Saturday, May 12, 2012

Massive Protests Fill the Streets of Madrid

Massive Protests Fill the Streets of Madrid - TRNN



Tens of thousands of Spaniards joined protestors in dozens of other European cities to mark the 1-year anniversary of the "Indignado" movement, and to demand an end to the austerity measures taken in response to the economic crisis (Full report expected tomorrow).

And the privacy invasion award goes to …

And the privacy invasion award goes to … by Rebecca Bowe

Who’s playing fast and loose with your data? The Big Brother Awards, billed as the “Oscars for data leeches” by the hackers and privacy advocates who hand out the prizes, shine a high-intensity spotlight on companies and individuals with poor privacy track records. Since 1998, Privacy International and a host of affiliated organizations have singled out the worst privacy violators in various countries including the UK, Austria, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Belgium, Japan, New Zealand and the U.S. The title evokes the totalitarian cult personality featured in George Orwell’s 1984, set in a dystopic world of mass surveillance.

In Germany, privacy advocates held their annual edition of the Big Brother Awards in April. The panel of judges was made up of representatives from privacy advocate FoeBuD and other organizations campaigning for data protection and human rights. Curious to know who made Germany’s list of privacy offenders? Here’s the rundown.

Markus Ulbig, Saxon Minister of the Interior 

Markus Ulbig, Saxon Minister of the Interior, snagged a Big Brother Award in the category “Government and Administration” for presiding over a veritable data tsunami that swept up mobile phone data belonging to hundreds of thousands of law-abiding citizens.  Police filed data requests with cell phone service providers for connection logs over a 12-hour period in Dresden, resulting in the staggering release of more than a million phone records associated with some 55,000 identified subscribers. The requests were filed in the wake of a February 2011 mass demonstration against a Dresden Nazi parade.  The police were targeting the anti-Nazi protesters.

The Cloud

 “The Cloud” won a Big Brother Award in the communication category, with the panel of judges characterizing it as “a trend that deprives users of control over their own data.” Almost all cloud storage providers are American companies, they point out, and are therefore obliged by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to allow US authorities access to all data, even if the server farms are situated on European soil. EFF hit on this point when we mentioned that the US Department of Justice (DOJ) “seems to be trying to placate international concern by saying one thing in international fora; but something quite different in the US courts … The DOJ's position in its court filings is that very little, if any, privacy protection is available against US government access to the records of users of US-based cloud computing services.”

Blizzard Entertainment, Inc.

In the consumer protection category, video game company Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. won a Big Brother Award for a change of terms that raised a host of privacy concerns, including a scan of the computer’s working memory to prevent cheating, chat recording that captures text communications, game recording and player rankings that reveal how often and how long players have been playing. “Our reason to give today’s Big Brother Award is the full interaction between numerous components, under the label ‘Real ID,’” the judges noted. 

Dr. Hans-Peter Friedrich, Federal Minister of the Interior

In the “Politics” category, Dr. Hans-Peter Friedrich, Interior Minister in the German federal government, became a Big Brother Award recipient for spearheading joint security projects judges described as violations of the constitutional principle of separating the police, intelligence services and military. The projects created a "national cyber-defense center" and a defense center against right-wing extremism – both of which were established without consulting the Parliament. These security initiatives “cause police, secret services and the military to be networked and integrated in a troublesome way,” the judges wrote. “This is a violation of the German constitution’s historically rooted imperative that these security authorities must work independently and in strict separation.”

Gamma International & FinFisher

In this day and age, what technology is most deserving of a Big Brother Award? Judges settled on surveillance software produced by Gamma International subsidiary FinFisher, which made headlines last year following revelations that it had been deployed under Egyptian ruler Hosni Mubarak. One of the most controversial investigation tools marketed by FinFisher “enables government agencies to search [a personal computer’s] contents remotely and covertly, snoop through e-mails, or record passwords. Even the computer’s microphone and web cam can be activated for surveillance,” noted the Big Brother Award announcement. EFF spotlighted Gamma International as part of a profile of spy tech companies and their authoritarian customers. 
 
Bofrost

German-based frozen foods manufacturer Bofrost earned a Big Brother Award in the “workplace” category for accessing a file on a computer belonging to the Bofrost staff council (in Germany, staff councils are “shop-floor” organizations representing employees in labor negotiations). On another staff council computer, Bofrost installed Ultra VNC – a kind of software that allows a user to display the screen of another computer on his or her own screen – without the staff council’s consent. The workplace espionage was carried out in connection with industrial law court cases, which Bofrost initiated and ultimately lost.

Brita

In the “Economy” category, water filtration company Brita GmbH was singled out for marketing water vending machines for schools that dispense water only when a student taps them with a bottle containing an RFID chip. Judges were extremely critical of the practice. They wrote, “This water bottle system is a glaring example of the industry’s attempts to establish a culture of overtechnisation, surveillance and blatant paternalism from early childhood.”

The Chicago NATO Summit: Preview and Perspective

The Chicago NATO Summit: Preview and Perspective - GRTV


Ever since its inception there have been those who have warned that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, far from offering a simple "collective security" pact to ensure the integrity of its member nations' borders, would in fact be used as an offensive tool of imperial adventurism and conquest. Since the NATO-led Kosovo bombing campaign of 1999 at the very least, those fears have appeared more and more justified.

