TRANSCRIPT: On the morning of September 11, 2001, 19 men armed with boxcutters directed by a man on dialysis in a cave fortress halfway around the world using a satellite phone and a laptop directed the most sophisticated penetration of the most heavily-defended airspace in the world, overpowering the passengers and the military combat-trained pilots on 4 commercial aircraft before flying those planes wildly off course for over an hour without being molested by a single fighter interceptor.
These 19 hijackers, devout religious fundamentalists who liked to drink alcohol, snort cocaine, and live with pink-haired strippers, managed to knock down 3 buildings with 2 planes in New York, while in Washington a pilot who couldn’t handle a single engine Cessna was able to fly a 757 in an 8,000 foot descending 270 degree corskscrew turn to come exactly level with the ground, hitting the Pentagon in the budget analyst office where DoD staffers were working on the mystery of the 2.3 trillion dollars that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had announced “missing” from the Pentagon’s coffers in a press conference the day before, on September 10, 2001.
The DIA destroyed 2.5 TB of data on Able Danger, but that’s OK because it probably wasn’t important.
The SEC destroyed their records on the investigation into the insider trading before the attacks, but that’s OK because destroying the records of the largest investigation in SEC history is just part of routine record keeping.
NIST has classified the data that they used for their model of WTC7′s collapse, but that’s OK because knowing how they made their model of that collapse would “jeopardize public safety“.
The FBI has argued that all material related to their investigation of 9/11 should be kept secret from the public, but that’s OK because the FBI probably has nothing to hide.
This man never existed, nor is anything he had to say worthy of your attention, and if you say otherwise you are a paranoid conspiracy theorist and deserve to be shunned by all of humanity. Likewise him, him, him, and her. (and her and her and him).
Osama Bin Laden lived in a cave fortress in the hills of Afghanistan, but somehow got away. Then he was hiding out in Tora Bora but somehow got away. Then he lived in Abottabad for years, taunting the most comprehensive intelligence dragnet employing the most sophisticated technology in the history of the world for 10 years, releasing video after video with complete impunity (and getting younger and younger as he did so), before finally being found in a daring SEAL team raid which wasn’t recorded on video, in which he didn’t resist or use his wife as a human shield, and in which these crack special forces operatives panicked and killed this unarmed man, supposedly the best source of intelligence about those dastardly terrorists on the planet. Then they dumped his body in the ocean before telling anyone about it. Then a couple dozen of that team’s members died in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
If you have any questions about this story…you are a batshit, paranoid, tinfoil, dog-abusing baby-hater and will be reviled by everyone. If you love your country and/or freedom, happiness, rainbows, rock and roll, puppy dogs, apple pie and your grandma, you will never ever express doubts about any part of this story to anyone. Ever.
In the future, if you tweet out a photo of a hilarious, meme-tastic kitten, it might be best not to include terms like “white powder,” “dirty bomb,” or “Death to America.”
Since late January, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been asking the IT industry to help it develop an open-source social-media application that would provide a panoramic real-time picture of any “breaking event, crisis, activity, or natural disaster…in progress in the U.S. or globally,” according tostatements released by the agency. Essentially, the bureau wants to crowd-source software that would data-mine Twitter and other websites to scan for—and perhaps predict—mass uprisings, criminal activity, and terror plots.
To make something like what the FBI is looking for, a programmer would have to write a scriptto yank content from, say, open Facebook profiles and Twitter feeds. Once the data is obtained, it can be quickly searched for key terms. The next step is “geotagging“—tying individual posts to specific geographical locations. But the app would have to deal with more than just keywords. Ideally, the FBI wants a “threat index” that combines multiple metrics such as locations, links, and networks into one waterfall search engine. Think Klout, but souped-up for the NatSec establishment.
At first glance, the concept seems sensible enough. It’s no surprise the US government would want to use every resource possible to stay ahead of the news and intelligence curve in case a new crisis hits at home or abroad. And because the program would be aimed at monitoring open sources, it might not sound like a major civil-liberties tripwire, since tweets and online forums are usually available for anybody to view.
Still, the idea of Big Brother checking up on whom you’ve friended on Facebook or watching the embarrassing videos you’ve posted on YouTube might be off-putting, even if you’re not a die-hard civil libertarian. Such initiatives are probably legal, says Rebecca Jeschke, a digital-rights analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, but they’re also “creepy.”
The FBI isn’t completely oblivious to such concerns. In statement sent to Mother Jones, a bureau spokeswoman insisted that the FBI is not looking for a program that would access private data or “focus on specific persons or protected groups.” Instead, she claims, the program would hone in on “activities constituting violations of federal criminal law or threats to national security.” The FBI also provided examples of words the application would be built to single out, including “bomb,” “suspicious package,” “white powder,” “active shoot,” and “lockdown.” “Although the FBI has always adapted to meet changes in technology,” the statement reads, “the rule of law civil liberties, and civil rights, will remain our guiding principles.” (They don’talways live up to those.)
Privacy concerns aside, the efficacy of open-source data-mining applications is, at best, questionable. “It reads almost like science fiction,” Mike German, a senior policy counsel for the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office and former FBI agent, says. “The FBI has this unquenchable thirst for more data…Here they are in this day and age, thinking there is some easy solution to identifying threats against the country. But it’s often foolish for agents to take what they see online and treat it as intelligence. For instance, if you run a search for some of their key terms like ‘lockdown,’ ‘white powder,’ and ‘active shoot,’ you get over 345 million hits. That’s 345 million potential false tips.”
The government has tried this sort of thing before, without much success. The Department of Homeland Security already has several controversial data-mining programs. In 2007, a DHS program known as ADVISE was suspended following an internal audit by the department’s inspector general for dodging a required privacy review. And last September, the Government Accountability Office issued a report (PDF) that urged stronger executive oversight of DHS data-mining to ensure necessary privacy protections. The Defense Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, and Central Intelligence Agency also have well-documented histories of flirting with large-scale data-mining, with mixed, secret, and often controversial results.
In 2008, a privacy and terrorism commission backed by DHS published a 376-page report titled “Protecting Individual Privacy in the Struggle Against Terrorists” that panned the logic behind post-9/11 data-mining. “Automated identification of terrorists through data mining (or any other known methodology) is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development effort,” the commissioners wrote. “Even in well-managed programs, such tools are likely to return significant rates of false positives, especially if the tools are highly automated.”
The FBI, however, is undaunted. As of Wednesday, it’s still looking for programmers.
We speak with Jacob Appelbaum, a computer researcher who has faced a stream of interrogations and electronic surveillance since he volunteered with the whistleblowing website, WikiLeaks. He describes being detained more than a dozen times at the airport and interrogated by federal agents who asked about his political views and confiscated his cell phone and laptop. When asked why he cannot talk about what happened after he was questioned, Appelbaum says, “Because we don’t live in a free country. And if I did, I guess I could tell you about it.” A federal judge ordered Twitter to hand over information about Appelbaum’s account. Meanwhile, he continues to work on the Tor Project, an anonymity network that ensures every person has the right to browse the internet without restriction and the right to speak freely. This interview is part of a 5-part special on growing state surveillance. Click here to see segment 1, 2, 4 and 5surveillance. [includes rush transcript]
We are Anonymous, and we do not forgive. Forgiveness requires humility, humility requires dignity. We have neither.
We are void of human restraints, such as self respect and common sense.
All those who break this pact will be eliminated without hesitation. And by elimination we will put their name on an icky photo and shit in each others’ mouths.
Those who perform reckless actions or wish to harm the Anonymous will be eliminated without hesitation. Again, elimination is our word for doing very little about it.
Failure is the basis of our existence.
Enemies of the Anonymous include anyone who can point out how many times we contradict ourselves in a single sentence.
Our enemies are to be flaccidly made fun of, using the same tired photoshopped stuff stolen from someone else.
Anonymous must “work” as one. No Anonymous knows anything.
Betrayal of Anonymous is both ironic and appropriate.
Manipulation of the weak and innocent is something that the truly weak believe indicates power, as such we do it alot. Not well but, often. Once a victim is no longer commodious, they are to be eliminated. Also, the cow was slaughtered in the abattoir.
REPRODUCE. REPRODUCE. REPRODUCE. Like cockroaches and Catholics we need to make sure our stupidity is at least backed by numbers. Quantity over quality. Loud = Funny.
No man-made or natural occurance can harm the Anonymous. Except when Mom and Dad ground us from the computer. That’s pouting time.
Under no circumstances are Anonymous human. We are beneath humans and mortality.
Anonymous are not to partake in meaningless tasks….pffft Ahhh dude I’m totally shitting ya, that’s all we do.
You are legion, for we are many. That makes it easier to defend ourselves when smart people tell us to stop acting like idiots.
Anonymous is everywhere at all times, we like to loiter. we really have nothing better to do than hang out. Yet, singular Anonymous are not permitted to know everything. Which is good, because we know very little.
All have the potential to be Anonymous until they choose to drop a bag of fertilizer on their nutsack and grow a pair. Those who are not Anonymous are to be eliminated….or photoshopped into a nasty photo which ever one requires less standing and walking. Or hack a paypal account and charge PS3’s, send massive amounts of cowardly and empty death threats or, whatever weak ass “criminal” act we think will make us appear powerful.
Anonymous has no weakness or flaw. Well, except maybe getting laid. That ain’t happening. And a whole bunch of others. But besides crippling personality flaws, body odor, lack of humor, not getting laid and relying on shock value and memes to speak for us…we have only a few more flaws and weaknesses.
Laws of Nature and Man cannot restrain the Anonymous. However, an IP ban, power outage or, a light punch to the solar plexus can drop us like a bag of bad habits.
Anonymous is Zero. Feuding and argument amongst the Anonymous is both constant and unavoidable.
Anonymous is in control at all times. We just choose to waste all of it.
Anonymous has no identity. Those who are not Anonymous yet know our presence must be eliminated. Again and, I can not stress this enough people, “eliminate” means sitting on our asses all day pretending to jerk off to Goatse, while our mothers yell at us to get jobs.
Anonymous cannot be contained by mere restraints. We are far too fat to fit any normal conveyance, handcuffs or standard size airline seats.
Anonymous are all equally stupid. No one is more retarded then Anonymous.
Anonymous must obey the Code. Those who do not are to be raped with our mighty e-peens, until supper time and homework, then an hour of Gameboy before bedtime.
Anonymous worships nothing because anonymous is nothing.
Anonymous cares for nothing, but Anonymous. Our existence is vapid, myopic and limited.
Humanity is the virus; Anonymous is the open wound that invites it in.
Snopes receives funding from an undisclosed source. The source is undisclosed because Snopes refuses to disclose that source. The Democratic Alliance, a funding channel for uber-Leftist (Marxist) Billionaires (George Soros etc.), direct funds to an “Internet Propaganda Arm” pushing these views. The Democratic Alliance has been reported to instruct Fundees to not disclose their funding source.
For the past few years www.snopes.com has positioned itself, or others have labeled it, as the ‘tell-all final word’ on any comment, claim and email. But for several years people tried to find out who exactly was behind snopes.com. It is run by a husband and wife team – that’s right, no big office of investigators and researchers, no team of lawyers. It’s just a mom-and-pop operation that began as a hobby. David and Barbara Mikkelson in the San Fernando Valley of California started the website about 13 years ago and they have no formal background or experience in investigative research.
The reason for the questions – or skepticisms – is a result of snopes.com claiming to have the bottom line facts to certain questions or issue when in fact they have been proven wrong. Also, there were criticisms the Mikkelsons were not really investigating and getting to the ‘true’ bottom of various issues.A few months ago, when my State Farm agent Bud Gregg in Mandeville hoisted a political sign referencing Barack Obama and made a big splash across the Internet, ‘supposedly’ the Mikkelson’s claim to have researched this issue before posting their findings on snopes.com. In their statement they claimed the corporate office of State Farm pressured Gregg into taking down the sign, when in fact nothing of the sort ‘ever’ took place. I personally contacted David Mikkelson (and he replied back to me) thinking he would want to get to the bottom of this and I gave him Bud Gregg’s contact phone numbers – and Bud was going to give him phone numbers to the big exec’s at State Farm in Illinois who would have been willing to speak with him about it. He never called Bud. In fact, I learned from Bud Gregg that no one from snopes.com ever contacted anyone with State Farm.
Yet, snopes.com issued a statement as the ‘final factual word’ on the issue as if they did all their homework and got to the bottom of things – not!Then it has been learned the Mikkelson’s are very Democratic (party) and extremely liberal. As we all now know from this presidential election, liberals have a purpose agenda to discredit anything that appears to be conservative. There has been much criticism lately over the Internet with people pointing out the Mikkelson’s liberalism revealing itself in their website findings. Gee, what a shock?
So, I say this now to everyone who goes to snopes.com to get what they think to be the bottom line fact ‘proceed with caution.’ Take what it says at face value and nothing more. Use it only to lead you to their references where you can link to and read the sources for yourself. Plus,you can always search a subject and do the research yourself.I have found this to be true also! Many videos of Obama I tried to verify on Snopes and they said they were False. Then they gave their liberal slant! I have suspected some problems with snopes for some time now, but I have only caught them in half-truths. If there is any subjectivity they do an immediate full left rudder.I have recently discovered that Snopes.com is owned by a flaming liberal and this man is in the tank for Obama. There are many things they have listed on their site as a hoax and yet you can go to You tube yourself and find the video of Obama actually saying these things. So you see, you cannot and should not trust Snopes.com, ever for anything that remotely resembles truth! I don’t even trust them to tell me if email chains are hoaxes anymore.
A few conservative speakers on MySpace told me about Snopes.com. A few months ago and I took it upon myself to do a little research to find out if it was true. Well, I found out for myself that it is true. Anyway just FYI please don’t use Snopes.com anymore for fact checking and make your friends aware of their political leanings as well. Many people still think Snopes.com is neutral and they can be trusted as factual. We need to make sure everyone is aware that that is a hoax in itself.
