single Lavabit user, and in the face of resistance from the company on that score, obtained a search warrant demanding that Levison turn over the keys to the encryption that protected data for all the service's users.
  "The privacy of...Lavabit's users are at stake," a Lavabit attorney told a judge during a closed-door hearing, Poulsen reports. "We're not simply speaking of the target of this investigation. We're talking about over 400,000 individuals and entities that are users of Lavabit who use this service because they believe their communications are secure. By handing over the keys, the encryption keys in this case, they necessarily become less secure."
  The news comes amid scrutiny of the methods used by the US intelligence and law enforcement community, which, critics say, has run roughshod over privacy rights and the Constitution in the name of national security. A series of revelations about those methods -- which include the National Security Agency's collecting of data about every call made in the United States -- has followed former NSA contractor Snowden's passing of internal documents to journalists.
  In outlining the more than 150 pages of newly unsealed court papers regarding Lavabit, Poulsen reports that Levison resisted an earlier "pen register" order requiring the e-mail provider "to record, and provide the government with, the connection information on one of its users every time that user logged in to check his e-mail."
  Levison was threatened with criminal contempt and the possibility of jail time when, the court papers say, Lavabit "indicated that [it] had the technical capability to decrypt the information, but that Lavabit did not want to 'defeat [its] own system.'"
  That's when the FBI obtained the search warrant calling for, the papers say, "all information necessary to decrypt communications sent to or from the Lavabit e-mail account [redacted] including encryption keys and SSL keys."
  As noted, the unsealed documents are redacted, or blacked out in places, and they don't name Snowden as the object of the FBI's investigation. But Poulsen points out that the papers list violations of the Espionage Act and theft of government property as the offenses being looked into, and that these are the offenses with which Snowden has been charged.
  After the issuing of the overall decryption warrant, Levison was reportedly willing to comply with the original pen register order, but the government had become impatient and insisted the privacy of Lavabit's other users would not be an issue.
  "While the metadata stream would be captured by a device," it argued, "the device does not download, does not store, no one looks at it. It filters everything...and we get what we're required to get under the order...So there's no agents looking through the 400,000 other bits of information, customers, whatever."
  That was enough for the judge, but Levison wasn't done with his refusal to cooperate. In response to the demand for the encryption keys, he provided an 11-page printout in tiny type.
  "To make use of these keys, the FBI would have to manually input all 2,560 characters," the government responded, "and one incorrect keystroke in this laborious process would render the FBI collection system incapable of collecting decrypted data."
  After an order from the judge for Levison to provide the electronic keys -- with a $5,000-a-day fine until he did so -- Levison shuttered Lavabit. He was quickly followed in his decision by another provider of encrypted e-mail, Silent Circle.
  "Where the government would hypothetically cross the line is to violate the privacy of all of my users," Levison told CNET during an interview the day after he closed Lavabit. "This is not about protecting a single person or persons, it's about protecting all my users. What level of access to this nation does the government have?"
  The government, on the other hand, said during the back and forth over the encryption keys that Levison "had every opportunity to propose solutions to come up with ways to address his concerns and he simply hasn't."
  You can read Poulsen's piece in its entirety, along with the newly released court papers, here.
  Levison has been ordered by the court not to reveal who the FBI's target is, and he's currently engaged in an appeal regarding the FBI warrants.
Patterico's Pontifications >> House Passes Bills to Fund NIH, National Parks, and Washington D.C.
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  Archived Version
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 03:48
  I knew they had planned to but had trouble finding reportage on whether they did. Well, they did, so spread the word:
  The House approved three targeted spending resolutions to the Senate on Wednesday, daring Senate Democrats to vote against measures to immediately fund the District of Columbia, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Park Service.
  The bills are part of the House Republican plan to pass spending bills in areas where there is bipartisan agreement in order to spare some pieces of the government from the shutdown.
  It appears that it is more important to Democrats to maintain the bad headlines than it is to Get Things Done.
  But while Democrats support these priorities, they mostly opposed attempts to pass them in the House. Democrats said Republicans were using the bills as part of a political strategy to mitigate the effects of the shutdown when they should instead pass a Senate spending resolution that funds the entire government.
  ''The majority is making itself clear,'' said Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-N.Y.). ''Any time they see a bad headline, they're going to bring a bill to the floor to make it go away.''
  Yup. Another way to put it is, if we see a program that is popular and deserves funding, we will vote for it.
  God, I love this tactic.
  Why does Louise Slaughter hate national parks and cancer patients?
  Look at how they'll lie to combat this strategy:
  Most Democrats opposed this bill as well, and said it amounts to playing needy groups off each other.
  ''Every day the Republican leadership tries to find a new way to pit one desperate group of Americans against another,'' said Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.). ''Today Republicans are pitting kids with cancer against kids who are hungry because of the shutdown.''
  But the House passed the NIH bill nonetheless, in a 254-171 vote that saw 25 Democrats join with all Republicans except one.
  Kids are hungry because non-essential government employees are on vacation (and will no doubt be paid in full for their days of nonwork)?
  Hungry???
  Please.
  Tell us how kids are hungry because of the slowdown, and we'll pass a bill to end that too! And you'll vote against it, George Miller. Won't you?
  Yes, you will.
  So you may pound sand.
Activist Post: Government Shutdown? 36 Facts Which Prove That Almost Everything Is Still Running
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 03:47
  Michael SnyderActivist PostAll of this whining and crying about a "government shutdown" is a total joke. You see, there really is very little reason why this "government shutdown" cannot continue indefinitely because almost everything is still running. 63 percent of all federal workers are still working, and 85 percent of all government activities are still being funded during this "shutdown".
  Yes, the Obama administration has been making a big show of taking down government websites and blocking off the World War II Memorial, but overall business in Washington D.C. is being conducted pretty much as usual.
  It turns out that the definition of "essential personnel" has expanded so much over the years that almost everyone is considered "essential" at this point. In fact, this shutdown is such a non-event that even referring to it as a "partial government shutdown" would really be overstating what is actually happening. The following are 36 facts which prove that almost everything is still running during this government shutdown...
  #1 According to U.S. Senator Rand Paul, 85 percent of all government activities are actually being funded during this "government shutdown".
  #2Approximately 1,350,000 "essential" federal employees will continue to work during this "government shutdown".
  #3 Overall, 63 percent of the federal workforce will continue to work during this "government shutdown".
  #4 The U.S. Postal Service will continue to deliver our mail.#5 U.S. military personnel will remain on duty and will continue to get paid.
  #6 Social Security recipients will continue to get their benefits.
  #7 Medicare recipients will continue to get their benefits.
  #8 Medicaid recipients will continue to get their benefits.
  #9 Food stamp recipients will continue to get their benefits.
  #10 Those on unemployment will continue to get their benefits.
  #11 Federal retirees will continue to get their pensions.
  #12 The federal school lunch program has enough money to go through at least the end of this month.
  #13 Public schools all over the country will continue to stay open.
  #14 Almost all federal law enforcement officials will continue working.
  #15 The Federal Reserve will remain "completely functional".
  #16 The Supreme Court will continue to operate normally and federal courts have enough money to keep going for at least two weeks.
  #17 TSA employees will continue to molest travelers at our airports.
  #18 Air traffic controllers will continue to monitor traffic at our airports.
  #19 Hopelessly outmanned border patrol agents will continue to try to stem the tide of illegal immigration.
  #20 Visas and passports will continue to be issued by the State Department.
  #21 The Veterans Administration will continue to offer substandard medical services, and it will be able to continue processing benefit payments at least for now.
  #22 The Obama administration apparently has plenty of money to spend on closing open-air memorials that are usually open to the public 24 hours a day.
  #23 The Department of Defense announced the awarding of 94 new contracts worth a combined total of more than 5 billion dollars on September 30th - the day right before the "government shutdown".
  #24 The "government shutdown" has not prevented the new two billion dollar NSA spy center from opening up.
  #25 Federal prisons will continue to operate normally.
  #26 Amtrak trains will continue to run.
  #27 The Patent and Trademark Office will be open.
  #28 The Consumer Product Safety Commission will continue to issue product recalls if the products "create an immediate threat to the safety of human life".
  #29 The National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center will continue to track weather patterns.
  #30 If the federal government needs to respond to a natural disaster, this "shutdown" will not affect that.
  #31 NASA will continue to support the Mars Rover and the two American astronauts up on the International Space Station.
  #32 All city employees of the D.C. government have been deemed "essential" and will continue to go to work.
  #33 Even though the Obamacare exchanges are not working properly, people will still be able to access them.
  #34 The IRS will continue to collect taxes, but it will be suspending punitive audits of conservative organizations.
  #35 Barack Obama will continue to get paid for the full duration of this "shutdown".
  #36 The U.S. Congress will continue to get paid for the full duration of this "shutdown".
  Of course not everything is operating normally during this government shutdown. Government parks are closed. The EPA and the Department of Energy have almost totally closed up shop. But overall, most Americans are not going to notice much of a difference.
  And perhaps now is a good time for the American people to evaluate whether or not they actually need a gigantic federal government that wastes enormous mountains of our money.
  For example, our federal government recently spent $98,670 to construct a single outhouse in Alaska.
  That is more than a lot of Americans pay for their entire houses.
  For many more examples like this, please see my previous article entitled "The Waste List: 66 Crazy Ways That The U.S. Government Is Wasting Your Hard-Earned Money".
  It is about time that Washington D.C. started experiencing some of the "belt-tightening" that the rest of the country has been going through. For far too long, the fatcats in D.C. have been living in an alternate reality where they have been able to live the high life at our expense. A recent blog post by Daniel Greenfield discussed how this shutdown is going to affect the alternate reality that the Obamas have been living in...
  The government shutdown has forced Obama to make do with only a quarter of his 1,701 person staff. That would leave 436 ''vital'' employees. The 90 people who look after his living quarters would be slashed to 15 to ''provide minimum maintenance and support''.
  Buckingham Palace, which is twelve times the size of the White House and has its own clockmaker, only has an 800 person staff. King Harald V of Norway and his court make do with 152 staffers. King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden gets by with 203.
  On Twitter, Michelle Obama announced that she is unable to Tweet on her own without the aid of all of her sixteen assistants; many of whom take home six figure salaries. There are more directors, associate directors and deputy associate directors on Michelle Obama's staff than there were in George Washington's entire administration.
  Presidents have fought wars and made peace, explored and annexed vast territories and built a nation out of a handful of colonies with fewer senior staffers than are needed to handle Michelle Obama's Twitter account.
  Oh the humanity! Will Michelle Obama ever tweet again? And how will the White House continue to function without at least one projectionist on duty at the White House 24 hours a day?No wonder Barack Obama is so upset about this shutdown.
  In the end, this shutdown could turn out to be very good for America. We have a government that is wildly out of control and that desperately needs to be reigned in.
  During the Obama administration, federal debt held by the public has risen by 90 percent, and overall federal government spending has risen by a whopping 317 percent since 1990.
  So is it really a bad thing that the federal government has been forced to cut back for a little while?Our politicians can whine and cry all they want. They won't be getting any sympathy from me.
  This article first appeared here at the Economic Collapse Blog. Michael Snyder is a writer, speaker and activist who writes and edits his own blogs The American Dream and Economic Collapse Blog. Follow him on Twitter here.
  BE THE CHANGE! PLEASE SHARE THIS USING THE TOOLS BELOW
Zero Enroll in New LA Plan on Obamacare's First Day | National Review Online
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 03:32
  Louisiana's top health-insurance provider said that not a single person enrolled in a new health-care plan offered through the Affordable Care Act on its first day.
  An executive with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana told the Times-Picayune that the agency was unable to sell the plan because customers were unable to access the HealthCare.gov website due to its website's sluggishness. ''It was not as intense as we had anticipated,'' the company's vice president of communication said of the company's sales. He urged supporters and critics, however, to ''take a deep breath and relax'' and assured them that the website would eventually allow consumers to enroll in a plan.
  According to the newspaper, the company spent $60 million in preparation of the October 1 rollout, but the website continued to stall on the day of its rollout. One interested applicant spent five hours trying to get onto the site, but eventually resorted to calling a customer-service representative and was told she would receive plan options via e-mail.
  The other Louisiana companies offering plans available through the Affordable Care Act said they are still waiting on numbers from the program's first day.
In the News | Internews
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 03:23
  (SoukTel sent out this e-newsletter about a project in the Dadaab refugee camp using SMS and radio.)
  As the turmoil escalates in Syria, a growing number of refugees are fleeing the nation in search of safety. Unfortunately, they comprise just a small segment of the millions around the world who are forced to live in refugee camps, whether temporarily or for decades. In these situations, it's all the more important--yet all the more challenging--for aid agencies to connect with these displaced communities quickly and effectively. Read more >>
Tor and the Silk Road takedown | The Tor Blog
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 03:17
  We've had several requests by the press and others to talk about the Silk Road situation today. We only know what's going on by reading the same news sources everyone else is reading.
  In this case we've been watching carefully to try to learn if there are any flaws with Tor that we need to correct. So far, nothing about this case makes us think that there are new ways to compromise Tor (the software or the network). The FBI says that their suspect made mistakes in operational security, and was found through actual detective work. Remember: Tor does not anonymize individuals when they use their legal name on a public forum, use a VPN with logs that are subject to a subpoena, or provide personal information to other services. See also the list of warnings linked from the Tor download page.
  Also, while we've seen no evidence that this case involved breaking into the webserver behind the hidden service, we should take this opportunity to emphasize that Tor's hidden service feature (a way to publish and access content anonymously) won't keep someone anonymous when paired with unsafe software or unsafe behavior. It is up to the publisher to choose and configure server software that is resistant to attacks. Mistakes in configuring or maintaining a hidden service website can compromise the publisher's anonymity independent of Tor.
  And finally, Tor's design goals include preventing even The Tor Project from tracking users; hidden services are no different. We don't have any special access to or information about this hidden service or any other. Because Tor is open-source and it comes with detailed design documents and research papers, independent researchers can verify its security.
  Here are some helpful links to more information on these subjects:
  Technical details of hidden services:https://www.torproject.org/docs/hidden-services
  Our abuse FAQ:https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq-abuse
  For those curious about our interactions with law enforcement:https://blog.torproject.org/category/tags/law-enforcementhttps://www.torproject.org/docs/faq#Backdoor
  Using Tor hidden services for good:https://blog.torproject.org/blog/using-tor-good
  Regarding the Freedom Hosting incident in August 2013, which is unrelatedas far as we can tell:https://blog.torproject.org/blog/hidden-services-current-events-and-free...
  Some general hints on staying anonymous:https://www.torproject.org/about/overview#stayinganonymous
  The Tor Project is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to providing tools to help people manage their privacy on the Internet. Our focus continues to be in helping ordinary citizens, victims of abuse, individuals in dangerous parts of the world, and others stay aware and educated about how to keep themselves secure online.
  The global Tor team remains committed to building technology solutions to help keep the doors to freedom of expression open. We will continue to watch as the details of this situation unfold and respond when it is appropriate and useful.
  For further press related questions please contact us at execdir@torproject.org.
Directors & Officers | Internews
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 03:14
  Co-chair
  Co-chair
  Board of Directors
  KQED
  CEO
  Tawala Systems
  Chief Economist
  Technology Forecasters, Inc.
  President
  International Republican Institute
  President Emeritus/Founder
  Internews
  Founder and CEO
  EZUZA
  President
  Manus Media & Literary Agency
  Journalist, Author, Special Correspondent
  Vanity Fair
  President
  JHR & Associates
  Vice Chair
  Executive Producer
  Cronkite Productions, Inc.
  Senior Advisor to the Chairman
  World Economic Forum USA Inc.
  Executive VP & Executive Editor
  ESPN, Inc.
FORMLESS LLC-#OpDarknet - Pedo hunt trophies, Bear Rugs for Mike Perry - Pastebin.com
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 03:10
  _ __ ___ __ _
  | | / /__ / | ________ / / ___ ____ (_)___ ____
  | | /| / / _ \ / /| | / ___/ _ \ / / / _ \/ __ `/ / __ \/ __ \
  | |/ |/ / __/ / ___ |/ / / __/ / /___/ __/ /_/ / / /_/ / / / / _ _ _
  |__/|__/\___/ /_/ |_/_/ \___/ /_____/\___/\__, /_/\____/_/ /_(_|_|_)_)
  /\_/ /
  \ _ /
  #OpDarknet Official Release -- 10/30/2011 - Pedo hunt trophies, Bear Rugs for Mike Perry
  In our last battle against Pedo Fort aka Freedom Hosting, we scored a major victory against the army of child pornographers. We were able to use 'The Legion' and 'Chris Hansen' to level pedo fort for over about 30 hours. To our shock, the community of pedos were able to quickly regroup and rebuild Lolita City and Freedom Hosting within a week. While us Anons regrouped to plan a new strategy, the World suddenly became aware of our little war against child pornography.
  Amiss the publicity, the pedos collaborated and dreamed of schemes for ways to disprove Operation Darknet. False stories were planted against the IT community about us Anons didn't "hack" Freedom Hosting and Lolita City. What the pedos didn't realize was that we actually took a secret treasure chest from their pedo fort. We worked silently for weeks to try and crack the lock containing this treasure that the pedo bear was diligently trying to protect.
  At-last, we cracked the lock and found the true identity of the builder and architect of Freedom Hosting. What we found was truly shocking, it was the deeds to a California, USA 'shell' company for 12 Tor Exit Nodes named Formless Networking LLC.
  Taken from California Security of State of Corporations:
  Formless Networking LLC - http://formlessnetworking.net
  California Company registration:
  Entity Name: FORMLESS NETWORKING, LLC
  Entity Number: 200910610241
  Date Filed: 04/10/2009
  Status: ACTIVE
  Jurisdiction: CALIFORNIA
  Entity Address: 740 A 19TH ST #135
  Entity City, State, Zip: SAN FRANCISCO CA 94114
  Agent for Service of Process: MATTHEW T WHATLEY
  Agent Address: 360 5TH ST
  Agent City, State, Zip: SAN FRANCISCO CA 94107
  Regisistered agent: Matthew T Whatley
  ISP for Formless Networking:
  Applied Operations, LLC - http://www.appliedops.net/company/
  IP range: 199.48.144.0 - 199.48.147.255
  Address: 3080 Raymond St, San Fransico, CA 94159
  Phone: (415) 367-7328
  Registered agent, Matthre T. Whatley (a "tax" lawyer with no CPA):
  California Bar Number: 233521
  Address:360 5th St, San Francisco, CA 94107
  Phone Number: (415) 335-1206
  Fax Number: (415) 276-9395
  e-mail: whatley88@gmail.com
  County: San Francisco
  Undergraduate School: Carnegie Mellon Univ; Pittsburgh PA
  District: District 4
  Sections: None
  Law School: Golden Gate Univ SOL; San Francisco CA
  Supporter: Electronic Freedom Foundation - http://eff.org
  Opposes: H.R.1981 - https://wfc2.wiredforchange.com/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=8175
  Website: http://www.taxninja.com/
  Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/taxninja
  What we found was troublesome, a "tax" lawyer with no CPA and a degree in "Social History and Japanese Language" from Carnegie Mellon? So we decided to do a little call to this "tax" lawyer.
  We pretended we Anon was the billing department at Applied Operations LLC. We were able to convince Mr. "Tax" Ninja to help explain why a company with a website with no business activity has 12 IP's and with a total speed of 10 GB/s. Realizing that something was a muck, the Mr. "Tax" Ninja dropped a name of "Mike Perry" from the Tor Foundation. From there things got became clearer.
  Name: Mike Perry
  College: University Of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  Current job: IT security Guru, author of Torbutton and Tor Performance Developer
  -> Author of TorFlow, a Tor controller that builds paths through the Tor network and measures various properties and behaviors. Developer and maintainer of Torbutton.
  Source: https://www.torproject.org/about/corepeople.html.en
  Tor Foundation website: https://blog.torproject.org/blogs/mikeperry
  WHOIS for 'mikeperry' on Tor IRC developer network: irc.oftc.net
  * [mikeperry] (~mikeperry@ides.fscked.org): Mike Perry
  * [mikeperry] #cryptodotis #tor-bots #nottor #https-everywhere #tails #tor-dev #tor
  * [mikeperry] charm.oftc.net :Fremont, CA, USA
  * [mikeperry] 216.224.124.114 :actually using host
  * [mikeperry] is connected via SSL (secure link)
  * [mikeperry] idle 00:58:36, signon: Thu Oct 13 20:57:31
  * [mikeperry] End of WHOIS list.
  Personal website: http://www.fscked.org
  WHOIS: fscked.org
  Domain ID:D8896750-LROR
  Domain Name:FSCKED.ORG
  Created On:07-Aug-1999 00:47:31 UTC
  Last Updated On:08-Oct-2007 19:57:09 UTC
  Expiration Date:07-Aug-2012 00:47:23 UTC
  Sponsoring Registrar:Register.com, Inc. (R71-LROR)
  Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
  Registrant ID:C2359198-RCOM
  Registrant Name:Mike Perry
  Registrant Organization:A Bunch of UNIX Geeks (ABUG)
  Registrant Street1:409 E. Chalmers #907
  Registrant Street2:
  Registrant Street3:
  Registrant City:Champaign
  Registrant State/Province:IL
  Registrant Postal Code:61820
  Registrant Country:US
  Registrant Phone:+1.2173655056
  Registrant Phone Ext.:
  Registrant FAX:
  Registrant FAX Ext.:
  Registrant Email:mikepery@mikepery.linuxos.org
  Admin ID:C36961674-RCOM
  Admin Name:Mike Perry
  Admin Organization:fscked.org evil labs
  Admin Street1:117 W. Water St 1/2
  Admin Street2:
  Admin Street3:
  Admin City:Farmer City
  Admin State/Province:Il
  Admin Postal Code:61842
  Admin Country:US
  Admin Phone:+1.2173906265
  Admin Phone Ext.:
  Admin FAX:
  Admin FAX Ext.:
  Admin Email:mikepery@fscked.org
  Tech ID:C36961678-RCOM
  Tech Name:Mike Perry
  Tech Organization:fscked.org evil labs
  Tech Street1:117 W. Water St 1/2
  Tech Street2:
  Tech Street3:
  Tech City:Farmer City
  Tech State/Province:Il
  Tech Postal Code:61842
  Tech Country:US
  Tech Phone:+1.2173906265
  Tech Phone Ext.:
  Tech FAX:
  Tech FAX Ext.:
  Tech Email:mikepery@fscked.org
  Name Server:DNS081.A.REGISTER.COM
  Name Server:DNS193.B.REGISTER.COM
  Name Server:DNS244.C.REGISTER.COM
  Name Server:DNS249.D.REGISTER.COM
  Network lookup of: fscked.org
  IP address: 216.224.124.114
  Host name: fscked.org
  canonical name: fscked.org
  216.224.124.114 is from United States(US) in region North America
  Netblock owner of: 216.224.124.114
  216.224.124.114 is from United States(US) in region North America
  Whois query for 216.224.124.114...
  Results returned from whois.arin.net:
  #
  # The following results may also be obtained via:
  # http://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;q=216.224.124.114?showDetails=true&showARIN=false&ext=netref2
  #
  Formless Networking LLC FORMLESS-1 (NET-216-224-124-112-1) 216.224.124.112 - 216.224.124.127
  Ethr.Net LLC ETHRN (NET-216-224-112-0-1) 216.224.112.0 - 216.224.127.255
  #
  # ARIN WHOIS data and services are subject to the Terms of Use
  # available at: https://www.arin.net/whois_tou.html
  #
  Results returned from whois.arin.net:
  #
  # The following results may also be obtained via:
  # http://whois.arin.net/rest/nets;handle=NET-216-224-124-112-1?showDetails=true&showARIN=false&ext=netref2
  #
  NetRange: 216.224.124.112 - 216.224.124.127
  CIDR: 216.224.124.112/28
  OriginAS: AS30490
  NetName: FORMLESS-1
  NetHandle: NET-216-224-124-112-1
  Parent: NET-216-224-112-0-1
  NetType: Reallocated
  RegDate: 2009-05-12
  Updated: 2009-05-12
  Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-216-224-124-112-1
  OrgName: Formless Networking LLC
  OrgId: FORML
  Address: 182 Howard St. #230
  City: San Francisco
  StateProv: CA
  PostalCode: 94015
  Country: US
  RegDate: 2009-05-12
  Updated: 2011-09-24
  Ref: http://whois.arin.net/rest/org/FORML
  OrgAbuseHandle: MPE194-ARIN
  OrgAbuseName: Perry, Mike
  OrgAbusePhone: +1-415-344-4441
  OrgAbuseEmail: admin@formlessnetworking.net
  OrgAbuseRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/MPE194-ARIN
  OrgTechHandle: MPE194-ARIN
  OrgTechName: Perry, Mike
  OrgTechPhone: +1-415-344-4441
  OrgTechEmail: admin@formlessnetworking.net
  OrgTechRef: http://whois.arin.net/rest/poc/MPE194-ARIN
  Website of: fscked.org
  "For the past three or four years now I've led something of a double life."
  "By day, I'm a reverse engineer and developer at Riverbed Technology. There, I'm part of a small team that reverse engineered and accelerates the Microsoft Exchange email protocol, but the company does much more than that, and I feel pretty safe saying I'm surrounded by some of the brightest engineers on the planet. It's actually a pretty neat place. Not evil (yeah, actually for reals), not (too) corporate, very fun staff, etc."
  "But, by night, I do basically whatever I can to help improve privacy, security, censorship resistance, and the ability for people to opt-out (if only temporarily) of the massive surveillance apparatus that is now the modern Internet."
  "I work extremely hard at the things that are important to me, but at the same time, I don't believe in taking anything too seriously, and have a pretty cavalier outlook towards life in general."
  "I also refuse to create a facebook account, a flickr account, a livejournal account, a twitter account, and generally join the web 2.0 party. It makes me sad in a way, because I really like parties, and I also really like new technology, but the astounding amount of personal information these places collect, sell, and use to target their users with ads and profiling i just too much for me"
  Development Language of fscked.org: PHP - Drupal
  IT Security Papers by Mike Perry:
  Securing the Tor Network - "https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-07/Perry/Whitepaper/bh-usa-07-perry-WP.pdf"
  365-Day: Active Https Cookie Hijacking - "http://www.defcon.org/images/defcon-16/dc16-presentations/defcon-16-perry.pdf"
  Wait...... what???? Tor Button Developer, IT guru, PHP Developer, Security + Hacker......., a side company belonging to Mike Perry running 12 Tor exit nodes????? What is going on here????? So we dug a little deeper.
  Freedom Hosting and Hidden Services Design Talk: http://www.bitchx.com/log/tor-o/tor-o-04-Feb-2010/tor-o-04-Feb-2010-00.php
  dun - but when it comes to PHP i'm concerned about security problems (some script however shows the real server ip to the user and youre screwed)
  dun - at least i havent found any detailed information on that yet
  dun - i'd really like to know how freedom hosting solved that
  dun - (yes, i'm not into php at all)
  nsa - or: mikeperry committed revision 21556 (/projects/todo):
  nsa - or: Point out my consensus bandwidth weight branch is ready for
  nsa - or: review.
  cheako - Does every exit node need to have access to the hidden service?
  cheako - dun: You can use port forwarding trickery so apache and php think the servers address is 127.0.0.1
  cheako - A handfull worked.
  phobos - hidden services run within the tor network
  phobos - they don't need exit nodes at all
  phobos - and by within, tor clients can host hidden services as well
  Talk about Hidden Service IP enumeration bug fixes: https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-commits/2010-February/009203.html
  Modified: projects/todo/git-branches
  ===================================================================
  --- projects/todo/git-branches 2010-02-03 19:40:57 UTC (rev 21555)
  +++ projects/todo/git-branches 2010-02-03 22:55:46 UTC (rev 21556)
  @@ -6,6 +6,9 @@
  - Circuit Build Times control port events and consensus params:
  mikeperry/cbt-status
  We found ourselves confused.... stuff about hidden services, tor, a 'shell' company named Formless Networking LLC owned/managed by Mike Perry with no other business than Tor Exit nodes? Shall we look at our records of data pull from our hacks against pedo fort, aka Freedom Hosting?
  Freedom Hosting Server data phpinfo():
  SERVER_SOFTWARE: Apache
  SERVER_NAME: xqz3u5drneuzhaeo.onion
  SERVER_ADDR: 10.0.1.2
  SERVER_PORT: 80
  REMOTE_ADDR: 10.0.1.2
  http://fscked.org server data:
  Server: Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS)
  X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.17
  http://www.freedomnetworking.net server data:
  Server: Apache
  So......
  1) Freedom Networking LLC has the Apache backend.
  2) Freedom Hosting server has ngnix front cache to proxy a backend Apache with PHP safemode on...
  3) Tor Security expert who fixed hidden service IP enumeration bugs
  4) Freedom Server has as business IP internal NAT of 10.0.1.X
  5) Mike Perry quit Riverbed Technology for Tor in 2008 and Freedom Hosting has a copyright of 2008. (Src: http://fscked.org/blog/farewell-riverbed-so-long-and-thanks-all-bits) and (http://s1.postimage.org/k8gmi740d/freedom.png)
  6) Mike Perry run's 12 Tor exit nodes under a shell company under Formless Networking LLC
  7) Formless Networking LLC has a "tax" attorney with no CPA
  8) Mike Perry designed Tor Button and is a major contributor to Tor Hidden Node design: https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-07/Perry/Whitepaper/bh-usa-07-perry-WP.pdf
  9) Mike Perry has stated on his personal website "For the past three or four years now I've led something of a double life"
  We ask you Mike Perry, what do you have to hide behind your little "shell" company? You have no Facebook, Twitter, or any data of you on the clearnet, and the only facial data we have about you is a video about your talk at Defcon 16. The only public data we have was obtained through your "tax" lawyer. You are a major designer and architect of Tor Hidden services + the Tor button.
  You have the motive to hid any illegal activity such as hosting CP behind a company. You hire an attorney to handle all matters regarding Tor through this Formless Networking LLC. You know Tor enough, are an IT security guru to able to lock down Freedom Hosting after launching 'The Legion' on the server, you are probably the only one in the Tor Foundation that has the technical knowledge to build a dynamic Tor .onion addressing hosting service running on PHP aka Freedom Hosting.
  We ask you Mike Perry. Why are you trying so hard to be Anonymous, like us?
  We are Anonymous.
  We are Legion.
  We do not forgive.
  We do not forget.
  Expect us.
No, They (NSA) Cannot Break SSL. They Don't Have To in [Market-Ticker]
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 02:59
  No, They (NSA) Cannot Break SSL. They Don't Have To
  Here you go folks -- and again, I get to use this sign:
  By July 9, Lavabit still hadn't defeated its security for the government, and prosecutors asked for a summons to be served for Lavabit, and founder Ladar Levison, to be held in contempt ''for its disobedience and resistance to these lawful orders.''
  A week later, prosecutors upped the ante and obtained the search warrant demanding ''all information necessary to decrypt communications sent to or from the Lavabit email account [redacted] including encryption keys and SSL keys.''
  There it is.
  They wanted the SSL private key. Without it they can't decrypt ****. With it, for many (non-modern) browsers, they not only can decrypt messages in real time (by intercepting the setup "in the middle") they can retrospectively decrypt anything they stored previously as many browsers and other connecting devices do not use perfect forward secrecy.
  What is that? It's a rather obscure bit of cryptographic tech-speak and has to do with how session keys are negotiated. Without it the secret key of the server can be used to retrospectively decrypt any traffic that was previously sent. This is much like how PGP operates -- if you get my Secret Key you can decrypt any message sent to me using the public key half no matter when it was sent.
  Perfect Forward Secrecy uses the private key to negotiate a session key that is deliberately stored only in volatile memory and erased when the session's transmission ends. Since the actual secret key is not used other than in this negotiation and the details of that negotiation are intentionally destroyed when the session has ended compromise of the secret key does not help you decode previous transmissions.
  It does, of course, allow you to intercept (by going "in the middle") any future transmissions.
  Here's the rub -- most browsers do not implement PFS. Without it if "someone" (say, the NSA) has a copy of an encrypted transmission and later gets ahold of the secret key they can decrypt the transmission retrospectively.
  So what did we learn from Lavabit?
  The spooks didn't "break" SSL; if they could have they would have as doing so would not require any help from or even knowledge of Lavabit. They instead tried to compel Lavabit to let them in the old-fashioned way, by demanding the key to the lock. Lavabit told them to go to Hell.The odds of any large entity having ever provided service to someone who has become the target of an investigation is effectively 100%. You therefore must assume that the secret keys that are in the possession of any of the large Certificate Authorities and any large business (such as Facebook, Microsoft, Google and similar) with customer-facing SSL (https) servers have been subpoenaed and are in the hands of the NSA and that in addition they have been gagged and unlike Lavabit are too pussified (or worse, bought) to refuse and/or disclose both the act and threat.You must assume that this means that the NSA can intercept any session to any mainstream eCommerce site or similar institution by "spoofing" the host in question (via a man-in-the-middle attack) since they have the secret key for all major CAs and thus can "replace" the certificate on the server end with one that is for the same site name even without the cooperation or even knowledge of the site involved. This, however, is detectable by you if you're paying attention as the server's key modulus will change -- but most people are not. You must assume that if the NSA subpoenas the secret key of an organization in general it will be provided and they will gag the organization from talking about it, allowing them to directly spoof the connection (even without the CA's involvement or without spoofing THEIR key!) If this has happened then your attempt to detect a key change as a means of alerting you to a possible compromise will fail. Your only defense against this compromise comes if the organization you are connecting does as Lavabit has done -- there is no other defense available to you. You must assume that this secret key, once divulged, can trivially be and thus will be used to decrypt not only the "target"'s transmissions but everyone else's, including yours even if you are not a target, for the purpose of "fishing."Worse, you must assume that nearly all browsers and other tools will not and did not ask for perfect forward secrecy, which means that any encrypted traffic you have ever sent to that site can be retrospectively decrypted once the secret key has been divulged even if you were not the original target -- or ever were a target -- of whatever investigation is now taking place.Therefore, if you want to "talk" to someone without this risk you must know that the other end (the server end) (1) set up their own CA and is the only party with the secret key for it, and (2) will not, and has not, divulged the SSL secret key to anyone. Finally, since anyone can be forced to divulge either or both in the future (e.g. by torture or legal threat and gag order) you must only use a client (web browser, email client, VPN client, etc) that implements Perfect Forward Secrecy so that if a compromise happens and you are made aware of it your previous conversations are not all instantly divulged at the same time. If you do not know all of these things, and in addition you cannot trust the other end to alert you via some means (e.g. by going dark!) if there is a compromise you must assume the compromise has occurred before your first transmission takes place.Security? What's that? Oh by the way, if you're in a sensitive commercial environment (think securities, compliance in the financial realm, HIPPA, etc) this means that if (when) that secret key leaks from the government (Snowden anyone?) you're ****ed as that compromise extends to anyone who has that key and if PFS was not in use it is retrospective all the way back to first use if the traffic was logged.
  The key point in all of this when it comes to "capability", however, remains as I have asserted:
  Once again we have hard evidence that these NSA guys are not smarter than everyone else. They do not have the smartest guys in the room, and thus do not have a "braintrust" advantage sufficient to get what they want.
  They're just plain old-fashioned jackbooted thugs who shove guns up people's noses to get what they're after, including spying on Americans, and we the people allow that crap to go on since we enable this **** through our Congress and payment of taxes.
  User InfoNo, They (NSA) Cannot Break SSL. They Don't Have To in forum [Market-Ticker]GhPosts: 59Incept: 2013-02-07Thanks for confirming what I have been assuming, based mostly on Schneier's book.One of my clients received an urgent notification to ditch all keys smaller than 2048 bits from their certificate provider this summer. I assume that change is mandated because some of the older keys were not compromised. We don't use the certificates for anything critical really. It prevents caching by proxy servers, which can sometimes break the apps and it reassures the customers.
  My guess is that Obama has enabled most of this.
  ----------
  --gh
  GenesisPosts: 134462Incept: 2007-06-261024 bit keys are potentially breakable.It gets exponentially harder as the length goes up -- not linearly harder. If there are even minor weaknesses in the entropy source a 1024 bit key can be broken in a large (but possibly usable to an intruder) amount of time.
  Good practice has been to run 2048 or 4096 bit keys now for the last few years. My CA key is 2048 bits, and my keys for private services are 4k bit while the Tickerforum https key is 2k. I recently replaced my older PGP key with a 4k bit key on the keyservers as well.
  Fairly recent changes here have enabled PFS on connections to the site here (if your browser knows how) and all my local services; older OpenSSL versions did not know how to negotiate that. The big deal is really PFS as without that logged encrypted transmissions cannot be broken even if the private key is later compromised (that is, retrospective breaking of the cipher is an individual problem for each transmission rather than being made possible "en-masse" if the secret key is compromised.)
  ----------
  All things have a season, and seasons change. -- MeI don't care if it makes sense -- only if it makes money. -- MeBank (n): See scam, fraud and theft.What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
  TraumaboyyPosts: 202Incept: 2011-05-19Northwest FloridaKGB had nothing on these snakes!!!
  GhPosts: 59Incept: 2013-02-07Yes I know all that.However, the amount of effort required to break a 1024 bit key in this case would not yield the attacker anything of sufficient value to justify the effort.
  BTW. This is off-topic but there is a hilarious post at hot-air, which was just put up less than 30 minutes ago.
  http://hotair.com/greenroom/archives/201....
  Quote:Sometimes, you just have to laugh. Yesterday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made the MSM blitz by announcing the website, glitches and all, and the national call-in center, which is 1-800-318-2596. Now to make this work, you have to skip the 1, because on a phone keypad, no letters are assigned to the number 1. But spell out the rest, and this is what you get.
  1-800-3(F) 8(U) 2(C) 5(K) 9(Y) 6(O).
  ----------
  --gh
  GenesisPosts: 134462Incept: 2007-06-26BTW, Tickerforum will come up with forward security on Chrome, Firefox 10, 17, 21 and 22, IE, 8-11 on Vista, Win7 or 8, JAva, Opera (Most) and Safari.The notable exception is Windows XP (which doesn't support it at all) and older browsers that also don't support it.