Since that time, NATO has continued to take a lead role in more and more overtly offensive campaigns of aggression in theatre after theatre. By now it is commonly understood to be an extension of the Pentagon itself, a convenient international military instrument for Washington to wield whenever the pretense of an international consensus cannot be achieved at the UN Security Council.

Find out more in this week's GRTV Backgrounder on Global Research TV.

Related:

Occupy Chicago NATO Week of Actions Preview

Federal government teams up with Big Pharma to scrounge up new uses for failed drugs

Federal government teams up with Big Pharma to scrounge up new uses for failed drugs by Ethan A. Huff

(NaturalNews) The blending of government, private industry, and academia into a single, mega-fascist entity is moving forward at an alarmingly rapid pace in the U.S. today, with the federal government now announcing its intentions to subsidize the drug-creation efforts of Big Pharma on the taxpayer dime. A recent Reuters report explains that roughly $20 million a year may soon be extorted from hardworking Americans and given to drug companies for the sole purpose of inventing phony new medical uses for failed drug compounds.

In their endless quest to develop new "blockbuster" drugs that will generate billions of dollars a year in new profits, drug companies must continually invest in new research and development (R&D) projects with the hope that an efficacious new drug will emerge. In many cases, however, potential new drugs fail to work as intended, which means hundreds, if not thousands, of patented compounds end up getting shelved in storage laboratories where they never again see the light of day.

But all this could quickly change if the Obama-led Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has its way. Rather than let these failed drug compounds go to "waste," why not have the taxpayers fund research into discovering new uses -- any new uses -- so that Big Pharma can recoup its losses and gain much, much more in profits? This, of course, is the mindset of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who told reporters the goal of the project is to "teach an old drug new tricks."

Merging of government and industry means elimination of freedom

As cute as Ms. Sebelius' little quip might sound, apportioning taxpayer-funded cash infusions for failed drug research projects is nothing short of corporate-government fascism, and the very type of public-private partnership that has no place in a free republic. As much as these traitors in the federal government would have us all believe that such research is necessary to find new "cures" for disease, the real driving force behind such a setup is to further bilk the public for the purpose of enriching Big Pharma.

It is the same thing the federal government is trying to do with agriculture, as it capitulates to the demands of corporate food giants like Monsanto that seek none other than to control the world's food supply. Rather than require proper safety testing of genetically-modified organisms (GMOs) -- or at the very least, mandate transparent labeling (http://www.naturalnews.com/029168_GMO_foods_labeling.html)-- the federal government has sided with industry at the expense of the public.

Unless the American people stand up now to stop the madness, the merging of government and industry will only continue to escalate until all semblances of freedom are vanquished. And one of the main drivers of this madness is the federal income tax which, as long as Americans continue to pay it, will continue to be used to enslave them.

Sources for this article include:

http://www.reuters.com

http://www.newswithviews.com/Stang/alan47.htm

The Intel Cowboys: The Ends Justifies the Means

The Intel Cowboys - Veterans Today

"This cloak of national security has become the standard operating procedure and is now routinely invoked as cover for criminal war profiting, illegal drug trafficking and money laundering."

The Expected Repatriotization of the Intel Cowboys by  Preston James, Ph.D.

Robert Steele, Former CIA Spy Connects the Dots & Speaks Out Publicly

A true Patriot and Great American Hero comes forward and speaks the truth we all need to hear:



A separate class of US citizens emerged during the Cold War and after the Roswell crash of 1947 and the other associated UFO crashes and recoveries.  A whole new and separate world of “national security” quickly emerged with the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 and 1952 and other associated new laws. It was obvious that the Pentagon and its key defense contractors went into “panic mode” and locked down everything associated with the UFO situation as a knee jerk reaction.

The True origins of the Shadow Govt and the World of Intel

This new world of intel was essential separated from conventional society by strict secrecy agreements, need to know compartmenting and rigid classifications and hierarchical ranks.

Read complete report..

Manufactured False Flag Bomb Plot Exposed, Officials Irate Over Leak Proving CIA Ran Entire Operation

Manufactured False Flag Bomb Plot Exposed, Officials Irate Over Leak Proving CIA Ran Entire Operation - The Intel Hub

 The supposed al Qaeda bomb plot to blow up a U.S. bound plane has completely fallen apparent with recent revelations that the terrorist was actually working for the CIA and Saudi Intelligence the entire time.

That's right, this huge corporate media manufactured story was literally a NON EVENT with the terrorist actually being an operative who then turned the bomb over to the Central Intelligence Agency.

In an all too predictable next move, the corporate media is now running direct homeland security advertisements for body scanners throughout the entire world.

Immediately after the release of this full scale propaganda story, the corporate CIA run media went to work promoting the dangerous naked body scanners and literally worshipping homeland securities draconian "security" measures.




KnowingTest WARNING: Video Contains Propaganda


Employees of the Chertoff Group touted their naked body scanners throughout all three major news networks within minutes of the story hitting the newswires.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee is furious over the leak that eventually proved that the supposed terrorist arrested in this latest staged event was actually working for the CIA and Saudi Intelligence.

In a segment on Anderson Cooper (Vanderbilt to be specific) show, Rep. Peter King claimed that its unfortunate this information got out and that a major investigation is being launched to find out how it happened.
"It's really, to me, unfortunate that this has gotten out, because this could really interfere with operations overseas," Rep. Peter King of New York told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday. "My understanding is a major investigation is going to be launched because of this."

The mole, who volunteered as a suicide bomber for the terrorist group, was actually working as an intelligence agent for Saudi Arabia, a source in the region familiar with the operation told CNN.