Thank you,
Alan Strong
Alan Strong CEO/Chairman
Commercial Programming Systems, Inc.
4400 Coldwater Canyon Ave. Suite
200 Studio City, CA. 91604-5039
Two major investigations have provided fresh evidence that civilians are continuing to be killed in Pakistan’s tribal areas by CIA drones – despite aggressive Agency denials.
In a study of ten major drone strikes in Pakistan since 2010, global news agency Associated Press deployed a field reporter to Waziristan and questioned more than 80 local people about ten CIA attacks. The results generally confirm the accuracy of original credible media reports – and in two cases identify previously unrecorded civilian deaths.
In a further case, in which an anonymous US official had previously attacked the Bureau’s findings of six civilian deaths in a 2011 strike, AP’s report has confirmed the Bureau’s work.
Anglo-American legal charity Reprieve has also filed a case with the United Nations Human Rights Council, based on sworn affidavits by 18 family members of civilians killed in CIA attacks – many of them children. Reprieve is calling on the UNHRC ‘to condemn the attacks as illegal human rights violations.’
New casualties
The Associated Press investigation, authored by the agency’s Islamabad chief Sebastian Abbot, represents one of the largest field studies yet into casualties of CIA drone strikes.
AP’s field reporter interviewed more than 80 local civilians in Waziristan in connection with 10 major CIA strikes since 2010. It found that of 194 people killed in the strikes, 138 were confirmed as militants:
The remaining 56 were either civilians or tribal police, and 38 of them were killed in a single attack on March 17, 2011. Excluding that strike, which inflicted one of the worst civilian death tolls since the drone program started in Pakistan, nearly 90 percent of the people killed were militants, villagers said.
In two of the ten cases AP has turned up previously-unreported civilian casualties.
On August 14 2010 AP found that seven civilians died – including a ten year old child – alongside seven Pakistan Taliban. The deaths occurred during Ramadan prayers. Until now it had not been known that civilians had died in the attack. US officials told AP that its own assessments indicated all those killed were militants.
On April 22 2011, AP confirms that three children and two women were among 25 dead in an attack on a guest house where militants were staying. Three named eyewitnesses in the village of Spinwan confirmed that the civilians had died – two had attended their funerals.
Bureau findings confirmed
The AP investigation has also independently confirmed that six civilians died alongside ten Taliban in an attack on a roadside restaurant on May 6 2011.
Last year the Bureau’s field researchers in Waziristan identified by name six civilians killed in the attack by the CIA. An anonymous US official used the New York Times to mock the Bureau at the time: ‘The claim that a restaurant was struck is ludicrous.’
Now AP’s investigation endorses the Bureau’s findings, stating: ‘Missiles hit a vehicle parked near a restaurant in Dotoi village, killing 16 people, including 10 Taliban militants and six tribesmen.’
United Nations
In the second new report confirming civilian casualties in US drone strikes, Reprieve has filed a major case with the United Nations Human Rights Council.
The study details a dozen drone strikes in Pakistan during President Obama’s time in office. Each is supported by witness affidavits, mostly from family members of civilians killed.
For example on Valentine’s Day 2009, just weeks after Obama came to office, a CIA drone attack struck a village in North Waziristan. Between 26 and 35 people died in the attack, nine of them civilians. One of those killed was an eight year old boy, Noor Syed. The complaint to the UNHRC draws on evidence from Noor’s father:
Maezol Khan is a resident of Makeen in South Waziristan, Pakistan. In the early morning of February 14, 2009, he and his son were sleeping in the courtyard of their home when a missile from a drone struck a nearby car. As a result of the explosion, a missile part flew into the courtyard, killing Maezol’s eight-year-old son. In addition, there were approximately 30 people killed or injured in the attack.
Noor Syed Aged 8 (Photo: Noor Behram)
Another complaint reports that four civilians died on June 15 2011 when a CIA missile hit their car in Miranshah, North Waziristan.
Far from being Taliban, the men were a pharmacist and his assistant; a student; and an employee of the local water authority.
That attack so enraged local opinion that at the mens’ funeral their coffins were used to block the main highway in a spontaneous protest at CIA attacks.
Clive Stafford Smith, Reprieve’s director, said that the CIA was ‘creating desolation and calling it peace.’
The UN must put a stop to it before any more children are killed. Not only is it causing untold suffering to the people of North West Pakistan – it is also the most effective recruiting sergeant yet for the very ‘militants’ the US claims to be targeting.
Pakistan barrister Mirza Shahzad Akbar runs the Foundation for Fundamental Rights, and prepared the UNHCR submission. He told the Bureau:
‘The US needs to address the question of a large number civilian victims, and also has to respect the well established international laws and norm. The UN is the best forum to discuss drones-related humanitarian issue as well as its far reaching impact on world politics.’
“The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) rampaging around Uganda is nothing more than a US and Mossad-backed guerilla force.
Its task is to destabilize wide areas of Africa rich in minerals like Uganda, ex-French and Belgian Congo, and Sudan.
Joseph Kony, the self-appointed leader of the LRA, ex-choir boy, brilliantly flexible break dancer, the new US terrorist poster boy, has been on the CIA’s books for years.”
Based on this analysis, the CIA is probably also involved in the million-dollar propaganda campaign to draw the American people’s attention towards Uganda, and Joseph Kony in particular, in order to secure public opinion in support of a U.S. and UN intervention in the country.
Another excerpt from Richard Cottrell’s article:
“What is going on in Central Africa is a fine old game of ping pong, the new scramble for Africa, in which western intelligence (American CIA, British MI6, Belgian intelligence, Israeli Mossad) are playing both sides of the table.
The aim is to destabilize the entire region so effectively that most of it can be effectively controlled under the disguise of the usual humanitarian mission. The vast mineral reserves (copper, diamonds, gold, uranium, and oil, for starters) can then he handed on a plate to western exploiters.
This is a direct continuation of the CIA/MI6/Belgian/Mossad promotion of the Katanga breakaway state back in the 1960′s. The western powers encouraged their local stooge Moise Tschombe to pull out of the freshly independent ex-Belgian Congo.
The prime minister of the Congolese Republic, Patrice Lumumba, was murdered in 1961 with the complicity of US and Belgian Special Forces.”
One of the CIA agents who was involved in the illegal assassination of the Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba was Frank Carlucci, who was the Secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration in the late 1980s. After leaving office, he became the chairman of the infamous Carlyle Group from 1992 to 2003, a company that is linked to the Bush and Bin Laden families, as well as other nasty people.These people are not only raping and murdering Africa, but they’re raping and murdering America and pretty much the whole planet. They don’t have human empathy, they are motivated by greed and want to take total control over the populations and resources of Earth.The satanic international banksters who control the CIA, MI6, Mossad, and other Western intelligence agencies are raping, killing, and looting in Afghanistan, Uganda, Iraq, Libya, America, etc. etc. etc.
The Kony 2012 campaign is a well-funded propaganda facade to lure good-hearted Americans into backing another illegal U.S./UN intervention in a part of the world that has been raped by cynical conquerors since the dawn of time.
This campaign is not about saving the children of Uganda from a heartless and brutal monster, but about stripping the resources of Uganda and giving them to the biggest heartless and brutal monsters on the planet, who own the CIA, MI6, Mossad, and the entire Western intelligence-security machine.
“Kony’s job is to provide the USA with the perfect excuse to invade Uganda on the pretext of inciting another humanitarian mission.
Yoweri Museveni, the dictator of Uganda, is also a CIA asset.
The CIA and its friends are supporting both sides.”
If you care about humanity, and the people and children of Uganda, then you must denounce the cynical Kony 2012 campaign, and inform your friends and family members that the real killers who are massacring children across the planet control the CIA, U.S. Military, Mossad, MI6, NATO, and UN.
UPDATE: The developer of a leading open source application for encrypted online chat, Nadim Kobeissi, claims to have been detained and interrogated at the US-Canadian border yesterday. “Out of my 4 DHS interrogations in the past 3 weeks, it’s the first time I’m asked about Cryptocat crypto and my passport is confiscated,” tweets Kobeissi. The US interrogator also asked about which encryption algorithms Cryptocat deployed and they were curious about its level of censorship resistance.
According to the ACLU, the border interrogation about Kobeissi’s encryption program raises troubling questions about the government’s claimed powers at the border. The “SSSS” designation stands for Secondary Security Screening Selection and if selected you become subject to extensive searches and interrogations — for any reason whatsoever. Ironically, since overall awareness about the existence of the Cryptocat program has increased, perhaps this unfortunate detention at the US border has done some good after all.
Nadim Kobeissi, master hacker, summoned for interrogation multiple times as a teenager by cyber-intelligence authorities in Beirut, Lebanon, sat in the backyard of a restaurant in Brooklyn, astounded that he was being treated to lunch.
“Please,” he protested, “you shouldn’t pay for my omelet.”
Mr. Kobeissi, 21, now a college student in Montreal, spent the weekend in New York City with elders of his tribe, software code writers who have ambitions that do not involve making suitcases of money off clever applications for sharing photographs online.
This group was building a project called Cryptocat, which has a simple, countercultural goal: people should be able to talk on the Internet without being subjected to commercial or government surveillance.
“The whole point of Cryptocat is that you click a link and you’re chatting with someone over an encrypted chat room,” said Mr. Kobeissi, who was born in Lebanon and said he had lived through four wars. “That’s it. You’re done. It’s just as easy to use as Facebook chat, Google chat, anything.”
The Arab Spring showed that the power of the Internet and Web communications is a multi-edged blade, with activists able to organize through social media and to get their stories out, and authoritarian governments often able to target the activists by following the trail of digital crumbs.
Among the conspicuous sources of information are the chat transcripts often kept on commercial servers, making it easy to see who was talking, what they talked about, and when the conversations took place. Cryptocat and a few other services disguise the content of chat messages so that they look like gibberish to anyone who does not have the encryption key. There is nothing new about encryption technology, but it is a brain-breaking subject, and the tools for using it are tricky.
Mr. Kobeissi started building Cryptocat a year ago in his bedroom with the goal of making it simple to encrypt an online conversation. He had help last weekend from the Guardian Project, a group of developers who are trying to make mobile phones secure. They figured out a way to encrypt a chat on an Android phone by shaking it, taking advantage of the motion detectors in many smartphones. This will generate the digits that are part of the encryption process.
“You can dance with your phone to encrypt it,” Mr. Kobeissi said.
Up to 10 people can speak privately to one another at a time in a Cryptocat chat room, a feature that distinguishes it from other encryption chat services. It is not ready for use by people in life-and-death situations, Mr. Kobeissi said, but it can give people a place to avoid everyday monitoring of routine conversation.
“Cryptocat is an enabling, positive technology, and it’s an alternative,” said Jacob Appelbaum, a developer with the Tor project, which routes Web traffic in ways that help disguise sites that people have visited. “A key thing here is that it is an experiment, with valid criticisms. It’s not perfect. But it is important that we have people who are interested and knowledgeable about computer security who are working on these things, not just for money, and not just to break into people’s computers.”
The group met over the weekend at a code-a-thon organized by Julia Angwin of The Wall Street Journal, which has chronicled the spread of commercial surveillance in everyday technology in a vital series of articles and engaging online demonstrations called What They Know. A recent article in Wired magazine detailed big advances in United States government surveillance capabilities. Mr. Appelbaum and a documentary filmmaker, Laura Poitras, are holding a teach-in Friday evening at the Whitney Museum of American Art on the subject of surveillance.
The invention of powerful tools to thwart the commercial and governmental collection of personal data has been criticized as creating hiding places for terrorists and online sexual predators. Mr. Kobeissi said he had been startled by those complaints. “Evil people have been evil forever,” he said. “I don’t think they’re going to stop being evil or become more evil because of Cryptocat.”
He appears to be wide open and unguarded about himself.
“I love it when people criticize me,” he said, pausing for a second and then amending his words. “When they criticize me technically.”
His ambitions with Cryptocat are not financial, though he is trying to raise $2,000 to cover his costs for the next year. “Money is great, money is amazing,” he said. “It’s not like money is something I don’t understand. I understand what it is. I care more about making something nice that people can use, and it’s free and it makes a difference.”
Bitcoin is not inherently anonymous. It may be possible to conduct transactions is such a way so as to obscure your identity, but, in many cases, users and their transactions can be identified. We have performed an analysis of anonymity in the Bitcoin system and published our results in a preprint on arXiv.
The Full Story
Anonymity is not a prominent design goal of Bitcoin. However, Bitcoin is often referred to as being anonymous. We have performed a passive analysis of anonymity in the Bitcoin system using publicly available data and tools from network analysis. The results show that the actions of many users are far from anonymous. We note that several centralized services, e.g. exchanges, mixers and wallet services, have access to even more information should they wish to piece together users’ activity. We also point out that an active analysis, using say marked Bitcoins and collaborating users, could reveal even more details. The technical details are contained in a preprint on arXiv. We welcome any feedback or corrections regarding the paper.
Case Study: The Bitcoin Theft
To illustrate our findings, we have chosen a case study involving a user who has many reasons to stay anonymous. He is the alleged thief of 25,000 Bitcoins. This is a summary of the victim’s postings to the Bitcoin forums and an analysis of the relevant transactions.
We consider the user network of the thief. Each vertex represents a user and each directed edge between a source and a target represents a flow of Bitcoins from a public-key belonging to the user corresponding to the source to a public-key belonging to the user corresponding to the target. Each directed edge is colored by its source vertex. The network is imperfect in the sense that there is, at the moment, a one-to-one mapping between users and public-keys. We restrict ourselves to the egocentric network surrounding the thief: we include every vertex that is reachable by a path of length at most two ignoring directionality and all edges induced by these vertices. We also remove all loops, multiple edges and edges that are not contained in some biconnected component to avoid clutter. In Fig. 1, the red vertex represents the thief and the green vertex represents the victim. The theft is the green edge joining the victim and the thief. There are in fact two green edges located nearby in Fig. 1 but only one directly connects the victim to the thief.