  SSL Labs calls our support for it "Robust" (if you can support it, we support it.)
  One of my BIG complaints is that browsers DO NOT, as a rule, display whether forward security is enabled or not. In fact I don't think any of them do.
  ----------
  All things have a season, and seasons change. -- MeI don't care if it makes sense -- only if it makes money. -- MeBank (n): See scam, fraud and theft.What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
  Learn How The Corrupt Political System Killed Our EconomyLittle_eddiePosts: 639Incept: 2009-04-30DelawareJust think about a low level clerk with access to this type of stuff?I would think that with just 15 minutes a day of personal computer time on the system (yes I think there may be a threat at GS) and I would never have a bad trading day.
  And that's the smart guy, the dumb ones would just try to sell the info to someone.
  ----------
  You can't fix STUPID, but we've made it survivable.Quote:If the math says one thing and the law says something different, it will be the law that ends up changing
  Charles Calomiris
  AttilahooperPosts: 2215Incept: 2007-08-28New York, by way of Montreal Canada.OnlineQuote:One of my BIG complaints is that browsers DO NOT, as a rule, display whether forward security is enabled or not. In fact I don't think any of them do.
  Good opportunity for someone to build a plugin for the browsers.
  ----------
  GenesisPosts: 134462Incept: 2007-06-26There's a disincentive for web site owners to enable it; it is a bit more computationally expensive. The difference isn't huge, but it's there.
  ----------
  All things have a season, and seasons change. -- MeI don't care if it makes sense -- only if it makes money. -- MeBank (n): See scam, fraud and theft.What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
  BozonianPosts: 20407Incept: 2007-09-01Saratoga Springs, New YorkOnlineWe have a refuge, in mathematics.That's good enough for me yo.
  ----------
  The most expensive thing you can have is a closed mind. -- Geoffrey FilburtEverything I write is my opinion and not to be considered proven fact. Nothing I write should be considered financial advice.
  CheckthisoutPosts: 197Incept: 2010-10-01Cary, NCI have always assumed that everything sent over the internet (including voice calls) are monitored or monitor-able. The problem for the average user is that it isn't apparent how insecure sending & receiving info over the net really is. All they have to go on is that little lock symbol next to the url in the address field.Wouldn't it be great if the browser companies refused to have that little lock symbol appear after they handed all the keys over to the feds? That would have gotten everybody's attention. It would be in everyone's face and you would have mass protest over it. Man I wish those execs would grow a pair.
  ----------
  There are no gun free zones where free men tread.
  BagbalmPosts: 4401Incept: 2009-03-19Just North of DetroitWhat Little_eddie touched on here.I can run a hot dog stand or a dry cleaner or a lawn service and not worry about secrets.But who in their right mind would bet the farm to trust he had secrecy to run a BIG business today? Or try to patent (ha!)and produce a major consumer product? You have no guarantee some agency of the the government isn't going to steal it and hand it off to one of their favored business partners. All of which seem to be indistinguishable in morals and operating practice from the mafia.
  Learn How The Corrupt Political System Killed Our EconomyJeffrey_thomasonPosts: 7601Incept: 2009-03-11Well Lavabit did give them the key... technically:Quote:In an interesting work-around, Levison complied the next day by turning over the private SSL keys as an 11 page printout in 4-point type. The government, not unreasonably, called the printout illegible.
  To make use of these keys, the FBI would have to manually input all 2,560 characters, and one incorrect keystroke in this laborious process would render the FBI collection system incapable of collecting decrypted data, prosecutors wrote.
  ----------
  Death can take me if I can't be free. I am not like you, I'm a dying breed.
  NathanaelaPosts: 3Incept: 2013-07-12Online
  Interesting enough most browsers actually do support PFS (except IE has really poor support, that shouldn't surprise anyone.http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/0....
  Shows that all the sites listed in the prism program (except google) are not using PFS; which means one fism warrant to facebook, twitter and NSA can decrypt everything going to Facebook, twitter, etc...
  Google appears to be the only property who might actually fighting them since they have been upgrading there keys; use PFS and have built into Chrome SSL certificate locking (this detects forged certs)...
  GenesisPosts: 134462Incept: 2007-06-26Quote:Shows that all the sites listed in the prism program (except google) are not using PFS; which means one fism warrant to facebook, twitter and NSA can decrypt everything going to Facebook, twitter, etc...
  Note that not using PFS means not only can they decrypt anything on a FORWARD basis but far more importantly, any SAVED ENCRYPTED SESSION GOING BACK TO THE ORIGINATION OF THE KEY can be decrypted retrospectively.----------
  All things have a season, and seasons change. -- MeI don't care if it makes sense -- only if it makes money. -- MeBank (n): See scam, fraud and theft.What part of "shall not be infringed" was unclear?
  MpilarPosts: 6392Incept: 2009-01-05Nashville, TNOnlineAll these "conspiracy" charges, but nothing for an actual crime. "Conspiracy" bull**** when the occupying forces in DC can't come up with anything better.
  ----------
  - Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats. H. L. Mencken- These are the times that try men's souls. - T. Paine
  ThystraPosts: 646Incept: 2009-07-12Around the WorldOnlineHow about a PKI system like DOD CAC? that way you know what kind of connection you have, even if the modern browsers use forward security, but you don't know what type of connection since they don't display it, and apparently there is no way to turn that indication on.
  Uppity_peasantPosts: 3563Incept: 2009-06-26Online
  Quote:A week later, prosecutors upped the ante and obtained the search warrant...
  How ironic that the "prosecutors" wagging their beetlebrows over what Snowden did are serving a treasonous piece-of-****-in-chief who delivered weaponry to the enemies of the United States.
  The "prosecutors" are no different than Roland Freisler. I spit on them.
  ----------
  ====If it's true that "assault weapons" are "weapons of war" and don't belong on the streets of America, why do the police need them? Who are the police at war with?
The Venus Project | Beyond Poverty, Politics and War
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  Archived Version
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 02:58
  The Venus Project proposes an alternative vision of what the future can be if we apply what we already know in order to achieve a sustainable new world civilization. It calls for a straightforward redesign of our culture in which the age-old inadequacies of war, poverty, hunger, debt and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as avoidable, but as totally unacceptable. Anything less will result in a continuation of the same catalogue of problems inherent in today's world. Today many people believe what is needed is a higher sense of ethical standards and the enactment of international laws to assure a sustainable global society.
  '–º read more...
  Below is a short summary of the article:
  Is it possible to create a radically different society? One where material possessions are unnecessary, where buildings are created in factories, where mundane jobs are automated?
  Would you want to live in a city where the main aim of daily life is to improve personal knowledge, enjoy hobbies, or solve problems that could be common to all people in order to improve the standard of living for everyone?
  Some may think it is idealistic, but 97-year old architect Jacque Fresco is convinced his vision of the future is far better than how we live today.
  - BBC News'–º Click here to read the full article and watch the presentation. (will open in new window)
  Presented here is a straightforward approach to the redesign of a culture, in which the age-old inadequacies of war, poverty, hunger, debt, and unnecessary human suffering are viewed not only as avoidable, but totally unacceptable. This new social and economic design works towards eliminating the underlying causes that are responsible for many of our problems. But, they cannot be eliminated within the framework of the present monetary system and political establishment. The ultimate survival of the human species depends upon planning on a global scale and to cooperatively seek out new alternatives with a relative orientation for improved social arrangements.
  '–º Click here to read our Frequently Asked Questions page and learn more about the project.
VIDEO-NBC Interview With Kathleen Sebelius on Obamacare | MRCTV
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 02:52
  MRC TV is an online platform for people to share and view videos, articles and opinions on topics that are important to them -- from news to political issues and rip-roaring humor.
  MRC TV is brought to you by the Media Research Center, a 501(c) 3 nonprofit research and education organization. The MRC is located at: 1900 Campus Commons Drive, Reston, VA 20194. For information about the MRC, please visit www.MRC.org.
  Copyright (C) 2013, Media Research Center. All Rights Reserved.
VDEO-Netayahu: 'Rouhani Thinks He Can Have His Yellowcake and Eat It Too' | MRCTV
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  If the player does not load, please check that you are running the latest version of Adobe Flash Player.
  In an address to the United Nations Tuesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that Iran's new president Hassan Rouhani wants the world to believe that it is not pursuing nuclear weapons, all the while building nuclear infrastructure and retaining nuclear materials.
VIDEO-Netanyahu: Iranian President Rouhani 'A Loyal Servant of the Regime' | MRCTV
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 02:40
  MRC TV is an online platform for people to share and view videos, articles and opinions on topics that are important to them -- from news to political issues and rip-roaring humor.
  MRC TV is brought to you by the Media Research Center, a 501(c) 3 nonprofit research and education organization. The MRC is located at: 1900 Campus Commons Drive, Reston, VA 20194. For information about the MRC, please visit www.MRC.org.
  Copyright (C) 2013, Media Research Center. All Rights Reserved.
VIDEO- This Makes Me Wonder How Much "Hate Speech" Is Being Spread By Government Agents? - YouTube
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 02:27
VIDEO- Explosion At U.S. Berkeley College Forces Evacuation - YouTube
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 02:22
VIDEO- Senator Graham Says We Could Have Prevented 9/11 If NSA Spying Program Was In Place Then - YouTube
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 02:08
Makena.com '' Official Website for Patients
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  Archived Version
  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 01:50
  Makena® is a prescription hormone medicine (progestin) used to lower the risk of preterm birth in women who are pregnant with one baby and who have delivered one baby too early (preterm) in the past. Makena was shown to work based on a lower number of women who delivered babies at less than 37 weeks of pregnancy. There are no studies showing Makena reduces the number of babies who have serious problems shortly after birth or who die. It is not known whether Makena is safe and effective in women who have other risk factors for preterm birth.
  Makena should not be used in women with any of the following conditions: blood clots or other blood clotting problems, breast cancer or other hormone-sensitive cancers, or history of these conditions; unusual vaginal bleeding not related to your current pregnancy, yellowing of the skin due to liver problems during pregnancy, liver problems, including liver tumors, or uncontrolled high blood pressure.
  Before you receive Makena, tell your healthcare provider if you have an allergy to hydroxyprogesterone caproate, castor oil, or any of the other ingredients in Makena; diabetes or prediabetes, epilepsy, migraine headaches, asthma, heart problems, kidney problems, depression, or high blood pressure.
  In a clinical study, certain complications or events associated with pregnancy occurred more often in women who received Makena. These included miscarriage (pregnancy loss before 20 weeks of pregnancy), stillbirth (fetal death occurring during or after the 20th week of pregnancy), hospital admission for preterm labor, preeclampsia (high blood pressure and too much protein in your urine), gestational hypertension (high blood pressure caused by pregnancy), gestational diabetes, and oligohydramnios (low amniotic fluid levels).
  Makena may cause serious side effects including blood clots, allergic reactions, depression, and yellowing of your skin and the whites of your eyes. Call your healthcare provider right away if you think you have symptoms of a blood clot (leg swelling, redness in your leg, a spot on your leg that is warm to touch, or leg pain that worsens when you bend your foot) or symptoms of an allergic reaction (hives, itching, or swelling of the face). The most common side effects of Makena include injection site reactions (pain, swelling, itching, bruising, or a hard bump), hives, itching, nausea, and diarrhea.
  You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA. Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.
  Please see full prescribing information for Makena.
  References: 1. Mercer BM, Goldenberg RL, Moawad AH, et al. Am J Obstet Gynecol. 1999;181:1216-1221. 2. Makena® (hydroxyprogesterone caproate injection) prescribing information, Ther-Rx Corporation, 2011.
VIDEO-Intel chief: Shutdown threatens national security - CBS News
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 01:39
  Director of National Intelligence James Clapper is warning that the combination of the government shutdown and previous sequestration spending cuts "seriously damages" the U.S. government's ability to protect its citizens.
  "This is not just a Beltway issue. This affects our global capability to support the military, to support diplomacy, to support our policymakers," Clapper said Wednesday while testifying during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. "The danger here, of course, [is] that this will accumulate over time. The damage will be insidious, so each day that goes by the jeopardy increases."
  Clapper also warned lawmakers that the financial climate - the worst he's seen in 50 years, he indicated -- has posed a substantial challenge to intelligence community's ability to attract talented employees.
  "This is a dreamland for a foreign intelligence service to recruit, particularly as our employees -- already many of whom [are] subject to furloughs driven by sequestration -- are going to have, I believe, even greater financial challenges. So we're spending our time setting up counseling services for employees to help them manage their finances," he said.
  Former Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., warned of a similar challenge across the federal government and contracting firms in an interview with CBSNews.com earlier this week.
  "The brain drain is hard to measure... we lose truly qualified people," Davis said. "A good contracting officer who understands the process, good people like this can walk across the street and make more money." Those consequences are another byproduct of the shutdown that are difficult to measure, but important to consider, he said.
  And / or link to the main post with the form -- http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57605553/government-shutdown-share-your-story/
christopher tarbell fbi sabu - Google Search
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  Thu, 03 Oct 2013 01:27
  FBI shuts alleged online drug marketplace, Silk Road | Reuterswww.reuters.com/.../10/.../us-crime-silkroad-raid-idUSBRE9910TR20131002
  1 hour ago ... "Silk Road has emerged as the most sophisticated and extensive criminalmarketplace on the Internet today," FBI agent Christopher Tarbell ...FBI seizes online drug marketplace Silk Road, outs owner in ...news.cnet.com/.../fbi-seizes-online-drug-marketplace-silk-road-outs-owner-in -indictment/
  6 hours ago ... In its investigation, the FBI, led by agent Christopher Tarbell of the cybercrimedivision in New York, made more than 100 purchases on the ...FBI Shuts Down Silk Road | Culture News | Rolling Stonewww.rollingstone.com/culture/.../fbi-shuts-down-silk-road-20131002
  5 hours ago ... In documents filed in U.S. District Court in New York, FBI agent ChristopherTarbell described 13,000 drug listings on Silk Road last month, ...Christopher Tarbell (thecbtarbell) on Twitterhttps://twitter.com/thecbtarbell- CachedThe latest from Christopher Tarbell (@thecbtarbell).Images for christopher tarbellChristopher Tarbell profiles | LinkedInwww.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Christopher/Tarbell- CachedView the profiles of professionals named Christopher Tarbell on LinkedIn. Thereare 10 professionals named Christopher Tarbell, who use LinkedIn to exchange ...Chris Tarbell | LinkedInwww.linkedin.com/pub/chris-tarbell/33/498/135- CachedUnited States - --
  View Chris Tarbell's professional profile on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the world'slargest business network, helping professionals like Chris Tarbell discover inside ...LulzSec - New York Magazinenymag.com/news/features/lulzsec-sabu-2012-6/index3.html- Cached - Similar11 Jun 2012... tall, balding FBI special agent Christopher Tarbell and a second agent,wearing bulletproof vests, entered the gloomy lobby of 90 Avenue D, ...FBI seizes underground drug market Silk Road, owner indicted in ...www.theverge.com/.../fbi-seizes-underground-drug-market-silk-road-owner- indicted-in-new
  6 hours ago ... The complaint is based on statements made by Christopher Tarbell, an FBI agentwho has been tracking Silk Road out of the cybercrime ...Christopher Tarbell | Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/christopher.tarbell- CachedChristopher Tarbell is on Facebook. Join Facebook to connect with ChristopherTarbell and others you may know. Facebook gives people the power to share ...The University of Maine - Department of English - Christopher Tarbellhttps://english.umaine.edu/faculty/christopher-tarbell/- Cached - SimilarAddress: Christopher Tarbell Teaching Assistant, Department of English 5752Neville Hall Room 107. Orono, Maine 04469-5752 U.S.A.. Office Telephone: 581- ...Searches related to christopher tarbell
Something is Fishy with the Silk Road "Seizure" - Plaxant.com
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  Something is Fishy with the Silk Road ''Seizure''Posted on 02 October 2013 by nickberry
  Ever since the first media reports that the silk road (a tor based illicit goods marketplace) was seized something didn't add up. First where the images posted, then there have been absolutely zero official statements from DHS, the FBI or ICE or any other agency that is typically involved in these cases. And with the ''government shutdown'' there is no one in the media office to contact. And the operators answering the phones after multiple calls say they are not aware of any seizures or statements regarding any seizures.
  Then I started looking into the images being posted.
  This is the official seized domain or server image from the DHS
  This is the image being spread through the media.
  Now if this comes out and it's real I will retract my statement, but this smells of market manipulation. Probably by the same people that have been running DDOS attacks against bitcoin operations.
  Like this:LikeLoading...
VIDEO-'I will crash that': Is President Obama trying to tank the stock market? | Twitchy
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  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 22:31
  Dude:
  This is what desperation looks like:
  From CNBC:
  While gridlock in D.C. is nothing new, ''this time I think Wall Street should be concerned,'' Obama said.
  '...
  While saying that he doesn't make decisions based on the performance of the stock market, the president nonetheless said that the current impasse could have a huge impact on business.
  ''It is important for [Wall Street] to recognize that this is going to have a profound impact on our economy and their bottom lines, their employees and their shareholders,'' Obama said.
  What is the purpose of these remarks, other than to drum up fear?
  Parting food for thought from Ace:
  Editor's note: This post has been updated with additional tweets.
23andMe receives patent to create designer babies, but denies plans to do so | The Verge
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  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 22:16
  Thanks to personal genomics companies like 23andMe, it's becoming quicker and easier for us to find out who we are. But will the same technology one day allow us to decide who our babies will be '-- before they're even born? That's the question raised by a newly issued patent, which grants 23andMe rights to a system that allows parents to pick and choose their children's traits prior to undergoing fertility treatment.
  Since 2009, 23andMe has offered a service called the "Inheritance Calculator," which lets parents see the odds that their future child will inherit a selection of traits, from brown hair to lactose intolerance. This latest patent, which the company applied for in 2008, covers the technology that comprises the calculator. But it also goes several steps further, by describing a system that would allow parents to select their preferences for a host of traits, some of them medical ("I prefer a child with longest expected lifespan"), and others not so much ("I prefer a child with high probability of blue eyes").
  Already illegal in Canada and the UK
  The system, according to the patent, could be used to "[identify] a preferred donor among the plurality of donors," based on genetic information. A woman undergoing in vitro fertilization using a sperm donor, for example, could ask 23andMe to crunch numbers on her own genetic profile and those of various donors '-- and then recommend a donor who'd most likely yield a child with the traits she desires. Of course, genetic analysis to check for some serious inheritable diseases already occurs. But the kind of non-medical trait selection that 23andMe describes is extremely controversial, and already illegal in Canada and the UK.
  There are no plans to actually implement the system
  According to the company, however, they won't actually be implementing the system described by this patent. "At the time 23andMe filed the patent, there was consideration that the technology could have potential applications for fertility clinics," reads a post published today on the 23andMe blog. "The company never pursued the concepts discussed in the patent beyond our Family Traits Inheritance Calculator, nor do we have any plans to do so."
  And even if they did, it might not yet yield the results some parents are looking for. The genetic foundations of traits like hair color or athleticism are markedly more complex than researchers had surmised several years ago '-- meaning that anyone trying to design a baby might be sorely disappointed with the end result.
Iran's cyber warfare chief shot dead
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  Source: DEBKAFile
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 22:11
  The commander of Iran's Cyber War HQ Mojtaba Ahmadi ws found dead with two bullets in his heart in a wooded area near Karaz, a town northwest of Tehran, the London Telegraph reports quoting Aloborz, a Revolutionary Guards website. He was last seen leaving his home for work Saturday. The local police chief said two people on a motorbike were involved in the assassination. Since 2007, five Iranian nuclear scientists and the head of the country's ballistic missile program have been killed.
Russian embassy in Libya attacked
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  Source: BBC News - Europe
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 22:08
  2 October 2013Last updated at17:17 ETGunmen have attacked the Russian embassy in Libya, according to the Russian foreign ministry.
  The unidentified attackers shot at the Tripoli compound and tried to force entry, officials said.
  A BBC journalist at the scene said the situation has now calmed down, and embassy staff are thought to have escaped the building unharmed.
  Officials said the attackers climbed the walls of the premises from three different directions.
  Libyan security sources told news agencies that the incident did not appear to have been orchestrated by a militant group.
  One source told Reuters that local people were angry because of the recent alleged killing of a Libyan by a Russian woman.
  "The group attacked the compound as an act of revenge," the security source said.
  Libya has been hit by many targeted killings of activists and security agents in recent months.
  An attack last year on a US compound in the city of Benghazi killed four people, including the US ambassador.
  In April, a car bomb outside the French embassy in Tripoli injured two French guards and a number of residents.
  A car bomb was found outside the Italian embassy in June, while the UK withdrew some embassy staff in May over security concerns.
Request To Amend a License To Export High-Enriched Uranium
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  Source: Federal Register Latest Entries
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 16:49
  Pursuant to 10 CFR 110.70 (b) ''Public Notice of Receipt of an Application,'' please take notice that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has received the following request for an export license amendment. Copies of the request are available electronically through ADAMS and can be accessed through the Public Electronic Reading Room (PERR) link http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm.html at the NRC Homepage.
  A request for a hearing or petition for leave to intervene may be filed within thirty days after publication of this notice in the Federal Register. Any request for hearing or petition for leave to intervene shall be served by the requestor or petitioner upon the applicant, the Office of the General Counsel, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555; the Office of the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555; and the Executive Secretary, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC 20520.
  A request for a hearing or petition for leave to intervene may be filed with the NRC electronically in accordance with NRC's E-Filing rule promulgated in August 2007, 72 Fed. Reg 49139 (Aug. 28, 2007). Information about filing electronically is available on the NRC's public Web site at http://www.nrc.gov/site-help/e-submittals.html. To ensure timely electronic filing, at least 5 (five) days prior to the filing deadline, the petitioner/requestor should contact the Office of the Secretary by email at HEARINGDOCKET@NRC.GOV, or by calling (301) 415-1677, to request a digital ID certificate and allow for the creation of an electronic docket.
  In addition to a request for hearing or petition for leave to intervene, written comments, in accordance with 10 CFR 110.81, should be submitted within thirty (30) days after publication of this notice in the Federal Register to Office of the Secretary, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC 20555, Attention: Rulemaking and Adjudications.
  The information concerning this export license amendment application follows.
  NRC Export License Amendment Application Back to TopName of applicant, Date of application, Date received, Application No., Docket No.Material typeTotal quantityEnd useRecipient country[Description of Material]U.S. Department of Energy, National Nuclear Security Administration, September 9, 2013, September 12, 2013, XSNM3730/01, 11006054High-Enriched Uranium (93.35%)18.4 kilograms uranium (17.1 kilograms U-235)To manufacture HEU targets in France for irradiation in research reactors for fabrication of molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) medical isotopes in the Covidien Molybdenum Production Facility in the Netherlands. Amend to: 1) increase the quantity of HEU authorized for export from 9.4 kg of U-235 contained in 10.1 kg uranium to a new cumulative total of 17.1 kg of U-235 contained in 18.4 kg uranium; and 2) add Maria Reactor in Poland to ''Intermediate Foreign Consignees(s)''The Netherlands.Dated this 26th day of September, 2013, at Rockville, Maryland.
  For The Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
  Mark R. Shaffer,
  Deputy Director, Office of International Programs.
  [FR Doc. 2013-24070 Filed 10-1-13; 8:45 am]
  BILLING CODE 7590-01-P
CONFIRMED: Obama Ordered Shut Down Of WWII Memorial That Is Always Open'...
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: The Ulsterman Report
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 21:52
  Yesterday saw coverage of World War Two Veterans being denied access to the WWII Memorial in Washington D.C. Normally, this memorial is open to the public 24/7 '' but on the orders of the Obama White House, it was shut down in an effort to create a political photo op for the administration. This is now backfiring as more and more are quickly learning that the memorial need not have been shut down at all. This administration is playing a very dangerous game now '' even at the expense of those who served and died for this nation. Disgusting.
  (Unlike the men and women this memorial represents '' Barack Obama and the Democrats have no honor)
  ______________________________________________
  Look here at the hours of operation description that comes directly from the memorial website:
  The memorial opened to the public on April 29, 2004 and was dedicated one month later on May 29. It is located on 17th Street, between Constitution and Independence Avenues, and is flanked by the Washington Monument to the east and the Lincoln Memorial to the west. The memorial is operated by the National Park Service and is open to visitors 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
  Simply put, whether or not the government is ''open'' or not, has no impact on the memorial being open '' it's an outdoor venue, accessible by the public at any time '' EXCEPT WHEN BARACK OBAMA DEMANDED IT BE CLOSED. He is playing politics with the memories of our best and brightest who sacrificed everything for America.
  Here are some of the breaking tweets proving this fact:
  At the WWII Memorial, Carol Johnson w/the Park Service says they were told to close the site by White House's Office of Management & Budget.
  There it is. The White House Office of Management & Budget ordered the closing of the WWII Memorial. Disgusting.
  Park ranger ''We were instructed to do this by OMB''
  _____________________________________________
  This administration and these Democrats are willing to sully the memorials of this nation's most revered '' all in a pathetic and immoral attempt to gain political points for a government shut down THEY manufactured.
  Please spread the word reader '' let EVERYONE you can know the truth'.... -UM
  CAPITOL UPDATE: Harry Reid Wanted Shutdown To Help Secure Senate Power
  ____________________________________________
  IN A WORLD GONE HORRIBLY WRONG, AMERICA NEEDS A NEW HERO.
  MAC WALKER. LINK
  '' I could not put this book down. The characters come alive. A very well written, page turner! Anxiously waiting to see what Ulsterman's creates next.''
  -Diane
  GET ALL OF D.W. ULSTERMAN'S BOOKS HERE
Monsanto Buys Billion Dollar Startup to Conquer Earth's Weather
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Valleywag
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 21:49
  Villainous agri-corp Monsanto, known for playing God with your cornflakes and terrorizing small farmers, just locked down a big acquisition: TechCrunch reports it now owns Climate Corporation, a firm that specializes in "big data" weather prediction. Silicon Valley meets an episode of Captain Planet.
  With the US government on its side, the common yeomanry out of the way, and the genome around its pesticide-soaked pinky, all Monsanto has left to accomplish is the subordination of natural phenomena. Climate Corporation'--which was backed by some of the biggest names in venture capital'--can't change the weather, but with a $1.1 billion price tag, it sure as hell better help Monsanto exploit the weather. Monsanto describes it thusly:
  The acquisition will combine The Climate Corporation's expertise in agriculture analytics and risk-management with Monsanto's R&D capabilities, and will provide farmers access to more information about the many factors that affect the success of their crops.
  Genetically modified crops raised on a massive industrial scale in conjunction with massive data pooling to avoid adverse climate conditions. Delicious! Of course Peter Thiel's Founders Fund was in on the investment action, and will now profit from the Monsanto buy, because he is basically a supervillain'--this is like Palantir for rain.
  Photo: Shutterstock
When Rouhani Met Ollie North - By Shane Harris | Foreign Policy
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 20:57
  Hasan Rouhani, a 37-year-old senior foreign affairs advisor in the Iranian government, and his country's future president, sat with a delegation of White House officials on the top floor of what was once the Hilton hotel in Tehran. It was May 27, 1986, and Rouhani had come to secretly broker a deal with the Americans, at great political and personal risk.
  The U.S. team's ostensible purpose was to persuade Iranian leaders to assist in the release of American hostages held in Lebanon, something Rouhani was willing to do in exchange for the United States selling missiles and weapons systems to Iran. But the group, which consisted of senior National Security Council staffers, including a then little-known Marine lieutenant colonel named Oliver North, had a second and arguably more ambitious goal: to forge a new political alliance with moderate Iranian leaders, such as Rouhani and his bosses, the men who ran the country.
  In those meetings, the man to whom U.S. officials are now turning as the best hope for a rapprochement with Iran, after more than three decades of hostilities, showed himself to be a shrewd negotiator, ready to usher in a new era of openness. But he was also willing to subvert that broader goal and string the Americans along to get what he wanted -- more weapons. If there is a window into how Rouhani thinks today and how he will approach negotiations over Iran's nuclear program, it may be those few days in May he spent in high-stakes talks with the Americans over hostages and the countries' shared futures.
  Rouhani knew that helping to free the hostages held by Hezbollah, the terrorist group with which Iran held some influence, was a top priority for President Ronald Reagan. The U.S. president had personally committed to the families that he'd do whatever it took to rescue their loved ones. A televised homecoming would be a political triumph for Reagan.
  "By solving this problem we strengthen you in the White House," Rouhani told North and his colleagues. "As we promised, we will make every effort."
  But it would not come without cost. Rouhani and his cohort, a group of lower-level functionaries in the regime, kept turning the conversation back to the subject of weapons. The Americans had pledged to have a plane full of missile parts on its way to Tehran within 10 hours of the hostages' release. The Iranians wanted the missiles first. When it was clear that wouldn't happen, they offered to help secure the release of two hostages and said that after further negotiations they'd try for two more.
  Rouhani did believe in the broader mission. "You did a great job coming here, given the state of relations between us," Rouhani told the Americans. He thought they could start to work together, though it would be slow going. "I would be surprised if little problems did not come up. There is a Persian saying: Patience will bring you victory -- they are old friend. Without patience, we won't reach anything. Politicians must understand this."
  But the bartering over missiles frustrated the Americans. North had handled all the logistics for the meeting and was overseeing the arms sales. But the higher strategy was led by Reagan's former national security advisor, Robert "Bud" McFarlane. Freeing the hostages was a priority, but McFarlane worried that it threatened the chances of what he called the "new political development" with Iran's moderates.
  McFarlane hoped that Rouhani was the key to success. A prior day of negotiations with the lower-level officials had revealed them to be a bunch of amateurs. The Iranians had shown up an hour late at the airport to greet McFarlane and his team, who were traveling under false identities to keep the mission a secret. When they finally started talking at the hotel, the Iranians were by turns hospitable and paranoid. In one minute they were welcoming the Americans with pledges of "goodwill" between their countries. In the next, they were accusing the Americans of reneging on their agreement to send a fresh round of missile parts to Tehran.
We the People Temporarily Disabled | The White House
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  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 20:48
  Due to Congress's failure to pass legislation to fund the government, We the People has been temporarily disabled.As a result, you will be unable to create or sign We the People petitions. Once government funding has been restored, We the People will be reenabled. Petitions that were open as of October 1, 2013 will have their deadlines extended.
  Updates regarding government operating status and resumption of normal operations can be found at USA.GOV.
VIDEO-Flawed - C-SPAN Video Library
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  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 20:40
  Anonymous UserClip Created Oct 2, 2013
  Clipped from:House Session, Part 2Oct 2, 2013Mistaken population numbers of own state.
  1 minute, 56 seconds | 0 views
  Video Library clips and descriptions are created by MyC-SPAN users. These descriptions and clips are not the editorial selections of C-SPAN.Click to report profane or abusive content.Tweet
Philip Greenspun's Weblog >> California's $327 million web site in operation
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  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 18:32
  Back in September 2012 I wrote a posting about California's state government spending $327 million to build a seemingly straightforward web site where consumers could go to find health insurance plans. The web site is now up and running.
  I told the site that I lived in Berkeley, earned $80,000 per year, and was a single 50-year-old who was neither pregnant nor disabled (click on image below to enlarge):
  The site helpfully told me that I may qualify for free coverage through Medi-Cal, but the linked-to fact sheet says that it is for ''an individual who earned less than $15,856 [per year]''. I was also offered ''Access for Infants & Mothers'' though it was unclear how this could apply to a household with one adult. In any case the linked-to fact sheet says that it is for ''income between $3,256 '' $4,884 per month for a family of 3.''
  In other words, for $327 million the government purchased a computer program unable to determine that $80,000 is more than $15,856.
Monsanto Buys Weather Big Data Company Climate Corporation For Around $1.1B | TechCrunch
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 16:27
  Today's big acquisition is a huge agritech exit: Biotech company Monsanto has bought Climate Corporation for approximately $1.1 billion. While the Monsanto press release says $930 million, we're hearing from investors that the actual price is past the $1 billion mark because part of the all-cash deal will be paid out over time, as an employee retention plan.
  Climate Corporation is backed by Founders Fund, Khosla, Google Ventures, NEA, Index Ventures and Atomico. The company uses machine learning to predict the weather and other essential elements for agribusiness.
  Monsanto focuses on providing seeds, biotechnology traits and crop production products for farmers around the world. The acquired company will continue to operate as the Climate Corporation, and Monsanto will leverage its big data expertise to optimize farming globally.
  This is a pretty cunning move. It comes on the same day that Monsanto '-- the world's largest argibusiness company '-- reported a larger-than-expected, increased 4th quarter loss, of $249 million, or $0.47 per share.
  And Monsanto is positioning this acquisition as part of a longer-term recovery plan, hoping that Climate Corporation's climate change monitoring technology will help Monsanto manage future risk better. Monsanto has weathered (pun intended) a lot of bad PR over the years around issues like genetic modification and the general trammelling of smaller agricultural enterprises, so it will be interesting to see how Climate Corporation fits into that mix.
  Below is my invite to the media call at 8am, and here is a link to the press release on the Monsanto home page.
  Good morning,
  Monsanto just announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire The Climate Corporation for $930M. The full press release and supporting information is available on http://www.monsanto.com.
  The acquisition will combine The Climate Corporation's expertise in agriculture analytics and risk-management with Monsanto's R&D capabilities, and will provide farmers access to more information about the many factors that affect the success of their crops.
  We would like to invite you to join us later this morning for a call related to today's announcement. We'll use this call to provide details about the announcement and then have an opportunity to take some of your questions.
  David Friedberg, chief executive officer of The Climate Corporation and Monsanto's executive vice president of global strategy, Kerry Preete will provide an overview of the announcement.
  The COO of Climate Corporation, Greg Smirin, tells me that the acquisition is an ideal fit for both companies: ''As we all know, the weather is becoming more extreme. We found that we had kindred spirits with the folks at Monsanto. The data science that we have developed can be applied to improve seed production immensely.''
  Climate Corporation CEO David Friedberg comes from an interesting tech background. He is an ex-Googler, where he served as one of its first corporate development execs. (One of the deals he tried to do while there was to convince Google to buy Skype, according to Index's Neil Rimer, who wrote the first VC check for Climate Corporation in a $300,000 seed round. Obviously the Skype deal never happened, but Rimer ushered in a number of other biggies for Google nevertheless.)
  I had the chance to interview Monsanto VP of Global Strategy Kerry Preete and Friedberg this morning about the acquisition, and Monsanto's bad rep. For an interview about farm tech, it's worth a watch.
  And, here's an interview with Friedberg from last year when the startup picked up $50 million:
  Additional reporting by Ingrid Lunden.
Sell those bitcoins to frontrun the US government | ForexLive
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 15:44
  US authorities shut down the drug trafficking website silk road and arrested the owner today. In the move, they seized $3.6 million in bitcoins.
  It's a brave new world where people can buy drugs online and pay with bitcoin. In any case, I assume the government will be unloading those bitcoins for hard currency at some point and $3.6 million is more than the total transaction value on most days.
  If that value is right it would also represent about 0.2% of all bitcoins in existence. It might not sound like much but if 0.2% of all the oil, gold or US dollars in the world hit the market at once, it would cause big waves.
  Categories: All, Americas, Regions | Tags: Bitcoin | Permalink
Tom Clancy dies at 66
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  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 15:05
  Robert Mora/Getty
  According to the Publishers Weekly Twitter account, American author Tom Clancy died Wednesday in a Baltimore hospital at age 66. A cause of death has not been revealed.
  The New York Times is also confirming:
  Born in Baltimore, Maryland, Tom Clancy studied literature at the Loyola College in Baltimore and was originally an insurance salesman before becoming famous for writing technically detailed espionage and military science books.
  He is responsible for best-selling books such as "The Hunt for Red October," "Patriot Games," "Clear and Present Danger," and "The Sum of All Fears" '-- all of which were adapted into major Hollywood films.
  In 1996, Clancy co-founded the video game developer Red Storm Entertainment and has had his name on several of Red Storm's most successful games.
  Red Storm was later bought by publisher Ubisoft Entertainment for an undisclosed sum.
  In 2002, Forbes wrote, "Clancy can produce a guaranteed bestseller just by writing two words: his name."
  "When it comes to leveraging his brand across multiple channels, he is positively protean," Forbes continued, noting his income at the time made him the tenth-best earner on Forbes Celebrity 100 list for 2002. His net worth today is reported to be around $300 million.
  Clancy has been a lifetime supporter of conservative and Republican causes in America, a member of the National Rifle Association since 1978, and was part-owner of the Baltimore Orioles.
  His next book, ''Command Authority,'' is planned for publication on December 3.
Was it a Psyop? Nairobi Mall Deceit Abets Israeli-Western Pipeline Wars to Oust Asian Rivals >> David Icke
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 15:00
  'As the events at the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi unfolded, it became clear that the bloody spectacle was staged by a shadowy entity, which the Kenya foreign minister described as ''Al Qaeda''. Her statement was based on the presence of other foreign assailants, including passport holders of the U.S. and Britain , under the command of a Western woman believed to be the so-called ''White Widow''.
  The obvious outcome of this bloody spectacle is not Kenyan military withdrawal from Somalia as desired by Al Shabaab rebels, but quite the opposite effect of hardening support for intervention by a majority of Kenyans who were previously opposed to cross-border troop stationing. It took a televised massacre to overturn the East African public's aversion to military cooperation with former colonial masters and the Israelis.
  The net effect of the conflicting reports from the mall and suspect photos raises troubling questions: What powerful elite group has the money to organize such an elaborate ruse to sway public opinion? Who can control a secret network inside the Kenyan military and the mass media? What is their motive? How do they benefit?'
  Read more: Was it a Psyop? Nairobi Mall Deceit Abets Israeli-Western Pipeline Wars to Oust Asian Rivals
  Kenya Hoax was a Fake Siege'Zionist mobster Frank Lowy owns Nairobi's Westgate mall. He is the same individual responsible for the murder of some 2000 or more people on 9-11, then reaping the rewards through fraudulent insurance pay-outs.