The man left Yemen, traveled through the United Arab Emirates and gave the bomb and information about al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula to the CIA, Saudi intelligence and other foreign intelligence agencies, the source said.

The agent works for Saudi intelligence, which has cooperated with the CIA for years, the source said.

"Indeed, we always were the ones managing him," the source told CNN.
Consider this: If the information was not leaked, networks such as CNN would continue to broadcast 24/7 propaganda as to how al Qaeda almost just blew up an American airline and that we are all in danger if we do not give up more of our rights.

Another report from CNN, this time by Marnie Hunter, used the fear many Americans are most likely feeling from this "bomb plot" to promote the use of naked body scanners not only inside the United States but throughout the world.

Quoting a former head of Israeli airport security, Marnie then went on to reference the Christmas Day Bomber from 2009 (an event completely 100% staged in its own right) and described how the use of naked body scanners inside the U.S. is making us all so much more safe.
A foiled plot to sneak a bomb through airport checkpoints and onto a plane bound for the United States calls attention to gaps in screening measures that are supposed to detect threats airport metal detectors miss.

Outside the United States, the controversial body-scanning technology is not widely used, security experts say. But they say it is the best way to detect plastic explosives hidden on people boarding airplanes.

"Since most of these airports are not using body-scanning technology, including for American flights, I would say that this is an opening that was probably intended to be abused by (the bomb-maker) and those who planned the attack," said Rafi Ron, president of New Age Security Solutions and former head of security of Ben-Gurion International Airport in Israel.
As Madison Ruppert noted in his recent article, "CIA Thwarts Own New Underwear Bomber Plot, Continues Trend of Manufactured Terror," there are a variety of reasons for such a staged plot.
This comes as Senator Rand Paul is pushing to dissolve the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) completely while they continue to expand operations outside of airports and into the daily lives of Americans with no reason to do so.

When the American people begin to become increasingly intolerant of the TSA's invasive tactics and dehumanizing treatment as well as the never-ending global war on terror, there has to be something done to keep us believing that this is for our own good.

This farcical case of manufactured terrorism is just another example of this principle at work. Without the CIA keeping us safe by foiling their own bomb plots, we might have real bomb plots, right?

Or, perhaps, the more logical conclusion would be that without these manufactured bomb plots, there would actually be no bomb plots.
Sadly it seems this country is set to continue to lose the very freedoms the terrorists supposedly hate us for, all in the name of security and the worshiping of the Homeland Security gestapo.

It is up to free thinking citizens throughout the country to continue to expose these staged terror plots and the role that the corporate mockingbird media plays in tricking the public into accepting more and more tyrannical actions in response to plots that were actually staged in the first place.

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Friday, May 11, 2012

Hundreds of protesters clash with police in Naples (VIDEO, PHOTOS)

Hundreds of protesters clash with police in Naples (VIDEO, PHOTOS) - Russia Today



Naples: Demonstrators (L) face riot policemen as they try to enter the offices of Equitalia, Italy's tax collection agency during a protest against the government's austerity measures and the wave of suicide committed by businessmen because of the crisis, on May 11, 2012 in Naples. (AFP Photo / Carlo Hermann)
Two policemen have been injured as hundreds of protesters hurled red paint and eggs at officers guarding Equitalia, Italy's tax collection office, in Naples following the suicide of yet another debt-ridden Italian citizen.
Demonstrators lobbed rocks and bottles at policemen clad in riot gear as the building was quickly closed to the public.

The protesters claimed to have attacked the tax office after its director refused to close it to mourn the latest suicide in Naples, allegedly sparked by the delivery of a bill from the tax recovery office, ANSA news agency reports.

Earlier in the day, a mail bomb was sent to Equitalia's head Rome office, police said.

A bomb squad was called in, and upon examining the package they discovered it was indeed filled with explosives, but contained no fuse. The agency has been widely criticized for increasing the burden of ordinary Italians suffering in harsh economic times.  Another man in the southern town of Pompeii left behind a suicide note chastising the tax collection agency before later shooting himself.

However, an Equitalia spokesman said it was “unacceptable” to blame the agency for the economic crisis gripping the country, and that linking the agency to the recent rash of suicides was “superficial.”

(AFP Photo / Carlo Hermann)
View more photos..

Occupy Chicago NATO Week of Actions Preview

May 10, 2012: Occupy Chicago NATO Week of Actions Preview - chicantv



Spokespeople for protests and other actions planned surrounding the upcoming NATO summit in Chicago offer a preview of their plans and identify resources for journalists. This program was recorded by Chicago Access Network Television (CAN TV).

The Evolution of the Democratic Plantation

The Evolution of the Democratic Plantation - Activist Post

Wall Street's Immunity

© Reuters/Larry Downing
President Obama and Eric Holder
Wall Street's Immunity by Glenn Greenwald

Why has the Obama administration so aggressively protected the financial industry from legal accountability?

Of all the ignominious actions of the Obama administration, the steadfast, systematic shielding of Wall Street from criminal liability is probably the most corrupt in the traditional sense of that word. In Newsweek this week, Peter Boyer and Peter Schweizer have an excellent examination of what happened and why, tying together crucial threads. First they lay out the basic facts, including the core deceit of the President's campaigning for re-election like he's some sort of populist crusader:
With the Occupy protesters resuming battle stations, and Mitt Romney in place as the presumptive Republican nominee, President Obama has begun to fashion his campaign as a crusade for the 99 percent - a fight against, as one Obama ad puts it, "a guy who had a Swiss bank account." Casting Romney as a plutocrat will be easy enough. But the president's claim as avenging populist may prove trickier, given his own deeply complicated, even conflicted, relationship with Big Finance.

