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3.3-magnitude quake reported near The Geysers
NSA monitored calls of 35 world leaders
after US official handed over contacts• Agency given more than 200 numbers by government official
• NSA encourages departments to share their 'Rolodexes'
• Surveillance produced 'little intelligence', memo acknowledges [Click to read article]
Angela Merkel and François Hollande have asked for a joint response to claims
that the NSA bugged the chancellor's phone and intercepted French calls
Steve Bell, The Guardian, Wednesday 23 October 2013, Cartoon Source
NSA surveillance: Merkel's phone may have been monitored 'for over 10 years'
TIL: Apple and Penis enlargement campaigns use the same form of advertising.
Dear Citizens of the World,
I believe the time has come to reveal to you some of the perplexities you have faced in recent decades.
It is important to understand some of these things, so that you might know how to behave in the New Order now taking shape on this planet you call Earth. We want you to be able to become fully involved and integrated into our new society. After all, doing this is for your best interest.
First of all, it is best if you understand some of our purposes so that you may more fully cooperate. I cannot tell you the hard times you will face if you resist us.
We have ways of dealing with resisters and you are being told this now, since it is much too late to turn things around. The days of putting a stop to us have long since past.
We have full control of the earth and it's finances, along with control of major corporate media propaganda, and there is simply no way any nation or power can defeat us.
We have eyes in every level of government in every nation of the world. We know what is being planned, for our ears and eyes are ever present. State secrets are fully known to us.
U.S. corporate media are constantly accused of lying for their government by everyone; including foreign governments.
Oh, you silly people, of course we lie. In this way we can keep the people unbalanced and always facing controversy, which is very helpful to us. Have you not seen the talk show spectacles on FOX?
Some of you believe we are the liberals and the good people are the conservatives. In reality, both serve our purposes. Each camp merely serves with the stamp of our approval, but they are not allowed to present real issues.
For example, consider BP's Oil Spill. By creating controversy on all levels, no one knows what to do. So, in all of this confusion, we go ahead and accomplish what we want with no hindrance. If fact, we teach this within a fraternity in one of your nation's older universities.
Consider President George W. Bush of the United States. Even though he regularly broke every known check on his power, no one could stop him, and he went ahead, and did whatever we wanted him to do.
Congress and 'The People' had no power to stop him. He did what we wanted, since he knew, if he did not, because of his rather dark character, we could have him removed in an instant. I'd say it was, "Rather brilliant strategy on our part?"
You cannot take us to court because you can't see us and the courts are our servants as well. We run everything and you do not know who to attack. I must say this invisible hand is wonderfully devised without any known historical precedent on this scale. We rule the world and the world cannot even find out who is ruling them.
This is truly a wonderful thing. In our corporate media, we present before you exactly what it is we want you to do. Then, as if in a flash you, our little servants, obey!
We can send American or European troops to wherever we like, whenever we like, and for whatever purpose we like, and you dutifully go about our business and don't even look up to see the poisons we are spraying on you in the form of chemtrails. How much more evidence do you need?
We can make you desire to leave your homes and family and go to war merely at our command. We only need to present some nonsense to you from the president's desk, or on the evening news, and we can get you all fired up to do whatever we like. You can do nothing but what we put before you.
Your Vain Resistance
When any of you seek to resist us, we have ways of making you look ridiculous with corporate media, as we have done with all your movements to show the world how impotent any resistance is.
Look at what we did near Waco. Did the Davidian's little store of weapons help them?
We have generously taxed you and used that money to make such sophisticated weapons you can in no way compete. Your own money has served to forge the chains we bind you with; especially, since we are in control of all money.
Some of you think you may escape by buying some land in the country and growing a garden. Let me remind you that you still pay us ground rent. Oh, you may call it property taxes, but it still goes to us.
You see, you need money no matter what you do. If you fail to pay your ground rent to us, we will take your land and sell it to someone who will pay us. Do you think we cannot do this? And with your ground rent we pay for the indoctrination of your children in the public schools we have set up.
We want them to grow up well trained into the system of our thinking. Your children will learn what we want them to learn, when we want them to learn it, and you pay for it through your ground rent.
Those funds are also used for other projects we have in mind, like drilling for oil in the Gulf, and our contractors are paid handsomely for their work.
You may doubt that we own your children, or have such control, but you will find that we do. We can declare that you abuse your children, when you spank them, and have them confiscated. If they do not show up for school indoctrination, we can accuse you of neglect, thereby, giving them to us.
Your children are not yours. They are ours. You must inoculate them, you must bring them to our hospitals, if we decree, or we will take them from you. You know this and we know this.
Through our electronic commerce and iDevices we are able to see where you are, what you are buying, and how much you have to buy things with. Where do you suppose we come up with our monthly financial statistics?
Through the Internet, Telecoms, and other sources we can even know how you think and what you say. It is not especially important to us what you believe as long as you do what we say.
Your beliefs are nonsense anyway. But if you think you have a following, and we perceive that you might be somewhat dangerous to our agenda, we have ways to deal with you. Do you remember how we used Telecoms to spy for us?
We have a Pandora's box of mischief with which to snare you. We can have you in court so long, you will never get out. We can easily drain away all your assets over one pretext or another. We have an inexhaustible fund with which to draw from to pay our lawyers.
These lawyers are paid by you in the form of taxes. You do not have this vast supply of wealth. We know how to divide and conquer. Have we not brought down rulers of countries through our devices?
Do you think your tiny self will be any match for us?
Your Vain Organizations
Let us consider your religions, tea parties, and "moral majority."
The "moral majority" is neither moral nor is it in the majority. We have delighted to use this wet noodle of a movement to make ridiculous the Christian faith.
The silly men who run that organization always end up with egg on their faces. We have always put them in defense of themselves, as we have so successfully done with the NRA.
We can make it seem, by our corporate media propaganda, that the National Rifle Association is actually the new Al Qaeda.
Have we not turned the American conservative movement on its ear? If it serves our purposes we can use the conservatives to turn the liberals on their ear.
It makes no difference to us but it serves to make you believe there are two sides struggling for their particular position. This helps to make things seem fair and free, since everyone has a voice.
Actually, there is only one side now with all kinds of masks on, but you are unable to penetrate our purposes.
You see, we can do whatever we like and you can do nothing about it.
Does it not seem reasonable that you should simply obey and serve us? Otherwise, you get eaten up in the resistance you suppose that will liberate you.
You cannot be liberated ... Try to Imagine how you can.
We supply fuel for your cars and we can turn it off whenever we like, claiming there is some sort of fuel shortage. What if your car breaks down? You cannot get parts for it without us.
We supply all money you use and at any whim of our desire, we can stop the money supply, or ... cause a complete crash all together.
We can then order the president to declare all money worthless and that we will have to have new money. All of your stashes of cash will go up in smoke in an instant.
Don't you need food?
If necessary, we can cause a trucker's strike which would stop deliveries of food to your local store. We can starve you whenever we like. You only have food because we have provided it for you from our 'supermarket to the world' table.
During the great depression we controlled food and heaped mountains of it behind fences, to let it rot.
The hungry were then made to work in our labor camps, even though there was enough, and more, to feed them. Do you really think you can beat us?
You say you will hoard gold coins so you will still have money in the time of the crash. We can simply pass a law which outlaws the possession of gold as we have done in the past.
If we find gold in your possession, we would simply confiscate it, and put you in prison for breaking the law.
While in prison, or at one of our recently reconstructed FEMA camps, you would be required to work for one of our prison industries. We have so formed a picture of the labor camps in our prisons, these days, that no one seems to object to them.
We tell people that murderers should pay for their own keep.
No one seems to consider that we have the power to put tomato growers in prison.
We can pass laws that prohibit gardens, and then make up some scientific reason why you may only buy food from our sources.
If someone sees you growing tomatoes, they will report you to us, and then we will have you in our fields, working for us.
Oh, silly, stoned out of your minds, people, there is no escape for you, for since long before you were born, we were planning your capture.
Your teachers and ministers have been forming your thoughts for us, for generations now. You have been tricked into taking corporate drugs that were intended for short term usage, which have turned you into a nation of controlled mood zombies, and you have no idea how to pull out of our influence, short of suicide. Go ahead and commit suicide, it will only help us to deal with excessive population.
You cannot hurt us, find us, or even imagine what we are up to. I am throwing you these few crumbs only so that you may, if you have a little good sense, obey and follow our orders.
Your Controlled Mind
We run Hollywood. The movies such as Terminator and Armageddon, along with a great host of others, were simply created to get you thinking according to our directions.
You have been made to delight in violence, so that when we send you off to kill some bad man, we have put before you, you move without a whimper.
We have placed violent arcade games in your malls to prepare your young children's minds in the art of battle.
We have made you view our armies and police as the good forces, which cause you to submit to things that were unthinkable a few decades ago.
We totally orchestrated 9/11 and blamed it on somebody else using our corporate media and Congress, who we bought through our lobbies.
Think about it ... Congress spent about 60 million (60,000,000) of your income tax dollars, to discover if Monica swallowed (a little pre-reality show we dreamed up) and a little over 3 million dollars on the 9/11 Commission because we did not want an investigation of secret energy meetings or 9/11 to surface. See how easy it is to trick you?
Our artful programs are all designed to help you to submit and help the New World Order. Star Trek, and other such creations, have taught you to simply: obey orders from new international rulers.
Oh, silly people, you thought you were being entertained, while you were actually being educated. Dare I use the words, "brainwashed" or "mind control?" By the way, have you ever seen Star Wars?
What a masterpiece of mental manipulation. Humans confer with nondescript beasts of all shapes and sizes, and they confer in English.
I wonder where those space beasts learned English. Oh, the simple-ness of the mind of the citizen, for sh-he never considers sh-he is being taken into fairyland.
We placed advertisements for Star Wars everywhere you go. They were in WalMart, K-Mart, Taco Bell and a host of our institutions of corporate commerce.
There is something we want you to learn from Star Wars. Or, perhaps it could be said, there is something we do not want you to learn. Either way, we will have what we want in the whole affair.
Of course, to keep you off guard, we have instructed our elected officials to appear to be correcting the evil of our violence. Presidents often speak against violence in Hollywood movies.
This will not solve the problem, but it will make the people believe the problem is being worked on.
Sex and violence are the very best powers to use, to help us gain our advantage. How the people loathe to give up their sex and violence, so we place all they want before them. In this way, we keep them so occupied they do not have the integrity or brain-power to deal with the really important matters which are left entirely in our hands.
President Bush was very helpful to us. We knew of what character he was before we placed him as president. Exposing him was very helpful in adjusting the moral habits of the youth downward and this is too, our advantage.
Even more agreeable to us were the vain efforts of those who thought they could remove him against our will. He was useful to us and we control who is removed or not removed.
Excuse me if I seem to be mocking your system of beliefs, but they are rather outdated. Have you no eyes to see your vain liberties and your righteous pontifications are nothing before us? You can only do what we say you can do.
We remove presidents when we are ready and the leader we set up will be there until it serves us to have another. At that time we place our purposed politicians before you, and you vote for what we want.
In that way we give you the vain voting exercise in the belief you had something to do with placing your politicians in office.
Our Unfathomable Mysteries
Our recent war in Iraq had many purposes to it, but we do not speak of these things openly. We let the talk show hosts blather all sorts of nonsense, but none of it touches the core.
First of all, there is a wealth of natural resources on the planet we must have complete control of.