  It may be recalled that he conspired in a fully premeditated fashion, this formerly Israeli-based espionage agent, to blow up the WTC complex, as he was part owner, and then attempt to gain consequently multiple billions of dollars, which was largely achieved.
  He and Silverstein created the ruse of insuring the buildings twice on the basis of two terrorist attacks, one against each tower. The team of cheats sought originally 7.1 billion, reaping instead nearly 4 billion, an astronomical amount, a monstrous fraud: a case of insurance extortion, one of the highest degree ever to occur.
  Destroying his own mall, with top-paying insurance in place, could not be put past this fraudster, since he has a decided history of criminal acts and extortion.'
  Read more '...
  Link Between Kenyan Shopping Centre Massacre and 9/11 Tower Leaseholders Surfaces
  'Westgate Shopping Mall in Kenya was Built by the Same People Associated with the World Trade Center!I am going to make this as simple and to the point as possible.
  1. The Westgate Shopping Mall was built by Westfield Australia.
  I found that out by doing a lot of digging. I had to go back years to find this information, because the Westgate Shopping Mall web site has been taken down. Hmmmm.'
  Read more '...
  Westgate Insurer Handed a Sh 6.6 Billion Bill'London based insurer, Lloyd's market, is set to dig deep into its pocket.. very deep.
  This is after the events at Westgate mall this past week, where at least 67 people died, and many more injured.
  Westgate mall hosted 80 stores and restaurants, which included Nakumatt Supermarket, Barclays Bank, Mr. Price etc. This translates to hundreds of millions in property damage. Three floors of the building collapsed, and engineers will now have to certify the rest of the building as structurally sane.
  In the very likely event that the building is found to be too weak, it will have to be brought down and rebuilt from scratch.'
  Read more '...
  'American Terrorists' in Kenya Mall Attack are Fake Names with Fake Identities
First pictures of cafe and shops inside Kenyan massacre mall | Mail Online
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 14:48
  Chaos: The FoneXpress computer store is littered with debris including shattered glass and smashed cabinets which are all empty
  Forensics: Investigators work in the mall passageways scouring the building for clues which may lead to other terrorists involved in the attack
  Kenya MPs launch Westgate Mall massacre probe
  Another 39 people remain unaccounted for almost a week after the end of the attack, the Red Cross said today.
  Its report conflicts with the government's contention that there are no remaining missing people from the attack on the Westgate Mall and suggests that the death toll could still rise as investigators dig through the rubble.
  'The numbers with us are what we are still showing as open cases that are reported to us', Kenyan Red Cross head Abbas Gullet said.
  'The only way to verify this is when the government declares the Westgate Mall 100 per cent cleared - then we can resolve it.'
  Destruction: This picture shows the mall car park which collapsed as a result of the attack
  Explosion: Burnt-out vehicles have been abandoned outside Westgate as the work of clearing up the mall continues
  The Red Cross number has been dropping over the past week as bodies have been positively identified and as some missing people have been reunited with their families. On Friday it said the number of missing was 59.
  On Sunday Interior Minister Joseph Ole Lenku said that police had no missing persons reports from the attack, and did not believe there were any hostages in the mall building when it partially collapsed. He left open the possibility, however, that things might change.
  'We think - unless the forensic investigation shows otherwise - we really do think that there were weren't any hostages,' he said.
  Entrance: The scene outside the mall's main gate remains chaotics nine days after the initial outbreak of violence
  Investigation: Forensic police inspect a saloon car parked near the main entrance of the mall
  Investigators from Britain, Canada, the U.S. and Germany, are helping in the investigation into the attack and are aiding Kenyan forensic experts poring through the mall complex. Results are not expected until later this week at the earliest.
  In addition to the 61 civilians and six troops reported killed in the attack, the government has said five of the attackers were killed by gunfire and at least one more is thought to be in the building's rubble.
  The militant group al-Shabab has said it carried out the mall attack to punish Kenya for sending its troops into neighboring Somalia to fight the Al Qaeda-linked militant group that had seized large parts of that country for years before being dislodged from the capital, Mogadishu.
How to foil NSA sabotage: use a dead man's switch
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 14:44
  'The deliberate sabotage of computers is an act of depraved indifference to the physical security and economic and intellectual integrity of every person alive.' Photograph: Workbook Stock/Martin Rogers
  The more we learn about the breadth and depth of the NSA and GCHQ's programmes of spying on the general public, the more alarming it all becomes. The most recent stories about the deliberate sabotage of security technology are the full stop at the end of a sentence that started on 8 August, when the founder of Lavabit (the privacy oriented email provider used by whistleblower Edward Snowden) abruptly shut down, with its founder, Ladar Levison, obliquely implying that he'd been ordered to secretly subvert his own system to compromise his users' privacy.
  It doesn't really matter if you trust the "good" spies of America and the UK not to abuse their powers (though even the NSA now admits to routine abuse), you should still be wary of deliberately weakened security. It is laughable to suppose that the back doors that the NSA has secretly inserted into common technologies will only be exploited by the NSA. There are plenty of crooks, foreign powers, and creeps who devote themselves to picking away patiently at the systems that make up the world and guard its wealth and security (that is, your wealth and security) and whatever sneaky tools the NSA has stashed for itself in your operating system, hardware, applications and services, they will surely find and exploit.
  One important check against the NSA's war on security is transparency. Programmes published under free/open software licenses can be independently audited are much harder to hide secret back doors in. But what about the services that we use '' certificate providers, hosted email and cloud computers, and all the other remote computers and networks that we entrust with our sensitive data?
  Ultimately these are only as trustworthy as the people who run them. And as we've seen with Lavabit, even the most trustworthy operators may face secret orders to silently betray you, with terrible penalties if they speak out.
  This is not a new problem. In 2004, American librarians recoiled at the FBI's demands to rummage through their patrons' reading habits and use them to infer terroristic intent, and at the FBI's gag orders preventing librarians from telling their patrons when the police had come snooping.
  Jessamyn West, a radical librarian, conceived of a brilliant solution, a sign on the wall of her library reading "THE FBI HAS NOT BEEN HERE (watch very closely for the removal of this sign)." After all, she reasoned, if the law prohibited her from telling people that the FBI had been in, that wasn't the same as her not not telling people the FBI hadn't been in, right?
  I was reminded of this last week on a call with Nico Sell, one of the organisers of the annual security conference Defcon (whose founder, Jeff Moss, told the NSA that it would not be welcome at this year's event). Nico wanted me to act as an adviser to her company Wickr, which provides a platform for private messaging. I asked her what she would do in the event that she got a Lavabit-style order to pervert her software's security.
  She explained that her company had committed to publishing regular transparency reports, modelled on those used by companies like Google, with one important difference. Google's reports do not give the tally of secret orders served on it by governments, because doing so would be illegal. Sell has yet to receive a secret order, so she can legally report in each transparency report: "Wickr has received zero secret orders from law enforcement and spy agencies. Watch closely for this notice to disappear." When the day came that her service had been served by the NSA, she could provide an alert to attentive users (and, more realistically, journalists) who would spread the word. Wickr is designed so that it knows nothing about its users' communications, so an NSA order would presumably leave its utility intact, but notice that the service had been subjected to an order would be a useful signal to users of other, related services.
  This gave me an idea for a more general service: a dead man's switch to help fight back in the war on security. This service would allow you to register a URL by requesting a message from it, appending your own public key to it and posting it to that URL.
  Once you're registered, you tell the dead man's switch how often you plan on notifying it that you have not received a secret order, expressed in hours. Thereafter, the service sits there, quietly sending a random number to you at your specified interval, which you sign and send back as a "No secret orders yet" message. If you miss an update, it publishes that fact to an RSS feed.
  Such a service would lend itself to lots of interesting applications. Muck-raking journalists could subscribe to the raw feed, looking for the names of prominent services that had missed their nothing-to-see-here deadlines. Security-minded toolsmiths could provide programmes that looked through your browser history and compared it with the URLs registered with the service and alert you if any of the sites you visit ever show up in the list of possibly-compromised sites.
  No one's ever tested this approach in court, and I can't say whether a judge would be able to distinguish between "not revealing a secret order" and "failing to note the absence of a secret order", but in US jurisprudence, compelling someone to speak a lie is generally more fraught with constitutional issues than compelled silence about the truth. The UK is on less stable ground '' the "unwritten constitution" lacks clarity on this subject, and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act allows courts to order companies to surrender their cryptographic keys (for the purposes of decrypting evidence, though perhaps a judge could be convinced to equate providing evidence with signing a message).
  When the NSA came up with codenames for its projects to sabotage security products, it chose "BULLRUN" and "MANASSAS", names for a notorious battle from the American civil war in which the public were declared enemies of the state. GCHQ's parallel programme was called "EDGEHILL", another civil war battle where citizens became enemies of their government. Our spies' indiscriminate surveillance programmes clearly show an alarming trend for the state to view everyday people as adversaries.
  Our world is made up of computers. Our cars and homes are computers into which we insert our bodies; our hearing aids and implanted defibrillators are computers we insert into our bodies. The deliberate sabotage of computers is an act of depraved indifference to the physical security and economic and intellectual integrity of every person alive. If the law is perverted so that we cannot tell people when their security has been undermined, it follows that we must find some other legal way to warn them about services that are not fit for purpose.
Google Accused of Wiretapping in Gmail Scans - NYTimes.com
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 14:31
  SAN FRANCISCO '-- Wiretapping is typically the stuff of spy dramas and shady criminal escapades. But now, one of the world's biggest Web companies, Google, must defend itself against accusations that it is illegally wiretapping in the course of its everyday business '-- gathering data about Internet users and showing them related ads.
  The accusations, made over several years in various lawsuits that have been merged into two separate cases, ask whether Google went too far in collecting user data in Gmail and Street View, its mapping project. Two federal judges have ruled, over Google's protests, that both cases can move forward.
  The wiretapping rulings are the latest example of judges and regulators prodding Google over privacy violations. The company is on the defensive, struggling to persuade overseers and its users that it protects consumer data, while arguing that the law is stuck in the past and has failed to keep up with new technologies.
  ''It's been a bad month for Google,'' said Alan Butler, a lawyer at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. ''What's at stake is a core digital privacy issue for consumers right now, which is the extent to which their digital communications are protected from use by third parties.'' For the most part, Google has managed to avoid major privacy penalties. The Gmail case could have broad effects, though, because nearly half a billion people worldwide use the service, and because if it is, as expected, certified as a class action, the fines could be enormous. At the same time, the case could have long-term consequences for all e-mail services '-- including those from Yahoo and Microsoft '-- and for the issue of how confidential is online data.
  Judge Lucy Koh denied a motion by Google for dismissal.
  ''This ruling has the potential to really reshape the entire e-mail industry,'' said Eric Goldman, director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law.
  The Gmail case involves Google's practice of automatically scanning e-mail messages and showing ads based on the contents of the e-mails. The plaintiffs include voluntary Gmail users, people who have to use Gmail as part of an educational institution and non-Gmail users whose messages were received by a Gmail user. They say the scanning of the messages violates state and federal antiwiretapping laws.
  The case revives a short-lived uproar over Gmail ads when Google introduced them in 2004. Microsoft has recently tried to call attention to the practice as part of its Scroogled campaign, including a video that shows a so-called Gmail man reading people's e-mail. Google has continued to show new types of ads in Gmail, including ads that look like e-mails.
  ''Google uses Gmail as its own secret data-mining machine, which intercepts, warehouses, and uses, without consent, the private thoughts and ideas of millions of unsuspecting Americans who transmit e-mail messages through Gmail,'' lawyers for the plaintiffs argued on July 11, opposing Google's motion to dismiss the case. On Thursday, Judge Lucy H. Koh of Federal District Court denied Google's motion in a 43-page order that fought the company at almost every turn.
  Judge Koh is highly respected in Silicon Valley, with a reputation for being fearless. During the Apple-Samsung patent trial, she made headlines for asking an Apple lawyer if he was ''smoking crack.''
  In this case, she came down hard on Google.
  In the June 13 motion to dismiss the suit, Google said the plaintiffs were trying to ''criminalize ordinary business practices.'' It argued that the scanning of Gmail messages was automated, with no human review, and was no different from the processes it uses to detect spam or viruses, offer in-box searching or filter messages into folders. It said users had consented to it by agreeing to Google's terms of service and privacy policy.
  In a section of the motion that was widely noted, Google also argued that non-Gmail users had no expectation of privacy when corresponding with Gmail users.
  ''Just as a sender of a letter to a business colleague cannot be surprised that the recipient's assistant opens the letter, people who use Web-based e-mail today cannot be surprised if their communications are processed by the recipient's'' e-mail provider, the lawyers wrote.
  Federal wiretap law exempts interception of communication if it is necessary in a service provider's ''ordinary course of business,'' which Google said included scanning e-mail. That argument did not fly with Judge Koh.
  ''In fact, Google's alleged interception of e-mail content is primarily used to create user profiles and to provide targeted advertising '-- neither of which is related to the transmission of e-mails,'' she wrote in last week's ruling.
  Judge Koh also dismissed Google's argument that Gmail users consented to the interception and that non-Gmail users who communicated with Gmail users also knew that their messages could be read.
  ''Accepting Google's theory of implied consent '-- that by merely sending e-mails to or receiving e-mails from a Gmail user, a non-Gmail user has consented to Google's interception of such e-mails for any purposes '-- would eviscerate the rule against interception,'' she wrote. A Google spokeswoman, Leslie Miller, and a lawyer for the company, Michael G. Rhodes of the law firm Cooley, declined to comment on the case beyond a company statement. ''We're disappointed in this decision and are considering our options,'' it said. ''Automated scanning lets us provide Gmail users with security and spam protection, as well as great features like Priority Inbox.''
  Lawyers for the plaintiffs, Sean F. Rommel of Wyly Rommel and F. Jerome Tapley of Cory Watson, did not respond to requests for comment.
  Also last week, Google asked the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to reconsider a Sept. 10 ruling that a separate wiretapping lawsuit could proceed. That one involves Google Street View vehicles that secretly collected personal information from unencrypted home computer networks.
  The federal antiwiretapping law at the heart of both cases is part of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, a 1986 law that has been under fire for years for not taking into account modern-day technology like e-mail.
  ''It's not surprising we're seeing courts struggle with applying the E.C.P.A.,'' Mr. Goldman of Santa Clara said. ''It's a poorly drafted statute that has aged very poorly.''
7th Annual Islamic Heritage Month Celebration Calendar of Events: Connecting People Using Culture & History | Cultural Tourism DC
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  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 14:15
  LocationAmerica's Islamic Heritage Museum & Cultural Center2315 Martin Luther King Jr. Ave SE
  Washington , DCSee map: Google MapsOctober 7, 2012-October 28, 2012
  The Mayor of Washington, DC issues a Proclamation honoring October as America's Islamic Heritage Month Celebration
  America's Islamic Heritage Museum & Cultural Center
  7th Annual Islamic Heritage Month Celebration Calendar of Events
  Connecting People Using Culture & History
  Sunday October 7th 2-4pm, a look at the history of Latino Muslims in the Americas
  Saturday October 13th 12:00 -6pm America's Islamic Heritage festival with special guest artists Violinist Bliss Ananda Group, the Hip-Hop group Leftist, Radio Rahim, the 18th century dramatic historical slave reenactment play about 'The Life & Times of Omar ibn Sayyid,' a book signing and discussion with Amin Nathari, face painting, henna, vendors, and more...
  Sunday October 14th 2-5 pmwill be a screening of the movie 'New-Muslim-Cool' with a panel discussion.
  Friday October 19th 6-9 pm Journey Through Ten Thousands Veils book signing and discussion with Maryam K Faye.
  Saturday October 20th'' 9:30am''5:00pm will be an all day community engagement event called 'A Day of Dignity' sponsored by Islamic Relief USA which will provide a food bank distribution, health and social service booths.
  Sunday October 21st'' 2:00-4:00pm is a book signing and discussion with James Johnston author of the book From Slave Ship to Harvard: Yarrow Mamout and the Historyof an African American Family. All of the above events are open and free to the public.
  Saturday October 27th 12-5pm- there will be a tour of DC's Islamic sites and museums with Islamic history. Please RSVP cost $20.00
  Sunday October 28th 3-5pm- to close our Islamic Heritage month there will be a video highlighting the Life & Times of Imam Warith Deen Mohammed known as America's Imam.
Harry Olson (1867-1935) Papers, 1906-1940
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  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 14:08
  Collection Title:Harry Olson (1867-1935) PapersDates:1906-1940Identification:1/14Creator:Olson, Harry, 1867-1935Extent:4 BoxesLanguage of Materials:EnglishAbstract:The Harry Olson Papers date from 1906 to 1940, and include biographical, correspondence, and subject files, with correspondence comprising the bulk of the series. This series represents the surviving portion of a larger body of papers, half of which were irretrievably damaged by mold, damp, and vermin. A few items are in Swedish.Acquisition Information:The bulk of the Harry Olson Papers were donated to the Northwestern University Archives by Nancy Schwiesow, via E.W. Thompson, as accession #91-73 on May 17, 1991. One folder of pertinent material from the University Archives' biographical files has been incorporated.Processing Information:Rae Sikula; September, 1999 (and Janet Olson, December, 1999)Separated Materials:Approximately three linear feet of materials were discarded upon receipt due to extremely poor physical condition, mold, and vermin infestation.In 1994 one large scrapbook was separated from the accession and donated to the Chicago Historical Society. In September 1999 a number of unrelated brochures and advertisements were separated and donated to the Chicago Historical Society.Materials relating to Northwestern University (Board of Trustees minutes, budget reports, etc.) were transferred to the University Archives' General Files. A commemorative gavel, block, and wooden case presented to Olson in 1907 was added to the Archives' artifacts collection; one photograph was transferred to the Archives' photographic collection.Conditions Governing Access:The Psychopathic Laboratory Cases file (Box 4, folder 12) can be viewed only with the permission of the University Archivist. All other files are open.Repository:Northwestern University ArchivesDeering Library, Room 1101970 Campus Dr.Evanston, IL, 60208-2300URL: http://www.library.northwestern.edu/archivesEmail: archives@northwestern.eduPhone: 847-491-3354Biographical/Historical InformationA son of Swedish immigrants, Harry Olson was born in 1867 in Chicago, Illinois, and spent his childhood on the Kansas frontier. After his father's death in 1880, Olson left Kansas to attend high school in Pecatonica, Illinois. He served briefly as teacher and principal in the public schools of St. Marys, Kansas, before graduating first from Washburn College, Topeka. He received his LL.B. from Union College of Law (later the Northwestern University School of Law), Chicago, in 1891. Once admitted to the Bar, Olson married Bernice Miller, whom he had met in Pecatonica. The couple settled in Chicago.
  While teaching in the Chicago Evening Schools, Olson met attorney Charles S. Deneen, who became a lifelong friend. When Deneen was elected State's Attorney for Cook County in 1896, he invited Olson to serve as his assistant. In this capacity Olson argued his landmark corpus delicti case in 1897, persuading the jury that a bit of hair, several bones, and a wedding ring represented the murdered body of Mrs. Adolph Luetgert. This prosecution was cited in law textbooks for years to come.
  In 1906 Olson was elected Chief Justice of Chicago's newly-established Municipal Court, the first unified court in an American city to incorporate specialized divisions--such as juvenile and domestic relations courts--into its administration. Over the next 24 years the Municipal Court pioneered further innovations in judicial practice as Olson revised its procedure and structure in light of Progressive thought and the developing social sciences. New rules of practice adopted by the municipal judges in 1910 simplified court proceedings, and new branches were added, including the Morals Court for women (1913), Boys' Court (1914), the Automobile Speeders Court (1915), Small Claims Court (1916), and the Felony Court (1929). Influenced by Northwestern University School of Law's first National Conference on Criminal Law and Criminology in 1909, Olson established the Municipal Court's Psychopathic Laboratory in 1914 to psychologically profile delinquents and criminals. Headed by psychiatrist Dr. William J. Hickson, the Laboratory was one of the first forensic psychiatric institutions in the United States.
  By this time, Olson was firmly convinced that criminal behavior was the result of inherited mental and emotional defects rather than environmental influences. In frequent public appearances, he advocated the early identification of such defectives and their segregation onto farm colonies, in order to prevent them from passing on their traits to future generations. Olson advanced his segregation plan through the ''Psychopathic Committee,'' an organization of legal and medical leaders who studied mental defects in conjunction with the Court's Psychopathic Laboratory, and supported segregation bills in the Illinois state legislature.
  Olson also explored the possibility of sterilizing mental patients. Olson contributed a brief position paper to Eugenical Sterilization in the United States, a study by noted eugenicist Harry H. Laughlin, which was published by the Psychopathic Laboratory in 1922. As Eugenical Sterilization's sole distributor, Olson was flooded with orders for the book from such distant countries as Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Poland, and the Kingdom of Serbia, as well as from educators, lawyers, and libraries across the United States.
  However, while many Progressives and eugenicists (including Laughlin) worked to restrict the number of ''undesirable'' Southern and Eastern Europeans immigrants to the United States, Olson advocated the unrestricted admission of individuals of every nationality, as long as they were mentally sound. In 1913 he spoke against the Congressionally-sponsored Dillingham Commission's proposed imposition of immigration quotas which favored Western and Northern Europeans at the expense of Mediterranean and Slavic groups. Though a Lutheran, Olson maintained a good relationship with Chicago's Catholics (who were mainly recent immigrants) and received invitations to many Catholic functions.
  He also preserved ties to his own ethnic group, participating in Swedish-American organizations and founding the John Ericsson League of Patriotic Service during World War I
  In 1925, Olson razed his home at 3933 Clarendon in Chicago and, on the site, constructed a 76-unit apartment hotel which he named the Millsfield (after orator/lawyer Luther Laflin Mills and poet Eugene Field).
  After serving four terms as Chief Justice, Olson, a Republican, lost his position to Democrat John J. Sonsteby in the Democratic Party's general sweep of Chicago government in 1930. Olson then worked as an attorney in private practice in Chicago's Loop until his death on August 1, 1935.
  Among Olson's many activities, he was a founder and the first chairman of the American Judicature Society; a trustee of both Northwestern and Lake Forest Universities; a member of the American Eugenics Society, the American Institute of Law, the American Institute of Law and Criminology, and the Chicago Press Club; and a mayoral candidate for Chicago (1915). He received honorary LL.D. degrees from Washburn College (1915) and Lake Forest University (1923).
  In 1938, speaking at the unveiling of a portrait of Olson at the Municipal Court, his friend Charles S. Deneen remembered Olson as ''always cheerful, tolerant, optimistic, and with unbounded faith in the improvement of law and government, and in the progress of the race.''
  Scope and ContentThe Harry Olson Papers date from 1906 to 1940, and include biographical, correspondence, and subject files, with correspondence comprising the bulk of the series. This series represents the surviving portion of a larger body of papers, half of which were irretrievably damaged by mold, damp, and vermin. The destruction of these papers accounts for gaps in date spans. Many of the remaining papers are also damaged, but are still legible. A few items are in Swedish.
  Dating from 1935 to 1940, the biographical materials include obituaries, the program of Olson's funeral, and eulogy texts and drafts, including a draft of an editorial by John H. Wigmore of the Northwestern University School of Law, a folder of materials compiled by Charles Deneen, and what appear to be the first pages of an undated autobiography. Newspaper clippings, programs, and announcements document Olson's mayoral race, his views on immigration, crime and heredity, the construction of the Millsfield Apartments, and his public appearances.
  Arranged chronologically, Olson's correspondence dates from 1906 to 1928, with the majority of the correspondence falling between 1913 and 1923. Files include both incoming and outgoing correspondence, as well as memos, reports, and other materials. Letters broadly pertain to Olson's career as Chief Justice; his interest in eugenics and psychiatry; his ties with Chicago's ethnic leaders; his appearances before local and national organizations (including many invitations to appear, along with his responses); and his connection with Northwestern University and its School of Law.
  More specifically, the correspondence dating from 1906 to 1912 documents Olson's efforts to refine Municipal Court procedures and explain to concerned individuals the limits of the Court's responsibilities. Letters from this period suggest some initial public confusion as to the process of collecting fees and methods of recording and publicizing Court activities. Olson also received inquiries regarding proposed vagrancy law reforms (April 22, 1907; May 1, 1907) and the value of medical expert testimony in cases involving insanity (from Dr. F.C. Studley; December 19, 1907). Many working people wrote to Olson for legal advice; Olson's replies indicate that he often complied with their requests. (An example is his correspondence with William Richardson, dated May 26, June 5, and June 10, 1908.) Other interesting correspondence from the period 1906-1912 involves the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, who offered to house female repeat female offenders in their institution (December 7, 1909), eliciting a favorable response from Olson (December 11, 1909); Julius Rosenwald of Sears, Roebuck & Co., who inquired after the appointment of court interpreters for the immigrant population (September 15, 1911; September 18, 1911); and John H. Wigmore, Dean of the Northwestern University School of Law (December 4, 1912).
  Olson's correspondence between 1913 and 1921 largely concerns the establishment of Municipal Court branches, particularly the Boys Court and Domestic Relations Court; the founding of the ''Psychopathic Committee'' and Municipal Court Psychopathic Laboratory (April, 1914); the distribution of Municipal Court publications; business of the Northwestern University Board of Trustees; and Olson's speaking engagements before various interest groups, including legal and philanthropic associations. Correspondence with Senator Lawrence Sherman (January 2, 1913), the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers (February 7, 1913; February 20, 1913) and the Charities Aid Association of New York City (February 18, 1913; February 21, 1913; February 24, 1913) document Olson's opposition to the 1913 immigration bill. Interesting particulars of Psychopathic Laboratory case work may found among the letters from 1917. Interspersed throughout the correspondence are letters to and from John H. Wigmore, Northwestern University President A.W. Harris, Northwestern Business manager William Dyche, and Law School Professor Robert Gault regarding the Board of Trustees. Other prominent correspondents include Oswald Garrison Villard of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); Ida Wells Barnett, journalist and president of the Negro Fellowship League (December 18, 1914; December 16, 1916); and Charles A. Comisky, owner of the Chicago White Sox (September 23, 1915; Chicago 28, 1915).
  From 1922 to 1928 correspondence pertains mainly to the distribution of Harry Laughlin's Eugenical Sterilization in the United States, published by the Court Psychopathic Laboratory in 1922, and includes many orders and receipts for the book. Other letters relate to Northwestern University, the Municipal Court and Psychopathic Laboratory, and Harry Olson's public appearances. Distinguished correspondents from this period include Secretary of State Charles E. Hughes (January 3, 1923); William Howard Taft, Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court (January 3, 1923); and Laughlin (December 9, 1924).
  Alphabetically arranged, the scanty and fragmentary subject files date from 1910 to 1930 and relate to Olson's professional interests and activities, with the exception of a file on his personal real estate development, the Millsfield Apartments.
  One issue of the Journal of the American Judicature Society (vol. 7 no. 2, August, 1923), is ''wholly devoted to presenting the views of Chief Justice Harry Olson '... on the prevention of what he calls 'fundamental crimes.'''
  Dating between 1910 and 1930, the Municipal Court files are arranged in order of increasing specificity. General materials include publications by Olson describing Court function and structure, and annual reports containing budget and statistical data for the Municipal Court and several of the branch courts. One folder holds descriptions of the intent and activities of the Boys Court. The file on the Court's Psychopathic Laboratory contains a publication on the subject by Olson and two reports by Dr. Hickson. One file contains a few case studies from the Psychopathic Laboratory which may have been used as examples in Olson's speeches. Perhaps the most unusual files document the matter of journalist Hadrian Baker, a self-described ''purveyor of rare information'' who published ratings and expos(C)s of legal professionals in his bulletin The Letters of Junius during the 1910s. Baker was arrested on July 16, 1915, presumably on charges of libel. Later Baker claimed that Municipal Court judges had attempted to commit him to a mental institution--a charge denied by the Court, though Olson personally was convinced of Baker's insanity.
  The undated Psychopathic Committee file contains rosters of committee members and drafts of Olson's plan for the segregation of mental defectives, for presentation to the State of Illinois.
  The undated speech files consist of copies and published extracts from Harry Olson's public addresses. The speeches, which were read before legal professionals and various interest groups, pertain to Municipal Court structure and procedure, and to the relationship between crime and inherited mental defects.
  SubjectsCorporate NameIllinois. Municipal Court (Chicago)
  Personal NameOlson, Harry, 1867-1935
  SubjectsEugenics--United States--History
  Judges--Illinois--Chicago
  Container List / ContentsObituaries and Eulogies, 1935-1940Box 1, Folder 1Clippings, Programs, Announcements, 1915-1929Box 1, Folder 2CorrespondenceCorrespondence, 1906Box 1, Folder 3Correspondence, 1907Box 1, Folder 4Correspondence, 1908-1911Box 1, Folder 5Correspondence, 1912Box 1, Folder 6Correspondence, 1913, January-MarchBox 1, Folder 7Correspondence, 1913, April-MayBox 1, Folder 8Correspondence, 1913, June-OctoberBox 1, Folder 9Correspondence, 1913, November-DecemberBox 2, Folder 1Correspondence, 1914, January-FebruaryBox 2, Folder 2Correspondence, 1914, March-AprilBox 2, Folder 3Correspondence, 1914, May-SeptemberBox 2, Folder 4Correspondence, 1914, October-NovemberBox 2, Folder 5Correspondence, 1914, DecemberBox 2, Folder 6Correspondence, 1915, January-MarchBox 2, Folder 7Correspondence, 1915, April-JulyBox 2, Folder 8Correspondence, 1915, August-OctoberBox 3, Folder 1Correspondence, 1915, November-DecemberBox 3, Folder 2Correspondence, 1916, January-MayBox 3, Folder 3Correspondence, 1916, June-DecemberBox 3, Folder 4Correspondence, 1917-1918Box 3, Folder 5Correspondence, 1919-1922Box 3, Folder 6Correspondence, 1923, JanuaryBox 3, Folder 7Correspondence, 1923, February-AprilBox 3, Folder 8Correspondence, 1923, May-AugustBox 3, Folder 9Correspondence, 1923, September-DecemberBox 3, Folder 10Correspondence, 1924, January-JulyBox 4, Folder 1Correspondence, 1924, August-DecemberBox 4, Folder 2Correspondence, 1925-1926Box 4, Folder 3Correspondence, 1927-1928Box 4, Folder 4Correspondence, n.d.Box 4, Folder 5Subject FilesJournal of the American Judiciary Society, 1923Box 4, Folder 6Millsfield Apartments, 1925, n.d.Box 4, Folder 7''Psychopathic Committee'', n.d. (ca. 1918)Box 4, Folder 15Speeches: Judicial Reform, n.d.Box 4, Folder 16Speeches: Crime and Heredity, n.d.Box 4, Folder 17Municipal Court of ChicagoGeneral, 1910-1930Box 4, Folder 8Annual Reports, 1927-1930Box 4, Folder 9Boys' Court, 1919-1921Box 4, Folder 10Psychopathic Laboratory, 1913-1922Box 4, Folder 11Psychopathic Laboratory: Cases, 1916-1919Box 4, Folder 12Hadrian Baker, 1915-1917Box 4, Folder 13Hadrian Baker: Publications, 1912-1919Box 4, Folder 14
National Bullying Prevention Center - National Bullying Prevention Month
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  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 13:58
  Join the movement!
  The End of Bullying Begins with Me: that's the message during PACER's National Bullying Prevention Month in October. It's a time when communities can unite nationwide to raise awareness of bullying prevention through events, activities, outreach, and education. Resources from PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center make it easy to take action.
  PACER created the campaign in 2006 with a one-week event which has now evolved into a month-long effort that encourages everyone to take an active role in the bullying prevention movement.
  We have a variety of resources you can use during October '-- and throughout the year '-- to engage, educate, and inspire others to join the movement and prevent bullying where you live. Check out all of the different events and activities and make plans to get involved. Remember, the End of Bullying Begins With You!
  Coming in October 2013:Would you like to receive updates about 2013 events for National Bullying Prevention Month? Complete the contact form for PACER or add your name to the digital ''The End of Bullying Begins With Me'' Petition.
  Run, Walk, Roll Against Bullying '' Schools, businesses, organizations, and communities will come together to Run, Walk, Roll Against Bullying on Saturday, Oct. 5 in Bloomington, Minn., and at dozens of other locations around the country throughout the month. This fun, active outdoor event increases awareness of bullying prevention and raises funds to support the cause. We have all the tools you need to host a Run, Walk, Roll in your community. Check out PACER's free toolkit which shows you how to plan the event in five easy steps and includes tips, ideas, and resources.
  Unity Day: Wednesday, Oct. 9 '' Mark your calendar now and make plans to wear orange on Unity Day. That's when scores of people around the country will join the movement to ''Make it Orange and Make it End!'' In 2011, Ellen DeGeneres promoted the cause on television by wearing orange and reminding millions of viewers about the importance of bullying prevention. Facebook supports the cause during October by providing users with information on PACER activities on its safety, educator, and privacy pages. Again in 2013, students will wear orange and use PACER resources to support the cause, hand out orange ''UNITY'' ribbons at school, and write ''UNITY'' on their hands or binders. Be sure to 'Attend' and 'Share' the Unity Day Facebook Event.
  New Student Event ToolkitNeed help planning a student-led bullying prevention event? PACER has partnered with Facebook to create a practical Student Event Toolkit that will make it easier to hold events in your school or community. This step-by-step guide will help you plan, promote, and execute a variety of events throughout the year using Facebook tools.Take a look
  Other exciting opportunities:Whether you are an educator, student, family, or individual you can take an active role during the month, ideas include:
  ''The culture of bullying won't end until people across the country take action and show kids that they care,'' says Julie Hertzog, director of PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center. ''National Bullying Prevention Month is a great opportunity to do that. This is a very real and painful issue that kids are facing but they don't have to face it alone. Bullying can be prevented if we all work together to change the culture.''
  PACER's National Bullying Prevention Center provides creative and interactive resources that are designed to benefit all students, including students with disabilities. Middle and high school students can visit PACERTeensAgainstBullying.org and elementary school students PACERKidsAgainstBullying.org for additional ideas on how they can take action against bullying.
White House Defends NSA 'Social Mapping' of Americans
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  Archived Version
  Source: News From Antiwar.com
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 06:55
  Every new revelation of NSA surveillance is a new affront to basic privacy, and goes far further than anyone had dared to imagine. Every time, the White House is there to defend it.
  So when the New York Times revealed over the weekend that the NSA has for the past 3 years been using its wholesale data collection from American citizens to construct elaborate maps of ''social connections,'' it was only a matter of time before the White House shrugged it off as perfectly legal and reasonable.
  The program is about as unreasonable as it gets, with the agency using metadata, GPS locations and voter records from ordinary Americans to figure out who is friends with who, and connecting people indirectly to others of ''intelligence interest.''
  It's sort of a George Orwell meets six degrees of Kevin Bacon program, and is exactly the sort of obscene, grand scale privacy violation that the administration had repeatedly assured Americans the NSA would never think of doing.
  But now that the cat is out of the bag, the story has changed, and White House spokesman Jay Carney, while refusing to discuss the specifics of the program, insisted that finding out who you might currently know, or conceivably meet from a friend of a friend, is a vital national security interest.
  While the White House has at times expressed support for the ''dialogue'' ongoing with respect to the NSA's abuse of privacy, they likewise seem outraged by every new leak, saying that informing the public of just how violated they are is itself a major crime.
  Last 5 posts by Jason Ditz
$2 trillion cost to de-carbonise the world is actually a bargain
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  Archived Version
  Source: The Conversation
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 06:52
  Smoke, like US$2 trillion, gets in your eyes. Ian BarbourWe can avoid the worst effects of climate change, say a team of Imperial College energy engineers in a recent study, and it will only cost US$2 trillion a year, at most. This sounds an unfeasibly large sum of money but in fact amounts to around 1% of projected world GDP in 2050.
  The study is clear on its assumptions, well-researched and balanced, and a useful update on earlier studies of a least-cost engineered solution to the problem. But it does not include the effects of how the wider economy would respond to the transformation of the energy system. GDP could be higher or lower, for example, depending on the economic policies required to bring about the change.
  Man-made global warming is happening, climate scientists have warned again in the latest, fifth IPCC report released a few days ago. Since the previous report in 2007, levels of confidence have risen to 95% following greatly expanded lines of evidence that confirm earlier predictions. As is well understood, the problem is several centuries-worth of man-made greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This is already higher than at any time over the last 800,000 years.
  If we do not slow and ultimately stop adding to this build up of emissions then the potential for further damage rises. The Imperial College study argues that halving CO2 by 2050 will be enough to bring the prospective eventual rise of global temperatures to below 2°C. After 2050, this reduction must continue in order to maintain stable temperatures.
  Creating value from decarbonisationDrawing upon the International Energy Agency's 2010 report on the prospects for energy technologies, the researchers have trawled the literature for costs of low-carbon equipment and vehicles. The study assumes projected demands for the services we want '' comfort, mobility, light, power '' analyses them by sector (buildings, transport and industry), and includes a detailed discussion of power generation and bioenergy. It provides details of comprehensive investments in each sector with costs and effects on energy use and emissions for 10 world regions. It's apparent how the mix of technologies varies according to regional resources and political priorities.
  Using data on energy supplies and demands from 2010, a future reference scenario is constructed for 2050, assuming that CO2 emissions are halved by 2050. Around 1% of GDP for 2050 is assumed as a net cost, while the cost of new low carbon equipment is offset by the costs of the fossil-fuel-using alternatives that are no longer needed. Generally, the study's range of cost estimates are not unduly optimistic.
  So the direct cost of 1% is modest in comparison to its benefits. As an insurance policy against the potential disaster of extreme climate change and the burdens of air pollution from fossil fuels puts on health, it seems cheap. Plus, the investment in low-carbon buildings, equipment and vehicles may well bring indirect economic benefits '' higher incomes and new technologies that increase GDP and employment.