Fig. 2: An interesting sub-network induced by the thief, the victim and three other vertices.
Interestingly, the victim and the thief are joined by paths (ignoring directionality) other than the green edge representing the theft. For example, consider the sub-network shown in Fig. 2 induced by the red, green, purple, yellow and orange vertices. This sub-network is a cycle. We contract all vertices whose corresponding public-keys belong to the same user. This allows us to attach values in Bitcoins and timestamps to the directed edges. Firstly, we note that the theft of 25,000 BTC was preceded by a smaller theft of 1 BTC. This was later reported by the victim in the Bitcoin forums. Secondly, using off-network data, we have identified some of the other colored vertices: the purple vertex represents the main Slush pool account and the orange vertex represents the computer hacker group LulzSec (see, for example, their Twitter stream). We note that there has been at least one attempt to associate the thief with LulzSec. This was a fake; it was created after the theft. However, the identification of the orange vertex with LulzSec is genuine and was established before the theft. We observe that the thief sent 0.31337 BTC to LulzSec shortly after the theft but we cannot otherwise associate him with the group. The main Slush pool account sent a total of 441.83 BTC to the victim over a 70-day period. It also sent a total of 0.2 BTC to the yellow vertex over a 2-day period. One day before the theft, the yellow vertex also sent 0.120607 BTC to LulzSec. Theyellow vertex represents a user who is the owner of at least five public-keys:
Like the victim, he is a member of the Slush pool, and like the thief, he is a one-time donator toLulzSec. This donation, the day before the theft, is his last known activity using these public-keys.
A Flow and Temporal Analysis
In addition to visualizing the egocentric network of the thief with a fixed radius, we can follow significant flows of value through the network over time. If a vertex representing a user receives a large volume of Bitcoins relative to their estimated balance, and, shortly after, transfers a significant proportion of those Bitcoins to another user, we deem this interesting. We built a special purpose tool that, starting with a chosen vertex or set of vertices, traces significant flows of Bitcoins over time. In practice we have found this tool to be quite revealing when analyzing the user network.
Fig. 3: A visualization of Bitcoin flow from the theft. The size of a vertex corresponds to its degree in the entire network. The color denotes the volume of Bitcoins — warmer colors have larger volumes flowing through them. We also provide an SVG which contains hyperlinks to the relevant Block Explorer pages.
Fig. 4: An annotated version of Fig. 3.
In the left inset, we can see that the Bitcoins are shuffled between a small number of accounts and then transferred back to the initial account. After this shuffling step, we have identified four significant outflows of Bitcoins that began at 19:49, 20:01, 20:13 and 20:55. Of particular interest are the outflows that began at 20:55 (labeled as 1 in both insets) and 20:13 (labeled as 2 in both insets). These outflows pass through several subsequent accounts over a period of several hours. Flow 1 splits at the vertex labeled A in the right inset at 04:05 the day after the theft. Some of its Bitcoins rejoin Flow 2 at the vertex labeled B. This new combined flow is labeled as 3 in the right inset. The remaining Bitcoins from Flow 1 pass through several additional vertices in the next two days. This flow is labeled as 4 in the right inset.
A surprising event occurs on 16/06/2011 at approximately 13:37. A small number of Bitcoins are transferred from Flow 3 to a heretofore unseen public-key 1FKFiCYJSFqxT3zkZntHjfU47SvAzauZXN. Approximately seven minutes later, a small number of Bitcoins are transferred from Flow 3 to another heretofore unseen public-key 1FhYawPhWDvkZCJVBrDfQoo2qC3EuKtb94. Finally, there are two simultaneous transfers from Flow 4 to two more heretofore unseen public-keys:1MJZZmmSrQZ9NzeQt3hYP76oFC5dWAf2nD and 12dJo17jcR78Uk1Ak5wfgyXtciU62MzcEc. We have determined that these four public-keys — which receive Bitcoins from two separate flows that split from each other two days previously — are all contracted to the same user in our ancillary network. This user is represented as C.
There are several other examples of interesting flow. The flow labeled as Y involves the movement of Bitcoins through thirty unique public-keys in a very short period of time. At each step, a small number of Bitcoins (typically 30 BTC which had a market value of approximately US$500 at the time of the transactions) are siphoned off. The public-keys that receive the small number of Bitcoins are typically represented by small blue vertices due to their low volume and degree. On 20/06/2011 at 12:35, each of these public-keys makes a transfer to a public-key operated by the MyBitcoin service. Curiously, this public-key was previously involved in another separate Bitcoin theft.WikiLeaksWikiLeaks recently advised its Twitter followers that it now accepts anonymous donations via Bitcoin. They also state that “Bitcoin is a secure and anonymous digital currency. Bitcoins cannot be easily tracked back to you, and are a [sic] safer and faster alternative to other donation methods.” They proceed to describe a more secure method of donating Bitcoins that involves the generation of a one-time public-key but the implications for those who donate using the tweeted public-key are unclear. Is it possible to associate a donation with other Bitcoin transactions performed by the same user or perhaps identify them using external information?
Fig. 5: A visualization of the egocentric user network of WikiLeaks. We can identify many of the users in this visualization.
Our tools resolve several of the users with identifying information gathered from the Bitcoin Forums, the Bitcoin Faucet, Twitter streams, etc. These users can be linked either directly or indirectly to their donations. The presence of a Bitcoin mining pool (a large red vertex) and a number of public-keys between it and WikiLeaks’ public-key is interesting. Our point is that, by default, a donation to WikiLeaks’ ‘public’ public-key may not be anonymous.
Conclusion
This is a straight-forward passive analysis of public data that allows us to de-anonymize considerable portions of the Bitcoin network. We can use tools from network analysis to visualize egocentric networks and to follow the flow of Bitcoins. This can help us identify several centralized services that may have even more details about interesting users. We can also apply techniques such as community finding, block modeling, network flow algorithms, etc. to better understand the network.
Feedback
We are excited about the Bitcoin project and consider it a remarkable milestone in the evolution of electronic currencies. Our motivation for this work has not been to de-anonymize any individual users; rather it is to illustrate the limits of anonymity in the Bitcoin system. It is important that users do not have a false expectation of anonymity. We welcome any feedback or comments regarding the preprint on arXiv or the details in this post.
Energy-intensive industrial farming practices that rely on toxic chemicals and genetically engineered crops are not just undermining public health–they’re destroying the planet. Here’s how:
#1 Generating Massive Greenhouse Gas Pollution (CO2, Methane, Nitrous Oxide) and Global Warming; While Promoting False Solutions Such as Industrial Biofuels, So-Called Drought-Resistant Crops, and Genetically Engineered Trees
Evaluations of corn grown for ethanol show that whatever reduction in emissions you get from burning corn instead of oil in the gas tank is more than offset by the fact that producing biofuel from corn requires as much fuel as it could replace.
Corn production, like the production of all of the crops (corn, cotton, canola, soy, and now, sugar beets and alfalfa) that Monsanto has so successfully industrialized through its business model of selling patented GMO seeds to increase the use of its pesticides, is very fossil fuel intensive.
But that’s just the beginning of Monsanto’s contribution to agriculture’s green house gas emissions. With ever-increasing acreage, where are all those GMO crops going? They’re being fed to animals, and when you look at emissions from factory farms, you’ll wish we burned them in the gas tank instead!
Added to the greenhouse gas emissions from crop production and factory farms is the pollution related to heavily processed food and the fact that food in the U.S. travels anywhere from 1500 to 3000 miles to reach your plate and must be either cooled or frozen in transit or storage. That’s fossil fuel intensive, too.
Before we total the life cycle contribution of Monsanto’s crops to greenhouse gas emissions, we have to take several steps back and acknowledge that clearing land to grow GMO crops for animal feed is the biggest driver of forest and wetland destruction, which generates 20% of all climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases.
All told, the production and processing of Monsanto’s GMO crops, from deforestation to fossil-fuel-based pesticides and fertilizers, polluting factory farms, and fuel-intensive food processing and distribution, is estimated to produce up to 51% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
#2 Polluting the Environment and the Soil-Food Web with Pesticides, Chemical Fertilizers, and Persistent Toxins, Including Dioxin
Industrial agriculture’s heavy reliance on pesticides and fertilizers is responsible for the release of many dangerous toxins into our environment, but since Monsanto first commercialized genetically engineered crops in the 1990s, we’ve been exposed to one more than any other. It’s common name is glyphosate, but Monsanto markets it as RoundUp and has created “RoundUp Ready” crops to promote it. RoundUp Ready crops are genetically engineered to withstand endless amounts of RoundUp. The success of Monsanto’s business model has made RoundUp the most-used pesticide in the history of the world.
The trouble is, RoundUp is very toxic. It’s known to cause cancer, birth defects and infertility. In fact, some scientists are now saying it’s more dangerous than DDT.
It only took about 15 years for the RoundUp Ready technology to begin to fail, with RoundUp-tolerant super-weeds springing up across the country and farmers having to resort to more and more toxic pesticides for weed control. The biotech industry says it has a solution: replace RoundUp Ready crops with a new type of GMO, “2,4-D Ready” crops.
As dangerous as RoundUp is turning out to be, the only thing worse would be 2,4-D replacing RoundUp’s as the most popular pesticide in the world. The use of 2,4-D releases dioxin. Dioxin is what has made Agent Orange, which contained 2,4-D, a source of horrific birth defects in Vietnam to this day. Genetically engineered 2,4-D-tolerant crops would be a disaster of untold proportions.
#3 Turning Farmland into Desert, Draining Aquifers and Wetlands
In the U.S., the soil’s capability to sequester carbon has been severely deteriorated due to the enormous increase in the use of nitrogen fertilizers, mostly to raise Monsanto’s genetically engineered crops for animal feed. The soil should be a sink for excess carbon but has lost about 50% of its organic matter, making it is less than half as effective as it used to be. Many of our most productive agricultural lands have been degraded or desertified because of industrial production.
Recent studies on the University of Illinois Morrow plots (the oldest continuously farmed experimental plots in the U.S.) have shown that since 1955, when synthetic nitrogen was first used, 40-190% too much nitrogen was applied, yet yields dropped and organic matter declined dramatically. These problems on the Morrow plots are writ large on millions of acres of agricultural soils that have been degraded by synthetic fertilizer all over this country.
Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer kills soil life, including earthworms and microorganisms. In addition to reduced yields, degraded and deadened soils produce less nutritious food.
Contrary to Monsanto’s marketing claims that their business is about “squeezing more out of a drop of water,” their genetically engineered crops are notoriously thirsty. It takes twice as much water to produce a pound of a RoundupReady crop soybean plant treated with RoundUp herbicide, as it does with a soybean plant that’s not treated with RoundUp.
#4 Poisoning Drinking Water, Acidifying the Oceans
Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is also responsible for the nitrate poisoning of two-thirds of the U.S. drinking water supply. Synthetic nitrogen fertilizer is the major cause of the 405 oceanic dead zones around the world (including the Gulf of Mexico, the Chesapeake Bay, and the coasts of California and Oregon). Monsanto’s genetically engineered corn uses more fertilizer than any other crop.
#5 Chopping Down the Rainforests for Monoculture GMO Crops, Biofuels and Cattle Grazing
Clearing land to grow GMO crops for animal feed is the biggest driver of forest and wetland destruction, which generate 20% of all climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases. In Argentina and Brazil, Monsanto’s genetically engineered soy is the main cause of deforestation.
Argentina has one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world with an average of 0.8% of the forest cut down each year, against a global rate of 0.23%. During the period 2002-2006, 1,108,669 hectares of forest were lost. That is 277,000 hectares per year, equivalent to 760 hectares per day or 32 hectares per hour. The speed with which Córdoba’s forests are disappearing is unmatched worldwide, it even surpasses that of tropical forests in poor countries. This is a ecological tragedy for the primitive forests which shelter a biodiversity found nowhere else on the planet.
In Brazil, the soy output increased 7.2 percent in 2011, causing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon to jump sixfold.
#6 Increasing the Cost of Food, While Reducing Nutrition and Biodiversity
The business press unabashedly links Monsanto’s profits to record-high global food prices and increases in the costs of farm inputs, especially Monsanto’s patented genetically engineered seeds. Monsanto’s profits go up as hunger increases and families lose their farms to insurmountable debt.
Nowhere has the connection between Monsanto’s fortunes and farmers’ misfortunes been so clear as in India where 200,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1997. For many Indian farmers growing Monsanto’s genetically engineered Bt cotton, suicide is their only means of escaping the debt they’ve accrued to obtain the seeds and pesticides.
Monsanto has made food and farming more expensive, while reducing the nutrition and variety of food available to the average consumer. The world’s farmers are increasingly growing more of fewer number of crops (especially Monsanto’s genetically engineered corn, cotton, soy, canola, sugar beets and alfalfa). The result is that we’re eating a lot more of these few genetically engineered crops, mostly in the form of animal products, oils & fats, and sugars. The most notorious genetically engineered ingredients are high-fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated vegetable oils, and processed meats.
The concentration of power in the hands of a few chemical companies like Monsanto and the industrial producers who can most easily afford their products, has resulted in a global food system dominated by two extremes: on one hand, a plenitude of industrially produced junk foods, on the other, regular food shortages and drastic price hikes. This leaves a billion people saddled with obesity and diet-related disease, even as more than a billion don’t know where their next meal is coming from.