Obama came into office vowing to end business as usual, and, in the gray post-crash dawn of 2009, nowhere did a reckoning with justice seem more due than in the financial sector. . . . Two months into his presidency, Obama summoned the titans of finance to the White House, where he told them, "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks." . . .

Candidate Obama had been their guy, accepting vast amounts of Wall Street campaign money for his victories over Hillary Clinton and John McCain (Goldman Sachs executives ponied up $1 million, more than any other private source of funding in 2008). Obama far outraised his Republican rival, John McCain, on Wall Street - around $16 million to $9 million. As it turned out, Obama apparently actually meant what he said at that White House meeting - his administration effectively would stand between Big Finance and anything like a severe accounting. To the dismay of many of Obama's supporters, nearly four years after the disaster, there has not been a single criminal charge filed by the federal government against any top executive of the elite financial institutions.
"It's perplexing at best," says Phil Angelides, the Democratic former California treasurer who chaired the bipartisan Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. "It's deeply troubling at worst."
The Newsweek reporters note that "financial-fraud prosecutions by the Department of Justice are at 20-year lows"; in fact, such prosecutions under Obama "are just one third of what they were during the Clinton administration" - even though the 2008 financial crisis was drowning in financial fraud. Contrast that with the reaction of George H.W. Bush to the much less severe Savings & Loan crisis of the 1980s:
"There hasn't been any serious investigation of any of the large financial entities by the Justice Department, which includes the FBI," says William Black, an associate professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, who, as a government regulator in the 1980s, helped clean up the S&L mess. Black, who is a Democrat, notes that the feds dealt with the S&L crisis with harsh justice, bringing more than a thousand prosecutions, and securing a 90 percent conviction rate. The difference between the government's response to the two crises, Black says, is a matter of will, and priorities. "You need heads on the pike," he says. "The first President Bush's orders were to get the most prominent, nastiest frauds, and put their heads on pikes as a demonstration that there's a new sheriff in town."
The Newsweek article offers two well-grounded theories for why Wall Street has been so aggressively protected by the DOJ. The first is that Obama filled his highest level Cabinet positions with Wall Street-subservient officials, beginning with Attorney General Eric Holder, who had been working as a highly-paid corporate lawyer for the law firm Covington & Burling, which represents "Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Deutsche Bank." The other top-tier DOJ positions were similarly filled with corporate lawyers from large law firms closely tied to and depended upon the financial industry. The problem is obvious:
Some suggest there is also the potential for conflicting interest when the department's top officials come from lucrative law practices representing the very financial institutions that Justice is supposed to be investigating. "And that's where they're going back to," says Black. "Everybody knows there is a problem with that." (Two members of Holder's team have already returned to Covington.)
Why would top DOJ officials - with bulging bank accounts from prior Wall Street service and, with their elevated status as top DOJ officials, future plans for even more bulging bank accounts upon returning - possibly alienate the very industry that will enrich them by prosecuting its top-level criminals? The full-scale immunity bestowed on Wall Street provides the answer.

Then there's the reliance on Wall Street money for President Obama's re-election effort. Newsweek notes the multiple investigations that documented numerous criminal acts leading to the financial crisis, including some explicitly incriminating top Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs. Anticipating possible indictments, "Goldman executives, including the firm's chief executive officer, Lloyd Blankfein, started hiring defense lawyers." Moreover, Black "says the conduct could well have violated federal fraud statutes - 'securities fraud for false disclosures, wire and mail fraud for making false representations about the quality of the loans and derivatives they were selling, bank fraud for false representations to the regulators.'" Beyond the Wall-Street-subservient officials, why have those led to no prosecutions?
Meanwhile, Obama's political operation continued to ask Wall Street for campaign money. A curious pattern developed. A Newsweek examination of campaign finance records shows that, in the weeks before and after last year's scathing Senate report, several Goldman executives and their families made large donations to Obama's Victory Fund and related entities, some of them maxing out at the highest individual donation allowed, $35,800, even though 2011 was an electoral off-year. Some of these executives were giving to Obama for the first time.

Justice insists that political operations such as fundraising are kept strictly distanced from the department, in order to avoid even the appearance of political influence. But the attorney general and his team are not unfamiliar with the process; Holder was himself an Obama bundler - a fundraiser who collected large sums from various donors - in 2008, as were several other lawyers who joined him at Justice.
It would be a leap to infer these Goldman contributions were made - or received - as quid pro quo for dropping a criminal investigation. Still, the situation constitutes what one Justice veteran acknowledged is a "bad set of facts."
The article goes on to detail the pressure that was continuously placed by the Obama administration on state attorneys general to agree to a lax settlement with banks regarding foreclosure fraud, and how they ultimately co-opted the holdouts to agree to the deal. It notes that while Obama, through last fall, "had collected more donations from Wall Street than any of the Republican candidates" (even "employees of Bain Capital donated more than twice as much to Obama as they did to Romney, who founded the firm"), Wall Street money is now beginning to flock to Romney. That's almost certainly because Wall Street dislikes some of Obama's populist rhetoric (financial industry executives are very sensitive and coddled and dislike any hint of criticism, no matter how symbolic and insincere) and because Romney is one of them (they certainly can't go wrong with Romney either). But it also is clear that they are attempting to leverage Obama's need for their support into even further concessions: ones that, if the past is any indication, will be eagerly forthcoming.