  While this study confirms others in pointing out what must be done '' decarbonising the economy '' it does not explain how it could be done, nor when. There may be a feasible solution for 2050, but we need an idea of the feasible pathways that will get us there.
  Finding the tools to get us thereThe carbon price the study finds as necessary varies between US$30 and US$39 per tonne of CO2 by 2050, depending on the assumed price of fossil fuels. This price is calculated by the increase in costs from 1 extra tonne of reducing CO2 emissions across the board at the point where the target of halving emissions by 2050 is achieved at minimal cost.
  But this price is low compared to the carbon prices beyond US$100 from studies for similar targets using models that incorporate economic responses. Either carbon prices must be much higher, or lower carbon prices need to be combined with other incentives and tighter regulations.
  This engineering approach probably overestimates the effects of changes in relative prices, given how long it is taking to transform energy generation systems. And imposing carbon taxes or emissions trading schemes come with their own political or practical difficulties.
  The policies required for the ideal engineering solutions have to be articulated more fully to inform governments how they should proceed. The team's carbon price affects the prices of carbon-based fuels, yet there is no institutional detail. Implicitly there is a need to strengthen regulations and standards to reduce emissions from equipment and vehicles.
  Looking at a wider picture, if the transformation of the energy system were a component of a green growth policy, the engineering ''costs'' can be seen as investments in new technologies creating new industries and jobs. Indeed such a technological revolution could lead to higher growth in the long term.
  Sign in to Favourite2 CommentsTagsClimate change, Carbon emissions
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Former BBC radio host faces two further sex charges
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  Archived Version
  Source: The Daily Star >> Live News
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 06:51
  LONDON: One of Britain's best-known radio presenters from the 1970s and 1980s, who counted Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi among his fans, was charged with two further sex offences on Tuesday on top of 12 other sex charges.
  FormerBBC Radio 1 DJ Dave Lee Travis, 68, now stands accused of 13 counts of indecent assault and one sexual assault. The incidents are alleged to have occurred between 1977 and 2007 and involved women and girls, with the youngest aged 15.
  The two new charges against Travis, who has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing, relate to indecent assault on a woman aged over 16 between January 1992 and December 1993.
  Accused under his real name David Patrick Griffin, he is due to appear at Westminster Magistrates Court on Oct. 3. He previously appeared at the Old Bailey on Sept. 6 and was bailed to appear at an undecided court on Oct. 21.
  Travis, who was first arrested last November, is one of 14 ageing celebrities and show business figures to be accused of sex offences in an investigation sparked by revelations that the late BBC TV host Jimmy Savile was a prolific child sex abuser.
  Savile was one of Britain's biggest stars in the 1970s and 1980s but since his 2011 death, police have discovered he committed sex crimes on an unprecedented scale.
Celebrities tell followers to #GetCovered with Obamacare
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  Archived Version
  Source: The Daily Star >> Live News
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 06:50
  NEW YORK: While technical problems slowed the launch of new "Obamacare" websites to sell health insurance on Tuesday, the law's supporters on Twitter had an easier time welcoming the "Affordable Care Cat."
  Celebrities and community groups took to social media to promote President Barack Obama's Affordable Care Act, the 2010 law popularly known as Obamacare, that aims to provide health coverage to millions of uninsured Americans beginning next year.
  Planned Parenthood Teens, part of the network of women's health clinics in southern New England, used Twitter and Tumblr to tell young adults, "The Affordable Care Cat wants you to ... Enroll Meow".
  Singer John Legend and actresses Alyssa Milano and Kerry Washington were among entertainers reaching out to young adults to spark their interest in the new subsidized health plans. The administration aims to sign up at least 2.7 million young, healthy Americans in Obamacare's insurance plans in their first year to offset the costs of sicker beneficiaries.
  "If you want to make sense of the whole healthcare thing, or just want to #GetCovered, check out http://www.healthcare.gov #KnowYourOptions," the rock band Pearl Jam tweeted to its more than 2 million followers on Tuesday.
  Heavy web traffic and technical glitches stalled many of the new insurance exchange sites at their launch on Tuesday, suggesting a slow start to the six-month enrollment period. The administration went ahead with the launch despite a federal government shutdown precipitated by Republican efforts to delay the healthcare law's implementation.
  "F the shutdown. The Health Insurance Marketplace is now open in every state. Don't wait another day to #GetCovered!" singer Legend tweeted Tuesday morning to his 4.8 million followers.
  Obamacare opponents, led by Republican lawmakers, sent messages about the #trainwreck of a law they say was not ready to take effect.
  Along with the #GetCovered hashtag, the shutdown was also a popular Twitter topic on Tuesday, with the phrases #governmentshutdown and #DearCongress trending on the micro-blogging site.
  Comedy website Funny or Die also released a video of bicycle crashes and other mishaps to its nearly 7 million followers, with the message that everybody gets hurt sometimes, so get coverage. The Funny or Die production president, Mike Farah, had joined a White House meeting in July to discuss how to use pop culture to persuade young Americans to sign up.
  Comedian John Hodgman and actress Martha Plimpton converted their Twitter streams into Obamacare forums on Tuesday. Plimpton retweeted messages from her followers saying what they like about the law, while Hodgman's stream included young adults tweeting about health problems they had encountered.
  "Young people: sign up for healthcare. Take it from me--YOU ARE NOT IMMORTAL," Hodgman tweeted to his more than 900,000 followers.
  Some detractors of the law also adopted the #GetCovered hashtag to criticize Obamacare.
  "Because of #ACA, my private plan is ending 12/01/2014. Bronze plan is DOUBLE the premium. That's Affordable? Thanks. #GetCovered," a user with the handle @EricMerlau tweeted on Tuesday.
Exercise 'just as good as drugs' for treating heart failure and strokes
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  Archived Version
  Source: bertb news feed
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 06:49
  Exercise may be just as effective as drugs for treating common diseases such as heart failure and strokes, a major review of evidence has suggested.
  Researchers from three leading institutions say that exercise is a ''viable alternative'' to drug therapy in preventing deaths from coronary heart disease, heart failure, diabetes and stroke.
  The study raises the question of whether doctors might be unnecessarily prescribing drugs when a simple instruction to be more active might be more appropriate. The rates of drug prescription in the UK have risen dramatically over the past decade.
  However, only 14 per cent of UK adults exercise regularly and only one third of adults in England meet the recommended levels of physical activity.
  The authors said there was a ''blind spot'' in knowledge about the true benefits of exercise, but health charities and the NHS said that, while exercise had a ''vital role'' in improving health, people on medication for any condition should not stop taking drugs prescribed by their doctor.
  The study, published in the British Medical Journal, looked at the results of 305 randomised trials involving 340,000 people and compared the effectiveness of exercise versus drug treatments in reducing mortality in patients with the four conditions.
  They found no ''statistically significant'' difference between exercise and drug interventions and discovered that for stroke, exercise was actually more effective than drug treatment. However, for heart failure, diuretic drugs were more effective than exercise.
  The team, which included researchers from the London School of Economics, Harvard Medical School and Stanford University, said that the evidence-base for the benefits of exercise in reducing mortality from the conditions was small and more trials were urgently needed.
  ''The findings of our review suggest that exercise and many drug interventions are often potentially similar in terms of their mortality benefits; exercise interventions should therefore be considered as a viable alternative to, or alongside, drug therapy,'' they conclude, adding that ''[in] cases where drug options provide only modest benefit, patients deserve to understand the relative impact that physical activity might have on their condition.''
  Amy Thompson, senior cardiac nurse at the British Heart Foundation, said that more research was needed before firm conclusions were made.
  ''Medicines are an extremely important part of the treatment of many heart conditions and people on prescribed drugs should keep taking their vital meds,'' she said.
  ''If you have a heart condition or have been told you're at high risk of heart disease, talk to your doctor about the role that exercise can play in your treatment.''
  Dr Peter Coleman, deputy director of research at the Stroke Association said that exercise and physiotherapy were known to play ''a vital role in helping patients recover after stroke'' but agreed that exercise ''should not be considered an alternative for patients taking prescribed medication as advised by their GP''.
  An NHS England spokesman said: ''Regular exercise is important as part of a healthy lifestyle. At the same time, decisions on which drugs to prescribe are made by doctors based on the individual needs of their patients. It is not advisable for anybody to stop taking medication without speaking to their doctor.''
Report: Three Top Microsoft Investors Call For Bill Gates To Step Down From The Board - Business Insider
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  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 01:10
  AP
  NEW YORK/SEATTLE (Reuters) - Three of the top 20 investors in Microsoft Corp are lobbying the board to press for Bill Gates to step down as chairman of the software company he co-founded 38 years ago, according to people familiar with matter.While Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has been under pressure for years to improve the company's performance and share price, this appears to be the first time that major shareholders are taking aim at Gates, who remains one of the most respected and influential figures in technology.
  A representative for Microsoft declined to comment on Tuesday.
  There is no indication that Microsoft's board would heed the wishes of the three investors, who collectively hold more than 5 percent of the company's stock, according to the sources. They requested the identity of the investors be kept anonymous because the discussions are private.
  Gates owns about 4.5 percent of the $277 billion company and is its largest individual shareholder.
  The three investors are concerned that Gates' presence on the board effectively blocks the adoption of new strategies and would limit the power of a new chief executive to make substantial changes. In particular, they point to Gates' role on the special committee searching for Ballmer's successor.
  They are also worried that Gates - who spends most of his time on his philanthropic foundation - wields power out of proportion to his declining shareholding.
  Gates, who owned 49 percent of Microsoft before it went public in 1986, sells about 80 million Microsoft shares a year under a pre-set plan, which if continued would leave him with no financial stake in the company by 2018.
  Gates lowered his profile at Microsoft after he handed the CEO role to Ballmer in 2000, giving up his day-to-day work there in 2008 to focus on the $38 billion Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
  In August, Ballmer said he would retire within 12 months, amid pressure from activist fund manager ValueAct Capital Management.
  Microsoft is now looking for a new CEO, though its board has said Ballmer's strategy will go forward. He has focused on making devices, such as the Surface tablet and Xbox gaming console, and turning key software into services provided over the Internet. Some investors say that a new chief should not be bound by that strategy.
  Microsoft is still one of the world's most valuable technology companies, making a net profit of $22 billion last fiscal year. But its core Windows computing operating system, and to a lesser extent the Office software suite, are under pressure from the decline in personal computers as smartphones and tablets grow more popular.
  Shares of Microsoft have been essentially static for a decade, and the company has lost ground to Apple Inc and Google Inc in the move toward mobile computing.
  One of the sources said Gates was one of the technology industry's greatest pioneers, but the investors felt he was more effective as chief executive than as chairman.
  (Editing by Edwin Chan, Paritosh Bansal, Tiffany Wu and Richard Chang)
  This post originally appeared at Reuters. Copyright 2013.
CNN to Drop Piers Morgan |
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  Archived Version
  Wed, 02 Oct 2013 01:09
  FTV Live '' by Scott Jones
  Sources tell FTVLive that CNN Boss Jeff Zucker is ''actively looking for a replacement for Piers Morgan.''
  Morgan signed a one year extension to his contract and as time winds down, Zucker is looking for someone to takeover his time slot.
  Word is that Zucker really wants Katie Couric in that slot. Couric should be available soon as many expect this is the last year her talk show ''Katie'' will be on the air.
  But, CNN sources tell FTVLive that Zucker is not putting all his eggs in the Couric basket. ''He's looking at other people besides Katie,'' says our source.
  Zucker might have learned a lesson when he planned on putting Erin Burnett on CNN's new morning show. It blew up in his face, when Burnett balked at going to mornings.
  Word is that CNN could offer Morgan another role at the network, most likely something outside of prime time and likely in the late night hours.
  Morgan, his agent and CNN have been working on his new role or his exit strategy from the network.
  One group that will likely be happy that CNN is pulling the plug on Morgan in prime time'... the NRA.
  Morgan has been very critical of the gun laws in the United States for years and has made it one of his main topics on his show.
  Stay tuned'...
  Click here to follow FTVLive on Twitter
  http://ftvlive.com/todays-news/2013/9/30/cnn-to-drop-piers-morgan?dtoc
What A Government Shutdown Looks Like Online
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  Archived Version
  Source: Planet Money
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 22:18
  The government shut down today. This means that, along with many other important things, lots of government websites are down. The economic sources we at Planet Money look to every day now look like this:
  Export Import BankExport Import Bank
  Commerce DepartmentCommerce Department
  For more on what the shutdown means for econ nerds, see this WSJ piece trying to figure out whether the big monthly jobs report will still come out on Friday.
Andrew Shell took a stab at wrapping Concord in Adobe Air so it could function as a desktop outliner.
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  Archived Version
  Source: Dave Winer's linkblog feed
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 22:15
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White House will continue giving military aid to countries with child soldiers
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  Archived Version
  Source: End the Lie - Independent News
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 22:00
  Barack Obama (Reuters / Larry Downing)
  A presidential determination announced by the White House on Monday will waive restrictions against aiding regimes that employ child soldiers and allow the United States to provide six African and Arab nations with military assistance.
  The determination, authorized by President Barack Obama and addressed to Secretary of State John Kerry, says that it is in the national interest of the US to waive the application of a provision of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 with respect to Chad, South Sudan and Yemen.
  That provision, section 404(a), prohibits the US from providing assistance to or licensing the direct commercial sale of military equipment to the government of any country identified as having children under the age of 18 participating in armed operations.
  Additionally, the White House has determined that it is in the best interest of the US if that prohibition is also waived in part with respect to the Democratic Republican of the Congo in order for America to continue providing International Military Education and Training (IMET) and nonlethal excess defense articles. The determination will also let the DRC receive licenses for direct commercial sales of nonlethal defense articles. The White House also said it is waiving sections of the CSPA so that the US can allow Somalia to buy nonlethal defense articles and receive IMET and the continued assistance from America under the Peacekeeping Operations authority ''for logistical support and troop stipends.''
  Presidential Determination, courtesy of Think Progress:
  2013cspa.pd .Rel
  According to Think Progress writer Hayes Brown, the blanket waiver applied to Chad, South Sudan and Yemen will essentially allow those nations to receive as much military assistance as possible from the US, while Somalia and the DRC will only be granted lethal aid in support of peacekeeping missions currently underway in those countries.
  The six nations that will benefit from the waiver make up the majority of a list of ten countries determined by the Department of State to be using children soldiers. Those that have been determined to employ children but are not having the prohibition waived are Burma (Myanmar), the Central African Republic, Sudan and Rwanda.
  But despite the State Department's awareness of those activities, this isn't the first time the Obama administration has waived provisions of the CSPA '-- even with regards to those countries. Last October, Pres. Obama waived penalties against Libya, South Sudan and Yemen, and again provided a partial waiver for the DRC.
  This week's determination in fact marks the fourth consecutive year that Obama has lifted restrictions on a law only five years old.
  When the White House announced its determination last year, Jo Becker of Human Rights Watch told Foreign Policy's The Cable that ''While the administration has stepped up its attention to child soldiers, it continues to squander the leverage it has through the Child Soldiers Prevention Act.''
  ''By giving waivers to nearly all of the countries that have been affected by the law, the president is telling military allies that ending the use of child soldiers is not that important,'' said Becker, the director of the group's children's rights advocacy office.
  On Monday this week, however, Becker authored a statement on the Human Rights Watch website applauding the Obama administration's decision to scale back, in part, assistance to Somalia and the DRC '-- countries that were allowed to receive even greater aid from the US in years past.
  ''The US government announced today it will withhold military assistance from four countries '' the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Rwanda '' because of their recruitment and use of child soldiers. This is a big improvement from previous years when the Obama administration routinely allowed governments to receive US military assistance even while they had child soldiers in their forces,'' Becker wrote.
  According to Becker, the White House's stance to provide some countries with only some support may actually help remove those nations of children soldiers in the long run.
  ''Last year we saw how the law could really work. The Obama administration announced it would withhold foreign military financing and training from a Congolese battalion until Congo signed an agreement with the United Nations to end its use of child soldiers. The Congo had been dragging its feet on signing the plan for seven years, but signed the plan only five days after the US announcement,'' Becker wrote.
  ''This year, the administration will withhold at least some assistance from four countries, not just one. This will put real pressure on these countries to take some serious steps to end their use of child soldiers,'' she said. ''The Obama administration's attention to child soldiers is welcome, but there's still more it can do to bring an end to this horrible practice.''
  According to Becker, Yemen will be the recipient of more than $20 million foreign military financing from the US. In 2010, the Obama administration said it was necessary for the US to continue providing Yemen with assistance because cutting off funding ''would seriously jeopardize the Yemeni government's ability to conduct special operations and counterterrorism missions, and create a dangerous level of in the country and the region.''
  Source: RT
  Help Spread Alternative News
VIDEO-Did You Catch the Comical Similarity Between the SNL Skit That Mocked Obamacare and the President's Actual Speech Today? | Video | TheBlaze.com
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 21:50
  Did President Barack Obama take direction from ''Saturday Night Live'' in crafting today's speech about health care reform and the government shutdown? Probably not, but one of the similarities '-- a humorous example of life imitating art '' is too ironic not to point out.
  And it all involves the trendy tech giant Apple.
  As TheBlaze reported over the weekend, SNL viewers were treated to a laugh at Obamacare's expense when the show devoted an entire skit to mocking the confusion and complaints surrounding the health care law. Among gripes voiced by citizens in the comedic clip was one woman's rant about her broken iPhone.
  SNL's faux-President Barack Obama (left) and the real Obama (right) (SNL/AP)
  ''I already have a complaint about Obamacare,'' said the woman after she approached Obama's lectern. ''My iPhone 5s broke and I took it to the Genius Bar and they would not fix it. I mean what the hell is that?''
  The faux-Obama, clearly flustered, explained that the angry constituent was confusing Obamacare with AppleCare '-- the latter of which is a product protection program.
  ''Well, either way. Happened on your watch,'' she responded.
  Watch this portion of the skit at the 3:10 mark:
  Flash-forward to the very real debate over the government shutdown and Obama's comments about problems surrounding logging on to HealthCare.gov (we covered some of that this morning).
  ''Like every new law, every new product roll-out, there are going to be some glitches in the sign-up process along the way that we will fix,'' said Obama, who went on to work these problems out in the coming days.
  In an effort to provide an illustration, he invoked Apple and some of the problems that were recently encountered in the company's mobile operating system upgrade (iOS 7).
  ''Consider that just a couple of weeks ago Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system and within days they found a glitch, so they fixed it,'' he said. ''I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones or iPads or threatening to shut down the company if they didn't. That's not how we do things in America. We don't actively root for failure.''
  Watch Obama's real-life comments here:
  Life imitating art at its finest.
  ''
VIDEO - Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership - Q&A
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 20:52
  In Brussels, U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman talked about the U.S.-EU Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership at an event hosted by the German Marshall Fund. Questions and Answers. Also available in high definition
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Climate Change Rescue in U.S. Makes Steyer Converge With Paulson - Bloomberg
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 19:41
  By Edward RobinsonOctober 01, 2013 12:00 AM EDT"We need to get rid of this idea that going with the status quo is a smart economic thing," says billionaire Tom Steyer, who is funding an effort to make an economic case for addressing climate change. Photographer: Robyn Twomey/Bloomberg Markets
  Billionaire Tom Steyer recalls a dinner at the U.S. Treasury in Washington with two senior department officials and six money managers. It was August 2012, and the meal was part of an effort by the agency to keep up with what the financial community was worrying about. The diners discussed China's slowdown, Federal Reserve policy and other trends affecting the U.S. economy.
  Steyer says they were overlooking the biggest game changer of all. He told the group the country would have to overhaul its energy policy to address greenhouse gas emissions, Bloomberg Markets magazine will report in its November issue. His fellow guests were skeptical.
  More from the November issue ofBloomberg Markets:
  ''It's like I was saying that what's going to make a difference in the economy is unicorns,'' says Steyer, 56, the founder of Farallon Capital Management LLC, a San Francisco hedge-fund firm with about $20 billion in assets. He declines to name the other people present because the meeting was off the record but says they control a lot of money. ''I thought to myself: These guys need to be made aware of the risks here.''
  So in December, Steyer ended his 26-year career as a hedge-fund manager and set out to make an economic case for addressing climate change. He wasn't the only person from the financial world to have this idea: Henry Paulson, Treasury secretary from 2006 to 2009 and a longtime conservationist, and Michael Bloomberg, the outgoing mayor of New York, which had suffered the costliest hurricane damage in its history, were also plotting how to reframe the issue.
  Catalyst for ActionThe three men agreed to join forces to persuade investors, policy makers and the public that the consequences of unchecked carbon emissions would eventually blow away whatever short-term costs are involved in curbing the pollution.
  They're funding and co-chairing a study to calculate just how much economic risk American industries and communities face as a warming atmosphere generates more storms, droughts, floods and extreme heat. Robert Rubin, who served as Treasury secretary from 1995 to 1999, and former Secretary of State George Shultz have signed on as advisers.
  ''Climate change is every bit as big a risk to our economy as it is to the environment,'' says Paulson, 67, who was chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs (GS) Group Inc. before he went to Washington. ''With any complex issue, we can never know with certainty what the timing and the impact will be, but we know from the data that the climate risk is very real. If we quantify its economic impact, I think that will be a catalyst for action.''
  3-Million-Year HighThe costs of a warming atmosphere are already mounting as the planet undergoes a geophysical shift so profound it will alter coastlines, rainfall cycles and the productivity of arable land.
  Carbon dioxide, the principal gas heating up the atmosphere, hit a 3-million-year high in May, according to data collected at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration monitoring station on the island of Hawaii.
  The average global temperature has increased 0.8 degree Celsius (1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1850, according to the 2007 report of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The decade from 2001 to 2010 was the warmest on every continent since modern measurements began 160 years ago.
  While new data show that the Earth's temperature since 1998 has increased less than half the pace of the longer-term averages since 1951, human activity is the dominant cause of warming since the mid-20th century, according to the IPCC's Fifth Assessment released on Sept. 27. The organization said the summer melting of ice sheets and glaciers in Antarctica and Greenland was accelerating, which makes risks related to rising sea levels worse.
  Losing HarvestsWarmer seas and a jump in airborne water vapor are fueling more violent weather: Last year, 900 disasters, including Hurricane Sandy, which pummeled New York and New Jersey, caused insured losses worldwide of $65 billion, according to Munich Re, the German reinsurance giant. That's more than double the 30-year average of $29 billion.
  Farmers, meanwhile, are struggling to cope with drastic disturbances of weather patterns they've counted on for generations. In the Mekong River delta, the heart of Vietnam's agriculture and aquaculture, rice growers and shrimp farmers are losing harvests as precipitation becomes less predictable and a rising sea inundates their fields. The World Bank says Vietnam may lose more than 12 percent of its crop production to saltwater intrusion by 2040.
  As freakish weather traumatizes society and rings up economic losses, adaptation is now taking on as much urgency as prevention, former Vice President Al Gore says.
  Catastrophic Impacts''There are some changes that will continue to unfold no matter what we do,'' says Gore, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for alerting the world to the perils of global warming. ''We have an obligation to pay attention to people who live in areas where the sea level is already rising and to farmers who are suffering the impacts of droughts and erratic weather. But the truly catastrophic impacts can still be avoided.''
  As the climate story shifts into a new phase, the key players aren't just heads of state or the environmentalists and oil industry lobbyists who have long clashed on this issue. They're agronomists like Jerry Hatfield in Iowa, who's developing new soil management and tillage practices to help corn withstand drought.
  And entrepreneurs who see money to be made. This past summer, Christian Bonfils, co-founder of Nordic Bulk Carriers A/S, a Danish shipping operator, sent two vessels carrying iron ore from Murmansk, Russia, to Shanghai through the virtually ice-free Northern Sea Route along the coast of Siberia. The newly opened route shaved 18 days off the voyage and saved $600,000 in fuel, compared with a trip via the Suez Canal, he says.
  Lucrative Possibility''The last time a new shipping route opened that wasn't a canal must have been hundreds of years ago, so we thought this might be a very lucrative possibility,'' Bonfils says.
  Mining, shipping and energy interests may plow more than $100 billion into the melting Arctic region in the next decade, according to a report released in April by Lloyd's of London.
  In the face of these developments, Paulson and Steyer say they worry that policy makers and the public alike are beginning to accept the idea that climate change is inevitable. Their push comes four years after a UN climate change conference in Copenhagen ended in disarray and a measure to regulate greenhouse gases stalled in the U.S. Senate.
  The economic study they're funding, which they've dubbed Risky Business, will be published in late 2014. They say it's just one piece of a larger strategy to reboot the issue as a global priority.
  Huge Step BackwardPaulson is focusing his influence on China, a country that has fascinated him since he visited as an investment banker at the dawn of its economic boom in the early 1990s. Through the Paulson Institute, a research and advocacy group at the University of Chicago, he has advised Chinese political and business leaders on energy efficient cities, protecting wetlands and forests, and using more-sustainable transportation systems.
  Meanwhile, Steyer, who's donated $65 million to set up renewable energy research centers at Stanford and Yale universities, has raised almost $2 million for his political action committee. It's backing candidates across the country who oppose approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, which would ship crude from Canada's oil sands to refineries on the Gulf of Mexico. At a cocktail party fundraiser Steyer hosted at his San Francisco home in April, he told President Barack Obama the pipeline would be a huge step backward in the fight to curb greenhouse gas emissions. The president has yet to make a final decision on the project.
  Can't Run the RiskAnd Bloomberg, 71, whose 12-year mayoralty ends on Jan. 1, has championed a $20 billion plan to construct sea barriers, enhance wetlands and take other steps to safeguard New York from superstorms like Hurricane Sandy, which killed 117 people and caused $50 billion in total losses in the Caribbean and the U.S.
  ''Whether you believe climate change is real or not is beside the point,'' Bloomberg said on June 11, when he announced the plan. ''The bottom line is, we can't run the risk.'' Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, which is the parent of Bloomberg News.
  Steyer and company have their critics. James Valvo, director of policy at Americans for Prosperity, a Washington advocacy group that opposes regulating greenhouse gas emissions, says that while laying out the costs of global warming may be a fresh approach, the effort may be outdated as industries and governments focus their resources on adaptation rather than mitigation.
  Complicated Issue''They'll have to prove that it's more economical to fix climate change than to live with it,'' says Valvo, whose group is financed by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire brothers who head Koch Industries Inc., the commodities conglomerate based in Wichita, Kansas.
  The plan to measure economic impacts only in the U.S. is flawed, Valvo says, because climate change is caused by global emissions and affects every country on the planet. Demand for coal, the dirtiest power source, will jump about 17 percent worldwide over the next four years, according to the International Energy Agency, as China and India burn more of the fuel.
  ''Climate change is the most complicated issue there is because of the extraterritorial impacts,'' Valvo says. ''It's not like dealing with acid rain or smog.'' The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state agencies were able to address those two air-quality problems by regulating local pollution sources.
  Deep ConflictsNicholas Stern, chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science, counters that making a fiscal case for regulating carbon may be the best way to break through the resistance on the issue. That's imperative, he says, with scientists predicting the atmosphere may warm another 5 degrees by 2100.
  ''We are already seeing what can happen with a 0.8 degree increase in temperature, and we are looking at a high probability of a 3-degree to 5-degree increase, which would cause major changes in rivers, a collapse of the monsoon cycle in Asia, and trigger deep conflicts,'' says Stern, whose institute is supported by fund manager Jeremy Grantham. ''This is a staggering creation of risk, and an analysis of this risk is fundamental.''
  Reserved RepublicanStern, a former chief economist at the World Bank, led a review for the U.K. government in 2006 that concluded a 5-degree rise in temperature by the end of the century could totally choke off global economic growth. Paulson and Steyer each consulted Stern separately last spring as they formulated their thinking on the issue.
  Paulson and Steyer make an odd couple. The former cabinet official, who worked under President George W. Bush through the height of the financial crisis, is a reserved Republican. He returned to his family farm in Illinois after leaving government. Steyer is a gregarious Democratic Party fund-raiser who used to live with his family in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, the cradle of the counterculture in the 1960s.
  They have two things in common. One is Goldman Sachs. Steyer began his career at the investment bank in the early 1980s on the risk arbitrage desk run by Rubin, who went on to become the firm's co-chairman, from 1990 to 1992. The other is a conviction that Americans will get serious about climate change if they understand how much it's going to cost.
  Jobs Versus the EnvironmentIn June 2009, a bill that would have regulated carbon pollution and set up a national cap-and-trade system passed the House of Representatives and went to the Senate. After the American Petroleum Institute and coal industry lobbyists argued that such legislation would raise energy costs and spur unemployment, the Senate's Democratic leadership failed to bring the bill to a vote.
  ''The big boys made this about jobs versus the environment, and the environment loses that argument every time,'' Steyer says. ''We need to get rid of this idea that going the way we are, with the status quo, is a smart economic thing to do.'' That's Steyer's goal in funding a detailed risk analysis.
  ''The next time lobbyists go from Senate office to Senate office saying this is how many jobs you're going to lose in your state, we'll have an intellectual response: 'Bulls---. That's bulls---,''' he says.
  Apocalyptic FutureThe Risky Business project will be directed by a 10-member interdisciplinary team of economists and climatologists. It will divide the U.S. into eight regions and present findings for each part of the country as a range of probabilities, similar to an insurer's actuarial table.
  Rather than prescribing solutions, the researchers aim to provide state and municipal policy makers, business leaders and investors with a data-rich framework they can use to understand the climate risks they face.
  ''This cannot be a liberal narrative about an apocalyptic future,'' says Kate Gordon, director of the energy and climate program at Next Generation, a nonprofit Steyer co-founded in San Francisco. ''People have to feel they can do something about climate change that's grounded in what they know and where they live,'' says Gordon, who's helping to direct the study.
  The Risky Business analysis will draw on climate models used by the IPCC and the National Climate Assessment, a U.S. government effort that combines information from 13 agencies to create region-by-region predictions of the effects of global warming.
  Stressed-out CropsThe Great Plains, stretching from Montana to Texas, likely will experience more heat waves and more extreme swings in precipitation, for example, and droughts will put pressure on diminishing water supplies, according to the assessment.
  The U.S. Department of Agriculture forecasts that over the next few decades, these changes will reduce harvests and may force cattle producers to set up air-conditioned shelters for their herds, meaning the cost of staples such as meat and milk will probably go up.
  The kind of volatile weather anticipated in the National Climate Assessment is already being seen in the corn belt, agronomist Hatfield says. In 2010, Iowa endured its wettest summer on record and its warmest nighttime temperatures, he says. Corn went from pollination to maturity in 35 days instead of 50, which was bad news for farmers as stressed-out crops yielded a poor harvest. In 2012, Iowa was gripped by the worst drought since 1934 only to experience river flooding in March, topped off with a sudden dry spell.
  Capture Every Drop''This is outside our normal thinking in terms of what our climate looks like,'' says Hatfield, the laboratory director of the National Laboratory for Agriculture and the Environment in Ames, Iowa, which is part of the USDA.
  Hatfield is developing ways for farmers to adapt. An upbeat man with salt-and-pepper hair, he notes that in the broader discussion of climate, soil is often forgotten. But it's one element we can actually manage, he says. ''We're never going to make it rain, but what we can do is capture every drop of water and make it available to the plant.''
  Hatfield has urged farmers to stop plowing before they plant and instead blanket the soil with corn husks, leaves and other leftovers from last year's harvest. Microbes feed on this organic matter and enrich the crops with nutrients. Soil cultivated in this manner loses less moisture through evaporation.
  Hatfield has found corn plants can send roots 2.2 meters (7.2 feet) into the earth instead of 1.2 meters, tapping deeper groundwater. For every 2 to 3 percent increase of organic matter in the soil, its capacity to hold water jumps 25 percent, Hatfield says, and that boosts yields, even in dry years. About 20 percent of the growers in Iowa have adopted Hatfield's water-conscious method of tillage.
  Going to be SurprisedForecasting exactly how much of an impact the warming will have on the $300 billion-a-year U.S. agriculture industry is a challenging exercise, says John Reilly, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The problem is that most climate models are too generalized to predict how changes in rainfall will affect particular crops in specific areas or how rising temperatures will affect the spread of pests and insects.
  ''Everyone is trying to put together a quantification of what this all means, but our tools lack the precision we need,'' Reilly says. ''All the modeling we do tends to smooth out the fact that there's a high probability that we're going to be surprised.''
  Sense of HopelessnessThat's the problem the Risky Business study will have to solve if it's to be at all effective. Yet Paulson says he has a far bigger worry. ''The biggest problem we're dealing with is a sense of hopelessness,'' he says. ''But I'm saying we're the first generation with the knowledge and the ability to do something: We don't need new science, and we have great technology. We need the will to act now so we don't leave our children and grandchildren with a catastrophic burden.''
  Along with Steyer and Bloomberg, Paulson is betting that as climate change, once a distant possibility, becomes altogether real, our economic self-interest will be the thing that finally provokes a popular call for action. That will almost certainly have to be making carbon dioxide emissions expensive by either taxing or regulating the gas on a global basis, Steyer says.
  Yet it's striking that 53 years after the U.S. government's station on Hawaii first recorded an increase of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, we're still trying to figure out how to think about climate change, let alone solve it.
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  To contact the reporter on this story: Edward Robinson in London at edrobinson@bloomberg.net
  To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Serrill at mserrill@bloomberg.net
Louis Gerstner death: Son of ex-CEO of IBM chokes to death at restaurant | Mail Online
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 17:00
  By Snejana Farberov
  PUBLISHED: 10:51 EST, 21 August 2013 | UPDATED: 16:49 EST, 21 August 2013
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  Sad loss: Louis Gerstner III, 41, a philanthropist and the son of a former IBM CEO, passed away after choking on his food at a New York City diner
  The 41-year-old son of a former CEO of IBM has died after choking on a piece of steak at a New York City diner.
  Louis Gerstner III passed away last Wednesday while dining alone at Lenox Hill Grill Diner on the Upper East Side.
  According to the owner of the restaurant, the 41-year-old married father of two ordered the $24.99 George's steak - a 16oz cut of beef topped with grilled mushrooms and red onions - which he washed down with a couple of vodka shots.
  'He was fine. It was fine till the last moment,' John Politidis told the New York Post. 'He was just watching TV at the bar.'
  Grace Brugess, a spokeswoman for the New York City Medical Examiner's Office, said that he died at Lenox Hill Hospital. The results of Gerstner's autopsy are pending.
  Gerstner's father, Louis Gerstner Jr, 71, became the CEO of IBM in 1993. At the time, the technology giant was in dire straits, but Gerstner was able to transform the struggling company on the verge of bankruptcy into a profitable business.
  Last meal: Gerstner choked to death while eating a 16oz aged steak topped with mushrooms and red onions
  Dinnertime drama: Gerstner was eating at the counter at Lenox Hill Grill and watching TV when he fell back in his chair
  Under his stewardship, IBM's market value jumped from $29billion to $168billion over the course of nine years, Bloombergreported..
  Gerstner Jr retired as CEO in 2002, and later wrote a book about his experience turning around IBM's fortunes titled Who Says Elephants Can't Dance? Mr Gerstner's impressive resume also includes stints at American Express and RJR Nabisco.
  Louis Gerstner III graduated from Princeton University and Columbia Business School, and was hired by the private equity firm Forstmann Little.
  Loved ones: Gerstner is survived by his wife of 14 years, Mary Gervaise Lawhorne (center), and their two daughters, Grace and Olivia
  Visionary: Louis Gerstner III's father, Louis Gerstner Jr, is credited with turning around the fortunes of IBM and saving it from bankruptcy during his nine-year tenure as the tech giant's CEO
  Later in life, Mr Gerstner turned his attention to philanthropy. Most recently, the 41-year-old served as president of the Gerstner Family Foundation, providing education opportunities to underprivileged children, the New York Times reported.
  In 2011, the charity reported $94million in assets. The foundation pledged $2million to the Partnership for Inner-City Education, which pays tuition for low-income children to attend Catholic schools, and $4.6million to fund a study of ADHD.
  In an entry on the site Legacy.com, David Thomas Clephane, who described himself as Gerstner's childhood friend, wrote that the deceased was 'a prince of a man.'
  Louis Gerstner III is survived by his wife of 14 years, Mary Gervaise Lawhorne; their two daughters, Grace and Olivia; his sister, Dr Elizabeth Gerstner, a neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital; and their parents.
  Living the high life: Gerstner owned a $2million two-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side, not far from the Lenox Hill Grill
  Home base: The 41-year-old philanthropist is listed as the owner of a massive $12.7million colonial mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut, just steps away from the Long Island Sound
  Real estate websites show that Gerstner owned a lavish $2million two-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side, not far from the Lenox Hill Grill, featuring marble finishings and a health club on site.
  The 41-year-old philanthropist is also listed as the owner of a massive $12.7million colonial mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut.
  The imposing 5,884-square-foot brick house nestled in a buclic landscape boasts five bedrooms, at least two fireplaces and a manicured lawn just a few minutes away from the Long Island Sound.
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President Obama: Expect Months of 'Glitches'
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  Source: EconomicPolicyJournal.com
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 16:19
  File under: Understatement of the decade.''In the first week, first month, first three months, I would suspect that there will be glitches,'' Obama told NPR News' Steve Inskeep.
  "This is 50 states, a lot of people signing up for something. And there are going to be problems. And I guarantee you, there will be problems because we've got precedent. When Massachusetts, just one state, set this up, it took quite a long time. It took several months before everything was smoothed out," he said.
Presidential Proclamation -- National Substance Abuse Prevention Month, 2013
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  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 16:08
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  September 30, 2013
  NATIONAL SUBSTANCE ABUSE PREVENTION MONTH, 2013
  - - - - - - -
  BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
  A PROCLAMATION
  Today, too many Americans face futures limited by substance use, which threatens health, safety, and academic performance. Substance use disorders are linked to crime, motor vehicle crashes, and fatalities. This month, we recognize substance abuse prevention programs across our country, and we do our part to build healthier neighborhoods and brighter futures.