#7 Spawning Pesticide-Resistant “Super” Bugs and Weeds, and Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria
Genetically engineered crops designed to produce insecticides or tolerate herbicides have proven a failure. Herbicide-resistant “superweeds” have increased farmers’ weed-control costs to $50/acre, as they battle weeds that can stand up to the most toxic chemicals ever invented, including RoundUp (glyphosate), 2,4-D, dicamba, atrazine, ALS inhibitors, PPO inhibitors, HPPD inhibitors and synthetic auxins. Monsanto’s Bt corn and cotton are being mowed down by resistant insectsfrom Iowa to India.
On farms raising animals for food, the non-therapeutic use of antibiotics has created a serious threat to the longevity and effectiveness of certain classes of antibiotics used to treat a host of human illnesses. Doctors concede that antimicrobial drug resistance due to use in animal feed has already cost thousands of lives. In 2006, the EU banned the use of antibiotics in water and feed, proving that raising livestock without drugs is possible.
Ban Monsanto’s RoundUp! Experts Say It’s Worse than DDT! Tell the EPA to Ban Glyphosate
Can You Imagine a World without Antibiotics? Tell the FDA to Protect Human Health and Regulate Antibiotics in Animal Feed
#8 Generating New and More Virulent Plant, Animal and Human Diseases
The following is a summary of a must-watch interview (Part 1, Part 2) that Dr. Joseph Mercola conducted with Dr. Don Huber.
The way Monsanto’s RoundUp herbicide (glyphosate) kills weeds and plants is by compromising their defense mechanisms, making them very susceptible to soil borne organisms. It’s not a direct killer, but it has a debilitating effect on the weed’s immune system, much like the human disease AIDS.
Monsanto’s RoundUp Ready gene, which enables crops to withstand glyphosate, doesn’t solve the problem of a debilitated immune system, all it does is make it possible for the plant to survive and to accumulate more glyphosate. RoundUp Ready crops aren’t killed immediately by the soil diseases RoundUp makes them susceptible to, because they’ve been engineered with genes from a resistant bacteria, but they are still more likely to succumb to disease than plants that aren’t exposed to RoundUp.
Among these disease-causing pathogens are fusaria, which causes sudden death syndrome in soybeans and is a major disease-causing organism for most of our crops. In crops sprayed with RoundUp, we find an increase of up to 500 percent in root colonization by this fungus.
While glyphosate promotes the growth of more virulent pathogens, it also kills off beneficial bacteria that might keep such pathogens in check in the soil and in the guts of animals and humans that ingest the crop.
Scientists have discovered a brand new organism in genetically engineered animal feed, an organism that has since been linked to infertility and miscarriage in cattle, horses, pigs, sheep, and poultry. We can anticipate that, with such a broad spectrum of animal species, which is extremely unusual, that humans will face the same problem, and there has been an increasing frequency of miscarriage and a dramatic increase in infertility in humans in just the last eight to 10 years.
The organism was initially identified by veterinarians around 1998, about two years after the introduction of Roundup Ready soybeans, which is one of the staple feeds. The vets were puzzled by sudden high reproductive failure in animals. While sporadic at first, the phenomenon has continued to increase in severity. Dairies are reporting rates of spontaneous as high as 70 percent.
The cause-effect relationship between high reproductive failure and this new microbial entity has been established, but the research has not yet been published. The reason for the delay is because they really do not know what the organism is. It’s not a fungus. It’s not bacteria. It’s not a mycoplasma or a virus. It’s about the same size of a small virus; you have to magnify it 40,000 times.
When the veterinarians wanted to find the source for this new organism, they went to the feed. The first place where they found high concentrations was in the soybean meal. Since it has been found it in corn and in silage, only where there is a genetically engineered crop that has had glyphosate applied to it. The organism is also found in manure when the animals have been given feeds with high glyphosate residues. When that manure is applied to pastures and cattle graze on it, we also see high infertility rates there.
The organism is found in the placenta, in the fetus, and in the sperm. In the dairy industry, it sometimes takes twice as much semen to get a conception and as many as four to eight inseminations rather than the typical 1.2 to 1.5. One bull breeder had to pull 40 percent of his bulls out of service, because of fertility.
If we continue to douse our crops with ever increasing amounts of glyphosate, we will inevitably see the same effect on human health as we’re seeing in plants and animals.
Glyphosate gets inside the plant; it cannot be washed off. Once you eat it, it ends up in your gut, where 80 percent of your immune system resides. Glyphosate can wreak havoc with your health by upsetting the healthy ratio of good and bad stomach bacteria.
Because organically-farmed fields are not doused with glyphosate, organic fields still contain beneficial soil bacteria that actually hinder pathogens in and on the food from multiplying out of control. This may be yet another reason why organic foods are less prone to be contaminated with disease-causing pathogens than conventionally-grown foods.
Pathogens such as E. coli have a high tolerance for glyphosate compared to their natural biological controls. What this means is that it may not be the presence or absence of pathogens per se that determines the safety of our food supply, but rather the presence or absence of the natural control organisms, which are effectively destroyed by glyphosate. Salmonella, Clostridium, and a lot of these disease organisms are ubiquitous. They’re everywhere. Our health is dependent on keeping them in check. If we’re eliminating that check, we’re going to see an increase in Alzheimer’s, thyroid problems, autism, Parkinson’s — any disease that has a tie with either the endocrine system or nutrient availability.
Genetically engineered crops are supposed to be nutritionally equivalent to conventional foods, but they’re not. On the contrary, they’re nutritionally inferior due to glyphosate’s herbicidal mechanism, which blocks absorption of micronutrients. Genetically engineered crops contain about 50 percent less manganese and up to 70 percent less zinc. They also contain less copper, iron and magnesium, just to name a few. This affects the overall health of the plant, and its reproductive ability, and when you eat this nutritionally inferior food, you’re not getting the micronutrients your body needs for proper function either. Animal products are similarly affected when they’re from animals raised on genetically feed.
Studies of pet rats are exposing behavioral differences in animals given genetically engineered feed, as opposed to normal food. The non-GMO-fed rats are docile. They can be pulled out of their cages and patted just like a cat. But try and reach in to the cage where the rats are being fed the genetically engineered feed. The rats are irritated. They don’t get along together. They always go off into their own little world. They do backflips. They crawl up and run around the cage. They can’t get any peace, can’t settle down. That is very typical of what you’d see with autism.
Doctors working with autistic children are noting many correlations between the rats fed genetically modified feed and autistic children. When you look at the stomachs of the GMO-fed animals, they have all of the severe allergy responses, the inflammation and the reddening. The intestinal lining is deteriorating. The smell of the intestinal contents is very rank. The biology has been drastically changed. Doctors say that’s exactly what they’re seeing with autistic children.
Another effect of the new mystery organism associated with genetically engineered crops is premature aging. Research done in Iowa three years ago showed that prime beef from a two-year old cow had to be downgraded to that from a 10-year old cow.
Glyphosate can also disrupt a number of other biological systems, including liver function, blood function, and hormonal function. Glyphosate is a potent endocrine disruptor that can affect the endocrine system, thyroid function, and pituitary function.
TAKE ACTION
Ban Monsanto’s RoundUp! Experts Say It’s Worse than DDT! Tell the EPA to Ban Glyphosate
#9 Utilizing Wasteful Fossil Fuel-Intensive Practices and Encouraging the Expansion of Natural Gas Fracking and Tar Sands Extraction (Which Destroy Forests, Aquifers, and Farmland)
The industrialized food system is responsible for more than half of greenhouse gas emissions, making Big Ag one of Big Oil’s biggest customers. We could deprive the oil and gas industry of a significant amount of income by making the shift from polluting, fossil-fuel-intensive factory farms to carbon-sequestering organic and local agriculture.
Until we do make the shift, we need to acknowledge that the old adage “you are what you eat” applies to energy and the climate, as well as the body. It isn’t just Hummers that are pushing the expansion of natural gas fracking and tar sands extraction, it’s also Big Macs.
The worst thing about agriculture’s wasteful ways that the more fossil fuels we use to produce our food, the more farmland will be destroyed in the search for new sources of that fuel.
Natural gas fracking pumps many millions of gallons of hydrocarbons and volatile organic compounds, including known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors, into the ground during the drilling process, and into the air from evaporation tanks. Pollution of water, air and food from the gas drilling industry is exempt from federal pollution laws, including the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Clear Air Act, thanks to Dick Cheney’s 2005 Energy Policy Act and its ‘Halliburton Exemption.’
In upstate New York, the three million acres of superior grasslands which are currently unused are threatened by natural gas fracking. This is enough pasture land to raise local, grass-fed cattle to replace all the factory farmed beef sold in New York City.
The Keystone XL pipeline would carry toxic tar sands oil 1,700 miles from Alberta, Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. The pipeline would cross the massive Ogallala aquifer, which supplies drinking water in 8 US states, and irrigation for millions of acres of farmland. We’ve already seen the damage the thick tar sands oil laden with volatile compounds can do from spills in the Yellowstone River and the Kalamazoo River. The first Keystone pipeline, developed with state-of-the-art technology, has already spilled 12 times in its first year in operation.
#10 Stealing Money From the 99% to Give Huge Subsidies to the 1% Wealthiest, Most Chemical and Energy-Intensive Farms and Food Producers
The following is a summary of Donald Carr’s must-read article, “Why the 2012 Farm Bill is a Climate Bill.”
In the 2012 Farm Bill, Congress is poised to cut 7 million acres from the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). The CRP is administered through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and pays farmers to keep highly erodible land out of production.
Putting land into conservation programs leads to cleaner water, healthier soil, and robust wildlife habitat, and also plays a major role in fighting climate change. According to the USDA [PDF], one acre of protected land sequesters 1.66 metric tons of carbon every year, carbon that would otherwise end up in the atmosphere. The 7 million acres about to be cut from the CRP have been putting 11.6 million metric tons of carbon into the soil every year.
The Environmental Protection Agency says that this amount of carbon is equivalent to the annual emissions of 2 million passenger vehicles. All that stored carbon will be sent back into the atmosphere if those 7 million acres are plowed under to plant more genetically engineered corn for ethanol and livestock feed.
Meanwhile lavish government payments to highly profitable mega-farms continue, and farm state lawmakers and agribiz lobbyists are working toward newer programs that could increase taxpayers’ burden, along with agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Save the Planet From Monsanto! It’s not enough to stop eating genetically engineered food. If we want a liveable planet we’ve got to boycott all factory farmed food and make the Great Transition from energy and chemical-intensive agriculture to a re-localized and organic system of food and farming. The World According to Monsanto is a recipe for disaster. Monsanto and Big Ag contaminate every link in the food chain, threatening the very foundation of life: living nutrient-rich soil, clean water, resilient crops, healthy animals, stable climates, and diverse food sources. The good news is that agro-ecological and organic methods can reverse this threat and sustain food production for future generations, but we don’t have much time to turn things around.
The pilgrimage for tin foil hat explorers to the ominous borders of Area 51 can now be undertaken without the threat of being shot at or chased off by low-flying black helicopters, as the world’s first official Area 51 museum opens in Nevada.
The actual Area 51 site at Groom Lake is still guarded by ferocious dogs, movement-detecting sensors and armed guards driving Warrior trucks, but years of research and investigation have gone into creating the ultimate Area 51 experience within the equally-interesting National Atomic Testing Museum of Las Vegas.
Since reporter George Knapp broke the story of Area 51 in the late 80s withBob Lazar‘s claims of reverse-engineering alien technology, it has been a hive of conspiracy theory and stranger-than-fiction folklore. Built originally for working on atomic weapons and testing them in the surrounding desert, Area 51 has grown massively and now even has its own runway, which is said to be the longest in the world, at an estimated 9.7km.
For years, the military refused to confirm Area 51’s existence, which contributed to the mystery surrounding it. Now however, for the first time, the facts have been laid out and presented at an exhibition open to the public. Although there isn’t a huge amount of detail about the goings-on in the depths of Area 51, visitors to the museum can expect more than scorched metal fragments in glass cases and dubious testimonies.
“This is an interactive exhibit,” the museum curator Karen Green told Wired.co.uk. “It actually takes the visitor to Area 51. Camouflaged personnel will meet the visitor and escort them into a mission room — and keep your badge on, this is top secret. You’ll be asked questions throughout the exhibit to help understand both the myth and the realities of Area 51. We want you to make up your own mind.”
No-one other than the US government, and employees flown in everyday via “Janet” flights on private planes from nearby McCarran airport, really know what is down there. Inside Area 51, or “Dreamland” as it’s sometimes known, is said to be a labyrinth of underground tunnels, containing what is claimed to be anything from advanced US aircraft to reptilian aliens. Over the years, the attention generated by the rumours surrounding the base has made it impossible for any kind of secret testing to take place as brazenly as it may once have, but the site is still massively popular amongst conspiracy theorists and curious onlookers alike.
Green explains why now is the right time to open the exhibit: “The National Atomic Testing Museum has been working on this exhibit for over three years, interviewing many of the people who worked at Area 51. Last year the name Area 51 was finally declassified by the CIA, and that opened the door for us to bring the first ever museum exhibit about Area 51 to the public. There are a number of things that are unique to this exhibit, including firsthand accounts of experiences from men who worked there, a rare look at untouched original UFO photographs from the Bigelow Aerospace Archives, and some ‘UFO artefacts’ from a crash in the Soviet Union that were given to investigative reporter George Knapp.”
Knapp, an investigative journalist based out of Las Vegas, is regarded as one of the few people who’ve approached the mystery of Area 51 with a level head, and his expertise played a major role in the construction of the museum. He told Wired.co.uk: “I’ve given [the Area 51 museum] quite a bit of input, a detailed history of the origin of the UFO stories, Lazar’s background, snippets I obtained from other witnesses and former employees, and a whole lot of post-UFO history. Area 51 is now known all over the world (…) and I helped the museum understand just how far it has spread.”
Knapp has spent decades investigating Area 51 and has spoken to many ex-employees who have been privy to highly-classified information. He claims to have seen US government documents detailing how it was more concerned about the lights in the sky than it ever let on in the public domain.