Iraq has large supplies of oil in its soil and oil is very helpful to our regime. Also, it suits us to keep this oil out of the hands of potential enemies.
For those who have not been helpful in getting these resources into our hands, we simply make things difficult until submission. Does anyone recall the word "sanction?"
We can reduce any proud nation to the level of humility we require from all people. For example if Zionist Israel does not sufficiently humble itself, we will take them to the world court, and have them charged with "war crimes." We made up that term; rather ingenious, don't you think?
How could there be such a thing as a war crime? The very nature of war is that the rules are off. It is so entertaining to watch the nations try to fight war according to the laws we have placed before them.
The only war crime there really is, involves the crime of being against us.
Anyone against us is violating our law and, as you have seen, when someone is for us, we do not care what they do. Was not Ariel Sharon a self professed murdering terrorist who tortured and horribly killed many of his enemies women and children? We made a hero of him. And what about the Bush administration? Are any of them in jail? No, they are still working for us and on your televisions, getting paid big salaries.
We observe no laws when it comes to war. We do what we want, when we want, and where we want.
We can starve nations to death, ruin civilizations, and commit other horrors for which we take our enemies to court. Look at one of our examples.
We bomb Iraq out of its wits. We can bomb rock throwing Palestinians out of their homes, poison their rivers and streams, turn off their electricity, making a grand crisis, and then we masterfully make it appear it is the fault of Islam.
It is the same way we made our inferno at Waco look like Mr. Koresh's fault. Then there was our chief villain, Saddam with all of his non existent weapons of mass destruction.
Bad men are a dime a dozen, we can conjure one up whenever it suits us, and ultimately, this is really quite funny when you think of it.
I am not one who is usually given to 'this sort' of humor, but I do catch myself laughing sometimes at the absolute absurdity of the notions we place before you, that you readily accept.
Do you wonder that the leaders of the world tremble at our presence? They know they have no power except the power we give them.
We have no fear of Russia or China, for we are already in full control of their system of things.
China knows we can freeze any number of their corporations in America and all of its capitol at the stroke of a pen. We use nations for what we want to use them for. Everyone knows that they must yield to us or die.
Fortunately, we have had a few resisters, such as Saddam, that have been helpful in showing world leaders what we will do to them if they do not submit.
There is only glory in following our purposes and doing what we say. If one does not, there will be a sad and tragic result.
I would have spared you of such an end, but, then, again, if you are not spared, it is of no consequence to us. We will use you to alleviate some of the overpopulation problem.
Your Silly Rebellions Against Us
Some of you have thought you could stop us by placing a bomb in one of our abortion clinics or in a government building.
Silly souls! How can that hurt us? All that does is give us an example to use so that we might place more controls, and heavy burdens, on the population.
We love it when you rebel and blow something up. You are our reason for making more laws against all those things, which might contribute to your freedom from us.
If someone did not blow something up on occasion, we would have no justification in placing more laws on you. Can't you see how impossible it is for you to resist us? The more you wiggle, the more we squeeze.
It is said our kingdom is the kingdom of money, but I must confess we are rulers of a kingdom of non-money.
You must see the humor in that statement. We have given you a piece of paper or some numbers on a computer screen that we have termed money.
It is backed up by nothing and proven by nothing, but what we say it is. We create it from nothing, we print it, we loan it, we give it its value, we take its value away. All things that have to do with money are in our hands.
Think of it, what is it that you can do against us without money? If you try to resist, we can cancel your credit or freeze your accounts. Your cash is easily confiscated.
We have made so many rules in the realm of living that you cannot live without money.
Camp on government land and you must move in two weeks. You cannot grow much of a garden in two weeks.
Many of our wilderness trails are entered by permit only.
We have passed laws that do not allow you to live in trailers over a certain period without moving to another location.
Have you not thought it ridiculous that we will allow a man to live in a box, full time, but we will not allow a man to live in a RV, full time, unless he is in a taxpaying campground? We want you to be in the system.
When you are buying a house, we not only receive the tax revenue to use for our purposes, but we gain large increases from the interest on the loan. You may pay for your house two or three times over from the interest alone. The interest is also taxed which is again placed for use in those sectors of influence we choose.
We do not want you to escape free and that is why we have made it as we have.
You are our property. We will not permit you to buy or sell unless you submit to our mark of authority.
If you go to court against us, we will wear you out, and in the end you will lose.
If you use violence, we will end up having you in one of our labor camps; more specifically called, prison industries.
You need our money, our entertainments, our fuel, and our utilities to function and if you don't have them, you feel deprived. By this, you are made to yield to our will.
You don't even know how to think anymore since we have thoroughly emasculated your religions and your faith in God. Now, you only have yourself ... and we have gotten 'that self' pretty well chasing its tail these days.
I hope this little note is sufficient to inform you what the new millennium is all about.
The 21st century is our century. You may stay if you do as you are told.
We have no intention of playing around with your so-called human rights or your so-called Constitution. These things were only used for our purposes, for a time. Your Constitution is a joke to us, and we can do with it what we please.
It probably never occurred to you, that years ago, your Constitution was used to refuse abortions. When we decided to have abortions legalized, we used the same Constitution to justify it.
Your human rights are what we say they are and your Constitution is what we say it is.
We have only used this phrase of "human rights" to keep things sufficiently in turmoil. The more things are unsettled, the better we like them, until we have everything in complete servitude.
This little letter may offend some of you, because it is presented so plainly, but that truly is no concern of ours. In simple terms, to quote our boy Dick Cheney, "Go F**k Yourself!" Have a nice day... [Source]
For: US Citizens From: Politicians:
Patriot Act - Telecom Crimes - Denialist - Drop Dead
The NSA files: how they affect you
The NSA files and GCHQ revelations have sparked huge debate about surveillance and spying around the world. With all the talk of Prism, Tempora and encryption, it can seem quite a technical topic to some … but this really isn't just a story for geeks. Here's why
Nick Hopkins, Jonross Swaby and Paul Boyd,
theguardian.com, Monday 21 October 2013, Source
Drone strikes by US could be classed as war crimes,
says Amnesty InternationalJoint report with Human Rights Watch judges US attacks in Yemen and Pakistan to have broken international human rights law
Jon Boone in Islamabad, The Guardian, Monday 21 October 2013, Article Source
A house in Pakistan near the border with Afghanistan destroyed by a drone missile in 2008.
Eighteen people including Islamist militants were killed. Photograph: ReutersUS officials responsible for the secret CIA drone campaign against suspected terrorists in Pakistan may have committed war crimes and should stand trial, a report by a leading human rights group warns. Amnesty International has highlighted the case of a grandmother who was killed while she was picking vegetables and other incidents which could have broken international laws designed to protect civilians.
The report is issued in conjunction with an investigation by Human Rights Watch detailing missile attacks in Yemen which the group believes could contravene the laws of armed conflict, international human rights law and Barack Obama's own guidelines on drones.
The reports are being published while Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister, is in Washington. Sharif has promised to tell Obama that the drone strikes – which have caused outrage in Pakistan – must end.
Getting to the bottom of individual strikes is exceptionally difficult in the restive areas bordering Afghanistan, where thousands of militants have settled. People are often terrified of speaking out, fearing retribution from both militants and the state, which is widely suspected of colluding with the CIA-led campaign.
There is also a risk of militants attempting to skew outside research by forcing interviewees into "providing false or inaccurate information", the report said.
But Amnesty mounted a major effort to investigate nine of the many attacks to have struck the region over the last 18 months, including one that killed 18 labourers in North Waziristan as they waited to eat dinner in an area of heavy Taliban influence in July 2012. All those interviewed by Amnesty strongly denied any of the men had been involved in militancy. Even if they were members of a banned group, that would not be enough to justify killing them, the report said.
"Amnesty International has serious concerns that this attack violated the prohibition of the arbitrary deprivation of life and may constitute war crimes or extrajudicial executions," the report said. It called for those responsible to stand trial.
The US has repeatedly claimed very few civilians have been killed by drones. It argues its campaign is conducted "consistent with all applicable domestic and international law".
The Amnesty report supports media accounts from October last year that a 68-year-old woman called Mamana Bibi was killed by a missile fired from a drone while she was picking okra outside her home in North Waziristan with her grandchildren nearby. A second strike minutes later injured family members tending her.
If true, the case is striking failure of a technology much vaunted for its accuracy. It is claimed the remote-controlled planes are able to observe their targets for hours or even days to verify them, and that the explosive force of the missiles is designed to limit collateral damage. As with other controversial drone strikes, the US has refused to acknowledge or explain what happened.
Amnesty said it accepts some US drone strikes may not violate the law, "but it is impossible to reach any firm assessment without a full disclosure of the facts surrounding individual attacks and their legal basis. The USA appears to be exploiting the lawless and remote nature of the region to evade accountability for its violations," it said.
In Yemen, another country where US drones are active, Human Rights Watch highlighted six incidents, two of which were a "clear violation of international humanitarian law". The remaining four may have broken the laws of armed conflict because the targets were illegitimate or because not enough was done to minimise civilian harm, the report said.
It also argued that some of the Yemen attacks breach the guidelines announced by Obama earlier this year in his first major speech on a programme that is officially top secret. For example, the pledge to kill suspects only when it is impossible to capture them appears to have been ignored on 17 April this year when an al-Qaida leader was blown up in a township in Dhamar province in central Yemen, Human Rights Watch said.
An attack on a truck driving 12 miles south of the capital Sana'a reportedly killed two al-Qaida suspects but also two civilians who had been hired by the other men. That means the attack could have been illegal because it "may have caused disproportionate harm to civilians".
The legal arguments over drones are extremely complex, with much controversy focusing on whether or not the places where they are used amount to war zones.
Amnesty said some of the strikes in Pakistan might be covered by that claim, but rejected a "global war doctrine" that allows the US to attack al-Qaida anywhere in the world.
"To accept such a policy would be to endorse state practices that fundamentally undermine crucial human rights protections that have been painstakingly developed over more than a century of international law-making," the report said.
Facebook allows beheading videos
Social network had banned decapitation clips but says they are being accepted again if intended to condemn violence
Why Facebook has got it spectacularly wrong on beheading videos
Reuters in San Francisco, theguardian.com, Tuesday 22 October 2013 01.19 EDT, Article Source
Facebook will again allow decapitation videos after previously banning them. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesFacebook has quietly resumed allowing decapitation videos to be posted on its website, lifting a temporary ban it had placed earlier this year on content featuring graphic violence.
The social network said after a report on the BBC on Monday that gory photos and videos were permitted on its site so long as the content was posted in a manner intended for its users to "condemn" the acts rather than celebrate them.
"Facebook has long been a place where people turn to share their experiences, particularly when they're connected to controversial events on the ground, such as human rights abuses, acts of terrorism and other violent events," the company said in a statement.
"People share videos of these events on Facebook to condemn them. If they were being celebrated, or the actions in them encouraged, our approach would be different."
Facebook said it was working on developing new ways to let users control what content they saw, including advance warnings that particular images contained graphic violence.
The BBC reported that many Facebook users were complaining about a video on the site showing a masked man killing a woman in Mexico.
Earlier this year Facebook placed a temporary ban on content with graphic violence as it examined its policy in the wake of complaints about certain images posted on the website.
Facebook's current community standards forbid users from posting information that is threatening to others, as well as content that includes hate speech or is sexually explicit.