  This year's theme, "Learn it! Live it!" encourages Americans to come together, learn how substance use affects our communities, and live to set a positive example for our families, friends, and neighbors. My Administration's National Drug Control Strategy begins with a commitment to stop drug use before it begins. We have expanded evidence-based national and community-focused programs that work to prevent substance use where young people learn, grow, and play. We support substance-free workplaces, and we provide information on effective strategies to parents and communities nationwide. Through the Affordable Care Act, we expanded substance use disorder and mental health benefits for more than 60 million Americans. And beginning this month, those who have been locked out of health insurance can sign up for affordable coverage by visiting www.HealthCare.gov.
  Because adult role models play an integral role in preventing youth substance abuse, we must lead by example, adopt positive behaviors, and talk to our kids about living substance-free. This month, we stand with local coalitions and community organizations as they advance their drive to keep young people, families, and neighborhoods free from drug and alcohol abuse. I encourage parents, schools, health officials, law enforcement professionals, faith-based organizations, workplaces, the recovery community, and all Americans to join in this effort. If we take up the mantle of healthy lifestyles together, we can help our children avoid the devastating consequences of substance abuse and give them the chance to explore their limitless potential.
  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 October 2013 as National Substance Abuse Prevention Month. I call upon all Americans to engage in appropriate programs and activities to promote comprehensive substance abuse prevention efforts within their communities.
  IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of September, 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
Presidential Proclamation -- National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, 2013
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  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 16:08
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  September 30, 2013
  NATIONAL CYBERSECURITY AWARENESS MONTH, 2013
  - - - - - - -
  BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
  A PROCLAMATION
  In an increasingly interconnected world, many Americans rely on the Internet and digital tools every day -- from communicating with colleagues, friends, and family across the globe to banking and shopping without leaving our homes. Technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives, and protecting our digital infrastructure from cyber threats is one of our highest security priorities. This month, we expand public awareness about cybersecurity, and we recommit to enhancing the security and resilience of our Nation's infrastructure while maintaining an environment that encourages efficiency and innovation.
  Incredible advances in technology also bring increased risk of disruptive cyber incidents. My Administration is dedicated to building a system of protections in both the private and public sectors to keep out malicious forces while preserving the openness and extraordinary power of the Internet. Our national and economic security depend on a reliable digital infrastructure in the face of threats, which is why earlier this year, I signed an Executive Order and issued a Presidential Policy Directive to strengthen this critical infrastructure. In tandem, these actions will enable us to develop and implement a framework of best practices for cybersecurity, increase information sharing between the Federal Government and industry partners, and build collaborative partnerships.
  All of us have a role to play in safeguarding the networks we use in our daily lives. Understanding the risks associated with being online can help secure personal information and prevent identity theft and fraud. The Department of Homeland Security's "Stop.Think.Connect." campaign empowers digital citizens with the tools to make smart decisions as they navigate cyberspace. For more information on computing practices, visit www.DHS.gov/StopThinkConnect.
  Our digital infrastructure is a strategic national asset, and my Administration is committed to strengthening this vital resource. As we mark the 10th anniversary of Cybersecurity Awareness Month, let us welcome the great possibilities cyberspace provides and continue to invest in the security measures and innovation that will enable us to safely and fully realize those possibilities.
  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 October 2013 as National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. I call upon the people of the United States to recognize the importance of cybersecurity and to observe this month with activities, events, and training that will enhance our national security and resilience.
  IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of September, 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
Executive Order -- Continuance of Certain Federal Advisory Committees
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  Archived Version
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  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 16:07
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  September 30, 2013
  EXECUTIVE ORDER
  - - - - - - -
  CONTINUANCE OF CERTAIN FEDERAL ADVISORY COMMITTEES
  By the authority vested in me as President, by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and consistent with the provisions of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as amended (5 U.S.C. App.), it is hereby ordered as follows:
  Section 1. Each advisory committee listed below is continued until September 30, 2015.
  (a) Committee for the Preservation of the White House; Executive Order 11145, as amended (Department of the Interior).
  (b) President's Commission on White House Fellowships; Executive Order 11183, as amended (Office of Personnel Management).
  (c) President's Committee on the National Medal of Science; Executive Order 11287, as amended (National Science Foundation).
  (d) Federal Advisory Council on Occupational Safety and Health; Executive Order 11612, as amended (Department of Labor).
  (e) President's Export Council; Executive Order 12131, as amended (Department of Commerce).
  (f) President's Committee on the International Labor Organization; Executive Order 12216, as amended (Department of Labor).
  (g) President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities; Executive Order 12367, as amended (National Endowment for the Arts).
  (h) President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee; Executive Order 12382, as amended (Department of Homeland Security).
  (i) National Industrial Security Program Policy Advisory Committee; Executive Order 12829, as amended (National Archives and Records Administration).
  (j) Trade and Environment Policy Advisory Committee; Executive Order 12905, as amended (Office of the United States Trade Representative).
  (k) President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities; Executive Order 12994, as amended (Department of Health and Human Services).
  (l) National Infrastructure Advisory Council; Executive Order 13231, as amended (Department of Homeland Security).
  (m) President's Council on Fitness, Sports, and Nutrition; Executive Order 13265, as amended (Department of Health and Human Services).
  (n) President's Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships; Executive Order 13498, re-established by Executive Order 13569, and continued by Executive Order 13640 (Department of Health and Human Services).
  (o) President's Advisory Commission on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders; Executive Order 13515, as amended (Department of Education).
  (p) Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues; Executive Order 13521 (Department of Health and Human Services).
  (q) National Council on Federal Labor-Management Relations; Executive Order 13522 (Office of Personnel Management).
  (r) President's Board of Advisors on Historically Black Colleges and Universities; Executive Order 13532, as amended (Department of Education).
  (s) President's Management Advisory Board; Executive Order 13538 (General Services Administration).
  (t) President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; Executive Order 13539, as amended (Department of Energy).
  (u) Interagency Task Force on Veterans Small Business Development; Executive Order 13540 (Small Business Administration).
  (v) Advisory Group on Prevention, Health Promotion, and Integrative and Public Health; Executive Order 13544, re-established by Executive Order 13631 (Department of Health and Human Services).
  (w) State, Local, Tribal, and Private Sector (SLTPS) Policy Advisory Committee; Executive Order 13549, as amended (National Archives and Records Administration).
  (x) President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics; Executive Order 13555, re-established by Executive Order 13634 (Department of Education).
  (y) President's Global Development Council; Executive Order 13600 (United States Agency for International Development).
  (z) President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans; Executive Order 13621 (Department of Education).
  Sec. 2. Notwithstanding the provisions of any other Executive Order, the functions of the President under the Federal Advisory Committee Act that are applicable to the committees listed in section 1 of this order shall be performed by the head of the department or agency designated after each committee, in accordance with the regulations, guidelines, and procedures established by the Administrator of General Services.
  Sec. 3. Sections 1 and 2 of Executive Order 13585 of September 30, 2011, and sections 1, 2, and 4 of Executive Order 13591 of November 23, 2011, are superseded by sections 1 and 2 of this order.
  Sec. 4. Executive Order 13538 of April 19, 2010, is amended in section 4(c) by striking "The Executive Director shall serve as the Designated Federal Officer in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as amended (5 U.S.C. App.) (FACA)" and inserting in lieu thereof "The PMAB shall also have a Designated Federal Officer (DFO) in accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as amended (5 U.S.C. App.) (FACA). The Executive Director may serve as the DFO".
  Sec. 5. Executive Order 13043 of April 16, 1997, is amended by striking section 4 and renumbering the subsequent sections appropriately.
  Sec. 6. Executive Order 13231 of October 16, 2001, as amended, is further amended by striking section 3, except subsection (c) thereof, and inserting immediately preceding subsection (c), the following:
  "Sec. 3. The National Infrastructure Advisory Council. The National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC), established on October 16, 2001, shall provide the President, through the Secretary of Homeland Security, with advice on the security and resilience of the critical infrastructure sectors and their functional systems, physical assets, and cyber networks.
  "(a) Membership. The NIAC shall be composed of not more than 30 members appointed by the President, taking appropriate account of the benefits of having members:
  "(i) from the private sector, including individuals with experience in banking and finance, transportation, energy, water, communications, health care services, food and agriculture, government facilities, emergency services organizations, institutions of higher education, environmental and climate resilience, and State, local, and tribal governments;
  "(ii) with senior executive leadership responsibilities for the availability and reliability, including security and resilience, of critical infrastructure sectors;
  "(iii) with expertise relevant to the functions of the NIAC; and
  "(iv) with experience equivalent to that of a chief executive of an organization.
  "Unless otherwise determined by the President, no full-time officer or employee of the executive branch shall be appointed to serve as a member of the NIAC. The President shall designate from among the members of the NIAC a Chair and a Vice Chair, who shall perform the functions of the Chair if the Chair is absent or disabled, or in the instance of a vacancy in the Chair.
  "(b) Functions of the NIAC. The NIAC shall meet periodically to:
  "(i) enhance the partnership of the public and private sectors in securing and enhancing the security and resilience of critical infrastructure and their supporting functional systems, physical assets, and cyber networks, and provide reports on this issue to the President, through the Secretary of Homeland Security, as appropriate;
  "(ii) propose and develop ways to encourage private industry to perform periodic risk assessments and implement risk-reduction programs;
  "(iii) monitor the development and operations of critical infrastructure sector coordinating councils and their information-sharing mechanisms and provide recommendations to the President, through the Secretary of Homeland Security, on how these organizations can best foster improved cooperation among the sectors, the Department of Homeland Security, and other Federal Government entities;
  "(iv) report to the President through the Secretary of Homeland Security, who shall ensure appropriate coordination with the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy, and the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs under the terms of this order; and
  "(v) advise sector-specific agencies with critical infrastructure responsibilities to include issues pertaining to sector and government coordinating councils and their information sharing mechanisms.
  "In implementing this order, the NIAC shall not advise or otherwise act on matters pertaining to National Security and Emergency Preparedness (NS/EP) Communications and, with respect to any matters to which the NIAC is authorized by this order to provide advice or otherwise act on that may depend on or affect NS/EP Communications, shall coordinate with the National Security and Telecommunications Advisory Committee established by Executive Order 12382 of September 13, 1982, as amended.".
  Sec. 7. Executive Order 13600 of February 9, 2012, is amended in section 3(b) by striking the "and" immediately preceding "the Chief Executive Officer of the Millennium
  Challenge Corporation" and by adding ", the United States Trade Representative, and the Chief Executive Officer of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation" immediately preceding "shall serve as non-voting members". Executive Order 13600 is further amended in section 5(c) by adding "administrative" immediately preceding "matters and activities pertaining".
  Sec. 8. Section 3(b) of Executive Order 13515 of October 14, 2009, as amended, is further amended by inserting in the list of agency members "the General Services Administration" and "the National Aeronautics and Space Administration" after "the Small Business Administration", and redesignating the subsections of section 3(b) as appropriate. Subsection 3(b) is further amended by inserting at the end the following sentence:
  "The Initiative is encouraged to invite other affected agencies, such as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Corporation for National and Community Service, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission to attend meetings and participate in the Initiative as appropriate.".
  Sec. 9. This order shall be effective September 30, 2013.
  BARACK OBAMA
  THE WHITE HOUSE,September 30, 2013.
Presidential Proclamation -- National Energy Action Month, 2013
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 16:07
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  September 30, 2013
  NATIONAL ENERGY ACTION MONTH, 2013
  - - - - - - -
  BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
  A PROCLAMATION
  To meet the challenges of the 21st century, we must work to ensure a clean, safe, and sustainable energy future. This National Energy Action Month, we can build on the progress we have made by recommitting to increasing our energy security, strengthening our economy, combatting climate change, and improving the environment.
  As a Nation, we are taking control of our energy future, and my Administration remains committed to our long-term energy security. Today, we produce more oil than we have in 15 years and import less oil than we have in 20 years. Since I took office, we have more than doubled the amount of renewable electricity we generate from wind and quintupled the amount we generate from solar energy. We are building our first new nuclear power plants in decades, and we produce more natural gas than any other country. And we have done this while creating hundreds of thousands of good jobs and sending less carbon pollution into the environment than we have in nearly two decades.
  While we have made significant progress, more work remains. The continuing cycle of spiking gasoline prices hurts American families and our businesses' bottom lines, and it reflects our economy's outsized demand for oil. To transition to a secure energy future, we must increase our production of clean energy, minimize waste and maximize efficiency, further reduce our oil imports, eliminate inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, and continue to develop more energy sources here at home. Because meeting global energy challenges requires international action, we must also engage with partners around the world to reduce carbon pollution, and we must build global markets for new advanced technologies. If we take these actions, we can curb climate change, save money for consumers, and use our resources to create good American jobs.
  A clean energy economy has the potential to fuel economic growth for decades to come. But we must invest in the technologies of the future and fund breakthrough research to make these technologies better and cheaper. With the American spirit of innovation powering our progress, our Nation can lead the world in creating green jobs and technologies that are vital to both a clean energy future and the fight against climate change.
  Years from now, our children may wonder if we did all we could to leave a safe, clean, and stable world for them to inherit. If we keep our eyes on the long arc of our future and commit to doing what this moment demands, the answer will be yes.
  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 October 2013 as National Energy Action Month. I call upon the citizens of the United States to recognize this month by working together to achieve greater energy security, a more robust economy, and a healthier environment for our children.
  IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of September, 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
Presidential Proclamation -- National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, 2013
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 16:07
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  September 30, 2013
  NATIONAL BREAST CANCER AWARENESS MONTH, 2013
  - - - - - - -
  BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
  A PROCLAMATION
  Every October, America stands in solidarity with those battling breast cancer and those at risk for breast cancer. This disease touches every corner of the United States -- in 2013 alone, more than 230,000 women and over 2,000 men will be diagnosed with breast cancer, and tens of thousands will die from it. As we observe National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we salute the women and men who dedicate themselves to prevention, detection, and treatment; we show our support for every individual and every family struggling with breast cancer; and we pause to remember those we have lost.
  Over the past two decades, our Nation has made strides in the fight against breast cancer. While we still do not know the exact causes, we do know that some women are at an increased risk of developing this disease, including those who have a personal or family history, who are older, or who are overweight or obese after menopause. Because early detection can decrease the risk of death from breast cancer, I encourage women to speak with their doctors about recommended mammograms and clinical breast exams. Whether you are looking for information about breast cancer prevention, treatment of metastatic breast cancer, or information about the latest research, all Americans can learn more by visiting www.Cancer.gov.
  Last year, my Administration invested over half a billion dollars in breast cancer research. We proudly support studies aimed at discovering better screening methods, developing more effective treatments, and improving our understanding of this disease.
  And because everyone should have access to preventive services, the Affordable Care Act requires most health insurance plans to fully cover recommended breast cancer screenings. This law also prohibits insurers from setting lifetime dollar limits on coverage, or from dropping coverage because of errors on paperwork. Beginning in 2014, companies will no longer be able to put dollar limits on annual benefits or deny insurance because of pre-existing conditions, including breast cancer. And starting October 1, Americans can visit www.HealthCare.gov to shop for affordable coverage in the new Health Insurance Marketplace.
  This month, we reaffirm our commitment to reduce the burden of breast cancer. We join hands with our mothers, daughters, sisters, and friends. We renew our support for increased access to screenings and care, and we advance the innovative research that will usher in a new era in the fight against breast cancer.
  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 October 2013 as National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I encourage citizens, government agencies, private businesses, nonprofit organizations, and all other interested groups to join in activities that will increase awareness of what Americans can do to prevent breast cancer.
  IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of September, 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
More mesh networking internets in suitcase blah blah. Give me the damn darknet already: John McAfee wants to NSA-proof the internet with a device called Decentral
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Engadget RSS Feed
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 16:01
  The name McAfee is synonymous with the ubiquitous anti-virus software, but in recent years, John McAfee has kept a relatively low profile in the tech industry, preferring instead to take up leisurely pursuits like yoga and evading Belizean police. Until now. Last Saturday, McAfee took the stage at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center to announce his intention to design and manufacture Decentral, a pocket-sized device priced at around $100 that would, in theory, make it difficult for governmental agencies to snoop on your online activities by creating so-called floating networks. According to the San Jose Mercury News, McAfee told an eclectic crowd of engineers and artists, "There will be no way [for the government] to tell who you are or where you are." A gadget like Decentral does sound like a bit of a timely pipe dream, and McAfee admits that the prototype has yet to be produced. But, hey, if you can dream it, then maybe, just maybe, McAfee can do it.
Presidential Proclamation -- National Arts and Humanities Month, 2013
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 16:00
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  September 30, 2013
  NATIONAL ARTS AND HUMANITIES MONTH, 2013
  - - - - - - -
  BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
  A PROCLAMATION
  Throughout our history, America has advanced not only because of our people's will or our leaders' vision, but also because of paintings and poems, stories and songs, dramas and dances. These works open our minds and nourish our souls, helping us understand what it means to be human and what it means to be American. During National Arts and Humanities Month, we celebrate the rich heritage of arts and humanities that has long been at the core of our country's story.
  Our history is a testament to the boundless capacity of the arts and humanities to shape our views of democracy, freedom, and tolerance. Each of us knows what it is like to have our beliefs changed by a writer's perspective, our understanding deepened by a historian's insight, or our waning spirit lifted by a singer's voice. These are some of the most striking and memorable moments in our lives, and they reflect lasting truths -- that the arts and humanities speak to everyone and that in the great arsenal of progress, the human imagination is our most powerful tool.
  Ensuring our children and our grandchildren can share these same experiences and hone their own talents is essential to our Nation's future. Somewhere in America, the next great author is wrestling with a sentence in her first short story, and the next great artist is doodling in the pages of his notebook. We need these young people to succeed as much as we need our next generation of engineers and scientists to succeed. And that is why my Administration remains dedicated to strengthening initiatives that not only provide young people with the nurturing that will help their talents grow, but also the skills to think critically and creatively throughout their lives.
  This month, we pay tribute to the indelible ways the arts and humanities have shaped our Union. Let us encourage future generations to carry this tradition forward. And as we do so, let us celebrate the power of artistic expression to bridge our differences and reveal our common heritage.
  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 October 2013 as National Arts and Humanities Month. I call upon the people of the United States to join together in observing this month with appropriate ceremonies, activities, and programs to celebrate the arts and the humanities in America.
  IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of September, 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
Presidential Proclamation -- National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, 2013
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 16:00
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  September 30, 2013
  NATIONAL DOMESTIC VIOLENCE AWARENESS MONTH, 2013
  - - - - - - -
  BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
  A PROCLAMATION
  Since the passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) nearly 20 years ago, our Nation's response to domestic violence has greatly improved. What was too often seen as a private matter best hidden behind closed doors is now an established issue of national concern. We have changed our laws, transformed our culture, and improved support services for survivors. We have seen a significant drop in domestic violence homicides and improved training for police, prosecutors, and advocates. Yet we must do more to provide protection and justice for survivors and to prevent violence from occurring. During National Domestic Violence Awareness Month, we stand with domestic abuse survivors, celebrate our Nation's progress in combatting these despicable crimes, and resolve to carry on until domestic violence is no more.
  Although we have made substantial progress in reducing domestic violence, one in four women and one in seven men in the United States still suffer serious physical violence at the hands of an intimate partner at least once during their lifetimes. Every day, three women lose their lives in this country as a result of domestic violence. Millions of Americans live in daily, silent fear within their own homes.
  My Administration remains devoted to halting this devastating violence. To lead by example, last year I directed Federal agencies to develop policies to assist victims of domestic violence in the Federal workforce. Earlier this year, Vice President Biden announced new grants for initiatives that aim to reduce domestic violence homicides across our country.
  This past spring, I signed the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act. The Act provides law enforcement with better resources to investigate cases of rape, gives colleges more tools to educate students about dating violence and sexual assault, and empowers tribal courts to prosecute those who commit domestic violence on tribal lands, regardless of whether the aggressor is a member of the tribe. In addition, VAWA will continue to allow relief for immigrant victims of domestic violence, and LGBT victims will receive care and assistance.
  Thanks to the landmark Affordable Care Act, insurance companies will be prohibited from denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions, and new health plans must cover domestic violence screening and counseling with no copayments or cost sharing. Millions will have the chance to sign up for affordable care through the new Health Insurance Marketplace by visiting www.HealthCare.gov beginning October 1.
  Ending violence in the home is a national imperative that requires vigilance and dedication from every sector of our society. We must continue to stand alongside advocates, victim service providers, law enforcement, and our criminal justicesystem as they hold offenders accountable and provide care and support to survivors. But our efforts must extend beyond the criminal justice system to include housing and economic advocacy for survivors. We must work with young people to stop violence before it starts. We must also reach out to friends and loved ones who have suffered from domestic violence, and we must tell them they are not alone. I encourage victims, their loved ones, and concerned citizens to learn more by calling the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-SAFE, or by visiting www.TheHotline.org.
  This October, let us honor National Domestic Violence Awareness Month by promoting peace in our own families, homes, and communities. Let us renew our commitment to end domestic violence -- in every city, every town, and every corner of America.
  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 October 2013 as National Domestic Violence
  Awareness Month. I call on all Americans to speak out against domestic violence and support local efforts to assist victims of these crimes in finding the help and healing they need.
  IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of September, 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
LA Times - Sandy Hook 911 debate pits privacy against public's right to know
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My uncle works for the D.O.D. Not sure what to think about this, please just give it the time of day. : conspiracy
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 15:52
  So, my uncle works for the Department of Defense, I'm not sure what his job title is or exactly what he does. He has been with the D.O.D. for a while now (over 15 years) and was also a high ranked officer in the Marines for years before he started with the D.O.D. Anyways, he came in town from Atlanta this weekend to visit and was acting extremely odd the whole time he was around my family. The whole time he was home he seemed to be preoccupied, not very talkative, and just acting strange in general. Last night before he went back to Atlanta he sat down with my grandparents, cousins and other uncles and said some offbeat shit that really made me feel uncomfortable and scared. He told us all he needed to talk to us, (I was thinking he was going to tell us he was getting remarried because he has been getting pretty serious with a woman he has been dating.) He told us that within the next month there is a high chance that things are going to "get ugly" on the east coast (where we all live). He said he wasn't sure what is happening or what is going to happen. He said that within the next 2-3 weeks he is being relocated to Virginia Beach from Atlanta because it is possible that they will need some help in that area. I asked him if they thought we were going to be attacked or if it was an economic issue or what? He told me that he truly did not know, but the people in his "department" had been warned of "citizen uprisings" and possible "domestic and/or non-domestic disputes" and that many of the D.O.D. officials with high levels military experience were being moved to port areas along the east coast. I was asking him every question I could think of and he really had no answers for me and seemed to be in the dark besides what I have already shared with you. I also asked him that if this were an event of any significance then what type of plan should we have and where should we go? He said, that if any significant attack or uprising really did happen that everything would be locked down, but with all the emphasis that the D.O.D. is putting on the east coast the he would definetly head West if anything were to happen and travel was allowed. I am normally a pretty skeptical person and do not believe everything I hear without some sort of proof or documentation to back it up, but this is seriously freaking me out as it came from a family members mouth and he was serious as a heart attack when he told my family. Does anyone have any idea about what this could be over? (the possibilities are endless, i know) I apoligize in advance for not having any sort of proof to back this up, b/c I know most people in this subreddit are skeptics just as I am. I really do not want to put my uncle at any risk for anything he has said.. Plus I am not sure how to prove a conversation. If anyone has any possible information or insight on what this could be over, please share. Or if anyone has seen or heard anything out of the norm on the east coast in the past month please share. I am freaking the fuck out over this and trying to make some sense of it. I realize that this could be some sort of preparedness drill, and that nothing may happen at all and that is what I am hoping, but any info is appreciated.
I AM The Documentary | Official Site
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  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 15:26
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REPORTER THREATENED OVER AEGEAN OIL SMUGGLING REPORT | Reports from the Edge of Borderline Democracy
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 15:25
  UNFOLLOW magazine reporter receives threats by man self-identified as oil magnate Dimitris Melissanidis of Aegean Oil, after publishing a report that implicates the company in an oil smuggling scandal.
  On January 31st, the latest -14th- issue of UNFOLLOW magazine hit the newsstands all over Greece. Among other reports, we published one on oil smuggling in Greece '' specifically the practice of oil carrier companies to buy oil at reduced-tax rates and channel it back into the market at the normal price.
  Dimitris Melissanidis
  We also published two reports by the 7th Piraeus Customs Authority, with detailed findings on how two major oil companies engaged in this practice. One is ELPE (Hellenic Petroleum), where the principal shareholders are the Greek state and Spiros Latsis. The other is Aegean Oil, which is run by Dimitris Melissanidis '' albeit without an official position, though his brother, Iakovos, holds a post on the board. Finally, in our report we pointed out that although Aegean Oil officials have been charged with smuggling and forgery, their trial has been postponed four times already, while the state attorneys were absent on all four occasions.
  Aegean Oil is truly colossal. Among other things, it supplies the American navy, and one of its associated companies trades in the New York stock exchange. A new trial regarding the smuggling and forgery charges is set for February 12th. Media attention in Greece has been, unsurprisingly, non-existent.
  ELPE is set to be fully privatized soon, according to the privatization program imposed on Greece by the troika. The front-runner to acquire state owned shares is Spiros Latsis. At the same time, Dimitris Melissanidis is poised to buy the also soon to be privatized OPAP, the state company that holds a monopoly on gambling.
  On the day following the publication of UNFOLLOW 14, February 1st, there was a phone call to the office of UNFOLLOW. The number was +30 210 4586000, the caller asked for reporter Lefteris Charalampopoulos, who has written the report, and identified himself as Dimitris Melissanidis.
  Our reporter talked to the caller on speaker, with two other UNFOLLOW reporters also present. The man self-identified as Dimitris Melissanidis threatened the magazine with legal action, and our reporter replied that he should of course proceed as he sees fit.
  Following that, despite our reporter's best efforts to converse in a courteous manner, the caller threatened his life repeatedly. Of the 20 minute phonecall, about ten minutes were spent on threats to our reporter.
  Part of what was said by the man self-identified as Dimitris Melissanidis, which was taken down by our reporter, follows:
  ''I'll have you killed, you, your wife, your children, everything you've got''
  ''I could have you killed without having warned you. But I am a man and I'm gonna have you blown up in your sleep. I'll have you killed, you, your wife, your children, everything you've got''.
  When our reporter told the caller that he would alert the authorities, he replied:
  ''Screw you and the authorities. I don't understand anything, I am Melissanidis. You will not be able to sleep. You will not be able to go out, I'll be your nightmare. Fear of me will haunt you. They will come to your house and blow you up in your sleep. I am used to talking to big journalists. I looked you up and I will tear you down''.
  When our reporter asked if by ''big journalists'' the caller meant those who play his game, the caller replied:
  ''I want you to tell me that with a gun to your head''.
  An online search for the phone number that called our office returned:
  AEGEAN OIL SA (Melissanidis Dimitrios) Oil Industry and Supply '' Main Office.
  According to phone company listings, the number is also registered with a number of associated companies, such as AEGEAN AGENCY, AEGEAN BUNKERING SERVICES, AEGEAN MARINE PETROLEUM, AEGEAN OIL, and AEGEAN SHIPPING MANAGEMENT '' all based at the same address, 10 Akti Kondyli, Pireaus, 18545.
  UNFOLLOW magazine issued a Press release last night, where points out the following:
  ''First, UNFOLLOW will not be shaken off its course.
  Second, after the unprecedented threats on our reporter's life, we declare that for anything that might from now on endanger the life of our reporter, any of our other reporters, or their families, we will hold the caller self-identified as Dimitris Melissanidis responsible.
  Third, we call on the authorities to do their duty.
  Fourth, we ask for the support of any journalist with a consciense.
  Fifth, we call on Press Unions to take a public position on the event, and do what is necessary, so that journalism in Greece is not stifled.''
  * * *
  UPDATE (5.2.2013): Late last night ''February 4th- UNFOLLOW magazine received a phone call and then an email from Failos Kranidiotis, attorney for Mr Melissanidis. In his email, which UNFOLLOW published on its website today, he states:
  ''As ordered by my client, Mr Dimitris Melissanidis, I declare the following:
  After the severely defamatory article published in your issue of February 2013, you also published on your magazine's website, on Saturday February 2nd 2013, at 22.15, an article titled 'Threats against UNFOLLOW from man self-identified as D. Mellissanidis'.
  Mr D. Melissanidis declares to you that he has never contacted any of your reporters or any of your collaborators.
  You are required to publish his response on your website and to delete the offensive and defamatory comments that follow your post.
  Beyond that, he reserves all legal rights.
  Failos M. Kranidiotis
  Attorney''
  UNFOLLOW issued the following brief statement in response: ''We have received with interest Mr Kranidiotis's letter and we anxiously await his actions, which will ''according to what he maintains'' point to whoever impersonated his client using a phone number registered to Aegean Oil.''
  Mr Kranidiotis, as well as being Mr Melissanidis's attorney, is a longtime friend of the Prime Minister of Greece Antonis Samaras, whom he also serves as an unofficial albeit close advisor. He is also a frequent commenter on public affairs, whose articles on populist right-wing newspapers and websites are notorious for their unashamed nationalism and xenophobia. One of the harshest proponents of authoritarian government, Mr Kranidiotis has gone as far as suggesting in an article that the army should intervene to maintain ''order'' in Greece.
  * * *
  UPDATE (10.2.2013): The threats on the life of Lefteris Charalampopoulos, reporter for UNFOLLOW magazine were discussed in the plenary session of the Greek Parliament, brought up by Opposition spokesman Dimitris Papadimoulis, and answered in true government form by New Democracy spokesman Makis Voridis. Here is a video of the discussion, subtitled in English:
  SYRIZA (Coalition of the Radical Left, the Main Opposition party) was evidently alarmed by the alleged threats on reporter Lefteris Charalampopoulos's life, which were, according to UNFOLLOW magazine, made by Aegean Oil magnate Dimitris Melissanidis. However, what the Opposition seems to also have found worrisome in a larger sense is that through the publicity generated by the magazine's public announcement of the threats, it was revealed that Mr Melissanidis's attorney is Mr Failos Kranidiotis, an acute public advocate of authoritarian government, and a close friend and unofficial adviser to the Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras. Furthermore, what is alarming according to SYRIZA is that while Mr Kranidiotis apparently has the Prime Minister's ear, his client Dimitris Melissanidis is poised to buy the soon to be privatized OPAP '' the state company that holds a virtual monopoly on gambling.
  Nea Dimokratia, the right wing party that heads Greece's current coalition government shrugged off SYRIZA's questions in a Parliament plenary session, on February 6th 2013, maintaining that there was no political issue in the threats allegedly made by one private citizen against another, and it chastised SYRIZA for needlessly involving the Prime Minister and bothering Parliament.
  * * *
  UPDATE (12.2.2013): UNFOLLOW magazine announced yesterday evening that reporter Lefteris Charalampopoulos has filed a law suit against Mr Dimitris Melissanidis.
  In a parallel development, the trial of Aegean Oil for smuggling and forgery, which was scheduled to take place today (12.2.2013) after having been postponed four times already, was again postponed, reportedly due to time constraints. A new trial date was fixed for March 1st.
  * * *
  UPDATE (12.3.2013): The trial of Aegean Oil has been postponed again on two occasions '' once on March 1st for March 11th, and once again yesterday for April 12th.
  Like this:LikeLoading...
GREECE EXCLUSIVE: New poll evidence explains Samaras attack on neo-Nazis | The Slog. 3-D bollocks deconstruction
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 15:04
  Secret voter survey prior to murder of popular Leftist Pavlos Fissas showed Samaras vote split and Tsipras a shoe-in for Prime MinisterGolden Dawn'....yobs, but in this case, victims
  The weird thing about aiming to tell the truth is that you can end up defending some truly awful people. But just as not all disabled people are paragons of virtue, so too not all gargoyles are guilty or ghastly all the time. Hitler, for example, was unfailingly polite to women and always stood up when they came into his presence. His military service in the First World War was exemplary when it came to courage. Having fathered a child by a French woman during a leave from action, after the War and throughout his career he both protected and subsidised the pair.
  Golden Dawn members, in my view, tend to wear out carpets very quickly on account of the knuckle marks they leave when perambulating. But as C P Snow remarked, ''Facts are sacred''. Today I have been sent some poll data that very clearly point the fickle finger of guilt at Antonikis Samaras in the matter of the State neutering of Golden Dawn. I doubt very much if you will see this evidence in the Guardian, but either way it remains prima facie evidence and thus worth examining.
  Regular Sloggers will recall that the prevailing view in Greece (whatever the Party affiliation) is that the ruling Samaras Coalition cracked down on Golden Dawn in order to reduce the split among Greek right-wing voters. It is also the overwhelming view of most journalists and the intelligentsia that what pushed the Government into this foolhardy action was growing evidence from its own polls about the left-wing Syriza's rise and a Golden Dawn surge in popularity.
  The data I've been given confirms this view unequivocally. Alexis Tsipras's Syriza Party of the Left is shown to be ahead of Samaras's New Democracy by 6-8% nationwide. And (prior to the murder) Golden Dawn weighs in at just under 18% '' only 2-3% below ND. In popular vote terms, the poll also suggested a significant percentage for other anti-Troika Parties.
  In short, in any future General Election the Left would cruise to power under Alexis Tsipras. As even pea-brained Antonikis could work out that an attack on Syriza would evoke Civil War, the stitching up of Golden Dawn's Nazi hordes seemed something of a no-brainer.
  I must add a penultimate comment on this freak-show. If Samaras really believed all the 2014 recovery bollocks was true '' and given that he isn't facing an imminent election '' why would he bother to employ such a risky strategy against his opponents? Surely if he thought economic winds were about to fill his sails, he would simple sit tight and wait for the sea change? This is, I think, a telling question to which the answer is pretty obvious.
  And finally, my favourite Grecian interpreter points out that referring to 'Little Antonis' Samaras as 'Antoniki' is genitively incorrect. Whereas I was trying to suggest that the Greek Prime Minister has a miniscule penis, by saying Atoniki I appear to be suggesting that he might be some kind of transexual or cross-dresser. As I have no desire to make such a scurrilous suggestion, I shall therefore henceforth use the correct genitive case, 'Antonikis. Mr Samaras may well have a penis of even smaller mass than his brain, but Eddie Izzard he very clearly isn't.
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A Disease Cuts Corn Yields - NYTimes.com
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 15:01
  ALTON, Iowa '-- It has come on like a tidal wave, washing across the Corn Belt from Minnesota to the Texas panhandle, a disease that few farmers had seen until five years ago.
  Known as Goss's wilt, it has cut some farmers' corn yields in half, and it is still spreading. This summer it reached Louisiana, farther south than it had ever been identified. Alison Robertson, a plant pathologist at Iowa State University, estimated that about 10 percent of this year's corn crop would fall to Goss's.
  The disease, named for R. W. Goss, a longtime Nebraska plant pathologist, is caused by a bacterium with the formidable name Clavibacter michiganensis subsp. nebraskensis. When a plant is damaged by hail or other heavy weather, the microbe enters the wound and infects its vascular system, scarring the leaves with brownish-yellow lesions sprinkled with black freckles.
  The infection may or may not kill the plant, depending on when it comes, but it almost always curtails yields. And for farmers who have never seen the infection before, it is deeply disconcerting.
  ''The farmer who called me had found a circle of corn about 50 feet in diameter or so that had strange symptoms, stalks broken over and twisting, discoloration, the whole nine yards,'' said Clayton Hollier, a plant pathologist at Louisiana State University. ''I hadn't heard symptoms like that since I learned about Goss's in college.''
  Until 2008, Goss's wilt had been confined to western Nebraska and a handful of counties in eastern Colorado. But that year it was found in Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Wisconsin.
  In 2011, a particularly virulent year, farms in much of Illinois lost as many as 60 bushels of corn per acre to the disease (the usual yield is 200 bushels per acre). So did many counties in Indiana.
  While there are no official tallies, the last two years do not appear to have been as bad '-- thanks in part to dry, hot weather, which tends to keep the disease at bay. But its continuing spread is worrying farmers and plant pathologists throughout the Corn Belt.
  No one is certain why Goss's wilt has become so rampant in recent years. But many plant pathologists suspect that the biggest factor is the hybrids chosen for genetic modification by major seed companies like Monsanto, DuPont and Syngenta.
  ''My theory is that there were a couple of hybrids planted that were selected because they had extremely high yield potentials,'' said Dr. Robertson, whose research is financed by Monsanto and the Agriculture Department. ''They also may have been highly susceptible to Goss's wilt.''
  About 90 percent of the corn grown in the United States comes from seeds that have been engineered in a laboratory, their DNA modified with genetic material not naturally found in corn species. Almost all American corn, for instance, is now engineered to resist the powerful herbicide glyphosate (often sold as Roundup), so farmers can kill weeds without killing their corn.
  Farmers often refer to such biotech plants, which require Agriculture Department approval, as ''traited,'' to distinguish them from traditional hybrids.
  While some corn seeds are resistant to Goss's wilt, especially those sold in western Nebraska and eastern Colorado, most are not. Dan Anderson, Monsanto's lead project manager for corn, acknowledged that high-yield varieties from his and other companies might be susceptible to the disease, but added that changes in farm management might also be spreading the disease. As farmers grow more corn to satisfy the demand for ethanol, they are rotating it less frequently with other crops.
  ''One of the best management techniques for controlling Goss's wilt is crop rotation '-- corn, then soy or another crop,'' Mr. Anderson said.
  Another possible factor is the growth of no-till farming, which leaves cornstalks, on which the bacteria can linger, to decay in the field after harvesting, rather than being plowed under.
  No hybrids have been developed that can fully withstand Goss's wilt, but the companies have increased the number of seeds with higher resistance.
  Ryan Forth and his father farm about 4,500 acres of land north of Ames, Iowa, about two-thirds of it in corn and the rest in soybeans. Mr. Forth is also a seed dealer for Monsanto. Some seeds in the company's DeKalb line have been identified as highly susceptible to Goss's.