“I broadened the discussion by sharing with them some information about the larger UFO picture — secret studies by the US and Russian military, a paper trail of documents to show the subject was taken seriously behind the scenes, and some unusual objects I brought back from two perilous trips to the former USSR.”
Regarded now as the US military’s “worst kept secret”, it’s likely that Area 51 has become far too famous for it to genuinely hold any kind of world-altering secrets such as a reclaimed flying saucer or alien hybrids in glass jars, but Knapp is confident that highly advanced technology is still being tested there: “I am told the base is largely focused on UAV type technology, everything from pilotless combat fighters to invisible planes — literally — to the tiniest UAV’s, advanced machines the size of insects,” he explained.
“If there were ever any recovered saucers out there, and I do say ‘if’ — then they are long gone. Too many people have been out there looking for them, including members of Congress and major news organisations. A congressional staffer with the highest clearances once told me that if the stories turn out to be true — and he believed they were true — then it was clear the military and intelligence agencies have been lying to the public and to Congress for a long time, have been siphoning funds away from legitimate national security programs to maintain a cover-up and that if it could ever be proven, then a lot of these guys deserve to go to prison. That, by itself, is enough of a reason to maintain a cover-up as far as I’m concerned.”
So if you’re not too keen on being spirited away to some unknown holding cell a thousand floors under the desert after trying to ram-raid the main gate at Area 51, visit the museum, as it’s probably the closest you’ll ever get to the real thing.
Shaahin Cheyene is an Iranian born writer, filmmaker, lecturer and herbalist based in Los Angeles, California . For over 15 years, Cheyene has traveled extensively and worked with healers and medicine men and women from all over the world in an effort to document and preserve their medicines and traditions.
n the early 1990′s while still in his teens, Cheyene spearheaded the smart drug movement by inventing Herbal Ecstacy and over 200 other award winning products. Herbal Ecstacy became a global phenomena that sold over 300,000,000 units. Cheyene later developed the first mass market herbal cigarette brand: Ecstasy Cigarettes. Ecstacy Cigarettes became the most successful brand of herbal cigarettes in the world with over 100,000,00 units sold. Cheyene has been called the “Willy Wonka of Generation X” and compared to the likes of Bill Gates and PT Barnum.
n the late 1990′s Cheyene was the first to travel to Mexico to discover a commercial source for the shamanic Mexican plant Salvia Divnorum and to import it on a commercial scale. He authored the first book in over 15 years on the plant.
Cheyene has worked with several of the major pharmaceutical companies in an effort to bring the technologies and benefits of plant medicines to the mainstream.
In 2000 Cheyene developed a revolutionary new technology and spearheaded the vaporization movement. He invented and patented the Vapir Vaporizer and authored the definitive book on the science of Vaporization. The Vapir Vaporizer has sold hundreds of thousands all over the world.
Now a full time writer and filmmaker, Cheyene has recently completed the award winning documentary film Serpent And The Sun : Tales Of An Aztec Apprentice and written the companion book Darkness: The Power Of Illumination.
Why did Jay-Z and Beyoncé name their kid “Blue Ivy”? What was the deal with Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime show? Why did Whitney Houston die? Some people might say that “famous people are weird and sad” is the answer to all three questions. But no, the answer is: The Illuminati. Who? Allow us to explain.
Note: to best service our readers, we’ve divided this guide into two sections — first, the believer’s guide; second, the skeptic’s guide.
The Believer’s Guide
What is the Illuminati?
The Illuminati is an ancient and shadowy group of elites who control nearly every aspect of life on this planet — from finance and government to religion and culture.
Who is in the Illuminati?
The Illuminati is made up of the world’s political and financial elite, and also, rappers. Theoretically, membership rolls are kept secret, but most YouTube intellectuals agree that the following people are members:
What do the Illuminati do?
Oh, you know, conspiracy stuff. Assassinations, currency manipulation, Super Bowl halftime shows. All executed through puppet institutions and groups like the Federal Reserve, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Freemasons, and Def Jam Recordings. And all carefully controlled and hidden to ensure that their meddling in world affairs will remain secret.
This is sounding more plausible by the minute. What’s the end goal of the Illuminati?
The end goal of the Illuminati is to establish a one-world authoritarian government known as the New World Order.
…and then?
Here, theories differ. Some of the internet’s finest minds, writing on scholarly websites like Yahoo Answers, believe that forced conversion to homosexuality will be a top agenda item in the New World Order. Others claim the first order of business will be to round all non-Illuminati up into FEMA camps, possibly as part of a deal struck with aliens in Roswell. Many, if not most, experts believe that the New World Order will be a front for the rise of the Antichrist.
The Antichrist?
Yes. The Illuminati is made up of Satanists.
Even the Pope?
I can see how it’s confusing. The Pope is actually a Satanist, just like Jay-Z and the Queen of England. (He might even be the Antichrist.) In fact, the whole Catholic church is just a continuation of Babylonian paganism, didn’t you know? They keep demons trapped inside the Pentagon, which is why it’s, you know, pentagonal.
Okay. How can I tell who’s in the Illuminati?
I know this sounds counterintuitive, but prominent Illuminati members frequently flag their Illuminati connections. Like how in Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” video, there’s that goat head-shaped star formation? Or have you ever seen Jay-Z’s video for “On to the Next One“? It has agoat skull in it. Goats, bro.
Goat heads are an Illuminati symbol?
Goat heads represents Baphomet, the goat-headed god beloved by 19th-century occultists. It’s not the only weird occult reference in “On to the Next One.” The creepy guy with the crow, Jay throwing devil horns, the, uh, actual Masonic symbol — all of Hov’s (that’s right: Hov) videos are filled with Illuminati and occult symbolism. So are Lady Gaga’s: that pink triangle and unicorn that you thought was some campy gay reference? Actually symbols of the immaculate conception of a new order of humanity. So are Kanye’s videos, especially “Power.”
But how will the Illuminati possibly pull off their plan for secret world domination if they’re constantly advertising their own existence?
Hey! Did I tell you about Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime show?
Ooh, no, tell me.
It was obviously a Satantic ritual. The color scheme was red and black. She had horns on her helmet. The show happened within 48 hours of the full moon. Her male dancers formed a pyramid, a Masonic symbol. It ended with the phrase “World Peace” — as in, “New World OrderPeace.” And LMFAO was there.
LMFAO is Illuminati?
Can you think of any other reason for their success?
But why would the Illuminati hold a Satanic ritual during the biggest television even of the year?
To celebrate the upcoming assassination of Whitney Houston.
Who else have the Illuminati killed?
Oh, you name it — J.F.K., 2Pac, Bob Marley, Michael Jackson. Heath Ledger’s death was a ritualistic sacrifice. Aaliyah was killed by Dame Dash so he could become famous.
Wow. That makes sense.
I know. And there’s stuff we haven’t even covered!
What is the Illuminati?
A defunct German secret society of freethinkers, humanists and Enlightenment academics, founded in 1776 and infiltrated and shut down by Bavarian authorities about a decade later.
There hasn’t been an Illuminati in 200 years?
Well, it’s been in use as a conspiracy theory ever since it was first founded, mostly by monarchists, right-wingers, and religious Christians looking for explanations as to why things aren’t going their way.
So who believes in the Illuminati?
Generally speaking, Ron Paul voters, people who are in militias, washed-up rappers, teenage R&B fans on Twitter, and that one guy from high school who is always posting links to Erowid “experiences” to Facebook.
That’s kind of a broad range of people, isn’t it?
Yeah. Weird, huh?
I don’t get it. If it’s this right-wing Christian conspiracy, how do rappers start believing in it?
That’s kind of the million-dollar question. Columbia professor Marc Lamont Hill says that conspiracy theories are a natural response by African-Americans to their disenfranchisement: “There have always been questions and conspiracies about the structure and nature of power by African-Americans, and naturally those questions have made their way into hip-hop,” he told the Philadelphia Weekly in 2010. “[In the 1990s] people were going to black book stores… and buying books like Behold a Pale Horse… They were talking about the Illuminati and the Rothschilds and Bilderbergs.”
So Alex Jones and Prodigy were reading the same fucked-up conspiracy books? That’s wild, man.
Dude, Prodigy is going to to vote for Ron Paul.
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (H.R. 3523) is a bill introduced in the United States House of Representatives by Reps. Mike Rogers (D-MI) and C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger (D-MD) in late 2011. It amends the National Security Act of 1947 to allow private companies and US government intelligence agencies to share information regarding perceived cyber threats.
WHAT IS WRONG WITH CISPA?
1. CISPA’s language, particularly in reference to how it defines “cyber threat,” is far too broad.
The bill’s definition of a “cyber threat” is so vague that it may potentially allow CISPA to encompass a far broader range of targets and data than initially contemplated by its authors. “Cyber threat” is a critical term in the bill, and is defined therein as:
…information directly pertaining to a vulnerability of, or threat to a system of network of a government or private entity, including information pertaining to the protection of a system or network from —
(A) efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy such system or network; or
(B) theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information.
Under this overly broad, vague definition, whistleblowers and leakers such as Wikileaks, tech blogs carrying the latest rumours and gossip from companies, news and media sites publishing investigations, security researchers and whitehat pen testers, torrent sites (including our beloved Pirate Bay), and of course, yours truly, Anonymous, would all be ripe targets.
Additionally, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) notes, CISPA’s broad definition of “cybersecurity” is so vague that it leaves open the door “to censor any speech that a company believes would ‘degrade the network.’” Going one step further, the bill’s inclusion of “intellectual property” provides for the strong possibility that both private companies and the federal government will likely be granted “new powers to monitor and censor communications for copyright infringement.” (Full EFF letter here)
2. CISPA demonstrates a complete disregard for reasonable expectations of privacy protection and essential liberties by providing for unaccountable sharing of user data.
As laid out, CISPA allows a large, nearly unchecked quantity of any and all information on a target to be obtained and shared between private companies and government agencies. The bill’s text states, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a self-protected entity may, for cybersecurity purposes…share such cyber threat information with any other entity, including the Federal Government.”
Why is this problematic? As it stands, CISPA’s text allows for a slippery slope of information and data that could be shared amongst private companies and the federal government without any regard for a target’s personal privacy protections. Such information could very well include account names and passwords, histories, message content, and other information not currently available to agencies under federal wiretap laws.
In a position letter addressed to Congress on 17 April 2012, CISPA critics point out:
CISPA creates an exception to all privacy laws to permit companies to share our information with each other and with the government in the name of cybersecurity. Although a carefully-‐crafted information sharing program that strictly limits the information to be shared and includes robust privacy safeguards could be an effective approach to cybersecurity, CISPA lacks such protections for individual rights. CISPA’s ‘information sharing’ regime allows the transfer of vast amounts of data, including sensitive information like internet use history or the content of emails, to any agency in the government including military and intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency or the Department of Defense Cyber Command.
3. The broad language in CISPA provides for the uncertain future expansion of federal government powers and a slippery slope of cybersecurity warrantless wiretapping.
Of particular concern is the word “notwithstanding,” which is a dangerously broad word when included in legislation. The use of “notwithstanding” will allow CISPA to apply far beyond the stated intentions of its authors. It is clear that the word was purposefully included (and kept throughout rewrites) by the bill’s authors to allow CISPA to supersede and trump all existing federal and state civil and criminal laws, including laws that safeguard privacy and personal rights.
The fact that the sponsors and authors of CISPA claim that they have no intentions to use the overly broad language of the bill to obtain unprecedented amounts of information on citizens should be of little comfort to a concerned onlooker. As it stands, if CISPA passes in Congress and is signed into law by the President, its broad language WILL be law of the land and WILL be available for use by agencies and companies as desired. Why should our only protection against rampant cyber-spying be us trusting the government or companies NOT to take CISPA over the line of acceptable (if any) data collection?
WOW, CISPA SUCKS! HOW CAN I HELP STOP IT?
Below are some various ways that YOU can get involved in the online and real world struggles against CISPA. It will take all of us to stop this bill, but we did it before with SOPA, PIPA, and [hopefully] ACTA, and we’re confident that it can be done once more with CISPA. The voice of the People WILL be heard loud and clear, and you can help because your voice matters. It’s time to stand up for your rights because, in the end, who else will? Internet, unite!
Educate a Congressman about the Internet and pitfalls of CISPA – here
Email a Congressman directly about the bill – here
Sign and pass around online petitions – here || here || here
Spread awareness. Tweet, blog and post about CISPA. Use the hashtags #StopCISPA and #CISPA so everyone can follow. Change your profile picture to an anti-CISPA image or add a STOP CISPA banner.
Tweet to CISPA’s proponents, @HouseIntelComm and @RepMikeRogers and let them know about the pitfalls of CISPA.
Let CISPA’s sponsor, Rep. MikeRogers, know how much his bill fails – here
Check out Fight For The Future’s #CongressTMI movement in regard to CISPA – here
Join the Twitter Campaign and Contact a Representative about CISPA – here
Protest. Organise in front of Congress and let them know what happens when they try to govern the Internet and strip our liberties in the name of national security. If you organise an IRL protest, please contact us@YourAnonNews so we can facilitate spreading the word on it and helping boost attendance.
I WANT TO LEARN EVEN MORE ABOUT CISPA! TELL ME MORE!
Ok…clearly you like reading and knowing the issues thoroughly. We’re proud of your dedication and passion to better educating yourself and others about this concerning bill. Below are additional helpful resources that you can check out to get an even better understanding of CISPA and how it will affect the world of tomorrow should it pass and become law.
Full text of CISPA, including recent rewrites and Amendments – here
A brilliant series of TechDirt articles on CISPA shed some light on the bill and point out exactly where its flaws are found — CISPA is a Really Bad Bill, and Here’s Why – read
– Did Congress Really Not Pay Attention to What Happened with SOPA? CISPA Ignorance is Astounding –read
– Forget SOPA, You Should Be Worried About This Cybersecurity Bill – read
NOTE: Even Obama seems to dislike CISPA — On 17 April 2012, the White House issued a statement criticising CISPA for lacking strong privacy protections and failing to set forth basic security standards.