Groups with a record of violence or criminal activity are banned from maintaining a presence on the site and Facebook says that "sharing any graphic content for sadistic pleasure is prohibited".Last week Facebook lifted sharing restrictions on teenagers, allowing them to make their content available to strangers. The social network dismissed concerns about cyberbullying, saying it could offer teenagers more choice while still keeping them safe.
Uruguay to sell legal marijuana for $1 a gram
President José Mujica presses on with plan to create government-run legal marijuana industry to combat criminals
Associated Press in Montevideo, theguardian.com, Tuesday 22 October 2013 02.56 EDT, Article Source
The measure would make Uruguay the first country in the world to license and enforce rules
for the production and sale of marijuana. Photograph: Anthony Bolante/ReutersUruguay's drug tsar says the country plans to sell legal marijuana for $1 a gram to combat drug-trafficking, according to a local newspaper.
The plan to create a government-run legal marijuana industry has passed the lower house of Congress, and Uruguay's president, José Mujica, expects to push it through the Senate soon as part of his effort to explore alternatives in the war on drugs.
The measure would make Uruguay the first country in the world to license and enforce rules for the production, distribution and sale of marijuana for adult consumers.
Marijuana sales should start in the second half of 2014 at a price of about $1 a gram, drug chief Julio Calzada told Uruguay's El País, on Sunday – an eighth or less of what it costs at legal medical dispensaries in some US states.
Calzada said one gram would be enough "for one marijuana cigarette or two or three slimmer cigarettes".
He said the idea was not to make money but to fight petty crime and wrench the market away from illegal dealers.
"The illegal market is very risky and of poor quality," he said. The state was going to offer "a safe place to buy a quality product and on top of that, it's going to sell it at the same price".
In August, Calzada had estimated the price would be about $2.50 a gram. Sales would be restricted to locals, who would be able to buy up to 40g a month.
Smoking pot has long been legal in Uruguay, but growing, carrying, buying or selling it has been punishable by prison terms.
About 120,000 Uruguayans consume marijuana at least once a year, according to the National Drug Council. Of these, 75,000 smoke it every week and 20,000 every day.
In the US, the states of Washington and Colorado have legalised marijuana and adopted rules governing its sale. Unlike Uruguay, they will tax marijuana, seeing it as a revenue source, when it goes on legal sale next year.
In Washington, the state marijuana consultant has projected legal pot might cost $13-$17 a gram. Marijuana in the medical dispensaries typically ranges from $8-$14 a gram in Washington depending on quality.
Are Oreos really as addictive as cocaine?
A recent study claims that the biscuits are as addicting as cocaine. But tasty though they are, can Oreos really be that dangerous?
Posted by Dana Smith, Monday 21 October 2013 08.04 EDT, theguardian.com, Article Source
They may be more-ish, but are they really as addictive as cocaine? Photograph: AlamyNo. No, they're not.
It seems like everything can make us addicted these days. Our iPhones. The internet. Oreos. But just because something is pleasurable and causes a relevant reward area of your brain to light up does not mean that it is addictive.
An addiction is like a compulsion, where you continue performing a behaviour even though it has resulted in negative consequences – like continuing to drink even though it's lost you your driving licence, your job and even your partner. Addiction also involves complex changes in your brain in areas where you process reward and self-control. These changes can result in feelings of craving and withdrawal, where your body has adapted to rely on the drug to feel normal. In some cases, withdrawal can be so severe that your body may actually shut down and you can die if you don't have another hit.
No matter how many Oreos you eat, this will not happen to you.
The idea of food addiction is not a new one, but a study released last week takes this claim to a whole other (and unsubstantiated) level, claiming that Oreos – and especially that all-enticing creamy centre – is as addicting as cocaine.
Unfortunately, the researchers from Connecticut College who ran this study, led by Professor Joseph Schroeder, never actually tested this hypothesis. They used a standard conditioned place-preference test, giving rats either an Oreo or a rice cake on one side of a maze or another and then watched to see where the animals later chose to spend their time. This type of task is typically used to measure associations between a stimulus (like cookies or cocaine) and the environment in which it was experienced, with the idea being that the more pleasurable an experience is, the more likely you will want to repeat it, and thus the more time you will spend in the place where you first received it. Stemming from this logic, as might be expected, the rats preferred the side of the maze where they received the Oreo.
Fine, great, we all like Oreos more than rice cakes. No surprise there.
Then the researchers repeated the experiment, but this time they injected rats with a dose of cocaine or morphine on one side and with a neutral saline solution on the other. Once again, as you might anticipate, the rats kept going back to the side where they had received the drugs, hoping for more.
Now here's where it gets sketchy. The researchers measured the amount of time the rats spent in each half of the chamber and claim that because the two groups of mice spent equal amount of time in the Oreo and in the cocaine area, these two stimuli are equally rewarding, or "addicting". However, they never actually compared the cocaine with the cookies! These were two completely separate groups of animals that took part in two different experiments – one testing Oreos with rice cakes and another comparing cocaine and saline. Yes the animals showed similar behaviours in response to the drugs and to the high-fat/high-sugar food, but these things cannot be equated if they are not directly compared.
To be fair, the researchers didn't just rely on behavioural tests, but also measured the amount of chemical activity that was seen in a reward region of the brain, the nucleus accumbens, in response to each of the two vices. Here they report that there was greater evidence of activation in the Oreo-eating rats than in the cocaine-consuming ones. However, again, they haven't directly compared the amount of activity seen within an animal after receiving cocaine and Oreos.
Many previous studies have directly compared cocaine with food rewards and the results are conflicting. One study measured cell firing in the nucleus accumbens in primates directly after receiving a sip of juice or a dose of cocaine. In these animals, there was significantly greater activity in response to the drugs than the juice.
Now, this isn't to say that the idea of "food addiction", particularly to foods high in fat and sugar, is complete nonsense. For over the past 10 years Dr Nicole Avena and others have been conducting elegant experiments where they let rats binge on chocolate pellets and then measure changes in their brain and behaviour. These researchers quite frequently see similar effects in rats that have been gorging on chocolate as those given cocaine. This includes physical changes in the brain (including in that crucial reward centre), as well as behaviours reminiscent of craving and even withdrawal.
The idea that junk foods can create addictive-like tendencies is not new, nor is it wrong. But the claims that this particular study makes are.
As for whether the eating the middle of an Oreo first really is better, well I guess I'll let that one slide.
Dana Smith is a science writer and PhD candidate in psychology at the University of Cambridge, researching drug addiction. She blogs at Brain Study and her Twitter handle is @smithdanag
No one has clean hands in the racist letting agents scandal
Many of us hold prejudices -- but only a few people have the power and opportunity to impose these on society
Hugh Muir, theguardian.com, Tuesday 22 October 2013 07.21 EDT, Article Source
'Without scrutiny, many of us will still place one group – usually our own – ahead of another.'
Photograph: Bob Thomas/CorbisAfter that harsh light was shone on racist letting agents conspiring to ensure African-Caribbean tenants cannot rent properties, we can now assess the gravity of what we have learned. It must be very serious, because even the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has woken from its slumbers and – prompted by Labour shadow minister Hilary Benn – may yet do something about it. Only Rip van Winkle seems deeper asleep than the EHRC these days. Some good may come from this.
The BBC investigation prompted some interesting responses. There were black people, some of whom understood for the first time the possible sequence of hidden events that led to a property eluding them.
There were observations about the iniquities of the housing market. One commenter defended the practice. So what if estate agents deter these people, went that argument: "Put bluntly, an influx of Afro-Caribbean residents doesn't tend to increase house values." Depends on the social composition, I'd say. An influx of the middle classes – and yes, there is an African-Caribbean middle class – will increase property values almost anywhere.
But the response that caught my eye came from a poster who worked in an estate agents dealing with a diverse clientele. "I had Asian landlords only wanting Asian tenants. Some people were fobbed off because of how they dress. Some were because they were Polish. One woman wasn't allowed because she was pregnant, and, conversely, I've seen landlords request white, British people not be allowed in their property. It is rarer. I couldn't handle the deceit or discrimination they were asking of me, so I left."
And why does that ring true? Because it proves that no one has clean hands. Left to our own devices, without scrutiny, many of us will still place one group – usually our own – ahead of another. The difference is that some have the power to impose those prejudices while others remain impotent. The defining issues are power and opportunity. As different groups achieve power and economic muscle, watch them abuse it. There is no monopoly of virtue, just humans of many descriptions. We interact for good and ill.
Myths of Mass Deception
Paul Krassner ~ The Realist/Writer/Comic/Investigative Satirist
A Tale of Two Alternative Media Conferences
AlterNet / By Paul Krassner
"In the time when new media Was the big idea That was the big idea" --lyric from U2 song, "Kite"
In June 1970, a charter flight was on its way from San Francisco to the Alternative Media Conference at Goddard College in Plainfield, VT. The passengers consisted entirely of attendees. Larry Bensky, then KPFA news anchor, recalls, “It was one of the craziest trips ever taken by anyone, anywhere, I’m sure. Many on the plane were tripping on acid.”
Photographer Robert Altman was sitting next to an old friend, Dr. Gene Schoenfeld, also known as Dr. Hip for his weekly countercultural advice column, syndicated to underground papers around the country. He shared a joint with Altman, who said, “It stimulated the good doctor with enough brashness and playfulness that he took over the plane’s entire audio system. As he sent raucous rock’n’roll from his portable player through the plane’s microphone, we were dancing, and the crew loved it.”
In addition, KSAN commentator Scoop Nisker played his signature news collages, and Michael Goodwin from Rolling Stone (then a skimpy 25-cent tabloid) remembers somebody reading Allen Ginsberg poetry. “It might even have been me,” he admits, “and if it was, I hereby apologize.”
Forty-three years later, a few months ago, another Alternative Media Conference took place at Goddard. The keynote speech was delivered by Thom Hartmann, topflight progressive radio talk-show host. When he was fifteen, in 1966, he published an underground newspaper, The Jurist. “Our first issue called for the legalization of pot and for teachers to let us smoke cigarettes in classrooms. That got us really in serious trouble, and we were told, ‘Don’t ever publish this thing again.’ But the next issue was about the military-industrial-complex. That got us kicked out of school.”
Hartmann emphasized that, “Before Ronald Reagan stopped enforcing the Fairness Doctrine in 1987, it did not say, ‘If you carry an hour of Rush Limbaugh, you have to carry an hour of Thom Hartmann.’ That’s the mythology that Limbaugh and the right have put out all these years, and what they’ve used to beat up the Fairness Doctrine. But it said that the station has to serve public interest.
“In ’88, I was driving down the street, listening to the radio, and a news report came on that CBS had just moved their news division under the vice-president of entertainment. And I thought, ‘That’s it, this is the beginning of the end of any kind of media that is genuine.’ All the networks had been losing money on their news divisions, because they were necessary for radio and TV stations to keep their community service component of their license now that Reagan was saying, ‘Hey, that doesn’t matter anymore.’
“In addition, in ’82, Reagan stopped the force of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act, which said that any organization that gets big enough to basically dominate an industry can’t do that, it’s a crime, two years in prison and a big fine, something like that. So between those two things, and then Clinton just put the nail in the coffin in ’96 with the Telecommunications Act.
“It used to be that nobody could own more than forty radio stations, and so what we’ve seen is that local media has become national media, national media has become corporate media, corporate media has eaten everything, and alternative media has been increasingly marginalized as a consequence of that. And then came the Web, and now much of the alternative media is on the Web. We’ve moved our shows onto the Web, as well as livestream, and we have YouTube channels.