  After a windstorm in 2010, he said, ''we started seeing these weird little circles on the foliage'' in the field where the DeKalb seeds were planted.
  At first they thought the marks were because of wind damage or the lack of rain '-- ''you always suspect the weather,'' he said '-- but now he's certain it was the choice of hybrid that caused the problem.
  The next year, they planted the same hybrids. ''We were the poster child for Goss's that year,'' Mr. Forth said. ''We had a complete disaster, a train-wreck kind of a yield for me.''
  Last year, he planted a different Monsanto hybrid and has not had a problem with Goss's wilt since. He no longer sells the DeKalb hybrids that contract the disease.
Government Shutdown | USA.gov
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 14:58
  What Happens If the Government Shuts Down?September 25, 2013
  When Congress and the President can't reach an agreement on the budget and federal agencies run out of funding, the government is required to shut down all non-essential services...
>> Yale Professor: Fukushima Will 'Threaten Humanity for Thousands of Years' Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!
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  Archived Version
  Tue, 01 Oct 2013 01:24
  Top professor warns 'all of humanity will be threatened for thousands of years' if Fukushima is not stopped, and it may soon get much worse
  Anthony GucciardiInfowars.comSeptember 29, 2013
  A Yale professor is cautioning the world to wake up from its nuclear slumber and face the severity of the Fukushima radiation crisis, warning that 'all of humanity will be threatened for thousands of years' if the Fukushima unit 4 pool is not kept cool. The disturbing statements act as a voice of reality when it comes to the depth of the Fukushima disaster, an event that world governments have relentlessly attempted to downplay while silently shutting down radiation counters and raising 'acceptable' levels of radiation in the food supply.
  The Fukushima explosion that officials now admit led to the emission of more than double the radiation levels originally stated.
  And now, along with other nuclear physicists and scientists, Professor Charles Perrow of Yale is sounding the alarm on the disaster that myself and others have been warning against since day one. And another prominent intellectual now speaking out on the subject does not surprise me. After all, we are seeing more and more high level academics speaking out due to the overall understanding that even job loss is nothing compared to the fatal consequences of allowing Fukushima to meltdown indefinitely.
  In his article posted on the Huffington Post website, Professor Charles Perrow cautions:
  ''Conditions in the unit 4 pool, 100 feet from the ground, are perilous, and if any two of the rods touch it could cause a nuclear reaction that would be uncontrollable. The radiation emitted from all these rods, if they are not continually cool and kept separate, would require the evacuation of surrounding areas including Tokyo. Because of the radiation at the site the 6,375 rods in the common storage pool could not be continuously cooled; they would fission and all of humanity will be threatened, for thousands of years.''
  The Professor's statements coincide with the warnings of previous experts who have said that Fukushima trumps even Chernobyl and other nuclear disasters. Even the mainstream media has covered these declarations as Japanese studies expose the fact that radiation levels emitted from Fukushima were much higher than plant officials ever admitted (and it was predominantly dumped into the Pacific Ocean). The Independent reports:
  ''Some scientists say Fukushima is worse than the 1986 Chernobyl accident, with which it shares a maximum level-7 rating on the sliding scale of nuclear disasters.''
  But the true problem lies with the aforementioned spent fuel rods. All the boron between the spent fuel rods has disintegrated, and plant officials are gearing up to remove them within the next couple of months. What the Yale Professor and others are warning about really comes down to the fact that a chain nuclear reaction could begin in the event that the rods get too close together. This, they say, would create nuclear mayhem. And given the record of the plant operators, who at one point were using duct tape and trash to fill in the destructing plant, this task is truly concerning.
  By spreading the word on the issue, we can ignite worldwide awakening on the severity of Fukushima's radioactive nightmare and demand immediate action. For now, it is essential to prepare yourself and your family. Recently, radiation expert Dr. Edward F. Group discussed the power of nascent 'nuclear' iodine and his ideas to better prepare your family:
  '--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--'--
  As the Fukushima radiation nightmare continues, top experts and analysts are continuing to warn against the devastating radiological effects that are already hammering citizens of the Northern Hemisphere and around the globe at record levels.
  And while Fukushima is considered to be 'even worse' by nuclear scientists and researchers thanChernobyl in terms of the radioactive contamination, what's even more concerning is the fact that Fukushima is only one factor in the spiking levels of radiation within the United States and abroad.
  Over the past several decades we have seen the emergence of excessive nuclear testing, the voluminous creation of nuclear power facilities, medical applications with radiation, the pollution of the air with radioactive elements, and even the absolute contamination of the food supply with health-crushing radiation '-- all contributing to a spike in background radiation levels that have been steadily climbing since just 60 years ago.
  Meanwhile, even the Fukushima plant operators were forced to admit that the radiation levels released from the plant explosion were at the very least 2 1/2 times greater than they admitted. But the real question is what happened to the majority of the radioactive contamination? According to one revealing study examining the true crippling effects of Fukushima on the globe, 20% of the caesium-137 fell on Japanese land, and about 2% ended up on land outside the country. The remainder came down in the Pacific Ocean, which means around 68% of the highly dangerous radioactive waste was released directly into the Pacific Ocean.
  Is it any wonder now that the EPA is actually going ahead and raising the 'acceptable levels' of radiation in the food supply as other nations just blatantly shut off their radiation tracking systems? Radioactive isotopes have already been discovered in California, and even as far away as Boston. There's a reason that even the Huffington Post now says that we are facing 'Fukushima Forever' as radiation continues to drain into the ocean.
  The Solution According to Top Doctors and Researchers
  Ultimately, all of the top experts say that the real 'solution' is to move to the Southern Hemisphere, which in reality is not really a viable solution for the vast majority of us. When speaking with the experts on this exact subject searching for a more viable answer, however, the response is always to begin taking a super strength form of what's known as nascent iodine on a daily basis because it is the only form your body can truly utilize in a way that supports the thyroid like nothing else.
  The problem with this has always been the fact that I know numerous nascent iodine supplements, and more so the harmful chemical versions of iodine, often contain toxic fillers and GMO derivatives. We're talking glycerin taken from USDA slaughterhouses where the livestock are fed GMO ingredients, absorption-blocking filler ingredients, GMO-derived corn ingredients, and a host of toxic substances.
  So after years of looking for something I could actually take and recommend to my readers who actually count on me to steer them away from any form of concerning substance within their supplements, I ended up teaming up with internationally renowned radiation expert and supplement formulator Dr. Edward Group to develop what is now known as Survival Shield for Alex Jones' Infowars Life product line '' a super high quality double strength form of nascent iodine that is absolutely free of these problematic substances that can actually damage your health.
  According to top medical professionals, nutritionists, and radiation experts, nascent iodine is really the alternative to migrating to the Southern Hemisphere, and it's essential to ensure you are receiving a form of nascent iodine that can both be utilized by your body and is free of dangerous additives. To ensure this, we made sure that Survival Shield was:
  - Completely non-GMO certified- The nascent iodine in Survival Shield is not subjected to direct heat, harsh chemicals, or alcohol- Contains raw, certified-USP grade iodine- Vegan-friendly and completely non-toxic
  As you are aware, there is currently a run on nascent iodine amid the radioactive chaos we face on a daily basis. As an alternative to moving to South America, my choice based on the advice of top doctors and researchers who I have spoken to over the years, is to utilize nascent iodine on a daily basis and also maintain a stockpile in my medicine cabinet for my family.
  '--'--'--'--''
  Anthony Gucciardi is the Founder of the third largest natural health website in the world, NaturalSociety.com, as well as the acting Editor and Founder of alternative news website Storyleak.com. He is also a news media personality and analyst who has been featured on top news, radio, and television organizations including Drudge Report, Coast to Coast AM, and RT.
  This article was posted: Sunday, September 29, 2013 at 5:48 am
  Tags: Fukushima, health, japan, nuclear, radiation
Online Obamacare Enrollment In Spanish Delayed - WebMD
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  Archived Version
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 22:29
  Online Obamacare Enrollment In Spanish DelayedWebMD News from Kaiser Health NewsBy Jenny GoldThe Spanish-language version of healthcare.gov will not be equipped to handle online enrollments on Oct 1., according to an Obama administration official. Instead, Spanish speakers will have to wait until Oct. 21 to sign up online.
  The official said the new signup date should not be considered a delay, but rather the administration is choosing to unveil the online enrollment tool to coincide with a ''week of action'' around Hispanic Heritage Month, in which community organizations and local, state and federal government partners will highlight the importance of the Affordable Care Act for Latinos.
  Hispanic Heritage Month, however, began on Sept. 15 and ends on Oct. 15. The delay was first reported by the Associated Press.
  More than 10 million Latinos are expected to be eligible for new public and subsidized health coverage options, making them the demographic group most likely to benefit from the health law - and a key to its success. They're more likely to be young - nearly half of Hispanics are under 26 years old. That's important for the insurance pools, because young and healthy people need fewer medical services, and insurance companies can use their premiums to balance the needs of older or sicker patients.
  Quick Start GuideLearn how to choose and use health insurance with your personalized action plan.
  Start Here
Truckers roar to D.C. with impeachment movement
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  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 22:26
  In less than two weeks, thousands of truckers will descend on Washington, D.C., driving their big-rigs and calling for the restoration of a constitutional republic '' but now their plan has taken a new twist: Their friends and families will simultaneously join other Americans rallying on overpasses across the nation for Obama's impeachment.
  The Truckers' Ride for the Constitution movement has a new ally in their protest against what organizers say is corruption in government and a trashing of the Constitution. The group is teaming up with Overpasses for Obama's Impeachment to line the routes into Washington with flags during the Oct. 11-13 event.
  Both Houses of Congress are tentatively scheduled to be in session Oct. 11.
  Truckers Ride for the Constitution leader and organizer Zeeda Andrews, a country singer and former truck driver, said Overpasses Founder James Neighbors reached out to her, suggesting the two groups form an alliance. Neighbors said the partnership is a ''natural'' merger for a common cause.
  ''Thousands of truckers have seen us across America,'' he said. ''We've gotten emails from them, thanking us for waking them up. The biker ride in D.C. happened. Then, the next thing you know, the trucker thing did, and we got even more emails from truckers across the country, thanking us.''
  He added, ''We are going to be out on the overpasses and at truck stops, encouraging the truckers to head to D.C., to join in with the others. They, in exchange, are encouraging their families who are at home to join us on the overpasses.''
  Read the details of Obama's actions and how they don't align with the Constitution, in ''Impeachable Offenses,'' by Aaron Klein and Brenda J. Elliott.
  Facebook tries to shut truckers down
  On Sept. 22, Facebook removed the truckers' Facebook page, ''Truckers to Shutdown America,'' which had accumulated 86,000 ''likes'' within days of its launch.
  ''Political opponents attacked the Truckers to Shutdown America page within days, and they exploited a little known (to the public) feature on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter called 'community standards' flagging, which allows them to instantaneously shut down an account on these social media platforms,'' the truckers group explained in a press release.
  ''[A]n administrator of the page offended someone by saying, 'God bless you, and God bless America.''
  Facebook headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.
  According to the group, radio talk-host Pete Santelli, of ''The Pete Santelli Show,'' has indicated that he ''intends to take legal action against YouTube and Twitter on behalf of all truckers, their supporters, as well as other members of the public who are similarly harmed by these unconstitutional 'community standards.'''
  While the truckers' group says it has made numerous attempts to appeal Facebook's decision, the page remains unpublished.
  Now the group is planning a special delivery to Facebook's corporate headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., on the same day of the Washington, D.C., convoy.
  ''Ride for the Constitution will now organize a convoy to Facebook corporate headquarters '... to coincide with the ride to Washington, D.C.,'' the group explained. ''We fully intend to arrive on corporate America's doorstep with our original 'community standards' guideline in hand '' the U.S. Constitution.''
  The truckers also launched their website, RideForTheConstitution.org, and created a second Facebook page called, ''Truckers Ride for the Constitution.''
  'Wake up the sleeping giant'
  What do they intend to accomplish with a convoy into Washington and nationwide rallies on overpasses?
  Neighbors explained, ''The goal is to wake up the sleeping giant, the people of America.''
  Truckers co-organizer Benn Pam said the rally will be quite a patriotic scene.
  ''I think it's great,'' he said. ''There are going to be thousands of trucks on the highways, flying flags. There are all of those people who are in the Overpasses campaign flying flags. Between the two groups, we may be covering a good part of the national highway network.''
  Andrews said more organizations are expected to join the rally, and she has ''two other huge groups that will give me a conformation.''
  But this event isn't just another political rally. The joint venture has clear objectives. Neighbors said one goal is to pressure Congress to begin the impeachment process.
  ''In doing so, the people can force Congress to act to begin by removing Obama from office,'' he explained.
  He said his group will also protest ''RINOs and progressive Democrats'' before the 2014 midterm elections.
  Andrews said she believes connecting with the Overpasses group will help achieve her group's aims.
  ''We both want to see an end to the unconstitutional laws in this country,'' she said.
  By joining forces, she said, both groups will get more publicity and video footage of the event.
  However, the group's short-term goal is to see a three-day cessation of business. Organizers are asking Americans to pre-purchase food and other necessities before Oct. 11 to send a message to Congress.
  ''We want to see the dollar stop circulating for three days,'' Andrews said. ''What we also want to see is deregulation for the truckers and our Constitution restored. We want to get rid of unconstitutional laws like the National Defense Authorization Act and the Patriot Act.''
  Andrews also said she has a list of grievances she plans to present to every member of Congress before the trucks leave Washington.
  Time to rally, contact lawmakers
  Overpasses for Obama's Impeachment national coordinator and co-founder Rick Halle said he's hopeful that the event will get Congress to remember its commitment to the Constitution.
  ''The ultimate result would be for our representatives to start taking their oath to protect and defend the Constitution seriously,'' he said. ''At the very least, we will get the message out to others who believe, as we do, that government corruption is rampant and that they are not alone.''
  However, Halle admitted that Congress will only feel pressure if enough people rally in the streets and make their voices heard by calling their lawmakers.
  ''We believe that we will also wake some people up so they start paying attention,'' he said. ''If enough people wake up and start contacting their representatives, then we believe that they will have no choice but to take notice.''
  Some critics in the trucking industry have taken to Facebook to condemn the upcoming protest.
  American Trucking Associations spokesman Sean McNally said his group opposes Andrews' activities.
  ''The American Trucking Associations is not a sponsor of this 'strike' nor do we endorse or condone the activities of these few individuals,'' McNally said. ''ATA and the vast majority of America's truck drivers will continue to deliver the nation's most essential goods unabated even while we continue to work through whatever policy disagreements we have with Congress and the administration.''
  But Andrews is undeterred.
  She said, ''I have the truckers that I need.''
You Tell Me
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: The Fabulous Geezersisters’ Weblog
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 21:13
  For the second year, my husband and I went to the Texas Tribune Festival. It's like going back to school for a couple of days, going to see panels on transportation, higher education, public schools, politics, you name it.
  We sat through an interview with Ted Cruz, the junior U.S. Senator from Texas. It was long-distance, since he was too busy blackmailing and shutting down the government in D.C. to show up in Austin. Cruz, being interviewed, looked almost mild-mannered and inoffensive, with eyes like hyphens and a soft voice with no apparent Canadian accent.
  Cruz said he really hated it that the President and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid were forcing the government to shut down. But what choice did Cruz have, except to fight? He had to stop all the ''suffering'' '-- a word he used repeatedly '-- caused by Obamacare. An out-of-solar-system visitor, listening to Cruz and his gut-clutching alarm, would have assumed ''Obamacare'' was an incurable plague of pustules, massive organ failure, and brain-munching amoebas. Suffering!
  The next day, I went to a session on Republicans and Hispanics where even the Republican Hispanics seemed pissed at the Republican Party. I went to a higher-ed session featuring a University of Texas regent who may be impeached. I showed up at a panel about women's health and the new abortion restrictions. I heard Texas First Lady Anita Perry defend her husband by saying people were wrong about old Rick: He didn't swagger. He walked Mrs. Perry said, ''just like his mother.''
  I said the festival was like going back to school '-- and I meant it. I love to learn, and that's why I was there. It's also a year in which change may or may not be happening in Texas politics, but there's enough of a promise of change to get many of us excited. After years in political exile, we are easily excited, you could say.
  But I'd also gone to sessions '-- like women and health '-- simply to confirm my own biases and get re-infuriated by people I already knew I wouldn't like. I could say I was supporting my own side, but that would only be a fraction of the real story.
  It made me think of one of the more revealing quotes of the day, when the embattled UT regent had begun his own defense by saying that the other side had started it. The other guy was the aggressor; not him, certainly not him.
  Oh, brother. Where were we? The sandbox? Aren't we a little old for this?
  The trouble is, how do we get out of the sandbox and stay there? Didn't Barack Obama start his first term by insisting he could bring civility and reason to D.C.? Didn't he try? Wasn't he eventually derailed by them, the other side, the right-wing nuts, the haters? Weren't they the ones who started it?
  When I finally caught up with my husband, I kept lobbing questions at him. Will we '-- as both a state and a nation '-- ever break out of this poisonous spiral? Why are we being highjacked by extremists? What's happened to reasonable people of good will who number in the tens of millions and want civil discourse and compromise?
  And, most of all, how do you engage in the biggest issues of our day without becoming a hater yourself? That's what I really want to know after the festival is over and the Gunfight at O.K. Corral keeps playing in the U.S. Capitol.
  I am so tired of all of it. I have questions and no answers. You tell me how you do it, how you keep from being a hater. Or are we all only kidding ourselves that we're better than they are?
  (Copyright 2013 by Ruth Pennebaker)
  Read about finding your heroes wherever you can
  Tagged as: austin, festival, politics, ted cruz, texas, texas tribune
Presidential Memorandum -- Delegation of Authority Under Sections 552(c)(2) and 614 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as Amended
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  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 21:12
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  September 27, 2013
  MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE
  SUBJECT: Delegation of Authority Under Sections 552(c)(2) and 614 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as Amended
  By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 301 of title 3, United States Code, I hereby delegate to the Secretary of State:
  (1) the authority under section 552(c)(2) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, as amended (FAA), to direct the drawdown of up to $15 million in nonlethal commodities and services from any department or agency of the United States to provide assistance for the Syrian Opposition Coalition (SOC) and the Supreme Military Council (SMC), and to make the determinations required under such section to direct such a drawdown; and
  (2) the authority under section 614 of the FAA to determine whether it is important to the security interests of the United States to furnish such assistance to the SOC and the SMC without regard to any other provision of law within the purview of section 614(a)(1) of the FAA.
  You are authorized and directed to publish this memorandum in the Federal Register.
  BARACK OBAMA
Presidential Memorandum -- Determination with Respect to the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 21:12
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  September 30, 2013
  MEMORANDUM FOR THE SECRETARY OF STATE
  SUBJECT: Determination with Respect to the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008
  Pursuant to section 404 of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (CSPA) (title IV, Public Law 110-457), I hereby determine that it is in the national interest of the United States to waive the application of the prohibition in section 404(a) of the CSPA with respect to Chad, South Sudan, and Yemen; to waive in part the application of the prohibition in section 404(a) of the CSPA with respect to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to allow for continued provision of International Military Education and Training (IMET) and nonlethal Excess Defense Articles, and the issuance of licenses for direct commercial sales of nonlethal defense articles; and to waive in part the application of the prohibition in section 404(a) of the CSPA with respect to Somalia to allow for the issuance of licenses for direct commercial sales of nonlethal defense articles, provision of IMET, and continued provision of assistance under the Peacekeeping Operations authority for logistical support and troop stipends. I hereby waive such provisions accordingly.
  You are authorized and directed to submit this determination to the Congress, along with the accompanying Memorandum of Justification, and to publish the determination in the Federal Register.
  BARACK OBAMA
CNN Taps Geraldine Moriba As "VP of Diversity"
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: TVNewser
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 21:11
  CNN has named Geraldine Moriba VP of diversity and inclusion at the company, and she will become the chairperson of its diversity council. Moriba will report on diversity and inclusion issues directly to CNN president Jeff Zucker.
  ''Geraldine is the ideal candidate to take on this very important role within the organization at a critical time for us,'' said Zucker in a statement. ''I had the pleasure of working with her prior to my time at CNN, and always found her to have a terrific sensibility and understanding of some of the complex issues we face when it comes to diversity and inclusion. As we look to reimagine what CNN will be in the years to come, this role on my team will be invaluable in shaping the kind of organization we want and need to have.''
  Moriba is also an executive producer for CNN's Original Program Development, where she oversaw the ''In America'' documentary team. She will remain in that role, reporting to senior VP of talent and content development Amy Entelis. Before joining CNN she spent more than 16 years at NBC News, working in broadcast standards and serving as co-chair of its diversity council.
  As we reported last week, the current chairperson of the CNN Diversity Council, Johnita Due, is stepping aside from that role but will remain with CNN as assistant general counsel. She will also continue to advise the Council.
  Details below.
  Geraldine Moriba Named Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion for CNN Worldwide
  Geraldine Moriba has been named Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion for CNN Worldwide. Included in her role will be Chairing CNN's Diversity Council, as well as offering strategic guidance on issues of diversity to the CNN Management team. The announcement was made today by CNN Worldwide President Jeff Zucker, to whom she will report on Diversity and Inclusion matters, marking the first time the position has reported in to the President.
  ''Geraldine is the ideal candidate to take on this very important role within the organization at a critical time for us,'' said Zucker. ''I had the pleasure of working with her prior to my time at CNN, and always found her to have a terrific sensibility and understanding of some of the complex issues we face when it comes to diversity and inclusion. As we look to reimagine what CNN will be in the years to come, this role on my team will be invaluable in shaping the kind of organization we want and need to have.''
  In addition to her new role with the Diversity Council, Moriba is also an executive producer for CNN's Original Program Development, reporting to Amy Entelis, SVP, Talent and Content Development. She will continue to be based in New York.
  ''Some of the smartest journalists in the business work at CNN and I know that the prevailing sentiment in our newsrooms is that it is crucial for our content and workforce to reflect the audience we serve,'' said Moriba. ''These are goals accomplished by working as a team. This isn't only about pursuing a noble purpose, it's about continuing to share news from across our increasingly diverse and interconnected world, in even more effective ways.''
  Moriba's predecessor, Johnita Due, who also serves as Assistant General Counsel for CNN, took over leadership of CNN's Diversity Council two years after it's inception in 2003. She will remain in her current role with CNN, and continue to advise Moriba and the Council.
  ''I want to thank Johnita for the great work she has done as leader of the Diversity Council for eight years,'' said Zucker. ''She set a terrific standard for what we need to be focused on, and set in place a terrific team that we will continue to build on.''
  Moriba is an Emmy-award winning producer, who led CNN's ''In America'' documentary team in the creation of 11 documentaries in two years. These award-winning and groundbreaking specials focused on communities which had previously been underserved by the media. She also conceived and launched the successful ''In America blog.'' In its first six months, it crossed the 15 million page view threshold and earned unprecedented engagement success, making it one of the most popular CNN.com blogs.
  Moriba came to CNN in 2010 after 16 years at NBC News, where she served as senior producer for Broadcast Standards, monitoring news reports on all NBC platforms. She also produced award winning long form and breaking news stories. And she was the co-chair for NBC News' Diversity Council developing diversity programs to support leadership development and diverse content across NBC News programming.
  Moriba has won five prestigious Emmy awards, an Alfred I. DuPont Award and two Peabody Awards. She has also received two RTNDA-Unity Awards, two Newswomen's New York Front Page News Feature Awards, two National Association of Black Journalists First Place Documentary Awards, four New York Association of Black Journalists awards, four New York Film Festival Awards, the US Films Video Festival Silver Screen Award, two National Headliner Awards, the ''Chris'' Award of the Columbus International Film and Video Festival and a Nancy Susan Reynolds Informational Documentary Finalist Award.
  CNN's award-winning Diversity Council was formed in 2003. Comprised of members across CNN's networks, platforms, departments and functions, the Council has pursued initiatives tied to CNN's diversity mission of growing its business by reflecting diverse audiences and perspectives in its programming and supporting an inclusive culture for its employees. The Council's initiatives have focused on the areas of content, marketplace, workforce and workplace. By collaborating with editorial, network booking, marketing, sales, PR, HR, recruiting, and talent development and recruitment, the Council has been crucial in establishing CNN's standing with multicultural audiences leading to some major ratings wins, earning revenue in the tens of millions of dollars for multicultural content, increasing CNN's racial and ethnic and gender diversity, launching employee development and student pipeline programs, and expanding the diversity of perspectives, including political perspectives, and storytelling on air.
  CNN Worldwide, a division of Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., a Time Warner Company, is the most trusted source for news and information. Its reach extends to nine cable and satellite television networks; one private place-based network; two radio networks; wireless devices around the world; CNN Digital Network, the No. 1 network of news Web sites in the United States; CNN Newsource, the world's most extensively syndicated news service; and strategic international partnerships within both television and the digital media.
Google Web Designer
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 20:22
  Two animation modesIn Quick mode, build your animations scene by scene and we'll take care of the frames in between. In Advanced mode, animate individual elements using layers, easily changing the location of elements within the stack.
  Learn More
  Full 3D authoring environmentCreate and manipulate 3D content utilizing an array of tools and the power of CSS3. Rotate objects and even 2D designs along any axis, visualizing 3D transformations and translations as you author.
  Learn More
  Design view and code viewWhile a visual tool is helpful, it can never represent your creativity, imagination and vision in full. That's why you can flip back and forth between Design View and Code View as you work, immediately seeing any changes made to code reflected back in your designs.
  Learn More
  Illustration toolsImport assets from any other creative suite or use the built-in illustration tools to create vector-style artwork '' keeping your designs light. To create new HTML tags in your designs, just draw them in with the Tag tool.
  Learn More
VIDEO-Poking Holes In CNBC and JP Morgan's Cozy Little Bubble | Crooks and Liars
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 20:17
  [h/t Scarce]If you want to understand Wall Street, this little clip will explain it quite well. Alex Pareene somehow landed on a CNBC segment with Maria Bartiromo and Duff McDonald. The ensuing hilarity is, on some level, not hilarious but instead pathetic.
  What's instructive about this segment is the disconnect between the Wall Streeters and the rest of us. Pareene laid it out quite well at the beginning of the segment where he said Jamie Dimon should be fired from JP Morgan simply on the basis of the fines and regulatory levies against the bank. McDonald and Bartiromo were shocked -- SHOCKED -- because...profits.
  Felix Salmon:
  Maria Bartiromo: Alex, to you first. Legal problems aside, JP Morgan remains one of the best, if not the best performing major bank in the world today. You believe the leader of that bank should step down?
  Alex Pareene: I think that any time you're looking at the greatest fine in the history of Wall Street regulation, it's really worth asking should this guy stay in his job. In any other industry '-- I can't think of another industry. If you managed a restaurant, and it got the biggest health department fine in the history of restaurants, no one would say ''Yeah, but the restaurant's making a lot of money. There's only a little bit of poison in the food.''
  This is a very strong point by Pareene '-- and it's a point which was well taken by Barclays. When the UK bank was fined $450 million last year for its role in the Libor scandal, its CEO duly resigned. After all, a $450 million fine is prima facie evidence that the CEO really isn't in control of his bank.
  But $450 million is a rounding error with respect to the kind of fines that Dimon is now talking about paying '-- $4 billion, $11 billion, $20 billion, who knows where this will stop.Tim Fernholzhas a good roundup of all the various things that JP Morgan is in trouble for; Libor manipulation is at #5 on his list of seven oustanding investigations '-- on top of another four settled investigations. If Libor manipulation alone was enough to mean the end of Bob Diamond, it's hard to see how Jamie Dimon should be able to survive this tsunami of litigation.
  But...but Alex? PROFITS!!! One of the most hilarious moments in the entire segment came after Duff (old boy) and Maria both agreed that there couldn't possibly be an adequate replacement for Dimon because...profits.
  Duff McDonald: It's preposterous. The stock's touching a ten-year high. It's a cash-generating machine.
  Maria Bartiromo: Should we talk about the financial strength of JP Morgan? The company continues to churn out tens of billions of dollars in earnings and hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue. How do you criticize that?
  Pareene quite reasonably suggested that the corruption inside JP Morgan should probably mean it's better off simply disbanding or breaking up. The ensuing wails were hilarious, with Bartiromo saying Pareene shouldn't come on CNBC and spout off lies with no facts, and by the way, Mr. Pareene, name that corruption.
  So he did. Hiring children of Chinese officials in order to get your deals done? Yes, that's corrupt.
  Bloomberg reported on it back in August:
  A probe of JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s (JPM) hiring practices in China has uncovered red flags across Asia, including an internal spreadsheet that linked appointments to specific deals pursued by the bank, people with knowledge of the matter said.
  The Justice Department has joined the Securities and Exchange Commission in examining whether JPMorgan hired people so that their family members in government and elsewhere would steer business to the firm, possibly violating bribery laws, said one of the people, all of whom asked to not be named because the inquiry isn't public. The bank has opened an internal investigation that has flagged more than 200 hires for review, said two people with knowledge of the examination, results of which JPMorgan is sharing with regulators.
  Facts did not stop Maria from outright calling Pareene a liar and fabricator, even though the corruption is but a Google search away from her fingertips.
  If you want to understand how Wall Street thinks, this clip illustrates it perfectly. Profits matter more than morals. In fact, morals matter not at all, because as long as it's a cash machine churning out millions and billions for investors, who cares about a few corrupt activities in China, or big fines here in the states, or the fact that JP Morgan was one of the key players in our economic meltdown?
  Because profits. And cash machines.
  Try as he might, Pareene couldn't pierce that tiny bubble they occupy, not even with facts and strong arguments. Because nothing speaks louder than profits.
VIDEO: Firms fined for bogus online reviews
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: BBC News - Technology
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 19:03
  Microsoft launches a new, upgraded version of its Windows 8 powered Surface tablet, 19 reputation enhancement firms are fined a total of $350,000 (£220,000) after it was found they were writing fake online reviews for their clients and a retro-fitted F16 jet is flown remotely by pilots on the ground.
  BBC Click's Spencer Kelly looks at these and other tech news stories.
  Watch more clipson the Click website. If you are in the UK you can watch the whole programme onBBC iPlayer.
Supercomputers improve solar power forecasts
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Phys.org - latest science and technology news stories
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 19:00
  Supercomputers improve solar power forecastsJavascript 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.1 hour agoSupercomputers improve solar power forecasts.
  To improve the accuracy of solar power forecasting, research meteorologist Edwin Campos and his colleagues at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory have partnered with IBM to build a forecasting technology based on IBM's Watson supercomputer, made famous by its 2011 victory over human champions on the television quiz show Jeopardy!.
  Campos hopes that the information he gains by integrating big data processing, machine learning and cloud modeling into a Watson-like platform will help grid managers and power plant operators develop more efficient strategies for allocating their resources to manage the unevenness of solar generation.
  "Even five minutes of clouds when we thought there'd be sun can equate to tens of thousands of dollars of extra costs from having to buy other forms of power from across the grid," Campos said. "The more accurately we can forecast clouds, the more money we can ultimately save homeowners on their electric bills."
  When a solar plant experiences a generation shortfall, other plants - typically fossil-fuel plants that run on coal and natural gas - need to increase generation in order to make up the difference, or else the grid could experience sporadic outages or even a blackout. These energy sources are relatively less environmentally friendly than solar.Additionally, grid operators may need to purchase electricity within a short time frame or continually carry additional back-up power in the absence of accurate and timely solar generation forecasts, which can then increase the cost of electricity. These increases are usually passed on to the consumer. With more accurate solar power forecasts, energy can be distributed more efficiently and cheaply.
  Explore further:NREL calculates emissions and costs of power plant cycling necessary for increased wind and solar
  More from Physics Forums - General Engineering
  Related StoriesNREL calculates emissions and costs of power plant cycling necessary for increased wind and solar Sep 24, 2013
  New research from the Energy Department's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) quantifies the potential impacts of increasing wind and solar power generation on the operators of fossil-fueled power plants in the West. ...
  No more cloudy days for solar Jun 14, 2012
  For a country with so much sunlight, some might think Australia has been slow to adapt its electricity generation mix to include solar power. One of the main reasons for this is solar intermittency.
  The grid of the future Sep 16, 2013
  The outlet in your living room doesn't know a lot'--yet. Unaware of whether they are drawing power from wind, solar, gas, or coal plants, the electrical lines that bring us power in many ways still resemble ...
  DayStar to buy technology to make solar power available at night Nov 12, 2012
  DayStar Technologies has struck a deal to buy a company whose technology could solve a problem that has chilled the solar energy industry: How to make solar power available for electricity usage at night when the sun is gone.
  Solar energy could supply one-third of power in US West, study finds Aug 02, 2013
  (Phys.org) '--Low-cost solar power could supply more than a third of all energy needs in the Western U.S., if the nation can hit its targets for reducing the cost of solar energy, according to a new study ...
  German bank reports solar power cost in India and Italy has reached grid parity Apr 10, 2013
  (Phys.org) '--Germany's Deutsche Bank has released a report that concludes that generating electricity using solar collectors has reached grid parity'--cost competitiveness with other industry standard sources'--in ...
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  Supercomputers improve solar power forecastsJavascript 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.1 hour agoSupercomputers improve solar power forecasts.
  To improve the accuracy of solar power forecasting, research meteorologist Edwin Campos and his colleagues at DOE's Argonne National Laboratory have partnered with IBM to build a forecasting technology based on IBM's Watson supercomputer, made famous by its 2011 victory over human champions on the television quiz show Jeopardy!.
  Campos hopes that the information he gains by integrating big data processing, machine learning and cloud modeling into a Watson-like platform will help grid managers and power plant operators develop more efficient strategies for allocating their resources to manage the unevenness of solar generation.
  "Even five minutes of clouds when we thought there'd be sun can equate to tens of thousands of dollars of extra costs from having to buy other forms of power from across the grid," Campos said. "The more accurately we can forecast clouds, the more money we can ultimately save homeowners on their electric bills."
  When a solar plant experiences a generation shortfall, other plants - typically fossil-fuel plants that run on coal and natural gas - need to increase generation in order to make up the difference, or else the grid could experience sporadic outages or even a blackout. These energy sources are relatively less environmentally friendly than solar.Additionally, grid operators may need to purchase electricity within a short time frame or continually carry additional back-up power in the absence of accurate and timely solar generation forecasts, which can then increase the cost of electricity. These increases are usually passed on to the consumer. With more accurate solar power forecasts, energy can be distributed more efficiently and cheaply.
  Explore further:NREL calculates emissions and costs of power plant cycling necessary for increased wind and solar
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Reminder: Peter Thiel Is Ted Cruz's Gay Billionaire Ally
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: Valleywag
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 18:51
  Where does a man like Ted Cruz get the confidence to IRL troll the United States Senate for 21 hours? Knowing that PayPal billionaire and Silicon Valley kingpin Peter Thiel has his back surely helps.
  It's an odd marriage of interests, the sort Cruz otherwise opposes as a matter of principle: Peter Thiel is a pot-smoking gay man, which makes him the kind of person Cruz supporters would like to launch into some sort of Martian exile. But Thiel is also, crucially, a massively rich bussinessman, which is enough for Cruz to shelve his Tea Party druthers and accept hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Silicon Valley luminary. Adjacent bigots have yelled at Cruz for pocketing Thiel's cash, but he has every reason to ignore them: last year, Thiel gave $2 million to Club for Growth, a SuperPAC that in turn poured over $600,000 into Cruz's (successful) senatorial run. Club for Growth is still a vocal supporter of Cruz as he's flailed and railed against Obamacare.
  Is it lunacy to be the most loyal supporter of a man who thinks you don't deserve equal protection under the law? No crazier than paying kids to drop out of school, cure death, or create a floating libertarian ocean utopia.
  Photos: Getty
Army Yanks 'Voice-To-Skull Devices' Site | Danger Room | Wired.com
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 18:00
  The Army's very strange webpage on "Voice-to-Skull" weapons has been removed. It was strange it was there, and it's even stranger it's gone. If you Google it, you'll see the entry for "Voice-to-Skull device," but, if you click on the website, the link is dead.
  The entry, still available on the Federation of American Scientists' website reads:
  Nonlethal weapon which includes (1) a neuro-electromagnetic device which uses microwave transmission of sound into the skull of persons or animals by way of pulse-modulated microwave radiation; and (2) a silent sound device which can transmit sound into the skull of person or animals. NOTE: The sound modulation may be voice or audio subliminal messages. One application of V2K is use as an electronic scarecrow to frighten birds in the vicinity of airports.
  The U.K.-based group Christians Against Mental Slavery first noted the change (they also have a permanent screenshot of the page). A representative of the group tells me they contacted the Webmaster, who would only tell them the entry was "permanently removed."
  The image above is one person's self-styled depiction of how a "voice-to-skull" weapon might work.
  [Image: Raven1.net]
  ALSO:
Proclamation -- National Disability Employment Awareness Month, 2013
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: White House.gov Press Office Feed
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 17:40
  The White House
  Office of the Press Secretary
  For Immediate Release
  September 30, 2013
  National Disability Employment Awareness Month, 2013
  - - - - - - -
  By the President of the United States of America
  A Proclamation
  Our Nation has always drawn its strength from the differences of our people, from a vast range of thought, experience, and ability. Every day, Americans with disabilities enrich our communities and businesses. They are leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators, each with unique talents to contribute and points of view to express. During National Disability Employment Awareness Month, we nurture our culture of diversity and renew our commitment to building an American workforce that offers inclusion and opportunity for all.
  Since the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, we have made great progress in removing barriers for hardworking Americans. Yet today, only 20 percent of Americans with disabilities, including veterans who became disabled while serving our country, participate in our labor force. We need their talent, dedication, and creativity, which is why my Administration proudly supports increased employment opportunities for people with disabilities. To that end, I remain dedicated to implementing Executive Order 13548, which called on Federal agencies to increase recruitment, hiring, and retention of people with disabilities. As a result of our efforts, the Federal Government is hiring people with disabilities at a higher rate than at any point in over three decades. Most recently, we updated the rules to make sure Federal contractors and subcontractors are doing more to recruit, hire, and promote qualified individuals with disabilities, including disabled veterans. And thanks to the Affordable Care Act, States are taking advantage of new options to support and expand home and community-based services.