This is a vital part of the Obama legacy. The prior decade witnessed the most egregious crimes imaginable by the nation's most powerful actors: torture and warrantless eavesdropping from political officials (with the aid of corporate giants), and massive fraud from financial elites. None has been held accountable; the opposite is true: the Obama administration has steadfastly protected all of them. Echoing the prime theme of my last book - that America's elites are virtually immune from the rule of law - the Newsweek article notes:
Maintaining public faith in the justice system is one of the reasons why people such as Angelides continue to call for a rigorous criminal investigation into Wall Street. "I think it's fundamental that people in this country need to feel that the justice system is for everyone - that there's not one system for those people of enormous wealth and power, and one for everyone else," he says.
But that's exactly the principle that has undergone such a relentless assault under this administration. That general development is odious in its own right. That the specific shielding of Wall Street is driven by such corrupt ends makes it even worse. But the worst part of it all is that Obama is going to spend the next six months deceitfully parading around as some sort of populist hero standing up for ordinary Americans and the safety net against big business, and hordes of people who know how false that is will echo it as loudly and repeatedly as they can, tricking many people who don't know better into believing it.

UPDATE: In comments, Montecarlo recalls this amazing New York Times article from March, which I wrote about at the time, lamenting the extreme levels of corruption in Afghanistan's ruling class ("a narrow business and political elite defined by its corruption"), made all the worse by this: "Despite years of urging and oversight by American advisers, Mr. Karzai's government has yet to prosecute a high-level corruption case." It was that phrase "despite years of urging and oversight by American advisers" - as though the U.S. is a beacon of accountability for ruling class corruption - that was really quite remarkable.

U.S. military training ironically advocates attacking civilian populations to fight terrorism

A slide from one of the training materials used
at the Joint Forces Staff College which openly
advocates using terrorism to fight terrorism.
U.S. military training ironically advocates attacking civilian populations to fight terrorism by Madison Ruppert

Recently released documents, including full presentations, dealing with the training soldiers received at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, reveal that our military is actually advocating the use of terrorism in an attempt to fight terrorism.

As insane as it sounds, it is quite unfortunately true, as you will realize as you read on. Even more unfortunate is that this is actually far from isolated, evidenced by former Mayor of New York City Rudy Giuliani advocating terrorism, the Israeli Vice Prime Minister supporting terrorism, and the training of terrorists by both the United States and the Israeli Mossad.

Let us first examine the definition of terrorism. The only problem is that there is no consensus either in academia or the international legal system as to what terrorism even is.

Clearly, this presents a problem when trying to deal with this subject, but since we will be dealing with the government of the United States of America in this article, we’ll have to settle with their definition.

United States government’s official definition of terrorism, as written in U.S. Code Title 22, Ch.38, Para. 2656f(d) is as follows:

(d) Definitions 
As used in this section— 
(1) the term “international terrorism” means terrorism involving citizens or the territory of more than 1 country; 
(2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents; 
(3) the term “terrorist group” means any group, or which has significant subgroups which practice, international terrorism; 
(4) the terms “territory” and “territory of the country” mean the land, waters, and airspace of the country; and 
(5) the terms “terrorist sanctuary” and “sanctuary” mean an area in the territory of the country— 
(A) that is used by a terrorist or terrorist organization— 
(i) to carry out terrorist activities, including training, fundraising, financing, and recruitment; or 
(ii) as a transit point; and 
(B) the government of which expressly consents to, or with knowledge, allows, tolerates, or disregards such use of its territory and is not subject to a determination under— 
(i) section 2405(j)(1)(A) of the Appendix to title 50; 
(ii) section 2371 (a) of this title; or 
(iii) section 2780 (d) of this title.
One glaring problem here is the vague nature of the definition, which is hardly accidental. Just as the USA PATRIOT Act uses intentionally vague language to leave plenty of room for government misconduct, the definition of terrorism is left intentionally vague in order to be able to apply to anyone and everyone who the government sets their sights on.

However, this also allows us to include the military as “subnational groups or clandestine agents” and thus, as you will see, the methodology being taught to our soldiers at the Joint Forces Staff College is clearly advocating using terrorism to fight terrorism.

The materials obtained by Wired’s Danger Room and given to soldiers as a part of this course are just now emerging (and can be seen below), and the Department of Defense has supposedly canceled the class, but the perspectives revealed in these documents are nothing short of disturbing.

Among other things, the military actually taught soldiers that in order to protect America from Muslim terrorists, they must wage a “total war” against all of the world’s 1.4 billion Muslims.

 Indeed, one of the options promoted in Lieutenant Colonel Matthew A. Dooley’s presentation, “A Counter-Jihad Op Design Model” is “taking war to a civilian population wherever necessary.”

In Lt. Col. Dooley’s model, the claim is made that “due to the current common practices of Islamic terrorists” the Geneva Convention IV 1949 standards of armed conflicts and UN endorsements of it are “no longer relevant or respected globally.”

Dooley goes on to claim that this gives us the ability to attack civilian populations, citing “the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, [and] Nagasaki.”

Dooley indeed realizes how repugnant his position is, although he puts it lightly in writing, “Some actions offered for consideration here will be seen as not ‘politically correct’ in the eyes of many, both inside and outside the United States.”