“But if we want to have vibrant media again –- real media, functional media –- there should be no mainstream media, that is, the conceptof mainstream media, the concept of one corporation basically owning the programming -- the Limbaugh show, the Hannity show, the Beck show -- then owning the points of distribution. This should not be. This was done away with in television in the 1970s or 1980s. The networks had to have at least two hours of prime-time television programming that did not come from the TV networks.
“Just this whole concept of there being a mainstream media gives legitimacy to what has essentially become corporate media with a corporate message. There is this thing called the mainstream media that is a giant corporate echo chamber that serves multinational corporations of billionaires, and nobody else. It’s destroying this country. It’s destroying democracy….”
In 1970, the keynote speech was delivered by Ram Dass, a delightfully stimulating spiritual teacher. The 2013 event began with a celebration of the original conference. Organizer Larry Yurdin pointed out that Ram Dass, beside his outdoor talk, also “led a workshop on stress reduction and conflict resolution, and his guiding mantra and meditation helped to bring the many different clashing progressive agendas into greater harmony.”
Or at least he tried. Take, for example, the interruption of a presentation by the late Harvey Kurtzman, the creator and editor of Mad, and later -- after he was fired for demanding 51 percent of Mad’s stock or he would quit – he became the contributor of a monthly, mildly raunchy full-page comic strip for Playboy titled “Little Annie Fanny.”
Danny Goldberg, who was at the conference as a columnist for Billboard, and is now managing rock artists including Steve Earle and Tom Morello, wrote in his recent book, Bumping Into Genius: My Life in the Rock and Roll Business:
“Just as Kurtzman was beginning to describe his take on the Woodstock culture his work helped to spawn, a couple disrobed and started having sex on the floor. Several attendees started clapping their hands in rhythm with the couple’s movements. In response, two feminists angrily yelled at the lecherous attendees to stop clapping. Kurtzman and the other panelists looked perplexed, and the crowd that had come to hear them quickly dispersed.”
Art Spiegelman was also there. His first cartoon for The Realist in 1967 depicted a male soldier sitting on the lap of another male soldier, and they’re smooching in front of a sign on the wall, “Make Love, Not War!” Spiegelman has since been the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for his 1991 graphic novel, Maus, and he currently creates covers for the New Yorker, including the poignant one about 9/11, featuring dark ghosts of the Twin Towers against a mournful black background.
“Harvey Kurtzman was the granddaddy of the underground cartoonists,” Spiegelman recalls, “and he was in shock. Basically, it was my first real encounter with feminists. They kind of busted up the underground comics meeting. From my perspective, they were absolutely alien. ‘Why were those chicks so pissed off?’ It was really the very first time somebody was getting so angry in my earshot about the way men treated women. So amazing, what a few decades will do in terms of rearranging your brain circuits.”
Indeed, Rona Elliot, who was the PR person at KMPX in San Francisco, recalls, “I told the program director that I’d been invited to the Alternative Media Conference, and he said no woman would go representing his station, so I quit on the spot.”
At that time, the blossoming Women’s Liberation Movement had its own forms of protest: the demonstration at the Miss America pageant; the six feminists taking over the male-dominated underground paper named Rat; Robin Morgan embracing Valerie Solanas, who had attempted to kill Andy Warhol. No wonder a fuck-in taking place at a lake across the road was raided by feminists. “If there’s going to be a fuck-in,” shouted one, “then we’ll decide where and when there’ll be a fuck-in.”
At this year’s conference, one of the participants was Andi Zeisler, co-founder and editorial director of Bitch, the “Feminist Response to Pop Culture.” Their Fall issue features articles ranging from “Helen Thomas [who died after the magazine went to press], Off the Record: A few opinions from the First Lady of the Press” to “Laughing It Off: What happens when women tell rape jokes?” The back cover ad is from She Bop, “A Female Friendly Sex Toy Boutique.”
Nonetheless, Zeisler pointed out that there is still some question on the general utility of print, and that the superficial multi-tasking world of the web has diluted the power of print and constrained the audience power of that medium.
In The Bridge, an independent local newspaper, Dan Jones wrote: “It was evident that the zeitgeist had moved on, and alternative media had been reduced to pleading for access to the mainstream media. One fun session was run by a group of producers from the Onion. What I found truly fascinating was that none of them owned TVs or subscribed to cable. Their news came from NPR and the New York Times. In fact, anecdotal reports from many presenters showed that few admitted watching TV at all. This left me wondering why any of us should be worried about access to the broadcast media if the opinion leaders weren’t even paying attention.”
Statistically, a Times survey indicates that one in three millennials watch mostly online video and no broadcast TV. Meanwhile, in a video by a man-in-the-street interviewer, students at George Mason University in Fairfax, VA, near Washington D.C., were unable to recognize the names of Vladimir Putin and John Kerry, but they gave detailed explanations on how to twerk.
Anonymous demands investigation into
small-town Missouri rape caseHacker group accused Maryville of complicity in shielding accused offenders, and vowed to pursue justice for one victim's family
Rory Carroll, theguardian.com, Tuesday 15 October 2013 17.41 EDT, Article Source
Anonymous accused Maryville, population 12,000, of turning its back on the two victims
of the January 2012 incident.. Photo: Jeff Blackler / Rex FeaturesA small Missouri town has hunkered down amid a campaign by hackers and activists who accuse it of shielding high school football players from rape and sexual exploitation charges.
Officials in Maryville declined interview requests on Tuesday as the story of two girls who were assaulted, ostracised and harassed went viral, putting the town under the spotlight.
The hacker group Anonymous and other social media activists vowed to pursue justice for one of the victim's families, which fled Maryville, abandoning a home that subsequently burned down.
The case drew comparisons to Steubenville, Ohio, where in March two high school football stars were convicted of raping a teenage girl after a trial that polarised opinion and prompted claims of cover-up.
Anonymous accused Maryville, population 12,000, of turning its back on the two victims of the January 2012 incident. "If Maryville won't defend these young girls, if the police are too cowardly or corrupt to do their jobs, if (the) justice system has abandoned them, then we will have to stand for them."
Law enforcement officials pulled down their Facebook and Twitter accounts and the town's website temporarily buckled.
A case which had seemed closed erupted online after the Kansas City Star on Sunday published the results of a seven-month investigation that revisited the sexual assaults and subsequent persecution of one of the victim's families.
Some basic facts are not in dispute: early on 12 January 2012, Daisy Coleman, a 14-year-old high school freshman, crept out of her house with a 13-year-old female friend, who was there for a sleepover, to meet a 17-year-old boy football player from their school.
They drove to his home ,where they sneaked into the basement. There, he had sex with Daisy, who had been given alcohol and a 15-year-old boy had sex with Daisy's friend. A third boy, aged 17, filmed one of the encounters with a phone. At around 2am the boys drove the girls back to Daisy's house.
The 13-year-old returned to bed. Daisy did not make it into the house. Later that morning her mother, Melinda, heard scratching at the front door and found her daughter outside with no shoes or jacket, slumped, disorientated and freezing.
While bathing Daisy, who was crying, Coleman noticed marks and suspected a sexual assault. She called 911 and brought both girls to hospital. Daisy's blood alcohol content was twice the legal limit for an adult driver.
"I thought I was dead at first," Daisy later told local station KCUR. "I was really confused. I was, like: what is happening? I couldn't even make sense of anything."
The Guardian does not generally name victims of sexual assault but is naming Coleman because she and her mother have been speaking publicly about the case.
The three boys were swiftly questioned and charged. The 15-year-old, charged as a juvenile, admitted sexually assaulting the 13-year-old girl, who had repeatedly said no. He accepted a plea bargain. The two 17-year-olds, members of the football team, were charged as adults.
"Did a crime occur? Hell, yes, it occurred," Nodaway county sheriff, Darren White, said in a radio interview this summer. "Was it a horrible crime? Yes, it was a horrible crime. Did these boys need to be punished for it? Absolutely."
But they were not. Two months after the incident, the county prosecutor, Robert Rice, dropped a charge of rape against one 17-year-old and a charge of sexual exploitation against the other, citing lack of evidence. The 17-year-old accused of rape said the sex was consensual and that Daisy was not unconscious from alcohol, merely "buzzed". The video, though reportedly circulated at school, was not found.
It is alleged that the boys' families' local political connections contributed to the dropping of charges, something Rice has vigorously denied.
On Tuesday, an aide told the Guardian the prosecutor was unavailable but read a statement in Rice's name that said there was insufficient evidence to prove a criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt: "The personal attacks made against me are malicious, wrong and never happened."
Without expressly naming her, he seemed to blame Daisy and her mother for the case not proceeding. "The state's witnesses refused to co-operate, and invoked their fifth amendment privilege to not testify."
White, the sheriff, said his office conducted a professional investigation but that Melinda Coleman sabotaged the prosecutions by not co-operating. White did not respond to an interview request on Tuesday.
A spokeswoman for Missouri's attorney general, Chris Koster, said on Tuesday that Koster lacked the authority to review a local prosecutor's decisions in particular cases.
What has riled so many commenters on Gawker, Reddit and other sites is Maryville's perceived hostility to the victims, who, unlike the boys were not Maryville natives. Coleman had moved from nearby Albany to start a new life with Daisy and her three other children after her husband, a doctor, died in a car accident.
After criminal charges were dropped, students at the high school booed and mocked Daisy and her brothers. Coleman was fired from her job.
The family moved back to Albany, where Daisy's younger friend also lives. In January, their house in Maryville, which was for sale, burned down. The cause has not been established. Coleman suspects arson.
Earlier this year she went public with their story and allowed Daisy, now 16, to be named to highlight the case. Coleman denies sabotaging the prosecution.
Daisy has started to harm herself and has made two suicide attempts. "I was cutting and I would like light up a pen and put it against my skin as burning, so," she said in her KCUR interview.
"I just felt like if I'm this ugly on the inside, I might as well look it on the outside, you know? 'You're the s-word, the w-word, the b-word, just ... After a while, you start to believe it."
The US shutdown crisis has shown us
democracy red in tooth and clawA catastrophe has been avoided, but the conflict over resources was real, and the problem has not gone away
Simon Jenkins, The Guardian, Thursday 17 October 2013 15.30 EDT, Article Source
A classic of American brinkmanship has been averted with some credit for common sense.'
Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesThe US has uttered a sigh of relief, and its critics the world over have chortled with glee. The nation that never ceases telling the world how to govern itself – even taking admonition as far as war - cannot run its own whelk stall. Was hypocrisy ever more grotesque?
Yet to visitors such as myself this week, America's budgetary hysteria and exhausted resolution have seemed a synthetic ritual, a bit like Labour day and Thanksgiving. The constitution delivers these Hitchcockian spectaculars when president and Congress are at odds, as last happened in 1995-6. They wrestle each other to the brink of the cliff, lose their footing, slip and hang on by their fingertips. But they clamber back up. They always do.
Washington's driving compulsion to keep the show on the road reflects a deep-seated survival instinct. It may be decried by the right as the desperation of those with their hands on other people's money, and by the left as democracy defaulting to sanity. Either way, when taxpayers can't pay the bills, lenders must do so. America's US debt is now about $16.7 trillion and is going to rise, not fall. The Tea Party lost the battle, but it did not lose the argument.