  In the years to come, I will remain committed to ensuring the Federal Government leads by example. This year, as we mark the 40th anniversary of the Rehabilitation Act, I will continue to marshal the full resources of my Administration toward effective and comprehensive implementation.
  If we swing wide the doors of opportunity for our family, friends, and neighbors with disabilities, all of us will enjoy the benefits of their professional contributions. This month, let us uphold the ideals of equal access, equal opportunity, and a level playing field for all Americans.
  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 October 2013 as National Disability Employment Awareness Month. I urge all Americans to embrace the talents and skills that individuals with disabilities bring to our workplaces and communities and to promote the right to equal employment opportunity for all people.
  IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this thirtieth day of September, 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
Domestic Security Alliance Council - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 17:24
  The Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC) is an American governmental/corporate alliance created at the request of corporations "for an FBI-led organization that would bridge the information divide between America's private and public sectors" [1] in December 2005. The program facilitates information sharing and cooperation between the FBI and over 200 of the largest American companies, which altogether account for over one third of the gross domestic product of the United States. In December 2012, released documents showed that the DSAC and counter-terrorism programs conducted surveillance of non-violent Occupy Wall Street protesters in 2011.
  The Overseas Security Advisory Council (OSAC) was founded by United States Department of State in 1985 to coordinate espionage between American companies and the Diplomatic Security Service.[2] The FBI Criminal Investigative Division (CID) began to advise OSAC in 1996. In November 2005, by corporate request, the FBI hosted a steering committee composed of Chief Security Officers for major American companies including Citibank, Coca-Cola and Federal Express; this committee founded the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC) the following month.[2] All three of these founding corporations cross-affiliate with the Business Roundtable.
  The mission statement of DSAC states that the program is "a strategic partnership between the FBI and the U.S. private sector," that it promotes the "effective exchange of information" between them, and that it allows the FBI to more easily detect and prevent criminal activity involving interstate commerce.[2] DSAC is also supervised by the Department of Homeland Security.[3]
  In July 2006 DSAC created a leadership board of 29 business leaders from major companies in the United States. These include companies in the airline, banking, entertainment, food, and other industries.[2] Two-thirds of the members of the leadership board cross-affiliate with the Business Roundtable. In 2010 over 200 companies participated in DSAC, constituting over one third of the US GDP and almost 10% of its labor force.[2]Merck Vice President Grant Ashley, American Undersecretary Dawn Scalici, and assistant FBI director Ronald C. Ruecker are all chairpersons of and executives for DSAC.[2] Merck also cross-affiliates with the Business Roundtable. Other American companies participating in DSAC include Bank of America, Barclays, American Express, Mastercard, United Airlines, Boeing, General Electric, and Walmart.[4] Of these, Bank of America, Barclays, American Express, Mastercard, Boeing, General Electric and Walmart all cross-affiliate with the Business Roundtable.
  Following successful freedom of information requests by the Partnership for Civil Justice, the FBI released redacted documents in December 2012 showing that the FBI had spied on Occupy Wall Street (OWS) organizers and passed OWS information to financial firms via DSAC prior to the first OWS protests in Zuccotti Park.[5] FBI officials met with New York Stock Exchange representatives on August 19, 2011, notifying them of planned peaceful protests.[6] FBI officials later met with representatives of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and Zions Bank about planned protests.[6]
  The FBI used informants to infiltrate and monitor protests; information from informants and military intelligence units was passed to DSAC, which then gave updates to financial companies.[7] Surveillance of protestors was also carried out by the Joint Terrorism Task Force.[7][8] DSAC also coordinated with security firms hired by banks to target OWS leaders.[9]
  Previously, in December 2011, DSAC had written a report on law enforcement agencies' plans for a 12 December protest at US ports, which involved investigation of links between OWS and port trade unions by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.[10]
  The Partnership for Civil Justice, a non-profit, said that espionage facilitated by DSAC treated "protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity," and said that DSAC was "functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and corporate America."[6]Naomi Wolf wrote in The Guardian that surveillance of OWS by the FBI was conducted with the knowledge of the Obama Administration.[11]
  A DSAC brochure[1] states that the benefits of membership in the DSAC include:
  Centralized access to security information not only from the FBI, but from all federal government entities, including the Department of Homeland Security, FEMA, the IRS, U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Secret Service
  Ongoing access to a network of diverse security experts at the highest government and corporate levelsContinuing education for CSOs through the semi-annual Domestic Security Executive Academy at the FBI Academy, Quantico, VAContinuing education for intelligence analysts through quarterly regional Intelligence Analyst SymposiumsAdditional opportunities through participation in DSAC's committees^ abhttp://www.dsac.gov/Pages/DSAC_Brochure.pdf^ abcdefU.S. DSAC Webpage, "About DSAC"^States News Service, 2011^U.S. DSAC Webpage, "DSAC Leadership Board."^Grant, 2012^ abcBrowdie, 2012^ abGrey, 2012^Wilkins, 2012^International Business Times, 2012^Partnership for Civil Justice, pp.30-33^Wolf, 2012
How Big Data Could Help Identify the Next Felon -- Or Blame the Wrong Guy - Bloomberg
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 17:18
  Tom Cruise in "Minority Report." Photograph: Twentieth Century Fox and DreamWorks L.L.C./Everett Collection
  Think of it as big data meets "Minority Report."
  While working as the chief privacy officer at Intelius, an online provider of background checks, Jim Adler created software that demonstrates how just a few details about a person could be used to estimate the chances of someone committing a felony. Accurately, he says.
  If that sounds like the stuff of science fiction, similar to the Tom Cruise movie where people are arrested before the crimes happen, early forms of this type of predictive policing can be attempted today because of the enormous amounts of digital data on individuals being collected and analyzed.
  To test his computer program, Adler began with tens of thousands of criminal records owned by Intelius and focused only on a few details about each person, including gender, eye and skin color, the number of traffic tickets and minor offenses, and whether the individual has tattoos. Based on that data, and excluding any information about a felony conviction, he said his algorithm determined with reasonable accuracy whether a person had committed a serious crime.
  While Adler acknowledges there was "sample bias" in the data and that his program is "not ready for prime time," he said a bigger sample with more historical information about individuals could be used to create a felon predictor -- software that gives the statistical likelihood of someone committing a serious crime in the future. Scores could even be assigned to individuals.
  Adler, who has testified before Congress and the Federal Trade Commission on big data and privacy issues, created the program to show both the potential benefits of using big data to stop trouble before it happens, as well as the possible dangers of going too far with using predictive technologies.
  "It's important that geeks and suits and wonks get together and talk about these things," said Adler, who recently left Intelius on good terms and is now a vice president at Metanautix, a data analytics startup. "Because geeks like me can do stuff like this, we can make stuff work - it's not our job to figure out if it's right or not. We often don't know."
  This type of predictive policing is already causing alarm for some civil libertarians.
  "When we start using data to make decisions that imprison people and execute people and impact their freedom, that is a reason to be enormously careful," said Jules Polonetsky, executive director of the Future of Privacy Forum, a Washington-based group. "Every individual has the free will to not be a criminal, despite what the statistics said yesterday."
  Government use of big data is a growing concern as law enforcement and intelligence agencies amass more personal information from e-mail providers, social networks and financial institutions. Efforts such as the National Security Agency's vast electronic spying operation are fueling fears that expanding dossiers of personal data are being used to profile innocent people. Separately, accusations of profiling were in the news this week when a federal judge ruled that the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk program unlawfully targets minorities, a ruling the city plans to appeal.
  Still, some law enforcement agencies say they're finding success with predictive software. Los Angeles has recorded declines in property crimes, while Memphis, Tennessee, has seen a drop in robberies, burglaries and rapes with the help of these programs, which analyze broad patterns to help police identify hot spots for trouble.
  Adler's program goes deeper, he says, by pinpointing specific people. He does this by drawing upon a source of data most researchers don't have access to -- Intelius's trove of records on 630 million criminal cases and 40 million defendants in the U.S.
  To create his software, Adler examined court records dating back to the early 1980s of everyone who had brushes with the law in Kentucky and whose information was in Intelius's database. The dataset, which he chose because it was small and easier to work with, included people who didn't have felonies but did have traffic tickets and misdemeanors.
  Certain features correlated highly with having a felony record: being male, having hazel eyes, minor offenses beyond traffic tickets, and tattoos. Another was being light-skinned. Eighty-nine percent of Kentucky's residents and 74 percent of its inmates are white. Adler wanted to see how many felons he could identify if the fact of the felony record was hidden.
  The accuracy of the software depends on the number of false positives one is willing to tolerate, a range that Adler calls the "anarchy to tyranny" spectrum. At its most aggressive, his program can correctly identify all 51,246 felons while misidentifying 2,220 non-felons, numbers an iron-fisted ruler could live with. At a more lenient setting, it can correctly identify 37,842 felons while misidentifying 152 non-felons -- a smaller number of false positives, but still far from perfect.
  "If we can do this smarter and faster and the right way, then certainly, especially when it revolves around gun violence and gang violence, it could be a useful tool," said Bruce Ferrell, a retired homicide and gang investigator with the Omaha Police Department and now president of the National Alliance of Gang Investigators' Associations.
  See How You Score in Jim Adler's Felony Predictor
  The real test of Adler's algorithm will be when it's used with other states' data and modified to include their defendants' information. He doesn't plan to do that since he no longer has access to Intelius's data.
  The use of physical characteristics such as hair, eye and skin color to predict future crimes would raise "giant red privacy flags" since they are a proxy for race and could reinforce discriminatory practices in hiring, lending or law enforcement, said Chi Chi Wu, staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center.
  And even though Adler's software is described as a research project, Wu says it isn't farfetched for the background-check industry, which has more than 3,600 companies, to begin offering this type of service.
  "These companies are always looking for new markets and they're very competitive," she said. "It wouldn't be surprising if one of them tried to sell this as an add-on product."
  First Advantage, which performs more than 23 million background checks annually and is owned by Palo Alto, California-based private equity firm Symphony Technology Group, declined to comment. Altegrity, the Falls Church, Virginia-based company that provides more than 12 million checks per year through its HireRight and Kroll divisions, also did not comment.
  "This is where this kind of technology is going," said Adler. "This is dangerous territory, where false positives lead to tyrannical government abuse of the innocent. But the allure is that such technology might tip off the authorities to the likes of Snowden, the Boston bombers or the mass murderers that hit Newtown and Aurora."
  Driven by security fears and an improving economy, the background-check industry is expected to grow to $4.5 billion by 2018, according to researcher IBISWorld. Background checks in the U.S. are covered under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, so employers would have to notify job applicants if they were rejected because of a predictive model.
  Adler's work grew out of a new service that Intelius's parent company, Inome Inc., has developed to match its public records with private databases maintained by banks, retailers, political candidates, police departments and other entities for risk assessment and other predictive uses. There are no plans to use felony prediction, but elements of the concept are being incorporated as part of the service, said Niraj Shah, the company's co-founder.
  Adler's research convinced executives of the untapped power of using predictive techniques on demographic data, Shah said.
  "If you can start to predict intent - for crime, for retail, for politics, for business, for commerce - it's powerful," Shah said in an interview. "There's so much opportunity when you know one's intent."
  Photograph: Twentieth Century Fox and DreamWorks L.L.C.
Copyright Law Online: Protection and Violation '-- iKeepSafe
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:38
  The Internet gives us more creative mediums to explore and platforms for exchange than we have ever before had access to, but we sometimes forget that ownership still exists in the virtual world. Copyright law can be dense and difficult to navigate, but it is just as important online as it is in more tangible forms. It is essential to have a good understanding of how copyrights and copyright violations can affect you and your family in these digital times. To get you started, what follows are some copyright basics from the United States Copyright Office.
  What is a copyright?A copyright is secured immediately upon creation of the work. This part of copyright law is frequently misunderstood. What this means is that as soon as the work is in a fixed form, it is protected by copyright law. The U.S. Copyright Office defines copyrightable creations as '''original works of authorship' that are fixed in a tangible form of expression'' [1]. This means your son's blog post or daughter's original internet video are protected as soon as they are posted, without anyone ever applying for a copyright.
  What is a copyright violation?Copyright offers plenty of protection for young authors, directors, artists and the like, but with the umbrella of protection stretched this wide, it blurs the line of what exactly copyright violation looks like. A basic definition of a copyright violation is anything that violates the exclusive rights of the copyright holder:
  The right to reproduce the work in copies or phonorecordsThe right to prepare derivative works based upon the workThe right to distribute copies of the work by sale or other transfer of ownershipThe right to perform the work publicly (if applicable)The right to display the work publicly (if applicable)The right to perform the work publicly by means of a digital audio transmission (if applicable)These rights seem easy enough to respect, but there are plenty of surprising ways to violate copyright law. For example, your daughter likes to use software to mix and layer popular songs to create new versions or remixes. She posts these online for her friends to download. This is technically creating a derivative work of original pieces that she doesn't own, thus violating the owner's copyright. Recording artists who make remixes or sample from other songs always have permission or have paid for the right to do so.
  You or your child can use borrowed material if it's in the public domain (or, out of copyright), if you have the express permission of the owner to do so, or if the terms are protected by fair use. A basic understanding of fair use is good for Internet-savvy youth to have. Fair use allows you to use copyrighted material for specific purposes, such as: educational purposes, to parody, in scholarly works if due acknowledgment is given, or in a news report [2].
  Perhaps the most commented-on form of copyright violation is piracy. Piracy is often equated with theft and can include the illegal downloading or uploading of music, movies, and TV shows. Piracy and other forms of copyright violation can be punishable by fines and even jail time.
  That said, don't discourage your child from using online platforms for creativity. Sit down with your child and make sure you both have a clear understanding of copyright law and ownership.
  References:
  United States Copyright Office. (2008). Copyright Basics. Retrieved from: http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.pdfUnited States Copyright Office. (2009). Fair Use. Retrieved from: http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl102.html
VIDEO-Downloading Is Mean! Content Industry Drafts Anti-Piracy Curriculum for Elementary Schools | Threat Level | Wired.com
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:31
  Listen up children: Cheating on your homework or cribbing notes from another student is bad, but not as bad as sharing a music track with a friend, or otherwise depriving the content-industry of its well-earned profits.
  That's one of the messages in a new-school curriculum being developed with the Motion Picture Association of America, the Recording Industry Association of America and the nation's top ISPs, in a pilot project to be tested in California elementary schools later this year.
  A near-final draft of the curriculum, obtained by WIRED, shows that it comes in different flavors for every grade from kindergarten through sixth, to keep pace with your developing child's ability to understand that copying is theft, period.
  ''This thinly disguised corporate propaganda is inaccurate and inappropriate,'' says Mitch Stoltz, an intellectual property attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who reviewed the material at WIRED's request.
  ''It suggests, falsely, that ideas are property and that building on others' ideas always requires permission,'' Stoltz says. ''The overriding message of this curriculum is that students' time should be consumed not in creating but in worrying about their impact on corporate profits.''
  The material was prepared by the California School Library Association and the Internet Keep Safe Coalition in conjunction with the Center For Copyright Infringement, whose board members include executives from the MPAA, RIAA, Verizon, Comcast and AT&T.
  Each grade's material includes a short video, and comes with a worksheet for teachers to use that's packed with talking points to share with students.
  An entrepreneurial schoolyard artist finds her business selling dragon drawings is ruined after a fellow third-grader takes a photo with her cell phone.
  In the sixth-grade version, (.pdf) teachers are asked to engage students with the question: ''In school, if we copy a friend's answers on a test or homework assignment, what happens?''
  The answer is, you can be suspended from school or flunk the test. The teachers are directed to tell their students that there are worse consequences if they commit a copyright violation.
  ''In the digital world, it's harder to see the effects of copying, even though the effects can be more serious,'' the teacher worksheet says.
  The material is silent on the concept of fair use, a legal doctrine that allows for the reproduction of copyrighted works without the rights holder's permission. Instead, students are told that using works without permission is ''stealing.''
  ''Justin Bieber got started singing other people's songs, without permission, on YouTube. If he had been subjected to this curriculum, he would have been told that what he did was 'bad, 'stealing,' and could have landed him in jail,'' says Stoltz.
  ''We've got some editing to do,'' concedes Glen Warren, vice president of the California School Library Association, the non-profit that helped produce the material with the Internet Keep Safe Coalition and industry.
  The Internet Keep Safe Coalition is a non-profit partnering with various governments and some of the nation's biggest corporate names like Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Target, Xerox, HP and others.
  Its president, Marsali Hancock, says fair use is not a part of the teaching material because K-6 graders don't have the ability to grasp it.
  The curriculum, she said in a telephone interview, ''is developmentally consistent with what children can learn at specific ages.''
  She said the group will later develop material for older kids that will discuss fair use.
  A 45-second video for second graders, for example, shows a boy snapping pictures and deciding whether to sell, keep or share them.
  ''You're not old enough yet to be selling your pictures online, but pretty soon you will be,'' reads the accompanying text in the teacher's lesson plan. (.pdf) ''And you'll appreciate if the rest of us respect your work by not copying it and doing whatever we want with it.''
  Hancock said the lessons were developed with ''literacy experts,'' and that some of the wording and kinks may still need to be ironed out.
  She said the material has not yet been approved by the Center For Copyright Information, the group that commissioned the curriculum.
  The Center for Copyright Information is best known for working with the White House and rights holders to forge an internet monitoring program with some of the nation's biggest ISPs. That program provides for extrajudicial punishment of internet users who download copyrighted works without permission. Commenced earlier this year, the program's punishment for repeat violators includes temporary internet termination and throttling connection speeds.
  Hancock said the center is expected to be briefed on the proposed curriculum '-- dubbed ''Be a Creator'' '-- perhaps as early as this week.
  The center's executive director, Jill Lesser, told a House subcommittee Wednesday that she hoped the program would be integrated in ''schools across the country.''
  She testified that it's best to attack piracy through youth education.
  ''Based on our research, we believe one of the most important audiences for our educational efforts is young people. As a result, we have developed a new copyright curriculum that is being piloted during this academic year in California,'' according to her testimony.
  ''The curriculum introduces concepts about creative content in innovative and age-appropriate ways. The curriculum is designed to help children understand that they can be both creators and consumers of artistic content, and that concepts of copyright protection are important in both cases,'' Lesser testified.
  She said the CCI's board is expected to sign off on the program soon, although she cautioned that it currently is in ''draft'' form.
  ''We are just about to post those materials in the next week or two on our web site,'' Lesser said in a telephone interview.
  Gigi Sohn, the president of Public Knowledge and an adviser to the CCI, declined to comment because she said she hasn't seen the curriculum.
  Overall, the curriculum's message is anything but ''sharing is caring.''
  ''We all love to create new things'--art, music, movies, paper creations, structures, even buildings! It's great to create '-- as long as we aren't stealing other people's work. We show respect for other artists and their work when we get permission before we use their work,'' according to the message to first graders. (.pdf) ''This is an important part of copyright. Sharing can be exciting and helpful and nice. But taking something without asking is mean.''
  The fifth-grade lesson introduces the Creative Commons license, in which rights holders grant limited permission on re-use. But even in explaining the Creative Commons, the lesson says that it's illegal to make any copies of copyrighted works. That's a message that essentially says it's even unlawful to rip CDs to your iPod.
  ''If a song or movie is copyrighted, you can't copy it, download it, or use it in your own work without permission,'' according to the fifth-grade worksheet. (.pdf) ''However, Creative Commons allows artists to tell users how and if their work can be used by others. For example, if a musician is okay with their music being downloaded for free '-- they will offer it on their website as a 'Free download.' An artist can also let you know how you can use their work by using a Creative Commons license.''
  Warren, of the library association, agreed that it's incorrect to tell students they can never use copyrighted works without permission, as the fifth-grade worksheet says. He said some of the package's language has been influenced by the rights holders on the Center for Copyright Information.
  ''We're moving along trying to get things a little closer to sanity,'' Warren said in a telephone interview. ''That tone and language, that came from that side of the fence, so to speak.''
Qaeda Plot Leak Has Undermined U.S. Intelligence - NYTimes.com
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  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:20
  WASHINGTON '-- As the nation's spy agencies assess the fallout from disclosures about their surveillance programs, some government analysts and senior officials have made a startling finding: the impact of a leaked terrorist plot by Al Qaeda in August has caused more immediate damage to American counterterrorism efforts than the thousands of classified documents disclosed by Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor.
  Since news reports in early August revealed that the United States intercepted messages between Ayman al-Zawahri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden as the head of Al Qaeda, and Nasser al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, discussing an imminent terrorist attack, analysts have detected a sharp drop in the terrorists' use of a major communications channel that the authorities were monitoring. Since August, senior American officials have been scrambling to find new ways to surveil the electronic messages and conversations of Al Qaeda's leaders and operatives.
  ''The switches weren't turned off, but there has been a real decrease in quality'' of communications, said one United States official, who like others quoted spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence programs.
  The drop in message traffic after the communication intercepts contrasts with what analysts describe as a far more muted impact on counterterrorism efforts from the disclosures by Mr. Snowden of the broad capabilities of N.S.A. surveillance programs. Instead of terrorists moving away from electronic communications after those disclosures, analysts have detected terrorists mainly talking about the information that Mr. Snowden has disclosed.
  Senior American officials say that Mr. Snowden's disclosures have had a broader impact on national security in general, including counterterrorism efforts. This includes fears that Russia and China now have more technical details about the N.S.A. surveillance programs. Diplomatic ties have also been damaged, and among the results was the decision by Brazil's president, Dilma Rousseff, to postpone a state visit to the United States in protest over revelations that the agency spied on her, her top aides and Brazil's largest company, the oil giant Petrobras.
  The communication intercepts between Mr. Zawahri and Mr. Wuhayshi revealed what American intelligence officials and lawmakers have described as one of the most serious plots against American and other Western interests since the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. It prompted the closing of 19 United States Embassies and consulates for a week, when the authorities ultimately concluded that the plot focused on the embassy in Yemen.
  McClatchy Newspapers first reported on the conversations between Mr. Zawahri and Mr. Wuhayshi on Aug. 4. Two days before that, The New York Times agreed to withhold the identities of the Qaeda leaders after senior American intelligence officials said the information could jeopardize their operations. After the government became aware of the McClatchy article, it dropped its objections to The Times's publishing the same information, and the newspaper did so on Aug. 5.
  In recent months, senior administration officials '-- including the director of national intelligence, James Clapper Jr. '-- have drawn attention to the damage that Mr. Snowden's revelations have done, though most have been addressing the impact on national security more broadly, not just the effect on counterterrorism.
  ''We have seen, in response to the Snowden leaks, Al Qaeda and affiliated groups seeking to change their tactics, looking to see what they can learn from what is in the press and seek to change how they communicate to avoid detection,'' Matthew Olsen, the director of the National Counterterrorism Center, told a security conference in Aspen, Colo., in July.
  American counterterrorism officials say they believe the disclosure about the Qaeda plot has had a significant impact because it was a specific event that signaled to terrorists that a main communication network that the group's leaders were using was being monitored. The sharpest decline in messaging has been among the Qaeda operatives in Yemen, officials said. The disclosures from Mr. Snowden have not had such specificity about terrorist communications networks that the government is monitoring, they said.
  ''It was something that was immediate, direct and involved specific people on specific communications about specific events,'' one senior American official said of the exchange between the Qaeda leaders. ''The Snowden stuff is layered and layered, and it will take a lot of time to understand it. There wasn't a sudden drop-off from it. A lot of these guys think that they are not impacted by it, and it is difficult stuff for them to understand.''
  Other senior intelligence and counterterrorism officials offer a dissenting view, saying that it is difficult, if not impossible, to separate the impact of the messages between the Qaeda leaders from Mr. Snowden's overall disclosures, and that the decline is more likely a combination of the two.
  ''The bad guys are just not going to talk operational planning electronically,'' said one senior counterterrorism official. Moreover, that official and others say, it could take months or years to fully assess the impact of Mr. Snowden's disclosures on counterterrorism efforts.
  Over the past decade, the N.S.A. has invested billions of dollars in a clandestine campaign to preserve its ability to eavesdrop. The agency has circumvented or cracked much of the encryption, or digital scrambling, that guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world, according to documents provided by Mr. Snowden.
  The government's greatest fear concerning its counterterrorism operations is that over the next several months, the level of intercepted communications will continue to fall as terrorists most likely find new ways to communicate with one another, one senior American official said. It will likely take the government some time to break into that method and monitor communications.
  One way the terrorists may try to communicate, the official said, is strictly through couriers, who would carry paper notes or computer flash drives. If that happens, the official said, terrorists will find it very difficult to communicate as couriers take significant time to move messages.
  ''The problem for Al Qaeda is they cannot function without cellphones,'' said one former senior administration official. ''They know we listen to them, but they use them anyhow. You can't run a sophisticated organization without communications in this world. They know all this, but to operate they have to go on.''
  A senior intelligence official put it this way: ''They are agile, we are agile. When we see a change in behavior, our guys are changing right along with it, or we're already seeing it and adapting to it. Our capabilities are changing in hours and days, versus weeks and months like we used to.''
  To be sure, Qaeda leaders and their top lieutenants use other secure electronic communications as well as old-fashioned means '-- like couriers, as Bin Laden did '-- that pose major challenges to American intelligence services.
  In the past few months, the Global Islamic Media Front, the propaganda arm of Al Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups, has released new software that allows users to encrypt communications for instant-messaging and cellphones. Officials say these new programs may pose fresh challenges for N.S.A. code breakers.
  Jihadists have been working on camouflaging their communications through encryption software for years.
  Al Qaeda's use of advanced encryption technology dates to 2007, when the Global Islamic Media Front released the Asrar al-Mujahedeen, or so-called ''Mujahedeen Secrets,'' software. An updated version, Mujahedeen Secrets 2, was released in January 2008, and has been revised at least twice, most recently in May 2012, analysts said.
  The program was popularized in the first issue of Inspire, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's quarterly online magazine, in a July 2010 post entitled ''How to Use Asrar al-Mujahedeen: Sending and Receiving Encrypted Messages.''
  Since then, each issue of Inspire has offered a how-to section on encrypting communications, recommending MS2 as the main encryption tool.
  Shortly after Mr. Snowden leaked documents about the secret N.S.A. surveillance programs, chat rooms and Web sites used by jihadis and prospective recruits advised users how to avoid N.S.A. detection, from telling them to avoid using Skype to recommending specific online software programs like MS2 to keep spies from tracking their computers' physical locations.
  A few months ago, the Global Islamic Media Front issued new software that relies on the MS2's ''Asrar al-Dardashah, or ''Secrets of Chatting,'' which allows users to encrypt conversations over instant-messaging software like Paltalk, Google Chat, Yahoo and MSN, according to Laith Alkhouri, a senior analyst at Flashpoint Global Partners, a New York security consulting firm that tracks militant Web sites.
  In early September, the Global Islamic Media Front said it had released an encryption program for messages and files on mobile phones running the Android and Symbian operating systems.
  According to the group, the software can encrypt text messages and files and send them by e-mail or between cellphones with different operating systems. The software also lets users securely check e-mail and prevents users from receiving nonencrypted messages, the group claimed.
Editing Wikipedia Pages for Med School Credit - NYTimes.com
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  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 16:18
  Medical students at the University of California, San Francisco, will be able to get course credit for editing Wikipedia articles about diseases, part of an effort to improve the quality of medical articles in the online encyclopedia and help distribute the articles globally via cellphones. While professors often incorporate Wikipedia work into classes, hoping that student research can live on online, the university and others say this is the first time a medical school will give credit for such work.
  ''We as a profession have our corpus of knowledge, and we owe it as a profession to educate the lay public,'' said Dr. Amin Azzam, a health sciences associate clinical professor at the U.C.S.F. School of Medicine who will teach the monthlong elective course in December.
  The course is open to fourth-year medical students and was scheduled for a month when many travel the country for interviews to arrange their residencies, so they need the flexibility to work remotely, Dr. Azzam said. Three students have signed up for the course, but he said that this time was really to test whether the concept was worthy.
  He said he could envision such a course being required for students as they begin studies and must immerse themselves in the details of how the body works, and, at times, stops working.
  Wikipedia editing will force students to think clearly and avoid jargon, he said. ''We do a great job in helping them talk to doctors, but we don't do as good a job in helping them speak to the public,'' he added.
  The students' editing will be part of Wikiproject Medicine, which focuses contributors on the 100 or so most significant medical articles, including those on tuberculosis and syphilis, but especially on those important articles that need the most editing. (The project lists more than 350 active editors, many of whom cite an advanced degree under the header ''medical qualification.'')
  These articles are submitted to a group from Translators Without Borders that produces medical articles for Wikipedias in languages spoken in countries that often lack high-quality medical information. Examples include an article in Javanese on dengue fever and one in Hindi on urinary tract infection. Creating these high-quality medical articles fits neatly with efforts by the Wikimedia Foundation to make deals with cellphone carriers to provide Wikipedia content free of data charges, especially in the developing world where cellphones are often the only connection to the Internet.
  ''If we want to get high-quality information to all the world's population, Wikipedia is not just a viable option, but the only viable option,'' Dr. Azzam said.
  He credited one of his former students, Dr. Michael Turken, 32, a first-year resident in internal medicine at Stanford Hospital and Clinics, with helping to conceive of the course.
  Dr. Turken said the importance of Wikipedia's medical information became clear to him a couple of years ago when a friend asked him how long H.I.V. tests could give false negative readings.
  A Wikipedia entry said two weeks, and ''that didn't seem right,'' he said. ''I checked with the literature, and it is up to 28 days, based on the test.'' He made the change, then looked at how many people read the article a month '-- often tens of thousands. Rather than be offended at the open access to Wikipedia pages, Dr. Turken said he found it ''very reassuring that it is a collaborative effort,'' with many people checking what is written.
  Dr. Azzam said the details of the course were still being worked out. He said he planned to see the students for two days at the start to plot the writing and editing requirements, then track their work on Wikipedia. While some might fear that his students would cut corners, Dr. Azzam said: ''I am working with medical students '-- professionals in training '-- who are highly motivated. I'm not worried about them slacking.''
Google is starting a new company to monetize life extension and disrupt the death space '' Quartz
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  Archived Version
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 15:46
  Time's cover story on Google's just-announced new firm, Calico, asks ''Can Google Solve DEATH?'' Ambitious though Google is, abolishing death is not in fact one of its goals, or at least not yet.
  Rather, Calico is apparently looking to use tools like big data to determine what really extends lives. Google CEO Larry Page told Time magazine, for instance, that cancer is not worth working on, because it doesn't make as big a difference as everyone seems to think. ''Are people really focused on the right things? One of the things I thought was amazing is that if you solve cancer, you'd add about three years to people's average life expectancy,'' said Page.
  Google has never started an entirely separate company to pursue a new line of business, but making you live longer is so important that it warrants it, apparently. ''For me, it was always unsatisfying if you look at companies that get very big, and they're just doing one thing,'' Page told Time. ''Ideally, if you have more people and more resources, you can do more things, get more things solved. We've kind of always had that philosophy.''
  Calico will be run by Arthur Levinson, former CEO of biotech and pharmaceuticals firm Genentech, and current chairman of the board at Apple. It looks like a long-term play for Google, considering the amount of time that it takes biotech research to come to fruition'--10 to 20 years.
Google announces Calico, a new company focused on health and well-being '' News announcements '' News from Google '' Google
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  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 15:46
  MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA '' September 18, 2013 '' Google today announced Calico, a new company that will focus on health and well-being, in particular the challenge of aging and associated diseases. Arthur D. Levinson, Chairman and former CEO of Genentech and Chairman of Apple, will be Chief Executive Officer and a founding investor.Announcing this new investment, Larry Page, Google CEO said: ''Illness and aging affect all our families. With some longer term, moonshot thinking around healthcare and biotechnology, I believe we can improve millions of lives. It's impossible to imagine anyone better than Art'--one of the leading scientists, entrepreneurs and CEOs of our generation'--to take this new venture forward.'' Art said: ''I've devoted much of my life to science and technology, with the goal of improving human health. Larry's focus on outsized improvements has inspired me, and I'm tremendously excited about what's next.''
  Art Levinson will remain Chairman of Genentech and a director of Hoffmann-La Roche, as well as Chairman of Apple.
  Commenting on Art's new role, Franz Humer, Chairman of Hoffmann-La Roche, said: ''Art's track record at Genentech has been exemplary, and we see an interesting potential for our companies to work together going forward. We're delighted he'll stay on our board.''
  Tim Cook, Chief Executive Officer of Apple, said: ''For too many of our friends and family, life has been cut short or the quality of their life is too often lacking. Art is one of the crazy ones who thinks it doesn't have to be this way. There is no one better suited to lead this mission and I am excited to see the results.''
  ContactLeslie MillerGoogle Corporate Communicationspress@google.com
Google Calico: Everything You Need to Know About TIME's Cover Story | TIME.com
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  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 15:45
  Bold project, to be led by biotech pioneer Arthur Levinson, will tackle's some of health care's biggest problems
  Anna Kuperberg / GoogleLarry Page at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.
  Can Google, the technology giant best known for search and free email, tackle aging?
  The Mountain View, Calif.-based company is planning to launch Calico, a new firm that will attempt to solve some of health care's most vexing problems. One of the independent venture's major initiatives will be significantly expanding human lifespan. Arthur Levinson, the former chief of biotech pioneer Genentech, is an investor in Calico and will serve as its CEO.
  The Sept. 30 issue of TIME profiles Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page as well as his decision to launch Calico.
  Based in the Bay Area, not far from Google's headquarters, Calico will be making longer-term bets than most health care firms. ''In some industries, it takes ten or 20 years to go from an idea to something being real. Healthcare is certainly one of those ares,'' said Page. ''Maybe we should shoot for the things that are really, really important so ten or 20 years from now we have those things done.''
  Google is announcing Calico in a Google+ post Wednesday. Details of the company's funding and employee head count were not available as of press time.
  Google is keeping its exact plans close to the vest. But it is likely to use its data-processing might to shed new light on age-related maladies. Sources close to the project suggest Calico will start with a small number of employees and focus initially on researching new technology.
  That approach may yield unlikely conclusions. ''Are people really focused on the right things? One of the things I thought was amazing is that if you solve cancer, you'd add about three years to people's average life expectancy,'' Page said. ''We think of solving cancer as this huge thing that'll totally change the world. But when you really take a step back and look at it, yeah, there are many, many tragic cases of cancer, and it's very, very sad, but in the aggregate, it's not as big an advance as you might think.''
  Levinson, the firm's leader, has had a storied career. A biochemist with a Ph.D. from Princeton, he rose through the ranks to become CEO of Genentech in 1995. Levinson, who was previously a director at Google, is currently the chairman of both Genentech and Apple's boards. He replaced the latter company's co-founder Steve Jobs after his death in 2011. Levinson was not immediately available for comment.
  Forming an entirely separate company as a way of expanding its ambitions is a new move for Google under Page. Far-out projects such as Google Glass, a pair of Internet-connect spectacles, and its self-driving car initiative are run out of Google X, the company's secretive research arm headed by co-founder Sergey Brin. But Calico will be a separate entity.
  ''For me, it was always unsatisfying if you look at companies that get very big, and they're just doing one thing,'' Page said. ''Ideally, if you have more people and more resources, you can do more things, get more things solved. We've kind of always had that philosophy.''
  Calico is in line with Page's oft-stated belief that the company should be aiming not just to make the world a little better, but a lot better. Page urges Google employees to engage in so-called 10x thinking'--aspiring to create inventions which are better than anything that already exists by at least an order of magnitude.
  Inside Google HeadquartersGregg Segal for TIME
  An employee rides a Google bicycle past Android-themed statues.
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VIDEO-Eye In The Sky: Navy Research Blimp Hovering Over Maryland CBS Baltimore
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  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 15:22
  BALTIMORE (WJZ) '-- You may have noticed an unusual sight over the Baltimore area in the last few days'--a Navy balloon hovering in the sky.
  Christie Ileto explains what the blimp is doing.
  The Navy is conducting aerial mapping over Baltimore, and it's caught the eye of many residents far below.
  If you've looked up lately, you may have spotted a U.S. Navy blimp hiding in the clouds, or hovering over Baltimore's harbor on clear sunny days.
  ''I've been seeing it all week. Like, every day,'' said Ashley Bradley.
  Almost 200-feet long, it's flying over Baltimore.
  ''Me and my friends were actually talking about it and wondering what it was,'' Bradley said.
  ''I was coming down 95 and I was like, 'what is with that blimp?''' said Dennis McGill.
  The U.S. Navy research laboratory says the blimp is a government research airship conducting aerial mapping, and that the MZ-3A lighter than air blimp began roaming above the D.C. area on September 21 and can remain stationary for more than 12 hours.
  The blimp is mapping in the flight restriction zones around Washington D.C. It includes places like the Department of Agriculture and at some of ourmajor airports like BWI.
  YouTube video even shows the blimp propelled by two 180 horsepower engines, landing as far west as the Frederick Municipal Airport.
  The ''Baltimore Blimp'' as it's being called online has even sparked Twitter discussions. People want to know what it's doing in the sky'--others are just ''blimp watching.''
  ''Usually when they have a football game or something you see a blimp. But this one was, like, way high,'' McGill said.
  But the blimp won't be up for much longer. The research lab says after October 5, it's flying away.
  When the mission is complete, pilots will fly the blimp north to a base in New Jersey.
  Right now, it is stationed at the Naval Air Station in the Patuxent River.
Green NGOs cannot take big business cash and save planet
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  Archived Version
  Source: The Conversation
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 14:59
  Hands up for the environment. Cathal McNaughton/PAWhen she wrote recently that ''big green groups'' are doing more harm than good when it comes to saving the planet, Naomi Klein was was right to be concerned.