Few understand the American election, even those who live here. I am forced to write for an international audience, which may actually make more sense to Americans. President Obama inherited two wars, a collapsed stock market and massive debt.
We look at the market today at 13,000 plus and still wonder why our pension funds are down and our homes are impossible to sell.
We also note that rents are up, food is up, gasoline is way way up yet that 13,000 market isn’t the same one it was in 2007.
It is a different group of companies, what we call a “fix.” The old “blue chip” companies went broke, or so we are told, and we picked new ones and are pretending things are better.
We make up for it by, not only printing massive amounts of counterfeit currency for ourselves but for Europe as well.
The Funny Money Game
More honestly, it wasn’t just the currency but the ambiguity of the banking business that let trade and investment build jobs.
Money was lent that never existed, collateralized by imagination, derivatives, overvalued real estate but real jobs were the result, jobs that came with home purchases, paid taxes, people buying things, when the “phony dollar, euro and pound” died, so did our ability to supply jobs.
We are now dependent, partially at least, on a couple of ways to continue that we see and some that are highly secret. What we see are these:
Every financial prediction is that the end came years ago but we are still moving on as though things were OK. This is a magic balancing act run by Timothy Geithner and President Obama who are trying to stop the massive thievery, overtly at least, and restore revenue through taxes on the rich, something that Reagan onward ended.
We are basing our economy on wartime spending, which is financed by borrowing. The wars, the Bush “terror wars” are the most insane and dishonorable in American history.
I even have Army Intel telling me the World Trade Center towers were brought down by sophisticated miniature hydrogen bombs. Photo analysis exists of all the attacks, millions of dollars of it, like that we released of the UFO in Korea last week. We are told it can never be released and it hasn’t ten years later, not to anyone.
Continuing on this is purposeless.The Republican Party, working with Israel and the Koch brothers, using manipulated polls, gas and oil speculation and rigging food prices is trying to crash the American economy before the election.
They are afraid of President Obama and rightly so. The GOP is primarily tied to narcotics, organized crime and has its only backing from Americans that no longer are willing to believe the outlandish lies they have been told as news for a decade.
The problem, a worse one, is that, since at least 1947, our history has been rigged as well. That story is not just strange but bizarre, frightening, and “topsy-turvy.”
We will get to some of it later. Now we move into the darker aspects of our economy, if such a thing were possible.
Federales Reservistos !!
Over the past few months, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a rogue operation even by Federal Reserve Standards, without any authorization, created $31 trillion and simply “gave it away,” pumping it into European banks, we have records as there was a partial audit done at the request of congress.
Congress, however, went silent. The reason, overtly at least, is that the foreign owned banks that represent the Federal Reserve System, really an ancient expression of 18th century “moneylenders”, had “gone under.” Their massive private debt, amounting to “qau-trillions,” imaginary though it is, has made continuation of our monetary system impossible.
Only America can illegally counterfeit the massive imaginary currency needed to float these banks while about two thirds is eventually bled off, 1/3 to organized crime and another third we can’t find at all and nobody is asking.
THREE STEPS BEYOND CONSPIRACY THEORY
"They're Heeeere!!!"
For nearly 60 years, movies and TV have slowly focused on a plotline involving secret Nazi flying saucers, alien landings, inter-dimensional travel and a future that never came.
We were supposed to be living in “Star Trek” already, having settled the moon in “1999″ as the old TV show, not even available on Netflix, told some of us.
Our “conspiracy television” tells us of flying saucer crashes, and astronauts who saw “alien spacecraft” speak up now and again.
And finally, we have recognized what has been minimally “inter-planetary” aircraft built by our own governments using technology that we have had for decades, technology that represents unlimited “free energy,” perhaps uncontrollable planetary development but worse, disclosure of some “dark secret.”
Word goes two ways: you tell folks that everything is free, free water, free electricity, and “free lunch” and we go into a population hell of “not so white” folks who worship what many Americans think might be the wrong gods.
With Romney, our Mormon candidate, his religion is based on secret inter-galactic travel, transmigration of men only into gods and the use of women as sex tools after the “brain sucking machine” finishes them off.
This really is the religion of Mormonism, this and much more. It makes Scientology look better and better.
Mormons are all Republicans. Who else would think that exploiting brain dead slaves would make you ‘godlike?”
HERE IS WHAT WE CAN TELL YOU
Senior reliable sources, by that I mean mainstream “Big Army” flag officers, have been consulted about the use of cold fusion, hydrogen/boron fusion and other “non-lethal” or “aneutronic” devices that can provide all power needed on earth at extremely low cost.
Wind and solar are considered “dead duck” technologies as fusion is both very simple physics, containable, produced not only unimaginable power but expels usable electric current without any traditional conversion required by nuclear technology.
The questions are only design and construction with working models out there already.
This technology is decades old, as is similar technology that nullifies gravity. This means that conventional rocket travel, our guided missiles, our airplanes, even our most advanced secret projects have been entirely “cover and deception.”
MORE LATER BUT SOME “DARKSIDE”
It is no secret to most of you that “bad space guys” have been visiting earth. In fact, the only crazy part is the number of films that try to depict off world or interdimensional civilizations as having any human characteristics at all.
Any “advanced civilization” could be millions of years beyond us, questions continually brought up for fans of “Dr. Who,” the British science fiction series that runs decade after decade as a demented “Scooby Doo” type show with cardboard scenery.
The “dark side” is that all this exists. The dark side is that America, seen as the representative world power, primarily at least, has decades of interaction with alien species, multiple alien species, and has “bought time” as it were through denial and through agreements that allow the seizure of humans for something far worse than the “anal probe.”
DENIAL
Lying about this while basing much of our entertainment industry on what borders on fairly full disclosure, of the threat at least, is almost a joke. Our denial comes in the cost. There is little or no sign that much in advanced technology has been passed on.
Documents outlining the relationship indicate the existence of a highly secretive and advanced committee that oversees our response which is, primarily, the divestment of technologies and resources, trillions of dollars, into programs that are meant, and this is a guess only, to allow us to defend ourselves.
The point of conjecture, based on easy to “figure out” disinformation campaigns and our decades of frozen technology, all new mobile phones and little else, is that basic concepts in physics involving both field and energy systems has created capabilities that are incompatible with a planet where stone age to iron age civilizations coexist.
We are a planet where animals are bred for food under brutal conditions and where continual warfare, too often near “UFO” level technologies used against virtually unarmed civilians are seen as acceptable by most people.
Moral and ethical concerns seem to have been systematically bred out of the most advanced societies through continual exposure to highly propagandized public education and history that barely passes for mythology.
You can add in absurdly childish economic and political systems that pontificate while, in reality, reproducing pre-feudal values, theft of resources, enslavement of the mass of population, and the defilement of the “middle” or “professional classes” within bureaucracies that foster apolitical lives or attempt to replace philosophy with dogmatic religions.
This only leaves the need to discredit or contain real creativity or advancement through a system of “branding” those who disclose truths as “whistleblower,” the genuinely talented as “elitist kooks” and the rest as “radicals” or “conspiracy theorists.”
Anyone else can be and is murdered.
When need to “manage” comes to play, appetites for perversion, buggery, abuse of power, murder and torture, satiate those who wish to prove to themselves their power is real.
Toward that end, we have seen the torture, so much of it over the past dozen years that thousands have died in secret prisons, many filmed and the most obscene acts shown to the most powerful, some members of the Supreme Court, congress and the White House.
I DIGRESS
DC Boy Toy - James Guckert/Gannon
Years ago, there were accusations made against a president by a “pimp” who organized the kidnapping and murder of children who were sold for sexual favors to leaders of our government and key industries.
The tradition, for decades, had been to supply politicians with “road secretaries, women who would provide sexual favors in lieu of normal family lives, keeping errant politicians in line and retiring with senior executive (GS 15) positions.
Some of these women held America’s greatest secrets and these relationships have glued America together, or at least did, until the middle of the Reagan administration when pedophiles, mostly homosexual, had infiltrated the government as they had the Catholic Church.
The basic accusations, kidnapping of children off the streets of America, chosen for “type” based on “requests” by the supposedly powerful and influential were quieted by groups within the FBI and intelligence agencies with dozens being murdered.
“Politics as usual,” the murder of several senators, key government scientists, FBI agents, the discrediting of dozens, imaginary street crimes, Chandra Levy, Dr. David Kelly, John Wheeler II, Vince Foster, Steve Kanga and hundreds of others, were only “safety valves.”
The only one spoken of anymore is Senator Paul Wellstone who was assassinated with his family for political reasons.
The release of the recent photograph showing Lee Harvey Oswald standing in the doorway of the Texas School Book Depository at the exact second he was supposed to be shooting President Kennedy is now accepted, part of the public record, and, not only denied but defiles us in ways we are now too stupid to begin to understand as does 9/11 and the 20 square miles torture prisons in Poland and a dozen other countries, or are they prisons?
No one has ever spoken to anyone who has ever been in one, either stationed as a guard, janitor, guard, nothing. America now has more secret prisons than Nazi Germany was said to have “concentration camps, far larger, far more expensive and, unless we can prove otherwise, capable of certainly more deaths.
How strange is that? In a nation of “human rights activists, no one asks, not a word from Ron Paul or the ACLU, not the SPLC, in fact no one has ever said a word other than mild complaints but never a law or request for an investigation or any curiosity at all.
What isn’t mentioned is that these facilities are huge, entirely secretive and show no signs of funding, no one has ever met a prisoner who has been in one, no accusations or trials are arranged, no named suspects are brought up, no crimes mentioned, no plots, no imaginary terrorist acts, in fact there is no proof that these are prisons at all.
Some of these are larger than our biggest military bases. What are they? We can’t prove they are prisons, no photos emerge, no witnesses come forward, no survivors have ever made it out, the Red Cross has never inspected them yet the Red Cross visited Auschwitz hundreds of times.
The best we could hope for is that they are CIA heroin and cocaine distribution hubs but they are too big and there are too many plus, we already know that Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo is where we run our drugs and where we manage our partnership with the Albanian Mafia.
U.S. Camp Bondsteel - Kosovo
Ever wonder why we have one of our largest military bases in the world in “Kosovo,” but nobody remembers every being stationed there or why it exists?
We had touched on stories of one or more presidential pedophile. I have talked with officials during the Bush administrations that were invited to “diplomatic functions” that ended with “private parties” upstairs. They said they thought it was just cocaine, this was the cover story.
I have since learned it was not cocaine. What was done with the kids when they had been “used up?” Does anyone believe the man in prison for killing Chandra Levy really did it?
ECONOMIC SECRETS
Organized Crime's Best Friend
There are two areas of economic secrets we will mention today, at the request of others. We have available incontrovertible proof that over half the diamonds that come into the United States are tied to terrorism and organized crime.
We also know that documents proving this, scientific papers, testimony, were turned over to both the FBI and State Department by credible sources in the international law enforcement community.
Published studies show that equipment used by American customs officials have been sabotaged to allow illegal diamonds, most manufactured using a sophisticated process more difficult to detect than simple “cloning” or simply smuggling conflict diamonds.
Fifty percent of diamonds brought into the US from Tel Aviv are illegal. Both customs and the organizations involved in overseeing diamond quality for the jewelry industry are financially involved. Quantities of proof are vast, authoritative and have caused several major firms such as DeBeers to restructure and divest.
Diamonds are the primary source of both money laundering and terrorist/weapons financing in the world and the US is quite purposefully avoiding demands they quit taking part in these activities.
America does the same thing with drugs.
NEW CHINESE PLOY
China is telling the world it can use “gold tailings” to remove 40 times more gold from ore than possible before. This is untrue.
Years ago, the South Koreans developed a methodology, though expensive, to actually manufacture gold. China has very small gold reserve for a nation as wealthy as they claim. In fact, their currency is one of the worst in the world and their banking system is inherently incompetent and corrupt.
It was also rumored, several years ago, that China, upon examining gold reserves it held in Hong Kong, found nearly 1/3rd to be counterfeit.
The issues have been, of late, seeking a currency for world trade and to secure and underwrite industrial growth while the “fiat” currencies of the west, all of them, have proven to be worthless.
Down the Black Hole
The $31 trillion dollars in unauthorized Federal Reserve currency exports is proof that, in actuality, there is no world currency exchange and it is now and has been for years, nothing but an act.
China has sought more, and to advance the process of creating a parallel currency as a hedge against political instability, to continue hiding from the public their recent political collapse and economic downturn, China has licensed South Korea’s technology for producing gold.
As cover for this, China has sent groups around the world buying non-producing mines, producing offers for worthless “gold tailings” and has been loading the internet and technical publications with pseudo-science, utter fiction and deception.
What we don’t know is how much it actually costs to manufacture gold. Is it $100 per ounce or $2000 per ounce?
Where we picked up the South Korean ploy is when they let market prices fluctuate up to $150 per oz. below accepted value.
The problems are twofold:
It creates gold as a derivative of subjective value, something Korea would never have done. Thus, any currency underwritten by gold will not only eventually have no trade value but, when the public learns of the process, gold market will crash.
Diamonds, a vastly larger market, both gem quality and industrial, have been manufactured for decades. Currently, there is no accepted technology that can detect phony diamonds. This is the truth and those who say otherwise are unaware of advances in growing diamonds from much smaller “seed crystals” with individual DNA. This is far different than “cloning” and, as yet, no equipment used by any government, quite purposefully, can detect these phony stones. Thus, all world diamonds are technically worthless.
CONCLUSION
This leaves very few waysof expressing value and power.
Future Tax Collectors?