Yes, Dooley, that is because you’re advocating terrorism and the outright slaughter of civilians in order to further your cause.

No matter how you wrap it up or frame it, you are promoting terrorism. Plain and simple.

One interesting tidbit included in one of the documents which many so-called conspiracy theorists will likely get a kick out of is the mention of transitioning the Muslim world “to 21st Century, representative, democratic, ‘globalist’ values.”

Disturbingly, Lt. Col. Dooley of the Army still holds his position at the Joint Forces Staff College pending an investigation.

Steven Williams, the Joint Forces Staff College spokesman, refused to discuss Dooley’s course or his status at the college.

When Williams was asked if Dooley was responsible for the material in the course, he responded with an even more disturbing answer, “I don’t know if I would classify him [Dooley] as responsible. That would be the commandant” of the school, Major General Joseph Ward.

Danger Room rightly points out, “That makes the two-star general culpable for rather shocking material.”

If Williams was correct in his statement, this belief that terrorism should actually be considered as an option goes all the way to the upper ranks of the military.

Also quite troublesome is the fact that the damage has already been done.

The officers, including colonels, lieutenant colonels, captains, commanders, etc. who attended his course have already been moved up in the military ladder without being “deprogrammed,” as it were.

The most glaring problem – aside from advocating killing civilians – is that Dooley fallaciously conflates all of Islam with what is known as “Islamism,” or the fundamentalist and sometimes radical or militant interpretation of Islam.

Dooley and the other instructors who produced this laughably imbecilic and at times highly offensive material do this through a wide variety of methods both subtle and overt.

 One of the most overt comes when Dooley reminds us that his model (which is “not the Official Policy of the United States Government or the DoD, nor are they in any part listed within the current NSS, NDS, QDR, QDDR or any official DoD document” except their training materials of course) promotes “a direct ideological and philosophical confrontation with Islam.”

“This confrontation will likely make anyone who sees the world in morally equivalent and/or religiously equivalent terms very uncomfortable,” he added.

I truly hope that no one looked over these materials before Dooley used them in his classes, and I also hope that at least one student questioned his positions.

Not only because he is clearly saying that we should consider using terrorism to fight terrorism, but also because these materials are so painfully moronic that I almost find it hard to believe that Dooley and the others were allowed to teach at all.

One glaring example is that he claims that the United States was founded under “a ‘judeo-christian’ [sic] ethic of reason and tolerance.”

He then goes on to claim that deconstructionist philosophies have instilled in us that “Islam and its ideology/politics of hate/violence are just as legitimate as Christianity, capitalism or representative democracy.”

Either Dooley is one of what I like to call “Christians In Name Only” (CINOs) or he simply forgot that whole “Thou shalt not kill” part of the Ten Commandments.

Maybe the irony of him claiming that deconstructionist philosophies and moral relativism are flawed while claiming that we should consider targeting civilians and invoking Christian philosophy is lost on him, but it certainly is not lost on me.

Dooley and others in the American intelligence, law enforcement and, of course, military communities – who Danger Room collectively refers to as “a small cabal of self-anointed counterterrorism experts” – have been attempting to shift the focus from “terrorists” to Islam itself.

Like other intellectually stunted individuals in government, Dooley claims, “We have now come to understand that there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam,’” a claim which is wholly unfounded.

As I previously reported, a survey conducted last year actually found that Muslims categorically reject violence against civilians more often than so-called Christians (who are, of course, CINOs if they ever accept such a tactic in any circumstance).

“It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction,” Dooley concluded.

Once again, Dooley seems to miss just how ironic it is to call Islam a “barbaric ideology” while saying that the United States should seriously consider targeting civilian populations.

Dooley was not the only one spewing hateful rhetoric during his eight-week course.

Others included:

Shireen Burki, an “independent consultant/trainer and writer on subjects relating to as [sic] South Asia/Middle East; counter terrorism and strategic communication” (according to this bio) who called Obama “bin Laden’s dream candidate” and called Islam “an Imperialist/Conquering Religion.”

Stephen Coughlin, an individual who was fired from his position consulting the military Joint Staff who said that al Qaeda helped overthrow Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Qaddafi as part of a scheme to take over the world while mocking those who disagreed.

 John Guandolo, a former FBI employee who told World Net Daily that Obama has fallen under the influence of Islamic extremists and attempted to justify the Crusades by saying they “were initiated after hundreds of years of Muslim incursion into Western lands.”

An investigation into how Dooley was able to present this course, which was “an official Defense Department-sanctioned course,” according to Danger Room, is to reportedly to be conducted by Major General Frederick Rudesheim, the results of which are due May 24.

Unfortunately, as was the case with the insane FBI memo which instructed agents that they could “bend or suspend the law” the vast majority of the damage has already been done.

These intellectually bankrupt ideas have already been placed in the minds of soldiers who were under the impression that they were being trained by an informed individual and assumedly integrated the information accordingly.

All we can do is hope that none of them took any of these insane ideas to heart.

Furthermore, we can only hope that these ideals are not shared by many, as if that was the case we would have a military replete with soldiers who believe terrorism could actually be the answer to terrorism.

To read the JFSC Training Manuals click HERE.

Did I forget anything or miss any errors? Would you like to make me aware of a story or subject to cover? Or perhaps you want to bring your writing to a wider audience? Feel free to contact me at admin@EndtheLie.com with your concerns, tips, questions, original writings, insults or just about anything that may strike your fancy.