Some ridicule at America's expense is understandable. The rottenness of modern Washington makes outsiders gasp. The pomposity of its architecture can no longer dignify the log-rolling, the gerrymandering, the lobbyists' egregious power, the money sloshing everywhere, and the partisan polarisation that drips from every news programme.
The most bizarre participant is the Republican party. Its representatives all sang Amazing Grace and invoked God's help in unison before voting down the penultimate Senate rescue package. It was like a Taliban loya jirga. Even in the final vote, a majority of Republicans refused to back the rescue, thus voting for the US to default on its debts.
The party of Lincoln, reconstruction and reform, as its elder statesman, Senator John McCain, admitted, has degenerated into a sad squabble of factions. The Tea Party, with just 40 signed-up congress members, threatened every Republican voting for rescue with a primary election challenge, no idle threat. It's small wonder that many opted for the devil of default rather than the deep blue sea of oblivion.
The Tea Party represents a serious strand in American public life – old-world fundamentalist in its exclusivity, self-righteousness and religious zeal. Its defence policy is little short of jihadist. It hates compulsory government, such as Medicare and Obamacare. It believes in state and local rights. It sees Barack Obama as an amalgam of federal power, liberal smugness and black Americanism, and hates him for it.
Like the right wing in any country, this strand lies in waiting for any political system that has grown too fat, centralised and arrogant. It cannot be dismissed as a crazed rural minority. Its threat to congressional Republicans was real, and remains so. When Tea Party members and candidates were warned they might cause the entire federal project to collapse, they saw that as a hope, not a threat. They still do.
For all that, a classic of American brinkmanship has been averted with some credit for common sense. The Tea Party was not just defeated – it was humiliated. It was brought down by the cynicism of using Obamacare as its cause, using shutdown and default as a nuclear weapon against its foe, and yielding a catastrophic failure to win public opinion. Obama's victory yesterday was not so much for him as for the American people, as they screamed, "Pull yourselves together", in poll after poll. The shutdown and its resolution were not the evil in the US system, but a sign of its ultimate sanity.
Outsiders should beware of dumping too much contempt on Washington. The separation of powers between the presidency and congress is not just hallowed by history: it is constantly tested in the fire. The US was born of disregard for the demands of subsidiary assemblies by George III and his then prime minister, Lord North. It forged its independence as a nation on the anvil of states' rights. This involved creating a deliberate, transparent tension between the states and federal government, one that held together a union that could easily have fallen apart. Where other federations fail – or in Europe's case are wilting – the US does not.
Certainly, the constitution is questioned on all sides. Commentators, thinktanks and political scientists agree that it is sick. Just as Iraq and Afghanistan have heralded the US's retreat from global suzerainty, so federal chaos is undermining faith in the system of government. Expressing this consensus, the author of The Unwinding, George Packer, argues in the new Prospect magazine that the whole gamut of conservative America has run out of ideas. The "weaknesses in a system of democratic checks and balances [are] now glaring" and need to be refocused on a stronger executive president, he says.
I am not sure. It is the presidency and its agencies that have made federal government bureaucratic and wasteful. The Pentagon is so cumbersome it can no longer win wars. Corporate lobbying and union power have driven federal medical and welfare entitlements to an unsupportable level. Obamacare, admirable in intent, is chaotic, with computers crashing and applicants left floundering.
Congress may be part of the problem. But it does exert a crude brake on the budget through having to vote for supply. It has delivered a jolt to government spending this past month, but has not curbed it. There is still no sign of Obama cutting back on welfare spending, a long-term cause of the looming debt mountain (as of Britain's). There may be another breakdown next year.
Governments round the world are facing the "impossibility of democracy", whereby electoral majorities vote for benefits they do not themselves have to finance, and thus resort to debt. Britain's last Labour government was reckless in this respect, as US presidents of both parties have been. Both countries face tax famines, in part because the world has not confronted the cancer of global corporate tax evasion. This is nowhere near resolved.
A catastrophe that threatened real damage to economic recovery has been avoided. But it is no bad thing that it happened. The conflict over resources was real, as was the continuing war between the extravagance of this generation and the burden heaped on to the next. Battles that elsewhere are swept under the carpet are fought in the US in full view, democracy red in tooth and claw. That is good. Thank you, America.
State of Mind vs. Government Shutdown
Now that the shutdown is over (for 3 months), we have some catching up to do: ~ imgur
I should buy a boat
I hope my husband doesn't buy that boat
So I hear you're looking to buy a boat...
Let me give you some advice on that
Later that day...
Yer boat iz ready, Cap'n
Honey, I'm home! And I bought a BOAT!!
Well, this sucks
I should sell my boat
I should steal that cat's boat
Jesus, take the wheel!
Why NONE of the ABOVE should Be a choice on
VOTER Ballots & NOBODY should be President
We Did Stop (The Government) ~ Video Source
NSA files -- live coverage of all developments and reaction
Welcome to our hub for all Edward Snowden, NSA and GCHQ-related developments around the world, as controversy over revelations leaked by the whistleblower continue to make headlines. As arguments rage over how much of our day to day life should be monitored in the name of security, we'll be tracking the growing global debate about privacy in the digital age. We'd like to know what you think about the whole NSA story, what you're worried about – and any new areas you'd like to read more about [Click Here to Continue Reading]
Who should judge whether Snowden's leaked secrets are too sensitive to report?
by Nick Davies ~ The Guardian's critics say journalists cannot be trusted to judge what may damage national security. But the press's track record shows it to be more trustworthy than politicians or spooks [Click Here to Continue Reading]
To Get Around US Law, The NSA Collects Email Address Books And Chat Buddy Lists From Foreign Locations
by Alex Wilhelm ~ It appears that the NSA lacks Congressional authority to collect buddy lists and address book information in the way that it currently does. As the Post rightly points out, address book data can include physical addresses, very personal information, and more. [Click Here to Continue Reading]
Snapchat admits to handing unopened
'snaps' to US law enforcementThe director of operations says the company has complied with search warrants under the ECPA about a dozen times since May
Amanda Holpuch in New York, theguardian.com, Tuesday 15 October 2013 20.35 BST, Article Source
Snapchat co-creators Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy. Photograph: J. Emilio Flores/CorbisThe photo-sharing app Snapchat has admitted to handing overto American law enforcement agencies images not yet seen by its users.
In a blogpost on Monday, the company outlined the circumstances under which it has given photos -- which the company calls "snaps" -- to investigators.
Since May 2013, about a dozen of the search warrants we've received have resulted in us producing unopened snaps to law enforcement," said Snapchat director of operations Micah Schaffer. The only photos handed over have been unopened snaps, because those are the only images the company stores on its servers.
Snapchat works by allowing users to take photos or short videos, then share them with friends for up to 10 seconds before the image self-destructs. If a recipient screenshots the photo, the app alerts the original sender, though hacks to interrupt this function do exist.
In a blogpost in May, Snapchat said once a photo has been opened by all of its recipients, it is deleted from the servers. A forensic software company said it can recover the deleted photos from Android phones and was working on a way to recover them from iPhones.
The photos must be uploaded on company servers to get to the recipient, and Schaffer said only he and the co-founder Bobby Murphy have access to a tool that lets them manually retrieve unopened snaps.
The company said it would retrieve an unopened snap if it receives a search warrant and the snap is still on its server, under requirements by the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).
Schaffer said he was clarifying Snapchat's access policy following the release of the app's new stories feature, which organizes snaps together. These photos can be viewed repeatedly in the first 24 hours after being sent and are then deleted from the company's servers. The same legal requirements apply to stories and snaps.
Snapchat is thought be worth about $800m. A former friend of Murphy and Snapchat's co-founder Evan Spiegel is suing the pair for 20% share into the company.
Yasser Arafat's belongings have traces of polonium-210
Swiss scientists say discovery supports possibility that Palestinian leader was poisoned with radioactive substance
Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem, theguardian.com, Tuesday 15 October 2013 04.15 EDT, Article Source
Yasser Arafat died in a hospital near Paris in 2004 after falling ill while under Israeli
military siege in the West Bank. Photograph: Nasser Nasser/APSwiss scientists have given details of their suspicious findings of traces of the radioactive substance polonium-210 on personal items belonging to the late Palestinian president Yasser Arafat, which fuelled claims that he was poisoned by Israel in 2004.
The discovery of polonium-210 on Arafat's effects was first made public last year. His body was exhumed from its mausoleum in the West Bank city of Ramallah last November for tests, but no results have been disclosed.
In a paper in the Lancet, toxicologists said they had examined 38 items belonging to the late Palestinian leader, including underwear and a toothbrush, and compared them with a control group of 37 items of Arafat's that had been in storage for some time before his death.
They found traces of the substance that "support the possibility of Arafat's poisoning with polonium-210", the scientists reported.
They added: "Although the absence of myelosuppression [bone marrow deficiency] and hair loss does not favour acute radiation syndrome, symptoms of nausea, vomiting, fatigue, diarrhoea, and anorexia, followed by hepatic and renal failures, might suggest radioactive poisoning."
Arafat died at the age of 75 in a hospital near Paris in November 2004 after falling ill while holed up under Israeli military siege at his presidential compound, the Muqata, in Ramallah. Doctors could not conclusively identify the cause of death. Claims that he had been poisoned by Israel swiftly took hold among Palestinians, who revered Arafat as an iconic resistance leader.
No postmortem was conducted on his body, but after al-Jazeera aired the polonium-210 suspicions last year, the Palestinian Authority agreed to a request by Arafat's widow, Suha, and French judicial investigators to exhume his body for further tests.
The Swiss scientists said: "An autopsy would have been useful in this case because although potential polonium poisoning might not have been identified during that procedure, body samples could have been kept and tested afterwards."
Polonium-210 was used to kill Alexander Litvinenko, a Russian KGB agent, who died in London in 2006. [Something else to remember]
In a real world, people who don't do their job get
FIRED
Dorothy says to Scarecrow, "How can you talk if you haven't got a brain?"
Scarecrow says, "Some people without brains do an awful lot of talking."
Below them is a picture of Congress ~ imgurHere are politicians who allow government to be shut down, while insisting on getting their paychecks == for doing NOTHING:
Senate
Keeping Salary
DEMOCRAPS
Murphy, Chris, D, Connecticut
Harkin, Tom, D, Iowa
Murray, Patty, D, Washington
REPUBLICONS
Grassley, Chuck, R, Iowa
Blunt, Roy, R, Missouri
Fischer, Deb, R, Nebraska
Coburn, Tom, R, Oklahoma
Undecided/Refuses to Say
DEMOCRAPS
Pryor, Mark, D, Arkansas
Durbin, Dick, D, Illinois
Tester, John, D, Montana
Baucus, Max, D, Montana
Menendez, Robert, D, New Jersey
Heinrich, Martin, D, New Mexico
Gillibrand, Kirsten, D, New York
Baldwin, Tammy, D, Wisconsin
REPUBLICONS
Shelby, Richard, R, Alabama
Flake, Jeff, R, Arizona
McCain, John, R, Arizona
Boozman, John, R, Arkansas
Rubio, Marco, R, Florida
Chambliss, Saxby, R, Georgia
Isakson, Johnny, R, Georgia
Moran, Jerry, R, Kansas
Roberts, Pat, R, Kansas
Johanns, Mike, R, Nebraska
Heller, Dean, R, Nevada
Chiesa, Jeff, R, New Jersey
Barrasso, John, R, Wyoming
Congress
Keeping Salary
DEMOCRAPS
Thompson, Mike, D, California
McNerney, Jerry, D, California
Miller, George, D, California
Lee, Barbara, D, California
Honda, Mike, D, California
Eshoo, Anna G., D, California
Lofgren, Zoe, D, California
Farr, Sam, D, California
Wasserman Schultz, Debbie, D, Florida
Davis, Danny K., D, Illinois
Clay Jr., William "Lacy", D, Missouri
Clyburn, James E., D, South Carolina
REPUBLICONS
Rokita, Todd, R, Indiana
Brooks, Susan W., R, Indiana
Coble, Howard, R, North Carolina
Too Many Undecided/Refusing to Answer
=== To List ===Click to see Senate Source or Congress Source
The People that Represent Us are using fear to change policies ...