If all currencies, all debt also, are deniable, if gold can be manufactured, and we can prove this beyond question, if all diamonds are useless and governments are choosing to turn to narcotics, weapons and hydrocarbons to express both political power and value, economic systems will continue until one of the bubbles burst or we have a world war, which is a more likely scenario.
Syria is the likely basis with US expansion of missile bases into Central Europe as the initiator.
Then again, the Serbian elections and a new realignment between Serbia and Moscow would flank US efforts to dominate the Black Sea region. With Russian power west of NATO, with Turkey and Israel at odds, with India producing ICBMs, aimed at China and Israeli ICBMs from India pointed at Europe and their real enemy, the United States.
Don’t believe this, start reading the Jerusalem Star.
US attempts to control Central Asia are going to fail until and unless we are willing to follow the unwritten Obama doctrine, trading Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and India for Israel and Britain.
When the Chinese have settled into Africa, each day planeloads arrive, they will find themselves overextended and dependent on an American military presence that has moved down the west coast of Africa in relative stealth.
The continuing problems will be narco-dependency and our lack of an American currency.
Our most crippling problem is the lack of a government, particularly the ability of the Supreme Court to go “activist” and usurp states’ rights, interfere in elections, write its own legislation, that and our “money in politics” issue, primarily involving Israeli interference in the House of Representatives is likely to bring about use of emergency presidential powers after the election.
Thus far, one Supreme Court Justice is guilty of tax evasion, another tied to organized crime, both “neocon-activists.” Both face arrest.
Despite the entertaining flurry of testimony regarding our army and Secret Service and their “whoring,” we have multiple high level confirmations of an Israeli attempt on President Obama’s life, to have been staged during the visit to Colombia.
If anything, problems with Israel are problems with Netanyahu alone. He hates black people and can’t help but show it.
Despite his lack of intellectual accomplishment, this is not a particularly clever guy, he talks to Obama as though he were talking down to a slave, which is how we are told Netanyahu thinks of anyone of African background.
On the other hand, Obama, Biden and General Dempsey, though all three extremely disappointed in Netanyahu’s lack of ability and manners, he has repeatedly insulted all three, believing his “mob” connections in the US make him “bulletproof,” see the writing on the wall.
Israel has been isolated, not by Arab dictatorships but by democracies. If Egypt can get rid of its military junta, Israel will be a lost cause, leaving them only their Wahhabist friends in Saudi Arabia.
The Muslim heresy of “Wahhabism,” spreading terrorism and ignorance, is and we aren’t kidding, a deal cut between the US, Saudi Arabia and Israel to open terrorism schools in every poor Muslim area, raising kids to be suicide bombers.
Why, we might ask? If you aren’t aware that Israel has made billions in profits peddling protection from “suicide bombers” around the world, you need to catch up on the defense industry.
To keep up business, if a real suicide bomber, some poor mentally abused kid preyed on my religious crazies can’t be found, “someone” will build a car bomb anyway. Look into it, a growth industry, invest, I am considering printing up a list of companies that do it all, disease and cure.
I found a lot of graphic suicide bomber images but just too gross for a Monday morning, so we go with generic…Jim
I found a lot of graphic suicide bomber images but just too gross for a Monday morning, so we go with generic...Jim
Without the Saudi’s funding extremist movements across the Middle East in concert with Israel and friends in the US, nations such as Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan, whose elections are rated as more democratic than either those held in America or Israel, something unreported in the US press, will, as threatened, let the “sands of time” erase Zionism.
The reality, of course, is that there never was a Zionist cause. There never was a “Greater Israel” or hope of it. There is no great nuclear arsenal in Israel as there are no nuclear weapons in North Korea and very few in China.
There is only oil theft, drug running, money scams, phony terrorism and propaganda. Israel is like one of those children’s charities, where they show the poor starving child, flies around their eyes, yet your donations do nothing but buy private islands, whoring vacations and private planes.
Being honest, the only reason we mention Israel is not because they are worst, not by far, the Saudi’s leave them in the dust, it is just that their control of the press has brought the backlash they were too stupid to notice.
The Promised Land? Where is it? We’re still looking.
Reuters’ Chris Francescani has written a detailed article that paints a far more sympathetic portrait of George Zimmerman than most media coverage to date.
Francescani visited the Twin Lakes neighborhood in Sanford, Florida where Zimmerman shot unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin in February.
He talked to many residents of the neighborhood, who provided details about Zimmerman and a recent crime spree that had plagued the neighborhood in the months before the shooting.
The George Zimmerman that Francescani describes is quite different from the “violent racist vigilante” that many have made him out to be.
The background information doesn’t make what happened any less tragic, but it does provide more color about Zimmerman’s behavior.
Here are some of the details that Francescani reports:
Zimmerman grew up in a mixed-race household
He was an altar boy at his Caltholic church from age 7-17
He is bilingual
After he finished high school, he studied for and got an insurance license
In 2004, Zimmerman and a black friend opened an Allstate insurance office (which soon failed)
Zimmerman’s 2005 arrest for “resisting arrest, violence, and battery of an officer” occurred after he shoved an under-cover alcohol control agent at a bar when the agent was trying to arrest an underage friend of his (he was 22 at the time)
Zimmerman married his wife, Shellie, in 2007. They rented a house in Twin Lakes. Twin Lakes is about 50% white, 20% Hispanic, and 20% black.
In 2009, Zimmerman enrolled in Seminole State College
In the fall of 2009, a pit bull broke free twice and once cornered Shellie in the Zimmermans’ yard. George Zimmerman asked a police officer whether he should buy pepper spray. The cop told him pepper spray wasn’t fast enough and recommended that he get a gun.
By the summer of 2011, Twin Lakes “was experiencing a rash of burglaries and break-ins.” In several of the cases, witnesses said the robbers were young black men
In July 2011, a black teenager stole a bicycle off the Zimmermans’ porch
In August of 2011, a neighbor of the Zimmermans, Olivia Bertalan, was home during the day when two young black men entered her house. She hid in a room upstairs and called the police. When the police arrived, the two men, who had been trying to take a TV, fled. One of them ran through the Zimmermans’ yard.
After the break-in, George Zimmerman stopped by the Bertalans and gave Olivia a card with his name and number on it. He told her to visit his wife Shellie if she felt unsafe.
The police recommended that Bertalan get a dog. She moved away instead. Zimmerman got a second dog–a Rottweiler.
In September, several concerned residents of the neighborhood, including Zimmerman, asked the neighborhood association to create a neighborhood watch. Zimmerman was asked to run it.
In the next month, two more houses in the neighborhood were robbed.
A community newsletter reminded residents to report any crimes to the police and then call “George Zimmerman, our captain.”
On February 2, 2012, Zimmerman spotted a young black man looking into the windows of a neighbor’s empty house. He called the police and said “I don’t know what he’s doing. I don’t want to approach him, personally.” The police sent a car, but by the time they arrived, the man was gone.
On February 6th, another house was burglarized. Witnesses said two of the robbers were black teenagers. One, who had prior burglary convictions, was soon caught with a laptop stolen from the house.
Two weeks later, Zimmerman spotted Travyon Martin and called the police. The last time he had done this, the suspect got away. This time, he disregarded police instructions and followed. A few minutes later, Martin was dead.
Again, none of this makes Trayvon Martin’s death any less tragic. But doesn’t it make you feel a bit differently about Zimmerman?
(Left) Tom Vanden Brook (on C-Span in 2010), a senior reporter for USA Today apparently targeted by a cyber-attack of misinformation and harassment. Photograph: guardiannews.com
In the case that the guilty party is found, and does indeed turn out to be one of the private firms that the Pentagon has hired to provide “information operations” for use in Afghanistan, what are the consequences likely to be?
To judge from the last known incident in which several government contractors were actually caught planning a far more sophisticated campaign of intimidation against yet another journalist, the consequences will not be so bad as to prevent others from doing the same thing. It’s easy enough, especially for those firms that are encouraged by their government clients to produce new and better ways by which to lie and discredit. And there’s money in it.
Early in 2011, four contracting firms with strong government ties – HBGary Federal, Palantir, Berico and Endgame Systems – decided to combine their capabilities and set up a high-end private info warfare unit called Team Themis. Bank of America asked them to write a proposal for a covert campaign against WikiLeaks. Aside from hacking the group’s European servers, the team raised the possibility of going after Salon contributor Glenn Greenwald, a prominent WikiLeaks supporter. “These are established professionals that have a liberal bent, but ultimately most of them if pushed will choose professional preservation over cause, such is the mentality of most business professionals,” wrote HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr. He resigned with a severance package a few weeks after the affair was exposed by Anonymous; soon afterwards, he got a new job with another government contractor.
What of the others? Berico simply broke ties with HBGary Federal, as if it were merely a bad influence. Endgame Systems, whose execs explicitly noted in internal emails that their government clients didn’t want its name appearing in a press release, was barely noted by the press at all – until, a few months later, Business Week discovered that their shyness may stem from the fact that they have the capability to take out West European airports via cyber attacks (if you’ve got a couple of million dollars to pay for that).
Palantir, which received seed money from the CIA’s investment arm, In-Q-Tel, and shares founders with PayPal, made a public apology to the effect that the cyber-plotting did not reflect the company’s values, and put one of the employees involved, Matthew Steckman, on leave. A few months later, when the press had lost interest, Palantir brought him back on. Nothing at all seems to have happened to another employee, Eli Bingham, who was also heavily involved. When Palantir throws its annual convention, it still attracts keynote speakers like former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff – who happens to be on the board of another huge contractor, BAE Systems, which, in turn, happened to have done some business with HBGary Federal, as well.
To be fair, these sorts of companies provide valuable services to the US and its allies. For instance, when US Central Command (CentCom)needed software that would allow 50 of its information warfare people to pretend to be 500 entirely fake people who don’t exist outside the internet, it had the USAF put out a call for bids. A number of contractors were up for the job – including the ethically challenged HBGary Federal – but only one of them could actually win.
Perhaps the others can provide this sort of “persona management” capability to other, private clients with a need to discredit their enemies in a clandestine fashion. I can think of about a dozen journalists they might want to go after. The rest won’t be a problem.
TEHRAN (FNA)- Senior Iranian military officials announced that the country’s experts have decoded the intelligence gathering system and memory hard discs of the United States’ highly advanced RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft that was downed by Iran in December after violating the country’s airspace.
Speaking to FNA, Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Forces Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh revealed some data taken from the aircraft’s intelligence system to discourage his counterparts in Pentagon who had alleged that Iranians would not succeed in decoding the spy drone’s memory and intelligence devices.
“This plane is seen as a national capital for us and our words should not disclose all the information that we have very easily.”
“Yet, I provide four cues in here to let the Americans know how deep we could penetrate into (the intelligence systems and devices of) this drone,” he added.
Hajizadeh stated that the drone parts had been transferred to California for technical works in October 2010, adding that the drone was later transferred to Kandahar, Afghanistan in November 2010 and had a flight in there.
The commander said that the drone had experienced some technical flaws in its Kandahar flight in November, but the US experts failed resolve the problems at the time.
Hajizadeh added that the RQ-170 was then sent back to an airfield near Los Angeles in December 2010 for tests on its censors and parts, adding that the drone had a number of test flights in there.
As a forth cue to prove Iran’s access to the drone’s hidden memory, the commander mentioned that the spy drone’s memory device has revealed that it had flown over Al-Qaeda Leader Osama bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan two weeks before his death.
“Had we not accessed the plane’s soft wares and hard discs, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve these facts,” Hajizadeh said, reiterating that Iran’s military experts are in full command of the drone intel and hold a good knowledge of the drone parts and programs.
The unmanned surveillance plane lost by the United States in Iran was a stealth aircraft being used for secret missions by the CIA.
The aircraft is among the highly sensitive surveillance platform in the CIA’s fleet that was shaped and designed to evade enemy defenses.
The drone is the first such loss by the US.
The RQ-170 has special coatings and a batwing shape designed to help it penetrate other nations’ air defenses undetected. The existence of the aircraft, which is made by Lockheed Martin, has been known since 2009, when a model was photographed at the main US airfield in Kandahar, Afghanistan.
The revelation came after Russia and China asked Tehran to provide them with information on the capture US drone.
Ahmad Karimpour, an adviser to Iran’s defense minister, said on Friday that Tehran has received requests from many countries for information on the RQ-170 Sentinel, but Moscow and Beijing have been most aggressive in their pursuit of details on the drone.
It turns out that tearing through the atmosphere at 20 times the speed of sound is bad for the skin, even if you’re a super high-tech aircraft developed by the government’s best engineers at its far-out research agency.
DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, has made public its best guess about what might have caused its unmanned arrowhead-shaped Hypersonic Technology Vehicle (HTV-2) to suddenly lose contact and crash in the Pacific just a few minutes after slicing through the sky at Mach 20 last August: it was going so fast its skin peeled off.
After an eight-month investigation, DARPA concluded that even though the HTV-2 was expected to lose some of its skin mid-flight, “larger than anticipated portions of the vehicle’s skin peeled from the aerostructure,” the agency said in a statement Friday.
The agency said it expected the HTV-2, which goes so fast it can make the commute from New York to Los Angeles in 12 minutes, to experience “impulsive shock waves” at such speeds, but shocks it experienced last August were “more than 100 times what the vehicle was designed to withstand.”
While the test was very public, the details of the HTV-2′s design, stability system and potential purpose remain highly classified.
Bottlenose dolphins appear to engage in formal greeting ceremonies while at sea.
The ceremonies involve exchanges of signature whistles, which likely contain information such as name, sex, age, health status, intent and more.
Bottlenose Dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) in Caribbean Sea near Roatan Island. – Corbis
Bottlenose dolphins swap signature whistles with each other when they meet in the open sea, a new study reports, suggesting that these marine mammals engage in something akin to a human conversation.
Earlier research found that signature whistles are unique for each dolphin, with the marine mammals essentially naming themselves and communicating other basic information.