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This article first appeared at End the Lie.

Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. He is available for podcast and radio interviews. Madison also now has his own radio show on Orion Talk Radio from 8 pm -- 10 pm Pacific, which you can find HERE.  If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at admin@EndtheLie.com
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Thursday, May 10, 2012

The Evolution of the Butterfly

Apr. 6, 2012: The Evolution of the Butterfly - ampedstatus.org



Renowned cellular biologist, Dr. Bruce Lipton narrates the process of a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly over a milieu of imagery in “The Evolution of the Butterfly”. The film combines first hand footage from the Occupy Wall Street movement with stylized portraits of the recent economic collapse and gives a backdrop of hope to sometimes bleak reality.

For more information on the caterpillar and butterfly, humanity and society, see Spontaneous Evolution: Our Positive Future And A Way To Get There From Here .

Does The West Have A Future?

© unknown
Does The West Have A Future? by Paul Craig Roberts

Living in America is becoming very difficult for anyone with a moral conscience, a sense of justice, or a lick of intelligence. Consider:

We have had a second fake underwear bomb plot, a much more fantastic one than the first hoax. The second underwear bomber was a CIA operative or informant allegedly recruited by al-Qaeda, an organization that US authorities have recently claimed to be defeated, in disarray, and no longer significant.
This defeated and insignificant organization, which lacks any science and technology labs, has invented an “invisible bomb” that is not detected by the porno-scanners. A “senior law enforcement source” told the New York Times that “the scary part” is that “if they buil[t] one, they probably built more.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared that “the plot itself indicates that the terrorists keep trying to devise more and more perverse and terrible ways to kill innocent people.” Hillary said this while headlines proclaimed that the US continues to murder women and children with high-tech drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, and Africa. The foiled fake plot, Hillary alleged, serves as “a reminder as to why we have to remain vigilant at home and abroad in protecting our nation and in protecting friendly nations and peoples like India and others.”

FBI Director Robert Mueller told Congress that the fake plot proves the need for warrantless surveillance in order to detect–what, fake plots? In Congress Republican Pete King and Democrat Charles Ruppersberger denounced media for revealing that the plot was a CIA operation, claiming that the truth threatened the war effort and soldiers’ lives.

Even alternative news media initially fell for this fake plot. Apparently, no one stops to wonder how al-Qaeda, which has become so disorganized and helpless that it is on the run and left its revered leader, Osama bin Laden, in a Pakistan village alone and unguarded to be murdered by US Navy Seals, could catch the CIA off guard with an “undetectable” bomb, to use the description provided by Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein, who was briefed on the device by US intelligence personnel.

Notice that the Secretary of State has committed the bankrupt US and its unravelling social safety net to the protection of “India and others” from terrorists. But the real significance of this latest hoax is to introduce into the fearful American public the idea of an undetectable underwear bomb.

What does this bring to mind? Anyone of my generation or any science fiction aficionado immediately thinks of Robert Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters.

Written in 1951 but set in our time, Earth is invaded by small creatures that attach to the human body and take over the person. The humans become the puppets of their masters. Large areas of America succumb to the invaders before the morons in Washington understand that the invasion is real and not a conspiracy theory.

On clothed humans, the creatures cannot be detected, and the edict goes out that anyone clothed is a suspect. Everyone must go about naked. Women are not even allowed to carry purses in their hand, because the creature can be in the purse attached to the woman’s hand.

Obviously, if the CIA, the news sources, and Dianne Feinstein’s briefers are correct that defeated al-Qaeda has come up with an “undetectable” bomb, we will have to pass through airport security naked.

If so, how will this be possible? If each airline passenger must go through a personal screening by disrobing in a room, how long will it take to clear “airport security”? I doubt there is any place in North or South America that the traveller couldn’t drive there faster. Or perhaps this is an answer to depression level US unemployment. Millions of unemployed Americans will be hired to view naked people before they board airliners.

As the Transportation Safety Administration division of Homeland Security has taken its intrusions, unchallenged, into train, bus, and highway travel, are we faced with the total collapse of the clothing industry? Stay tuned.

A couple of years ago a noted philosopher wrote an article in which he suggested that Americans live in an artificial or virtual reality. Another noted philosopher said that he thought there was a 25% chance that the philosopher was right. I am convinced that he is right. Americans live in the Matrix. Nothing that they know or think that they know is correct.

For example, our non-truth-telling “leaders” continually declare that “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.” This myth is one of the many reasons rolled out to justify American taxpayers’ declining incomes being taxed to provide the Israeli government with the means to murder Palestinians and steal their country.

Israeli democracy a myth you say? Yes, a myth. According to news reports compiled and reported by Antiwar.com (May 8), the September 4 Israeli elections have been cancelled, because the “opposition leader Shaul Mofaz is joining the government.”

Mofaz sold out his party for personal power, a typical politician’s behavior.

Mofaz’s treachery produced protests from his followers, but, according to news reports, “Israeli police were quick to crack down on the protest, terming it ‘illegal’ and arresting a number of journalists.”

Ah, “Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.”

In truth Israel is a fascist state, one that has been in violation of international law and Christian morality during the entirety of its existence. Yet, in America Israel is a hallowed icon. Like Bush, Cheney, and Obama, millions of American “christians” worship Israel and believe it is “God’s calling” for Americans to die for Israel.