Which means they meet the qualifications to be called TERRORISTS
Who is responsible for the US shutdown?
The same idiots responsible for the 2008 meltdownIn opposing Obamacare, the radical-populist right exposes its own twisted ideology
Slavoj Žižek, The Guardian, Friday 11 October 2013 11.15 EDT, Article Source
A Tea Party rally against the Affordable Care Act in Washington, DC last month. 'An opinion
poll [in] 2012 showed that a majority of Americans, while opposing Obamacare, strongly
support most of its provisions.' Photograph: UPI /Landov / Barcroft MediaIn April 2009 I was resting in a hotel room in Syracuse, hopping between two channels: a PBS documentary on Pete Seeger, the great American country singer of the left; and a Fox News report on the anti-tax Tea Party, with a country singer performing a populist song about how Washington is taxing hard-working ordinary people to finance the Wall Street financiers. There was a weird similarity between the two singers: both were articulating an anti-establishment, populist complaint against the exploitative rich and their state; both were calling for radical measures, including civil disobedience.
It was another painful reminder that today's radical-populist right reminds us of the old radical-populist left (are today's Christian survivalist-fundamentalist groups with their half-illegal status not organised like Black Panthers back in the 1960s?). It is a masterful ideological manipulation: the Tea Party agenda is fundamentally irrational in that it wants to protect the interests of hardworking ordinary people by privileging the "exploitative rich", thus literally countering their own interests.
This twisted ideology is also behind the current federal government shutdown in the US. An opinion poll at the end of June 2012 showed that a majority of Americans, while opposing Obamacare, strongly support most of its provisions. Here we encounter Tea Party ideology at its purest: the majority wants to have its ideological cake and eat the real baking. They want the real benefits of healthcare reform, while rejecting its ideological form, which they perceive as a threat to the "freedom of choice". They reject the concept of fruit, but they want apples, plums and strawberries.
Some of us remember the infamous communist tirades against bourgeois "formal" freedom. Ridiculous as these arguments were, there is some truth in the distinction between "formal" and "actual" freedom. A manager in a company in crisis has the "freedom" to fire workers, but not the freedom to change the situation that imposes on him this choice. We see it in the US healthcare debate, too: Obamacare would deliver many people from the dubious "freedom" to worry about who will cover their illness.
Freedom of choice is something that only functions if a complex network of legal, educational, ethical, economic and other conditions exists – the constraints that form the invisible underpinning to the exercise of our freedom. This is why, as an antidote to the populist rightwing ideology of choice, countries such as Norway should be held up as a model: although all main agents respect a basic social agreement and large social projects are enacted in solidarity, the economy is thriving (and not only because of the oil reserves), flatly contradicting the common wisdom that such a society should be stagnating.
Not many people know – and even fewer appreciate the irony of the fact – that Frank Sinatra's iconic song My Way – which is supposed to epitomise the American individualist attitude – is in fact a version of the French song Comme d'Habitude, which means "as usual, as is customary". It is all too easy to see this as yet another example of the opposition between sterile French manners and American inventiveness. But what if this is a phoney opposition? What if, in order to be able to do it my way, I have to rely on things going on comme d'habitude? A lot of things have to be regulated if we are to enjoy our non-regulated freedom.
One often hears that the US shutdown is the result of partisan bickering, that politicians should learn to rise above it and find bipartisan solutions for the good of the nation. Not only the Tea Party, but also Barack Obama is accused of dividing the American people instead of bringing them together. But what if this, precisely, is what is good about Obama? In situations of deep crisis, an authentic division is urgently needed: a division between those who want to drag on within the old parameters and those who are aware of the need for radical change. This, not opportunistic compromise, is the only path to true unity.
One of the weird consequences of the 2008 financial meltdown and the measures taken to counteract it (enormous sums of money to help banks) was the revival of the work of Ayn Rand, the closest one can get to an ideologist of the "greed is good" radical capitalism. The sales of her opus Atlas Shrugged exploded. According to some reports, there are already signs that the scenario described in Atlas Shrugged – the creative capitalists themselves going on strike – is coming to pass in the form of a populist right. However, this misreads the situation: what is effectively taking place today is almost the exact opposite. Most of the bailout money is going precisely to the Randian "titans", the bankers who failed in their "creative" schemes and thereby brought about the financial meltdown. It is not the "creative geniuses" who are now helping ordinary people, it is the ordinary people who are helping the failed "creative geniuses".
John Galt, the central character in Atlas Shrugged, is not named until near the end of the novel. Before his identity is revealed, the question is repeatedly asked, "Who is John Galt". Now we know precisely who he is: John Galt is the idiot responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown, and for the ongoing federal government shutdown in the US.
![A Tea Party rally against the Affordable Care Act in Washington, DC last month. 'An opinion poll [in] 2012 showed that a majority of Americans, while opposing Obamacare, strongly support most of its provisions.' Photograph: UPI /Landov / Barcroft Media](http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2013/10/11/1381497635244/Tea-Party-Holds-US-Capito-008.jpg "A Tea Party rally against the Affordable Care Act in Washington, DC last month. 'An opinion poll [in] 2012 showed that a majority of Americans, while opposing Obamacare, strongly support most of its provisions.' Photograph: UPI /Landov / Barcroft Media")
Joint-Responsibility Rule of Conspiracy & Sarah Palin
The Eyes Have It!Should Joint-Responsibility Rule of Conspiracy apply to Sarah Palin for her role in the 2011 Tucson shootings (including victim Gabrielle Giffords) like it did for Charles Manson? Manson was convicted of murder through this rule, where each member of a conspiracy is guilty of crimes fellow conspirators commit in furtherance of the conspiracy's object.
Broken Boehner Boner
http://vimeo.com/18943715
Republicans are delusional about US spending and deficits
The story of out-of-control debts and deficits is just plain wrong. US deficits have fallen in the past four years
Dean Baker, theguardian.com, Monday 14 October 2013 08.30 EDT, Article Source
Republican House speaker John Boehner. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPAIt is understandable that the public is disgusted with Washington; they have every right to be. At a time when the country continues to suffer from the worst patch of unemployment since the Great Depression, the government is shut down over concerns about the budget deficit.
There is no doubt that the Republicans deserve the blame for the shutdown and the risk of debt default. They decided that it was worth shutting down the government and risking default in order stop Obamacare. That is what they said as loudly and as clearly as possible in the days and weeks leading up to the shutdown. In fact, this is what Senator Ted Cruz said for 21 straight hours on the floor of the US Senate.
Going to the wall for something that is incredibly important is a reasonable tactic. However, the public apparently did not agree with the Republicans. Polls show that they overwhelmingly oppose their tactic of shutting down the government and risking default over Obamacare. As a result, the Republicans are now claiming that the dispute is actually over spending.
Anywhere outside of Washington DC and totalitarian states, you don't get to rewrite history. However, given the national media's concept of impartiality, they now feel an obligation to accept that the Republicans' claim that this is a dispute over spending levels.
But that is only the beginning of the reason that people should detest budget reporters. The more important reason is that they have spread incredible nonsense about the deficit and spending problems facing the country, causing most of the public to be completely confused on these issues. If budget reporters were held to the same standards as school teachers, with the expectation that they would be able to convey information, they would all be fired in a minute.
Contrary to the widely repeated stories of out-of-control deficits and spending, deficits have plunged in the last four years falling from 10.1% of GDP in 2009 to just 4% of GDP in 2013. The Congressional Budget Office projects the deficit to be just 3.4% of GDP in 2014. The latest projections show the debt-to-GDP ratio falling for the rest of the decade.
In other words, the story of out-of-control debts and deficits is just plain wrong. Less polite people would call it a lie, but it stands at the center of the public debate because the media consider it rude to point out a truth that would embarrass so many important politicians. The idea that we face a longer term deficit problem of enormous proportions has little better grounding in reality. First, it is worth noting that we have not had a constant upward path of spending as is widely asserted in Washington, and widely believed around the country, due to the incompetence of budget reporters.
During the Reagan presidency spending averaged more than 22% of GDP, peaking at 23.5% in 1985. This year it is projected to be 21.6% of GDP. The latest CBO projections show spending rising back to Reagan era levels towards the end of the 10-year budget window.
Over a longer term, spending is projected to rise further due to projections of rising health care costs and a growing interest burden, which is the result of a growing debt. The deficit fear mongers like to hype these projections of large deficits decades in the future to advance their agenda of cutting Social Security and Medicare.
The reality is that the story of exploding interest burdens is utter nonsense since there is zero precedent for the country ever allowing the debt to expand in this way. This makes as much sense as arguing that someone driving west in New Jersey risks falling into the Pacific Ocean. People driving west in New Jersey invariably turn or park their calls before ending up in the Pacific Ocean and the United States has always taken measures to reduce deficits long before they posed a fundamental threat to the economy.
The real question is why the primary (ie non-interest) deficit rises and this is the story of the broken US healthcare system. We pay twice as much per person for our health care as the average for other rich countries, with nothing to show for this money in terms of outcomes. We pay 2.5 times as much as the UK. If our costs were at all in line with those in other wealthy countries, we would be looking at explosive budget surpluses running into the trillions of dollars annually.
This fact raises the obvious question, why are projections of deficits based on unaffordable healthcare costs always treated in the media as a basis for cutting benefits to seniors rather than a reason for cutting payments to providers like doctors, drug companies, and medical device companies?
There is no explanation except the bias of the media. Obviously they identify much more with rich doctors and the people who profit from the bloated prices charged in the United States by drug companies and medical equipment providers than with the seniors who are dependent on Social Security and Medicare.
Yes, the public has every right to be disgusted.
Keith Lampe ~ Co-Founder of YIPPIE and Progressive Activist Groups + YouTube Video Channel
Archives & Special Collections
at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center
IMAGE GALLERY ~ University of Connecticut
http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/exhibits/voices/
Marliese's Corner ~ San Francisco Events
Some great events coming up at the Book Smith in the Haight/Ashbury ~ October/November
Columbus Day Is A Celebration of Holocaust
WANTED: CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS
Grand Theft, Genocide, Racism, Initiating the Destruction of a Culture, Rape,
Torture, and Maiming of Indigenous People and Instigator of the Big Lie.
500 YEARS OF TOURISM
Go ahead steal this poster, you've already stolen everything else.