  In recent years the environmental agenda has become heavily corporatised. Unimaginable a few decades back, partnerships between environmental NGOs and big-brand companies have become common. The Environmental Defense Fund led the way in 1990, partnering with McDonald's to introduce more sustainable packaging. Today, the WWF receives funding from and works with Coca-Cola to ''save'' polar bears, and acts as ''conservation partner'' to IKEA.
  Conservation International has partnerships with Starbucks and Walmart. The Nature Conservatory has partnered with Boeing, British Petroleum, Shell, Monsanto, and Walmart, among many others. Even Greenpeace, one of the more traditionally anti-corporate NGOs, is now cooperating with Unilever and Coca-Cola to promote ''Greenfreeze'' refrigeration technology (though unlike others, Greenpeace does not accept corporate funding).
  Ties between environmental NGOs and the world's largest oil and gas companies have also deepened. To name just a few examples, Time magazine reported in 2012 that ''between 2007 and 2010 the Sierra Club, a US grassroots conservation network founded in the 19th century, accepted over US$25m in donations from the gas industry". The majority of these funds came from Chesapeake Energy, one of the world's biggest gas drillers.
  The Nature Conservancy has accepted millions of dollars from British Petroleum (BP) and is currently working with BP to ''ensure their oil exploration efforts in the West are done sustainably''. And Antony Burgmans, a non-executive board member of BP, sits on the board of WWF International. While not completely new, such links between environmental NGOs and the biggest retail and energy corporations in the world are now commonplace, and growing in number.
  As Peter Dauvergne and I argue in our forthcoming book Protest Inc., corporate-NGO partnerships do not represent a simple business takeover of activism. But they do demonstrate a significant shift in the strategy and ethos of many NGOs. They reflect the acceptance of corporations as allies rather than adversaries, and of the market as an efficient and acceptable tool through which to pursue environmental objectives. As many of the big environmental NGOs morph into global business-style institutions, they have come to value win-win moderate calls for ''concrete and measurable progress'' and impact over more radical disruptive demands to transform the system.
  A consequence of environmental NGOs opting to co-operate with corporations has been that more effort has gone into market-friendly and consumer-driven activism '' eco-certification and eco-labeling, for example, which helps legitimise rather than challenge business as usual.
  For instance, the WWF/Coca-Cola campaign to ''save'' polar bears has driven sales of over one billion cans of Coke adorned with a white polar bear. The Sierra Club's partnership with Clorox rents out the club's century-old logo to help market a line of ''green'' cleaning products, in exchange for a percentage of sales. One can only imagine that John Muir, the Sierra Club's first president and staunch advocate of ecological preservation, would hardly be impressed at the extent of his group's compromises.
  Efforts such as these may improve the ecological footprint of individual products and bring revenue to cash-strapped environmental organisations '' but they are not fundamentally helping the planet, in fact they reinforce unsustainable patterns of production and consumption worldwide.
  The great danger of corporatisation is that while environmental NGOs tinker at the edges with efforts to improve recycling and packaging (such as Greenpeace's campaign to remove the illegal Indonesian paper fibre in Mattel's Barbie boxes), overall consumption is rising exponentially. So too is the power and profit of the oil and retail corporations whose unsustainable business models drive climate change.
  Grassroots environmental movements and groups continue to resist and challenge corporatisation. But this does not mean they are unaffected by it. Our research has found that at as global leaders praise corporate-NGO partnerships, politicians, police forces and court rooms in nations such as the UK, US and Canada treat street-level activists '-- particularly those involved in direct action '-- increasingly harshly. When credible alternatives are smeared by association, such actions only enhance the power that corporations have to weaken environmental activism.
  Sign in to Favourite Post a CommentTagsConservation, NGOs, Corporate Social Responsibility, Environmentalism, Environmental activism, Corporate accountability
  Related articles 30 September 2013 Why Victoria needs a Giant Forest National Park 27 September 2013 Green Conservatism shriveled after banks went to the wall 25 September 2013 Introducing species to change ecosystems is a balancing act 25 September 2013 Losing Australia's diggers is hurting our ecosystems 24 September 2013 Sometimes science can't see the wood for the bees
Shebab says no woman involved in mall attack
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  Source: The Daily Star >> Live News
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 14:58
  NAIROBI: Somalia's Shebab Islamists insisted Monday that no woman joined them in an attack on Nairobi's Westgate shopping mall, dismissing speculation that British 'White Widow' Samantha Lewthwaite took part in the massacre.
  "We once again openly declare that no woman was involved at Westgate," Shebab said on Twitter, reiterating it had a policy of "not employing sisters for such missions".
  "A week after Westgate, the Kenyan government and Western intelligence officials failed to uncover the facts and details of the Westgate Operation," it added, playing up an apparent lack of information on the attackers and details of how the massacre was planned and carried out.
  "The Kenyan govt (government) is still chasing its tail by holding on to the hopeless notion that a woman led the attack," the group said in another Twitter post.
  The four-day bloodbath at the upmarket shopping mall, which Kenyan forces brought to an end on Tuesday, left at least 67 people dead. The Kenyan Red Cross said Monday that 39 more were still missing.
  Lewthwaite, a 29-year-old Muslim convert, was married to Germaine Lindsay, one of four suicide bombers who attacked the London transport network in July 2005, killing 52 people.
  The mother-of-three has been on the run in East Africa for around two years and is wanted by Kenyan police for alleged involvement in a separate terror plot.
  Interpol issued a "red notice" arrest warrant for Lewthwaite on charges of possessing explosives and conspiracy to commit a felony dating back to December 2011.
  Kenyan officials have given contradictory statements about whether a British woman may have been involved in the attack.
NSA: The Involuntary Social Network
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  Source: Activist Post
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 14:25
  Lily DaneActivist PostThe latest Edward Snowden leak revealed that everyone's favorite government agency has been mapping out our social connections. They've been identifying our friends and associates, detecting our locations at certain times, gaining clues regarding our political and religious affiliations, and gathering information about our personal calls and emails.
  Since 2010, the NSA has been gathering that social networking data on Americans and compiling it into intricate graphs like this one:
  According to James Risen and Laura Poitras ofThe New York Times:The agency can augment the communications data with material from public, commercial and other sources, including bank codes, insurance information, Facebook profiles, passenger manifests, voter registration rolls and GPS location information, as well as property records and unspecified tax data, according to the documents. They do not indicate any restrictions on the use of such ''enrichment'' data, and several former senior Obama administration officials said the agency drew on it for both Americans and foreigners.
  There doesn't seem to be any restriction on the types of data collected '' or from whom it is collected. This network is supposed to be used to track the data of foreign nationals, but Americans can get tangled in the web if they are linked to a suspect's social connections.An NSA spokeswoman explained how this can happen:The legal underpinning of the policy change was a 1979 Supreme Court ruling that Americans could have no expectation of privacy about what numbers they had called. Based on that ruling, the Justice Department and the Pentagon decided that it was permissible to create contact chains using Americans' ''metadata,'' which includes the timing, location and other details of calls and e-mails, but not their content. The agency is not required to seek warrants for the analyses from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
  PowerPoint presentations and memos from the agency detail how the NSA has been able to develop software and other tools to reveal as much information about individuals as possible. One document cited a new generation of programs that ''revolutionize'' data collection and analysis.Some facts about this newly-revealed spying program:
  1) The NSA is developing a ''metadata repository'' that can take in 20 BILLION ''record events'' every DAY '' and this information will be available to analysts within an hour, according to a 2013 budget document disclosed by Snowden.
  2) There are multiple collection programs and databases, and they rely on both domestic and international metadata.
  3) One of the main tools used for ''chaining'' phone and email records is called Mainway. Significant amounts of data originating in the United States goes into this system.
  4) An internal NSA bulletin stated that Mainway was taking in 700 million phone records per day. In August 2011, it began receiving an additional 1.1 billion cellphone records daily from an unnamed American service provider under Section 702 of the 2008 FISA Amendments Act, which allows for the collection of the data of Americans if at least one end of the communication is believed to be foreign.
  5) Budget documents revealed by Snowden show that the NSA is putting a lot of effort and money into ''creating a metadata repository capable of taking in 20 billion ''record events'' daily and making them available to NSA analysts within 60 minutes.''
  6) The budget includes $394 million for an ''Enterprise Knowledge System,'' which is designed to ''rapidly discover and correlate complex relationships and patterns across diverse data sources on a massive scale,'' according to a 2008 document. This data is automatically computed to hasten queries and discover new targets for surveillance.
  7) ''Better Person Centric Analysis'' is a top-secret document that describes how the agency searches for 94 ''entity types,'' including phone numbers, e-mail addresses and IP addresses. In addition, the NSA correlates 164 ''relationship types'' to build social networks and what the agency calls ''community of interest'' profiles, using queries like ''travelsWith, hasFather, sentForumMessage, employs.''
  8) An internal briefing paper from the NSA Office of Legal Counsel showed that the agency was allowed to collect and retain metadata and content about ''U.S. persons'' for up to five years online and for an additional 10 years offline for ''historical searches.''
  Orin S. Kerr, a law professor at George Washington University, told the New York Times:
  Metadata can be very revealing. Knowing things like the number someone just dialed or the location of the person's cellphone is going to allow to assemble a picture of what someone is up to. It's the digital equivalent of tailing a suspect.
  In essence, the government is building a detailed database of our daily lives.But they are just looking out for our best interests, right?
  Lily Dane is a staff writer for The Daily Sheeple, where this first appeared. Her goal is to help people to ''Wake the Flock Up!''
  BE THE CHANGE! PLEASE SHARE THIS USING THE TOOLS BELOW
Blackberry hits out at Gartner claim
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  Archived Version
  Source: BBC News - Home
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 14:24
  30 September 2013Last updated at09:06 ETBlackberry has dismissed an influential recommendation that customers should move to other mobile technologies.
  The embattled smartphone maker said that firms using its products did not need to switch.
  Blackberry said conclusions drawn about the viability of its business plans were "purely speculative".
  Analyst firm Gartner had based its recommendation on Blackberry's financial losses and planned redundancies.
  Blackberry said the job losses were part of its strategy to focus on its core enterprise business.
  "We recognise and respect external parties' opinions on Blackberry's recent news," the company said in a statement. "However, many of the conclusions by Gartner about the potential impact of a sale or other strategic alternatives, are purely speculative."
  RedundanciesBlackberry this month revealed that it would make half its workforce redundant by the end of the year, after losses of $950m (£588m) in the second quarter.
  The struggling Canadian firm, which has been hit hard by declining handset sales, has agreed in principle to be bought by a private consortium led by investor Fairfax Financial.
  Blackberry products are used by governments and large financial institutions around the world for secure communications.
  Gartner, one of the world's major technology analyst firms, said in a report last week that Blackberry customers were becoming increasingly concerned about the company's prospects.
  The technology consultancy said Blackberry's hardware group could be sold to a foreign government, "which may be unsettling for some clients".
  Businesses have up to six months to make plans to switch from Blackberry to alternatives, Gartner said in its report.
  Organisations should move completely away from Blackberry or phase out Blackberry handset use for everyone apart from executives, Gartner recommended.
Case Against Greenpeace Activists
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: RIA Novosti
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 14:21
  On September 18, 2013, an international group of activists from the environmental organization Greenpeace staged a protest in Arctic waters, trying to board a Russian oil rig operated by a subsidiary of the state-controlled gas giant Gazprom. The activists were detained for a time and Russian investigators opened a criminal case into the incident.
Here's what it's like to start writing a book '-- Medium
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  Archived Version
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 14:18
  The idea of writing a book started forming in my mind after chatting to a 70-year-old man I randomly met in my gym's changing room. He was a former squash instructor but also a university professor, and he noticed my squash racket. He was all about how important it was to achieve things in life and to improve your skills through the course of your life, and I was like ''I just play casually with my girlfriend because it's fun and I like spending time with her''. The more he said it was capital for me to play some serious squash, the more I defended the thesis that what matters is spending quality time with people you like. At some point he asked me if I had written any books. He had. He was a university professor. I said no, then, as I played the role of the guy who couldn't care less about achievements, he went on about why it was important to write a book. Not for your career, but on an intellectual perspective. The things you learn in the process, the way it helps you clarify your thoughts'... I can't remember what he said exactly, but it made the idea stick.
  The ideaA few weeks later, I had an idea for a book. It came to me during one of these times when you just let your mind drift. Probably it was in the jacuzzi at that same gym. I wasn't crazy excited about this idea at first, it just grew in my head, until I was convinced I had to write this book. I knew people needed this book. Had I forced the idea, had I tried to come up with it logically, I would have had to spend time doing some Adwords testing, to gauge people's interest. But I didn't'Š'--'ŠI just knew.
  My book is called Bootstrapping Machine Learning and it is a guide to using Prediction APIs. Quite technical stuff. If these terms don't ring a bell, or if they don't sound interesting to you, you can skip to the next paragraph. I'd come across Prediction APIs thanks to my friend Erick Alphonse who is an Associate Professor in Machine Learning and who has created one (it's still in stealth mode). I believed in the fact that Prediction APIs could democratize Machine Learning, that they could make it a commodity that would be used by many to create smarter apps, but I felt this wouldn't happen unless people would be properly educated to them. Unfortunately, there is no resource to educate them. There are either textbooks that are too technical and go too much into details if one just wants to use Prediction APIs, or there are blog articles that are too short to explain what you need to know in a progressive and self-contained way, as a book does. My book fills this gap. I have to write it, otherwise people will never get to use these APIs.
  So now I am in the middle of the process of writing this book. It is definitely too early to speak about this process. But still, inspiration just hit me and here I am. Here are my first feelings and thoughts about the whole thing.
  The businessI noticed that there was this new trend of writing and self-publishing short, concise, non-fiction ebooks. I've been heavily influenced by Nathan Barry's work who has shown me it could be a legitimate way to make a living. Other authors have said that they ended up making more money with their books than with their startup. You get the freedom to write about whatever you want. From wherever you are'Š'--'ŠI am facing mountains and a lake at this very moment. And it sets you on the way to financial freedom, they say. Well, I don't know about that yet, but I sure am listening.
  The view from my current writing desk. Writing is cool'...Writing a book seems hard. The more work you put into it, the harder it seems. But it still seems easier than creating a startup. Because you're on your own, you can remove the team from the equation, which makes things a bit simpler. As if you were starting a business, you'll be faced with the task of making a product, promoting it, selling it, potentially bundling other products in your offering, doing business with partners and affiliates, etc. Creating the product will happen much faster than at a startup, which is great so you can fail faster than those who fail at their startup. Fail fast, fail early and fail often, they say. According to the examples I am following, 3 months is what it should take to write and promote the first edition of your book.
  According to these examples, the average selling price is around $80. The format that works well is to provide 3 tiers, starting from book-only and progressively adding resources and more material in other formats, for instance videos. $80 is an average over the tiers.
  ''What? $80?! That's way more than an ebook on the Kindle store!
  '-- Yeah but I'm writing about a niche topic and I'm going to teach you stuff you'll be able to use to make money!
  '-- Oh ok, so I should invest $80 which I will recoup later anyway?
  '-- Yeah. Here's a free sample. Can I have your email?''
  This pricing works when your book enables the reader to create value that's more than a few hundred bucks. The default target is to sell to 500 readers (50*80 = $40,000), which makes sense for 3 months of hard work up to the launch and then some further work to continue promoting the book and to do some ''maintenance''.
  Beyond its perceived value, I think that material in other formats such as multimedia is more suited at teaching certain things. Videos, for instance, work well for tutorials, for showing how to set things up and what they look like when you use them. Sometimes these different formats may not be particularly better than words, but changing the teaching mode helps repetition, and repetition helps learning.
  When you think about it, it's much cheaper for readers to get your book than to hire you as a consultant or as a speaker, where you would end up explaining a good chunk of what you already talked about in your book. If people need more personalized teaching, you can run workshops. Those who need extra-personalized teaching will hire you, the author of the book of reference on the topic, as a consultant.
  The egoWriting and publishing a book brings reputation, credibility, publicity. It's also a really cool thing to say that you're writing a book. I confess that I pause for a second to enjoy seeing people impressed, and then I tell them that it's not a novel or anything like that, it's just a technical book. Slight deception. There was this restaurant owner in Dublin who told me of this supposedly famous Irish writer (but not obviously famous, not Joyce nor Wilde nor Yeats) who used to sit and write at the very place where I was sitting. Might have been made up, but cool'... And he gave me kind-of the VIP treatment (''I'm Marco. If you need a table, you call me.''). Or maybe he was just another friendly Italian'...
  Writing a book may bring serious money. It may not. Chances are you'll expand your audience anyways'Š'--'Šand that's nice, at least for your ego. If you don't meet your financial objectives (if you have any), hell, you can always give your book away for free, for more virality and shares and people talking about you! I love Nathan's example of Marco Polo, which, to me, sums up quite well the egotistical reasons to write books: Marco Polo was an explorer, no different from other explorers at the time; only he wrote about his trips, and he's the one who was remembered.
  The jumpI wasn't totally ready to write this book. You never are. I had to get up to speed on a few things, and doing so I learned a lot. Don't get me wrong, I am the best person to write this book, and I know lots on the subject. But that doesn't keep me from learning more everyday!
  You may not feel like you can be a writer, but if you set a target of 1,000 words to write every day and if you stick to it, you'll probably end up writing something valuable at some point. If you have writers' block, write like you talk. No one gets talkers' block (Seth Godin, approximate quote). You can always edit stuff later. I can tell you that at least the first version of this post was shit. Surfing on inspiration made iterating very fast (thanks, Execute book). Don't worry too much about others who have already written on the same topic; start writing and then you'll see much more clearly how you can be unique.
  I felt that becoming a writer changed the way people saw me. Many congratulated me only after they saw I was committed to my project and I had set up a webpage for my book. Some of them actually read the sample chapter I'm giving for free, and they liked it. But you'll also hear from skeptical and critical people. You want to hear from these people. Sometimes you should act on what they say, sometimes not, because you can't please everyone. My friend Liam Boogar says that when people close to you give you feedback, they should make it brutally honest. If that happens to you, brace yourself for that feedback. Get as much support, energy and inspiration from others as you can, and keep iterating.
  If you're also starting on this journey, we could help and support each other! I've had great, motivating, inspiring conversations with people who have also just started writing. I found that writing a book is a great way to connect with various people. You get to meet and chat with successful people through interviews to add to your book in a package, and you get to have lots of interesting conversations with those who think your book can help.
  That being said, I am sure you can think of a lot of reasons why you shouldn't start writing a book just now. But I hope the idea of it will stick.
  BonusMany people ask me which tools I use to write my book (oh, that's a good one, figure out what people want to hear about and write about that). Here's a list (I am not paid to mention these tools, I just like them):
  All it takes to get started is a text processor. I use iA Writer because it's just words and no clutter (goodbye Microsoft Word).Then you need to format your book. I use iBooks Author.Evernote is probably the most popular app in this list, I use it to keep and organize all my thoughts and my external resources (thanks, Web Clipper).I used Squarespace to create a webpage for my book, because they have the most refined templates.You need a tool to collect email addresses in exchange for freebies. I use Convertkit.If you're selling, you need a tool to process orders, payments, and delivery of the digital goods. I use Gumroad.Finally, I used Lift to develop and keep the habit of writing 1,000 word per day.
The EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) '' from EU initiative to global impact
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Source: European Public AffairsEuropean Public Affairs
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 10:21
  Since 2005, the EU ETS has led the charge for a stable and market-led carbon price across the European Union. Now, in its 8th year, the merits and future of the ETS, and its role across transnational industries, is looking likely to dominate the political landscape before the current European Commission engages in its timely re-shuffle at the end of 2014. But it's not at the EU level that the long-term future of the ETS will be determined but on the international scene; with countries such as Canada, Brazil and India creating their own carbon regimes off the back of the ETS, the collapse of the market price since the global recession, and the on-going aviation emissions negotiations all contributing to the success or failure of this initiative.
  Let's start by briefly looking at the current situation. In the past year, the EU adopted plans to backload '' postpone '' upwards of 900 million CO2 units up for carbon auctioning until 2018. Carbon auctioning between companies constitutes the cornerstone of a successful market-led carbon price and in doing so, ensures competitive prices, and therefore incentives for industries to be gently pushed towards renewable energy strategies and innovation. This was done for two key reasons:
  Firstly, the collapse of carbon unit to only ¼ of the originally intended price (currently bordering on 6EUR per metric ton) '' due to falling manufacturing output '' has meant that the money received via these trades has been much less than anticipated, leading to a much smaller fund to invest in renewable energy strategies.Secondly, the original ETS gave widespread exemptions to energy intensive industries, showcased through the damning figure of only 50% of carbon allowances created within the EU actually being processed through trades. In reality, meaning that there was virtually no incentive for companies to partake in competitive pricing due to low cost and exemptions already in existence.How you can have an effective ETS with a goal of limiting emissions and pushing for green investment with such little scope and market consequence is just one question which seriously needs to be addressed.
  Even though this is a startling figure, it must be remembered that the ETS was the first of its kind, anywhere. And as I've already mentioned, its success has led to the uptake of similar schemes across the globe. The most impressive '' at least in my eyes '' is emissions intensive India. Even with a ludicrously low unit price (2EUR per metric ton), its emerging economy status and dependence on energy intensive manufacturing, this move must be applauded. Further schemes are being contemplated in Asia and the Africas, and there have even been low level talks of a NAFTA agreement, due, in no small part, to America's new found ''gift of gas'' in fracking '' instantly widening the policy scope achievable in this area by the notoriously divided house.
  The talks which piqued my initial interest in the EU ETS though were focused on a single industry: Aviation. Last year, the EU put a ''hold'' on all aviation emissions charges for international flights in, or out, of the EU after one of the largest and most damning aviation disputes in recent memory. China was so aggrieved that they pulled the plug on a 2.3bn EUR deal with Airbus for new aircraft and are now in negotiations with the US firm Boeing, while the US passed a law which made it illegal for US companies to pay the tax. EU flights are still bound to pay, or abide by, the ETS deal as it stands while the international aviation industry continues in its talks to create a worldwide emissions price '' the most effective and non-discriminatory solution for an industry which transcends borders, regulations and political views. The UN is currently leading these ongoing talks but with the best will in the world, an agreement is still a long way off.
  The outcome of these talks will have a resounding impact on the future of the EU ETS. With the inclusion of manufacturing and solutions to solve the current failings of the ETS within the EU in effect, the chance of a global carbon price for aviation will signal a clear understanding and need to invest in recoverable energy strategies. It will also transform (maybe too strong a word) '' in the long run '' the price of travel across all sectors. Where once only firmly secured manufacturing industries were charged (location focused), global supply chains will now be affected. Shipping will follow shortly, as will the ability of multi-national companies to up and move for favourable incentives the second their practices are questioned.
  The EU ETS has its failings: low price, mass exemptions, low financial impact for companies, high tax fraud and emissions tampering. But the overall impact, not just on EU companies, but the discussion it has generated at a global level has been beyond what was expected upon its inception. The ETS will not go away, even if aviation talks fail, and international companies balk at the cost once the moratorium on aviation costs ends. Its scope will only increase. The true testing point of the ETS will not come now, or even in a few years '' the ETS is still finding its feet '' but in 2020 when emissions targets come to a head, and maybe most importantly, the goal to have a functioning Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) facility is completed. Only then can we judge and review the ETS, alongside its international cousins.
  Ed GavaghanI am a proud member of an increasingly endangered group, a true UK-Europhile abroad. I previously gained my Bachelor's degree at Aston University in English & European Politics, with a one year placement at Korea University where I focused on Asian politics, International trade and economics. Understanding the fractious Anglo-Europe relationship was at the heart of my decision to specialise in European Public Affairs at Maastricht University.I have a passion for realistic politics, Tarantino films, travelling, aviators and explaining the rules of cricket to anybody who will listen.
  Feel free to contact me at: egavaghan@europeanpublicaffairs.eu / Or follow me on Twitter: Edmund Patrick Gavaghan
Twitter: The new face of crime
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 08:28
  Civilians who had been hiding inside the Westgate Mall in Nairobi during the standoff exit the scene Sept. 21. 2013. The extremist group Al-Shabab live-tweeted about this mall siege in Kenya.(Photo: Jonathan Kalan, AP)
  Story HighlightsTwitter has become the social media site of choice for extremist groupsGang members use Twitter to promote their gang and to conduct illegal activityBut sometimes the tweets provide a road map for law enforcement officialsCrime has a new face: Twitter.
  Political extremists, criminals and gang members are advertising their wares, flaunting their exploits and recruiting new members in 140 characters or less, according to law enforcement authorities, criminologists and security experts.
  The most shocking example occurred a week ago when the extremist group al-Shabab live-tweeted about the mall siege in Kenya, defending the mass killing, threatening more violence and taunting the military.
  But the list is long '-- and growing '-- of those using Twitter and other social media venues for nefarious purposes.
  Extremists spread their propaganda via video. Gangs post their colors, signs and rap songs to showcase their criminal enterprises. Prostitutes and drug dealers troll for new customers. Teens trash a former NFL player's house and brag about it with photos on Twitter.
  But while Twitter can serve as a valuable recruitment and communications tool, it also can be a double-edged sword: Public boasting about illegal deeds can serve as a road map for law enforcement officials and lead to arrests.
  Extremist groups, domestic and international, have been particularly savvy in their use of social media, says Evan Kohlmann, a senior partner with the security firm Flashpoint who specializes in the online communications of extremist groups. Twitter has become their site of choice because it is easy to sign up and remain anonymous among millions of users and tweets.
  "These groups realize they need to reach as many people as possible," he says. "And Twitter and Facebook is where you find people."
  In the beginning, extremist groups were reluctant to use social media. They relied on password-protected online forums, Kohlmann says. But as social sites became ubiquitous, the groups and their members jumped in like everyone else, he says.
  One of the early and most prolific outfits to turn to Twitter was al-Shabab, the radical Somali group with links to al-Qaeda whose name means "The Youth" in Arabic.
  Al-Shabab used Twitter during the hostage siege at the Westgate Shopping Mall in Nairobi to ballyhoo the mayhem blow-by-blow. Tweets defended the attack, mocked the Kenyan military and president, posted photos of members inside the mall and threatened more bloodshed.
  Twitter shut down at least five different accounts used by al-Shabab. But each time the microblogging site suspended an account, the group created another with a different user name.
  Twitter says it doesn't comment on individual accounts for security and privacy reasons.
  Al-Shabab currently has a working feed on the site. Since Wednesday, the group posted audio statements by its leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane, also known as Mukhtar Abu Zubair, justifying the siege and threatening more attacks. It posted a tweet accusing the Kenyan government of demolishing the mall intentionally: "To cover their crime, the Kenyan govt carried out a demolition to the building, burying evidence and all hostages under the rubble #Westgate." The Associated Press reported Friday that the military caused the collapse, citing an unnamed senior Kenyan police official. The official said Kenyan troops fired rocket-propelled grenades inside the mall, but would not say what caused the collapse or whether it was intentional.
  This undated and unlocated picture provided by U.S. website 'Rewards for Justice' shows top Al-Shabab leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane.(Photo: AFP/Getty Images)
  J.M. Berger, a security analyst who is editor of Intelwire, an online magazine that monitors extremist activity, says it's not the first time the group has tweeted about its activities in real time. He says Al-Shabab used Twitter to broadcast messages and threats during bombings in Mogadishu and to trumpet an attempt to assassinate the president of Somalia in early September.
  "This time was more visible simply because the attack itself was more visible and unusual in its nature," Berger says.
  NO GATEKEEPER ON HATE
  A growing number of homegrown extremists are also turning to Twitter.
  A May 2013 report on digital hate speech from the Simon Wiesenthal Center says Twitter helped spur a 30% growth in online forums for hate and terrorism over the past year. The study says more than 20,000 "hate-spewing hashtags and handles" appeared on Twitter in 2012, up 5,000 from the year before. The group identified Twitter as a "chief offender" among social media sites because of a lack of monitoring of hate and terrorist content.
  Those who monitor extremist activity online say that as the site of choice for extremists, Twitter needs a clear, transparent policy as to what content is off-limits, and it has to enforce that policy vigorously.
  "They respond to abuse reports, but their criteria for suspension is very limited," Berger said in an e-mail interview. He spotted al-Shabab's tweets during the mall siege and notified Twitter.
  "They are broadly permissive of extremist content in a way that other services, like Facebook and YouTube, are not," he says.
  Twitter, through spokesman Nu Wexler, would not make anyone from the company available for an interview. He directed a reporter to a blog post by the company's head of safety, Del Harvey, who wrote that manually reviewing every tweet is simply not possible. Users post up to 500 million tweets a day in more than 35 languages.
  "We use both automated and manual systems to evaluate reports of users potentially violating our Twitter Rules," Harvey wrote. "These rules explicitly bar direct, specific threats of violence against others and use of our service for unlawful purposes, for which users may be suspended when reported.
  INTERNET-BANGING AMPLIFIED
  Closer to home, gangs in the United States have been adding Twitter and Facebook accounts to their arsenals for years in what University of Michigan social work professor Desmond Patton calls "Internet-banging."
  "If we think about violence as a disease, one particular host of that disease is social media," he says.
  Historically, displaying pictures of the gang or recording ''jump-ins,'' an initiation rite in which recruits endure a severe beating by gang members to demonstrate their toughness, or other acts of violence, required expensive equipment and lots of time, Patton says. That's no longer the case.
  "With the advent of smartphone technology, youth can upload pictures and videos to social media sites quickly," he says.
  A March study by Arizona State University criminologist Scott Decker found that nearly 20% of gang members reported that their gang had a website or social networking page and 50% said that their gang posts video online.
  Eleven percent said their gang organized activities online, often using code. A gang member in St. Louis said he posted, "We got a baseball game" on Facebook to call the gang together for a fight. A gang member in Fresno said his gang avoided organizing drug business online but used the Internet to set up meetings, parties and even fundraisers for "bail or other emergencies."
  Decker says gang members used to proclaim their allegiance via graffiti or by taunting their rivals.
  "Now the kind of things that result in fighting take place online," he says. "Challenges to manhood, challenges to how tough the gang is. ... It could be YouTube videos, posting on someone's Facebook site."
  He says gangs involved in drug dealing use Twitter, but because police know the corners and other spots where transactions generally take place, gang members will tweet out an address. He says the context of the tweet is unclear to a lay person, but the person on the receiving end understands the message.
  DECIPHERING THE CODE
  Rob D'Ovidio, a Drexel University criminologist, says gang members use code to boast about their deeds. For example, he says, they use "biscuit" or "clickety" for a gun, "food," "sea shells" or "gas" for bullets and "rock to sleep early" for murder.
  He says street gangs are crafty in their online recruitment techniques. The gangs associate their group with popular music that has a violent message or a message that portrays ethnic oppression, which leads youngsters to believe they have something in common with the gang, he says.
  "It is very reminiscent of how white supremacists use the World Wide Web to recruit kids," D'Ovidio says.
  But the braggadocio can backfire.
  In January 2012 in New York City, police arrested 43 gang members from rival gangs and linked them to six killings, 32 shootings, 36 robberies and numerous other crimes. The arrests came about because of posts the members put on Twitter crowing about what they had done.
  Criminal activity online has led more than 2,600 police departments from New York City to Seattle to create social media units to monitor sites. Urban schools in Chicago monitor social media because fights that start online often spill into hallways.
  Cincinnati police officer Dawn Keating was one of the first to track gangs on social media. In 2007, she began tracking a gang calling itself the Taliband that had a heavy presence on the now virtually forgotten MySpace. The gang posted photos of members, rap songs, its colors and signs. The posts helped Keating gather intel about the members and their connections. The online surveillance eventually led to 5,000 pieces of evidence and 90 indictments of gang members, she says.
  She says drug dealers use Twitter to advertise their wares and their locations, and petty criminals brag about their exploits by posting photos of themselves with cash or stolen items on Facebook. She tells the story of a thief who committed five robberies in downtown Cincinnati. Police knew him only by a nickname, which they found on Facebook, along with photos of the man with cash and other items he'd stolen. That led to his arrest.
  Prostitutes use Twitter to attract new customers or post their locations, daily specials and rates, the way lunch trucks let customers know where to find them, D'Ovidio says. He says they use hashtags such as #Vegas, #escort, #services and #callgirl.
  "It clearly is a way for the call girl or prostitute to act as an individual entrepreneur in that it allows them to reach an audience for virtually no cost," D'Ovidio says. "In the past, they would need to hook up with an agency that would then advertise, via paid ads, at the back of free newspapers. Social media sites are allowing individuals to cut the middle person out."
  And some bad actors do it just for the attention of a large audience that Twitter provides. Take the partying teens who broke into the vacation home of former NFL player Brian Holloway in Upstate New York, causing $20,000 in damage, including broken windows and holes in the wall. The teens posted photos of their antics on Twitter. Six people have been arrested so far and police expect dozens more arrests.
  "With criminals, it's one thing to brag on the street," Cincinnati officer Keating says. "But now, with social media, they brag and get credibility worldwide."
  And, sometimes, they also get arrested.
A Fed love story: Janet Yellen meets her match - CNBC
  Link to Article
  Archived Version
  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 08:20
  But the influence of her husband in shaping her thinking and professional success cannot be overestimated, say those who have known the couple for decades. Yellen and Akerlof declined interview requests.
  The support went both ways. Yellen helped Akerlof maintain the focus that distinguished his academic work, highlighted in 2001 when he shared a Nobel Prize in economics. He later wrote in an autobiography for The Nobel Foundation (posted on Nobelprize.org) about happily collaborating with his wife for more than a decade.
  "Not only did our personalities mesh perfectly, but we have also always been in all but perfect agreement about macroeconomics. Our lone disagreement is that she is a bit more supportive of free trade than I," he wrote.
  Yellen, 67, came to the Fed in 1977 from Harvard University after a recruiting effort that involved Ted Truman, then about to take over the Fed's international finance division. Truman had known Yellen since 1967 when she came to Yale University to pursue her PhD in economics; he was a junior professor and heard her oral exam.
  The recruiters faced an uphill battle because Yellen was teaching at Harvard University and her early research made her a sought-after talent. But she took the Fed job to work on projects in trade and financial studies.
  The Fed was under pressure in 1977 with rising inflation unsettling the economy. Truman assigned Yellen to research international monetary reform.
  (Read more: The case against Janet Yellen)
  Akerlof, 73, whose early paper, "The Market for Lemons," had made a splash among economists, landed at the central bank for a one-year stint between jobs. Recently divorced, he came from the University of California-Berkeley en route to a post at the London School of Economics.
  After connecting with Yellen, "we decided to get married hastily, not only because we had so little doubt about each other, but also for practical reasons '... if we were to avoid being separated, Janet would also need to get a job in England too," he wrote.
  Truman said Yellen had barely settled into the Fed before announcing she would join Akerlof and lecture at the London School of Economics. "We were disappointed when she left with him, though completely understanding. We had invested a lot in attracting her," he told Reuters in an email.
  Yellen, of course, would be back eventually'--next as a Fed board member and one of Truman's seven bosses.
  In London, Yellen and Akerlof both had identity problems. "We were Americans, not English," he later wrote. After two years, they returned to Berkeley, where Yellen was hired to teach in the business school.
  Yellen twice won a coveted Berkeley teaching award. And she and Akerlof, sometimes in partnership with others, collaborated on research that benefited from their different styles, colleagues said.
  "George was less disciplined, more artistic and perhaps creative; Janet was more grounded, sensible, and a paragon of common sense," said Andrew K. Rose, who was hired by Yellen and now serves as associate dean of Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Rose collaborated with the couple on several papers, including a year of research on the East German economy.
The push to create a $30 portable brain recorder - CNBC
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  Mon, 30 Sep 2013 08:14
  MakerBot brings 3D scanning to desktop
  Now anyone can take a 3D object, scan it, and create a digital copy. MakerBot is launching its new $1,400 product, the Digitizer, this October.
  Wanted: Super smart scientists
  To better understand SI2 Technologies's road to brain recording units, you have to go back to 1982. Congress back then established the Small Business Innovation Research Program. It was an opportunity for smaller businesses to participate in federal government-sponsored research and development. Akin to a help wanted ad for super-smart scientists, DARPA publicly posts solicitations for researchers when it needs problems solved.
  So when DARPA announced a solicitation for a "portable brain recording device & app," Handy and his team at SI2 Technologies'--founded a decade ago'--jumped at the opportunity.
  EEG devices are part of the broader interdisciplinary field known as neurosciences. It focuses on the brain and its impact on behavior and cognitive functions. The field traditionally has been the domain of those who can access brain science labs.
  Of course Handy can't give away the company's high-tech secrets in detail.
  But the company's assets include a 3-D technology ink process that can conduct electricity, like a sheet of copper foil. Envision a 3-D printer shooting material through a nozzle that ultimately provides electric conductivity.
  The "so what?" here is upending traditional circuit boards, which are the small building blocks inside lots of technology and devices.
  Moving beyond circuit boards
  Traditional circuit boards are rigid and attached to the surface of other objects. In contrast, SI2 Technologies's 3-D printing technology allows electronic properties to be fused directly on the inside of a helmet or any curved surface'--without the added weight of stiff circuit boards.
  "Soldiers helmets are already fairly heavy. So any additional weight could be problematic," Handy said. "Adding some neural intelligence without significant weight is a huge benefit," he said.
  "Including EEGs in basic military first aid kits would also help with both medical diagnostics and clinical care for deployed soldiers," according to DARPA's solicitation for researchers. "Portable EEGs could be used in the field, with data sent to a corresponding app on a smartphone for near-instantaneous analysis."
  As context, most portable EEGs are prohibitive by cost and inflexible designs. "These devices are typically comprised of one or only a handful of sensors with fixed locations on the scalp," according to DARPA's solicitation.
  That's why DARPA is pursuing more affordable models; easy to use sensors that could be placed in multiple locations on the head to record activity in various brain regions; and the ability to download data directly to a tablet or smartphone, no middle-man interface required.
  (Read more: First mind-controlled bionic leg a 'groundbreaking' advance)
VIDEO-Melinda Gates: Let's put birth control back on the agenda - YouTube
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  Sun, 29 Sep 2013 19:32