A signature dolphin whistle in human speak, might be comparable to, “Hi, I’m George, a large, three-year-old dolphin in good health who means you no harm.”
The latest study, published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, is the first to show how free-ranging dolphins in the wild use these whistles at sea. The findings add to the growing body of evidence that dolphins possess one of the most sophisticated communication systems in the animal kingdom, perhaps even surpassing that of humans.
“In my mind, the term ‘language’ describes the human communication system; it is specific to us,” co-author Vincent Janik of the University of St. Andrews Sea Mammal Research Unit, told Discovery News. “It is more fruitful to ask whether there are communication systems with similar complexity. I think the dolphin system is probably as complex as it gets among animals.”
Janik and colleague Nicola Quick studied how bottlenose dolphins in St. Andrews Bay, off the coast of northeast Scotland, communicate with each other. While in a small, quiet boat, the researchers followed the wild dolphins and recorded their vocalizations.
Analysis of the observations and recordings found that the dolphins usually swam together in a group moving slowly and relatively quietly.
“When another group approaches, usually one or more animals start to produce their signature whistles,” Janik said. “We then hear dolphins from the other group calling back with their own signatures, and after or during this counter-calling the animals get together as one group and continue swimming together. Shortly after the union of the groups, they become much more quiet again.”
Most animals have some sort of communication system that allows them to make similar introductions and meetings, but dolphins are unique in that they can invent and copy new sounds. This is “unlike non-human primates, who are stuck with their species-specific repertoire,” he said.
The researchers also noticed that usually just one dolphin from each group would emit a signature whistle before the other group members would join the second group. This might mean that dolphins elect a “spokesman” to represent the entire group during meetings. Such an individual may be an older dolphin, Janik said, but he thinks the other dolphins are not fully silent, and may be using echolocation instead of whistles.
“We don’t know whether echolocation works in this way, but it seems like a viable hypothesis,” he said. “In that case, the whistle exchange is more of a greeting ceremony that communicates a friendly intention and is perhaps not needed to identify the group after the first introduction.”
Dolphins at a distance may rely more upon sounds and echolocation for their communications than visual, scent and other signals. This is likely due to their marine environment and social structure. A dolphin can hear the whistle of another dolphin over a distance of about six miles and with lots of noise in the background.
Heidi Harley, a bottlenose dolphin expert who is a professor of psychology at the New College of Florida, told Discovery News that she believes the findings are key to understanding how dolphins use signature whistles.
“Now we know that dolphins in groups use signature whistles before they join each other,” Harley said. “This is an important piece in the puzzle that we’ve been constructing about signature whistles.”
She added, “I was surprised to learn that the exchanges appeared to be between only a single individual in each group.”
In 2008, Congress enacted a statute that authorized the National Security Agency to carry out dragnet surveillance of Americans’ international communications. Almost four years later, the statute — called the FISA Amendments Act — has yet to be reviewed by the courts, and, if the Obama administration has its way, the courts are unlikely ever to review it. In February, the administration asked the Supreme Court to overturn acourt of appeals decision that would allow an ACLU challenge to the statute to go forward. Today we filed our brief in opposition, which asks the Supreme Court to let the appeals court’s decision stand.
As we explain in our brief, the statute gives the NSA extraordinary power:
[The FISA Amendments Act] allows the government to collect [Americans’ international communications] en masse without specifying the individuals or facilities to be monitored; without observing meaningful limitations on the retention, analysis, and dissemination of acquired information; without individualized warrants based on criminal or foreign intelligence probable cause; and without prior judicial or even administrative determinations that the targets of surveillance are foreign agents or connected in any way, however remotely, to terrorism.
We argue that the appeals court was right to rule that our plaintiffs have standing to challenge the statute, and we ask the Supreme Court to leave that ruling in place. We write:
In the end, what the government disguises as a narrow, technical argument about justiciability reveals itself to be this sweeping proposition: The courts have no meaningful role to play in protecting Americans’ international communications from wholesale government surveillance, or even in determining whether that surveillance is consistent with the Constitution. For sound strategic reasons, the government avoids stating the proposition forthrightly, but it is the inescapable consequence of the argument it advances. Nothing in this Court’s precedents countenances such a result.
The plaintiffs in the case include Amnesty International USA, the Global Fund for Women, Human Rights Watch, the International Criminal Defence Attorneys Association, The Nation Magazine, PEN American Center, Service Employees International Union, and the Washington Office on Latin America.
You can find more information about the FISA Amendments Act here, and more information about the case — called Clapper v. Amnesty International USA et al. —here.
Monsanto only cares about bee’s so they can figure out how to make them only pollinate Monsanto GMO crops. Whistle-blower testimony and supporting evidence will confirm that Monsanto seeks ultimate agricultural world domination through most incomprehensible and nefarious means. -Anonymous
Monsanto, the massive biotechnology company being blamed for contributing to the dwindling bee population, has bought up one of the leading bee collapse research organizations. Recently banned from Poland with one of the primary reasons being that the company’s genetically modified corn may be devastating the dying bee population, it is evident that Monsanto is under serious fire for their role in the downfall of the vital insects. It is therefore quite apparent why Monsanto bought one of the largest bee research firms on the planet.
It can be found in public company reports hosted on mainstream media that Monsanto scooped up the Beeologics firm back in September 2011. During this time the correlation between Monsanto’s GM crops and the bee decline was not explored in the mainstream, and in fact it was hardly touched upon until Polish officials addressed the serious concern amid the monumental ban. Owning a major organization that focuses heavily on the bee collapse and is recognized by the USDA for their mission statement of “restoring bee health and protecting the future of insect pollination” could be very advantageous for Monsanto.
In fact, Beelogics’ company information states that the primary goal of the firm is to study the very collapse disorder that is thought to be a result — at least in part — of Monsanto’s own creations. Their website states:
While its primary goal is to control the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and Israeli Acute Paralysis Virus (IAPV) infection crises, Beeologics’ mission is to become the guardian of bee health worldwide.
What’s more, Beelogics is recognized by the USDA, the USDA-ARS, the media, and ‘leading entomologists’ worldwide. The USDA, of course, has a great relationship with Monsanto. The government agency has gone to great lengths to ensure that Monsanto’s financial gains continue to soar, going as far as to give the company special speed approval for their newest genetically engineered seed varieties. It turns out that Monsanto was not getting quick enough approval for their crops, which have been linked to severe organ damage and other significant health concerns.
Steve Censky, chief executive officer of the American Soybean Association, states it quite plainly. It was a move to help Monsanto and other biotechnology giants squash competition and make profits. After all, who cares about public health?
“It is a concern from a competition standpoint,” Censky said in a telephone interview.
It appears that when Monsanto cannot answer for their environmental devastation, they buy up a company that may potentially be their ‘experts’ in denying any such link between their crops and the bee decline.
NSA whistleblower William Binney said some pretty explosive things during his interview with DemocracyNow! late last week, but arguably his most newsworthy comments have thus far elicited hardly any reaction among the mainstream press.
One of the most disturbing revelations Binney provided is that the Bush administration’s NSA had already begun deploying its “Total Information Awareness” (TIA) program well before it sent the program’s director, John Poindexter, to the public to leak evidence of the project. We’ll get to that in a moment.
But first, listen to Binney describe why he became a whistleblower, risking his entire life — forty years in government service, his family, everything — to tell the truth about a problem he saw as fundamentally threatening to our society.
First of all it was a very depressing thing to have happen that they would turn their capabilities that I built for them to do detection of foreign threats, to have that turned on the people of the United States, that was an extremely depressing thing for me. And that made it all the more important for me to try to do things to get the government to correct its own criminal activity.
Binney then describes what he did initially, how he spoke out:
And I did that by going to the House intelligence committees. I also attempted to see Chief Justice Renquist, to try to address that issue to him. And I also visited the Department of Justice Inspector General’s office, after Obama came in to office, by the way, to no avail.
Now that was before the 2009 joint IG report on surveillance. Which basically said you need to have better and more active monitoring of these surveillance programs. It didn’t say anything else, so, it just did simply, absolutely nothing.Because the oversight that’s given to the intelligence community is virtually nonexistent from Congress. I mean they are totally dependent because they have no way of really knowing what’s happening inside the agencies involved unless they have people come forward to tell them, like me. They would not know those things.
Binney says that he blew the whistle to a Justice on the Supreme Court, to the House intelligence committees that are supposedly tasked with oversight of the 16 secretive intelligence agencies, and to the DOJ’s Inspector General. The results?He was investigated, and the FBI busted into his house, guns drawn.
But what of the information he leaked?
Much has been made over the past few days about his admittedly stunning statement to the effect that the NSA has copies of every email in the United States, but hardly anyone has talked about something equally stunning: evidence of rank manipulation of the press and the public.
In the DN! interview embedded above, Amy Goodman asks Binney to compare the system the NSA was running when he blew the whistle to the infamous “Total Information Awareness” program, which John Poindexter — formerly a convicted felon — oversaw at the Department of Defense. (TIA aimed to do just what it sounds like: collect every bit of information about every single person and store it in vast databases, producing digital dossiers on all of us, all without warrants or anything approaching probable cause.)
Binney elaborates:
[Poindexter] was actually pushed out, to test the waters, to see how Congress would be receptive to what they were already doing. In other words that process of building that information about everybody, getting ‘total information’, was already happening. And they threw Poindexter out with DARPA…but it was actually already happening. And the question was, would it be acceptable to Congress, because they were keeping it very closely held in Congress, calling it a covert program. So that would make it a process to find out what the reaction would be if they expose to Congress what they were already doing.
In other words, the DoD sent Poindexter out to “test the waters” in the House intelligence committee, to see what the reaction would be to the Total Information Awareness program that they were already running.
The New York Timespiece that broke the TIA story to the public on November 9, 2002 told us that the program “will” and “would” do a host of unsavory things:
As the director of the effort, Vice Adm. John M. Poindexter, has described the system in Pentagon documents and in speeches, itwill provide intelligence analysts and law enforcement officials with instant access to information from Internet mail and calling records to credit card and banking transactions and travel documents, without a search warrant.
…
In order to deploy such a system, known as Total Information Awareness, new legislation would be needed, some of which has been proposed by the Bush administration in the Homeland Security Act that is now before Congress. That legislation would amend the Privacy Act of 1974, which was intended to limit what government agencies could do with private information.
…
The system would permit a team of intelligence analysts to gather and view information from databases, pursue links between individuals and groups, respond to automatic alerts, and share information efficiently, all from their individual computers.
The project calls for the development of a prototype based on test data that would be deployed at the Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Belvoir, Va. Officials would not say when the system would be put into operation.
According to Binney, the NSA was already providing this information to “intelligence analysts” and police, all without warrants, judicial oversight, or Congressional authorization. The program had been developed and it was already operating when Poindexter told Congress that the DoD was developing it. The NYTimes might want to correct that story.
Binney’s remarks raise the question: if the DoD and the federal government were lying about TIA then, having already implemented the program, should we trust the government when it says that it disbanded the operation after the public said “hell no”?
No, it’s probably unwise to trust the DoD in light of this revelation.
Should we therefore assume that NSA has been spying on our digital data for the past ten years, all without warrants, Congressional or judicial oversight, or Constitutional blessing? Stranger things have happened.
Another important piece of the interview describes the means by which the FBI, collaborating with the NSA in its investigations of William Binney and Thomas Drake, built its case against the whistleblowers.
Juan Williams asked Binney: “The NSA is a huge agency, aren’t there others who are disturbed by this?”
Binney:
I’m sure there are. And I know a number of them that are but they’re so, they’re so afraid to do anything. I mean, they’ve seen what happened to us — they sent the FBI to us. So they’re afraid of being indicted, prosecuted, and even if you win the case if you’re indicted, you’re still going to lose, because you’ve had to hire a lawyer and all like Tom [Drake] did and we did. So you lose anyway you speak of it. When they have unlimited funds to do whatever they want, and you don’t, they can indict you on any number of things like they tried to do with us.
Binney says that the FBI was monitoring his and Drake’s communications, and had prepared indictments against them alleging a conspiracy to leak classified information. The FBI apparently backed off when Binney told Drake, over a phone line that Binney assumed the FBI was monitoring, that he had evidence of illegal FBI investigatory tactics. Spy v. Spy, indeed.
More honestly, it wasn’t just the currency but the ambiguity of the banking business that let trade and investment build jobs.
Every financial prediction is that the end came years ago but we are still moving on as though things were OK. This is a magic balancing act run by Timothy Geithner and President Obama who are trying to stop the massive thievery, overtly at least, and restore revenue through taxes on the rich, something that Reagan onward ended.
Senior reliable sources, by that I mean mainstream “Big Army” flag officers, have been consulted about the use of cold fusion, hydrogen/boron fusion and other “non-lethal” or “aneutronic” devices that can provide all power needed on earth at extremely low cost.
It is no secret to most of you that “bad space guys” have been visiting earth. In fact, the only crazy part is the number of films that try to depict off world or interdimensional civilizations as having any human characteristics at all.
The point of conjecture, based on easy to “figure out” disinformation campaigns and our decades of frozen technology, all new mobile phones and little else, is that basic concepts in physics involving both field and energy systems has created capabilities that are incompatible with a planet where stone age to iron age civilizations coexist.
How strange is that? In a nation of “human rights activists, no one asks, not a word from Ron Paul or the ACLU, not the SPLC, in fact no one has ever said a word other than mild complaints but never a law or request for an investigation or any curiosity at all.
Thus far, one Supreme Court Justice is guilty of tax evasion, another tied to organized crime, both “neocon-activists.” Both face arrest.
TEHRAN (FNA)- Senior Iranian military officials announced that the country’s experts have decoded the intelligence gathering system and memory hard discs of the United States’ highly advanced RQ-170 Sentinel stealth aircraft that was downed by Iran in December after violating the country’s airspace.