Indigenous Elders Share Ancient Teachings, October 2011
http://vimeo.com/27572771
Native Americans Have Been Fighting Terrorism Since 1492
Elemotho ~ A Dose of Reality (featuring, John Trudell)
http://vimeo.com/74573491
John Trudell "Perceptions of Reality" @ UW Whitewater
http://vimeo.com/8022177PETITION: NATIONAL HOLIDAY
FOR NATIVE AMERICANS
Notes from ~@~
Estimated 3-hour Planetary Kp-index
The K-index quantifies disturbances in the horizontal component of earth's magnetic field with an integer in the range 0-9 with 1 being calm and 5 or more indicating a geomagnetic storm. It is derived from the maximum fluctuations of horizontal components observed on a magnetometer during a three-hour interval. The label 'K' comes from the German word 'Kennziffer' meaning 'characteristic digit.' The K-index was introduced by Julius Bartels in 1938.
Estimate Planetary Kp 3 days, 3-hourly values ~ SourceOrange and/or red bars displayed in the above graph would signify an increase in magnetic field disturbance.
Scumbag Congresswoman Renee Ellmers
Votes for government shutdown, putting 800,000 workers out of the job.
When the wealthy congresswoman was asked if she would refuse her paycheck,
she replied "I NEED MY PAYCHECK" ~ imgur
Karl Cohen ~ Association International du Film d'Animation-SF Newsletter
ASIFA~SF NEWSLETTER
Association International du Film d'Animation
(International Animated Film Association)
October 2013HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:
THE TRUTH ABOUT "GET A HORSE" IN 3D CGI FROM DISNEY, A FASCINATING THEATRICAL MICKEY MOUSE SHORT
FOR-PROFIT COLLEGES CONTINUE TO GET SUED FOR A VARIETY OF ABUSES
DON'T MISS THE TYRUS WONG RETROSPECTIVE IN THE NEW SPECIAL EXHIBIT HALL OF THE WALT DISNEY FAMILY MUSEUM
PEOPLE WHO WANT "NAUGHTY NEWS" SHOULD READ ABOUT "WALT'S FIELD DAY," A STAFF PARTY THAT GOT WAY OUT OF CONTROLhttp://www.disneyhistoryinstitute.com/2013/09/walts-field-day-1938.html
NANCY PHELPS WRITES "ANIBAR, AN ECOLOGY CONCIOUS FESTIVAL, IS EVEN BETTER THE SECOND TIME AROUND (ANIBAR ANIMATION FESTIVAL, August 9 - 24, 2013 in Peja, Kosovo)"
FIVE SMALL BAY AREA ANIMATION STUDIOS
AND IF YOU LIVE IN THE BAY AREA ATTEND:An animation day celebration honouring the rich diversity of a great art form
OUTSTANDING ANIMATED VISIONS
Wednesday, October 23, 7:15 PM
At San Francisco State, Coppola Theatre
Fine Arts Building, Room 101, Public Invited, Free
THE PROGRAM AND OTHER DETAILS AT THE END OF THIS NEWSLETTER
Amestizo ~ BLOG + NEW: http://amestizo.bigcartel.com/
WAR ON OUR WORLD (2011) ~ http://vimeo.com/32384359
Nun faces up to 30 years in prison for
protesting at nuclear weapons facilityDistrict judge denies appeal of Sister Megan Rice, 83, and two other activists, citing their intent to 'disarm' Oak Ridge
Karen McVeigh, theguardian.com, Friday 4 October 2013 11.57 EDT, Article Source
Sister Megan Rice before the start of her trial in Knoxville, Tennessee, last May. Photograph: J Miles Cary/APAn octogenarian Roman Catholic nun, jailed for breaking into a nuclear weapons facility in Tennessee, is facing up to 30 years in prison after losing her plea for the most serious charge to be dropped.
Sister Megan Rice, 83, and two fellow peace activists staged a non-violent protest to symbolically disarm the Oak Ridge Y-12 nuclear weapons facility, home to the nation's main supply of highly enriched uranium, in July. They were initially charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in prison, but felony charges quickly followed. They were eventually convicted of interfering with national security and damage to federal property.
This week, a judge denied a motion to acquit them of interfering with national security under the sabotage section of the US criminal code, which carries the harshest prison sentence of up to 20 years. Rice and her two fellow activists, Greg Boertje-Obed, 57, a carpenter, and Michael Walli, 68, a veteran, now face up to 30 years in prison, although the ruling by district judge Amul Thapar, in the eastern district of Tennessee, suggests their sentences will be more lenient than the maximum allowed.
The three describe themselves as 'Transform Now Plowshares', a reference to a passage in the bible, Isaiah 2:4, which states: "They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more."
They are currently in the Irwin County detention center, Georgia, awaiting their sentence.
In his ruling denying the so-called Rule 29 motion, Thapar writes: "The defendants are entitled to their views regarding the morality of nuclear weapons. But the defendants' sincerely held moral beliefs are not a get-out-of-jail-free card that they can deploy to escape criminal liability."
Bill Quigley, a law professor at Loyola University-New Orleans who works pro bono for the three, said "everybody is disappointed" by the decision. "We believe really strongly that they did not do anything that could be constituted as sabotage or violating the national security of the US. The prosecution admits that national security was not damaged. Their theory is that even though it wasn't damaged, the protesters intended to."
However, he said he took heart from the judge's acknowledgment that the non-violent nature of the protesters and their characters would be taken into consideration at sentencing.
The New York Times described the break-in as he "the biggest security breach" in the nation's atomic history.
The protesters argue that while they entered the plant with the intention of causing some symbolic damage, including painting slogans on buildings, their non-violent behaviour and peaceful natures could not be interpreted as trying to interfere with national defence. They argued that no reasonable jury could have found intent to cause harm, that the government had failed to prove any intent, and that their non-violent actions did not actually damage national defence.
However, in his ruling dated 1 October, the judge cites the defendants' phone calls made while in custody, including one in which Rice said the three entered Y-12 to "begin the work of disarmament"; Thapar argues this was evidence that they acted to frustrate the plant's mission to store and enrich uranium. The mission, he says, was among "activities of national preparedness".
At one point in the ruling, the judge refers to the sabotage charge and asks the question: "But what about the fact of the defendant's non-violence – does it make sense to deal as harshly with non-violence protesters as with foreign saboteurs?" He concludes that, the court must interpret the criminal statute by its terms and "cannot fashion case-by-case exceptions of sympathetic defendants". He goes on to say the defendants' non-violence will be relevant at sentencing.
The court must account for both the "nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and characteristics" of the defendants, he says. He also dismissed the defendants' Rule 33 motion, requiring a retrial based on the prosecutor's alleged misconduct.
Ralph Hutchinson, co-ordinator for Oak Ridge Environmental Peace Alliance, said he was disappointed but not surprised by the ruling. He said he spoke to Rice after the ruling and she told him: "We're fine, we're fine, it's all good."
Hutchinson said: "We did not expect the judge to rise to the occasion. The judge did say, though, he felt constrained by the technical language of the law and suggested he is not going to be overly harsh at sentencing."
Sentencing is scheduled for 28 January next year.
Why Stanford Hoover Institution's
Donald Rumsfeld Is A Total POS
CALL FOR CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION TO REMOVE TRAITORS
WHO WOULD ABOLISH UNITED STATES LIBERTY AND FREEDOMDonald Rumsfeld called Vietnam Veterans:
"WHAT WAS LEFT AFTER THE BEST & BRIGHTEST FOUND A WAY TO DODGE MILITARY SERVICE".
I am a Vietnam Veteran with Honorable Discharge & Recommendation, volunteered to serve, was insulted by Rumsfeld and yellow, scum bag, CHICKENHAWK cowards:
who "Talk the talk, but never walked the walk."
~@~ gave me this directory to voice my opinion.
Statement by Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation on Secretary Rumsfeld's Comments about Vietnam War Conscription
As an organization founded by Vietnam War veterans seeking justice and fairness for all - whether military personnel or civilians - we are outraged by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's comments made at a January 7th DOD press conference when asked about the possibility of resurrecting the draft. Secretary Rumsfeld said troops from Vietnam War conscription, "added 'no value, no advantage, really, to the United States armed services…"
As Vietnam veterans who served with conscripted soldiers, we find Secretary Rumsfeld's egregious slur a grave insult to the memory, sacrifice and valor of those who lost their lives, and, further, dismissive of the hundreds and thousands of lives, both in the U.S. and in Vietnam, who were devastatingly shattered by the Vietnam War.
We suggest that the Secretary choose his words much more carefully in the future, and be sensitive as to how they affect those who put their lives on the line for this country, whether drafted or enlisted. This is all the more critical as our country is on the eve of war with Iraq, and thousands of U.S. troops are again mobilized to potentially engage in battle.
Bobby Muller, President of Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation
Vietnam war: classic AP photographs - in pictures
See powerful images of the conflict from the archives of the news agency. They are featured in a new book, Vietnam: The Real War, published on 2 October, that marks the 50th anniversary of the start of hostilities. It includes AP journalist Malcolm Browne's shocking photo of a Buddhist monk taking his own life in petrol-fuelled flames on a Saigon street in 1963, and Nick Ut's famous shot of a Vietnamese girl in the aftermath of a napalm attack. Warning: readers may find some of these images disturbing. theguardian.com, Wednesday 2 October 2013 07.42 EDT, Article Source
Exhausted South Vietnamese soldiers sleep on a US Navy troop carrier taking them back to the provincial capital of Ca Mau in August 1962. The infantry unit had been on a four-day operation against the Viet Cong in swamplands at the southern tip of the country ~ Photograph: Horst Faas/AP
In the first of a series of fiery suicides by monks, Thich Quang Duc burns himself to death on a Saigon street to protest persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government on 11 June 1963. The photograph aroused worldwide outrage and hastened the end of the Diem government. With the photo on his Oval Office desk, President Kennedy reportedly remarked to his ambassador, 'We're going to have to do something about that regime' ~ Photograph: Malcom Browne/AP
Sunlight breaks through dense foliage around the town of Binh Gia as South Vietnamese troops, joined by US advisers, rest after a cold, damp, and tense night of waiting in an ambush position for a Viet Cong attack that did not come in January 1965. One hour later, the troops would move out for another long, hot day hunting the guerrillas in the jungles forty miles southeast of Saigon ~ Photograph: Horst Faas/AP
A US paratrooper wounded in the battle for Hamburger Hill grimaces in pain as he awaits medical evacuation at base camp near the Laotian border on 19 May 19 1969 ~ Photograph: Hugh Van Es/AP
An unidentified American soldier wears a hand-lettered slogan on his helmet in June 1965. The soldier was serving with the 173rd Airborne Brigade on defense duty at the Phuoc Vinh airfield ~ Photograph: Horst Faas/AP
Women and children crouch in a muddy canal as they take cover from intense Viet Cong fire on 1 January 1966. Paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade (background) escorted the civilians through a series of firefights during the US assault on a Viet Cong stronghold at Bao Trai, about twenty miles west of Saigon ~ Photograph: Horst Faas/AP
Caught in a sudden monsoon rain, part of a company of about 130 South Vietnamese soldiers moves downriver in sampans during a dawn attack on a Viet Cong camp on 10 January 1966. Several guerrillas were reported killed or wounded in the action thirteen miles northeast of Can Tho, in the flooded Mekong delta ~ Photograph: Horst Faas/AP
Medic Thomas Cole looks up with his one unbandaged eye as he continues to treat wounded Staff Sergeant Harrison Pell during a firefight on 30 January 1966. The men belonged to the 1st Cavalry Division, which was engaged in a battle at An Thi, in the Central Highlands, against combined Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. This photo appeared on the cover of Life magazine on 11 February 1966, and photographer Henri Huet's coverage of An Thi received the Robert Capa Gold Medal from the Overseas Press Club ~ Photograph: Henri Huet/AP
The body of a US paratrooper killed in action in the jungle near the Cambodian border is lifted up to an evacuation helicopter in War Zone C on 14 May 1966. The zone, encompassing the city of Tay Ninh and the surrounding area north of Saigon, was the site of the Viet Cong's headquarters in South Vietnam ~ Photograph: Henri Huet/AP
General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnamese chief of the national police, fires his pistol into the head of suspected Viet Cong official Nguyen Van Lem on a Saigon street early in the Tet offensive on 1 February 1968. Photographer Eddie Adams reported that after the shooting, Loan approached him and said 'They killed many of my people, and yours too,' then walked away. This photo won the 1969 Pulitzer prize for spot news photography ~ Photograph: Eddie Adams/AP
A woman mourns over the body of her husband after identifying him by his teeth, and covering his head with her conical hat. The man's body was found with 47 others in a mass grave near Hue on 11 April 1969. The victims were believed killed during the insurgent occupation of Hue as part of the Tet offensive ~ Photograph: Horst Faas/AP
Severely burned in an aerial napalm attack, children run screaming for help down Route 1 near Trang Bang, followed by soldiers of the South Vietnamese army's 25th Division, on 8 June 8 1972. A South Vietnamese plane seeking Viet Cong hiding places accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on civilians and government troops instead. Nine-year-old Kim Phuc (centre) had ripped off her burning clothes while fleeing. The other children (from left) are her brothers Phan Thanh Tam, who lost an eye, and Phan Thanh Phouc, and her cousins Ho Van Bon and Ho Thi Ting. This photo won the 1973 Pulitzer prize for spot news photography ~ Photograph: Nick Ut/AP
Marines move through a landing zone, December 1969 ~ Photograph: AP
Lies, Lies, Lies - BlackMustache.comRumsfeld, Bush, Cheney, and the Torture Whore
should take their own advice !!!
Mike Wilhelm ~ Charlatans, Flamin' Groovies, Loose Gravel, and more
Hear The People
New Old Pawnshop Blues
Click to Visit Podcast Page ~ Click to Visit Mike Wilhelm's Page
Dale [King of the Hill animated cartoon]
Warns You About the Government Everyday ~ Was Right the Whole Time
The Government is Asleep ~ Quick ~ Post Pictures of Freedom ~ imgur
You had one fucking job ~ imgur
May I Suggest the First 535 Layoffs (Congress)? ~ imgur
Republicans are Red, Democrats are Blue, Neither One of Them Gives A Fuck About You ~ imgur
Our Government Is Bad and We Should Feel Bad (Because we elected them)
~ imgur
What If I Told You the Problem Is Our Two-Party System ~ imgur
None of the Above should be a choice on voter ballots!
Sorry folks, America's closed. Moose out front shoulda told you. ~ imgur
How Government Copes With Disagreements ~ imgur
SCREW YOU GUYS, I'M GOING HOME
What's the difference between a politician and POS?
Shit Can't Vote!Republicans and Democrats are Lying Hypocrites,
Who Support Selective Terrorism Against U.S. Military
We've tried nothing and we're all out of ideas ~ imgurRepublicans and Democrats
Should Be Fired!!!
(The Coup's) Ride the Fence by Haik Hoisington ~ BlackMustache.com ~ NOT WORK WORD SAFENone of the Above
should be a choice on Voter Ballots
We'll make our own government with blackjack and hookers ~ imgurNobody brought Peace to Our Times, feeds the hungry,
cares for the sick, and bakes apple pie better than Mom!
Freedom of expression and freedom of speech aren't really important unless they're heard...It's hard for me to stay silent when I keep hearing that peace is only attainable through war. And there's nothing more scary than watching ignorance in action. So I dedicated this Emmy to all the people who feel compelled to speak out and not afraid to speak to power and won't shut up and refuse to be silenced. ~ Tom Smothers
Cree Prophecy
Only after the last tree has been cut down,
Only after the last river has been poisoned,
Only after the last fish has been caught,
Only then will you find money cannot be eaten.
Call For New Corporate Top-level domain: nsa
Examples of Possible Second-level domain names:
google.nsa | apple.nsa | microsoft.nsa | facebook.nsa | aol.nsa | at&t.nsa | yahoo.nsa | snapchat.nsa | sunmicrosystems.nsa | verizon.nsa | paltalk.nsa | skype.nsa | twitter.nsa | youtube.nsa | gnu/linux.nsa | freeBSD.nsa | solaris.nsa | apple/darwin.nsa | etc.
Integrity ~ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Integrity is a concept of consistency of actions, values, methods, measures, principles, expectations, and outcomes. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions. Integrity can be regarded as the opposite of hypocrisy, in that integrity regards internal consistency as a virtue, and suggests that parties holding apparently conflicting values should account for the discrepancy or alter their beliefs.
Hypocrisy ~ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hypocrisy is the state of pretending to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that one does not actually have. Hypocrisy involves the deception of others and is thus a kind of lie.
Judas Iscariot ~ From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Judas Iscariot is infamously known for his kiss and betrayal of Jesus to the hands of the chief Sanhedrin priests in exchange for a payment of thirty silver coins. His name [Judas] is often used to accuse someone [or a corporation] of betrayal.
From: http://www.nsa.gov/research/selinux/background.shtml:
SELinux Background ~ Researchers in the National Information Assurance Research Laboratory of the National Security Agency (NSA) worked with Secure Computing Corporation (SCC) to develop a strong, flexible mandatory access control architecture based on Type Enforcement, a mechanism first developed for the LOCK system. The NSA and SCC developed two Mach-based prototypes of the architecture: DTMach and DTOS. The NSA and SCC then worked with the University of Utah's Flux research group to transfer the architecture to the Fluke research operating system. During this transfer, the architecture was enhanced to provide better support for dynamic security policies. This enhanced architecture was named Flask. The NSA integrated the Flask architecture into the GNU/Linux® operating system to transfer the technology to a larger developer and user community. The architecture has been subsequently mainstreamed into GNU/Linux® and ported to several other systems, including the Solaris™ (Sun Microsystems/Oracle) operating system, the freeBSD® operating system, and the Darwin (Apple) kernel, spawning a wide range of related work.
Images Via Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaWhy? = Because Loyal Users Should Know Who Sold Them Out
The National Security Agency has obtained direct access to the systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US internet giants [who sold out their users?].
The NSA access was enabled by changes to US surveillance law introduced under [Republican] President Bush and renewed under [Democrat] Obama in December 2012. ~ via Dahbud Mensch
Time For A Corporate Death Penalty?
Alternative eMail, Search, & Translate Sites
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Click if one wants a new, locally accepted, email addressYandex Search
Click if one wants to search Web, Images, Video, or needs TranslateDuck Duck Go Browser Search
Closing Argument
[Ed. Note: The video keeps vanishing, so here are the words]
Boston Legal, "Stick It" ~ Season 2, Episode 19 ~ Broadcast: March 14, 2006
James Spader as Alan Shore, Shelley Berman as Judge Robert Sanders, and Scott Paulin as U.S. Attorney Jonathan ShapiroAlan Shore: When the weapons of mass destruction thing turned out to be not true, I expected the American people to rise up. Ha! They didn't.
Then, when the Abu Ghraib torture thing surfaced and it was revealed that our government participated in rendition, a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure then the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.
Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called terrorists suspects, locked them up without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.
And now, it's been discovered the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens. You and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough. Evidentially, we haven't.
In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is we're okay with it all. Torture, warrantless search and seizure, illegal wiretapping's, prison without a fair trial - or any trial, war on false pretenses. We, as a citizenry, are apparently not offended.
There are no demonstrations on college campuses. In fact, there's no clear indication that young people seem to notice.
Well, Melissa Hughes noticed. Now, you might think, instead of withholding her taxes, she could have protested the old fashioned way. Made a placard and demonstrated at a Presidential or Vice-Presidential appearance, but we've lost the right to that as well. The Secret Service can now declare free speech zones to contain, control and, in effect, criminalize protest.
Stop for a second and try to fathom that.
At a presidential rally, parade or appearance, if you have on a supportive t-shirt, you can be there. If you are wearing or carrying something in protest, you can be removed.
This, in the United States of America. This in the United States of America. Is Melissa Hughes the only one embarrassed?
*Alan sits down abruptly in the witness chair next to the judge*
Judge Robert Sanders: Mr. Shore. That's a chair for witnesses only.
Alan: Really long speeches make me so tired sometimes.
Judge Robert Sanders: Please get out of the chair.
Alan: Actually, I'm sick and tired.
Judge Robert Sanders: Get out of the chair!
Alan: And what I'm most sick and tired of is how every time somebody disagrees with how the government is running things, he or she is labeled un American.
U.S. Attorney Jonathan Shapiro: Evidentially, it's speech time.
Alan: And speech in this country is free, you hack! Free for me, free for you. Free for Melissa Hughes to stand up to her government and say "Stick it"!
U.S. Attorney Jonathan Shapiro: Objection!
Alan: I object to government abusing its power to squash the constitutional freedoms of its citizenry. And, God forbid, anybody challenge it. They're smeared as being a heretic. Melissa Hughes is an American. Melissa Hughes is an American. Melissa Hughes is an American!
Judge Robert Sanders: Mr. Shore. Unless you have anything new and fresh to say, please sit down. You've breached the decorum of my courtroom with all this hooting.
Alan: Last night, I went to bed with a book. Not as much fun as a 29 year old, but the book contained a speech by Adlai Stevenson. The year was 1952. He said, "The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live and fear breeds repression. Too often, sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to freedom of the mind are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-Communism."
Today, it's the cloak of anti-terrorism. Stevenson also remarked, "It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."
I know we are all afraid, but the Bill of Rights - we have to live up to that. We simply must. That's all Melissa Hughes was trying to say. She was speaking for you. I would ask you now to go back to that room and speak for her.
A copy of this video can be found here: Speech on America
One Can Lead A Horse To Water, But...
Until there is a solution for this, where one solution has been provided, Nobody will bring Peace to Our Times, feed the hungry, care for the sick, and bake apple pie better than Mom. (otoh) If None of the Above was a choice on voter ballots, it would be a huge step towards recovering U.S. political control, and Nobody gets it.
None of the Above
should be a choice on Voter Ballots
George Carlin, The American Dream ~ http://vimeo.com/37487342
Oh, I hope that I see you again I never even caught your name As you looked through my window pane ~~ So I'm writing this message today I'm thinking that you'll have a way Of hearing the notes in my tune ~~ Where are you going? Where have you been? I can imagine other worlds you have seen ~~ Beautiful faces and music so serene ~~ So I do hope I see you again My universal citizen You went as quickly as you came ~~ You know the power Your love is right You have good reason To stay out of sight ~~ But break our illusions and help us Be the light ~ Message by Michael Pinder
Without love in the dream, it will never come true. ~ Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter
The man whispered, "God, speak to me" and a meadowlark sang. But the man did not hear.
So the man yelled "God, speak to me" and the thunder rolled across the sky. But the man did not listen.
The man looked around and said, "God let me see you" and a star shined brightly. But the man did not notice.
And the man shouted, "God show me a miracle" and a life was born. But the man did not know.
So the man cried out in despair, "Touch me God, and let me know you are there"
Whereupon God reached down and touched the man. But the man brushed the butterfly away and walked on.
Don't miss out on a blessing because it isn't packaged the way you expect.