If you believe in murdering your opponents, not debating with them, dispossessing the powerless, creating a fictional world based on lies and paying the corporate media to uphold the lies and fictional world, you are part of what the rest of the world perceives as “The West.”

Let me back off from being too hard on The West. The French and Greek peoples have shown in the recent elections that they are unplugging from the Matrix and understand that they, the 99%, are being put by their elites in a position to be the sacrificial lambs for the mistakes of the 1% mega-rich, who compete with one another in terms of how many billions of dollars or euros, how many yachts, collections of exotic cars, and exotic Playboy and Penthouse centerfolds they have as personal possessions.

The central banks of the West–the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank, and the UK bank–are totally committed to the prosperity of the mega-rich. No one else counts. Marx and Lenin never had a target as exists today. Yet, the left-wing is today so feeble and brainwashed that it does not exist as even a minor countervailing power. The American left-wing has even accepted the absurd official account of 9/11 and of Osama bin Laden’s murder in Pakistan by Navy Seals. A movement so devoid of mental and emotional strength is useless. It might as well not exist.

People without valid information are helpless, and that is where Western peoples are. The new tyranny is arising in the West, not in Russia and China. The danger to humanity is in the nuclear button briefcase in the Oval Office and in the brainwashed and militant Amerikan population, the most totally disinformed and ignorant people on earth.

The spectacle of terror and its vested interests

The spectacle of terror and its vested interests by Naomi Wolf

 The news stories, which quickly surface, long enough to cause scary headlines, then vanish before people can learn how often the cases are thrown out. These are stories about "bumbling fantasists", hapless druggies, the aimless, even the virtually homeless and mentally ill, and other marginal characters with not the strongest grip on reality, who have been lured into discourses about violence against America only after assiduous courting, and in some cases outright payment, by undercover FBI or police informants.

They have become a litany in recent years. The terrifying 2003-2004 national news stories that a Detroit "sleeper cell" had sent Muslim terrorists to blow up Disneyland and other landmarks, including in Las Vegas, was later thrown out of court, with accusations of prosecutorial misconduct, to almost no press attention - the same cycle of hype and failed convictions that have characterized many such stories. The evidence had included a home video taken in Disneyland, "doodles", and a guy with a credit card fraud problem, who had been pressured to diminish his own sentence by accusing his buddies.

Read more..

Microsoft bans Firefox on ARM-based Windows, Mozilla says

IE10: the only browser allowed on Windows
for ARM-based devices?
(Credit: Microsoft)
Microsoft bans Firefox on ARM-based Windows, Mozilla says by Steven Shankland

Raising the specter of last-generation browser battles, Mozilla launches a publicity campaign to seek a place for browsers besides IE on Windows devices using ARM chips.

Stop me if you've heard this one before: Microsoft muscles aside other browsers and cements the dominance of Internet Explorer. The browser market, deprived of competition, stagnates.

That, of course, is what happened during the first browser war of the 1990s and beyond, on personal computers. Today, Mozilla's top lawyer warned that Microsoft's behavior threatens a repeat of history, because it's telling Mozilla that it's barring Firefox from forthcoming Windows 8 machines that use ARM processors.

"They're trying to make a new version of their operating system which denies their users choice, competition, and innovation," said Harvey Anderson, Mozilla's general counsel. "Making IE the only browser on that platform is a complete return to the digital dark ages when there was only one browser on the Windows platform."

Anderson has been discussing the matter with his counterparts at Microsoft, but the company hasn't budged, he said. Anderson also detailed concerns in a blog post.

Microsoft declined to comment for this story.

Read complete report..

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Sibel Edmonds: US government needs to keep the fear factor alive

Sibel Edmonds: US government needs to keep the fear factor alive - RT



The Obama administration has the worst track record when it comes to prosecuting whistleblowers. Obama once claimed he'd work hard to have a transparent government, but many have faced retaliation for revealing controversial government information. Sibel Edmonds, who is a whistleblower, waited 340 days for FBI clearance of her memoir but finally released it on her own. Edmonds, founder of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition, joins us for more.

Monster Black Holes Stifle Star Birth

An artist's illustration of the view into
a black hole. CREDIT: April Hobart, NASA,
Chandra X-Ray Observator
Monster Black Holes Stifle Star Birth - LiveScience

The intense energy and winds from gigantic black holes can block the birth of stars as scientists have long suspected, a new analysis of distant galaxies reveals.

Most galaxies, including our own Milky Way, are thought to have supermassive black holes at their hearts. Some of these monster black holes are relatively calm, but others, known as "active galactic nuclei," or AGN, can spew out more radiation than our entire galaxy does, and from a patch of space no larger than our solar system.

Scientists had long thought all this energy from active galactic nuclei quenched the formation of stars around them.

"There is so much energy in the radiation coming out from the AGNs, that if the surrounding gas absorbs just a small fraction — about one-twentieth will do it — it will have enough energy to escape from the host galaxy, and effectively becomes a wind clearing the galaxy of gas," said study lead author Mathew Page, an astrophysicist at University College London. "Once the gas has been heated up and driven out, there's no material from which to form stars." [Gallery: Black Holes of the Universe]

Proving whether this star-stifling occurs has been a problem because measuring star formation in galaxies containing powerful active galactic nuclei has long been difficult. The radiation from these jumbo black holes outshines that from star formation in nearly all wavelengths of light.

The best chance to find this evidence lies in the far-infrared to millimeter wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, since active galactic nuclei emit comparatively little radiation at these wavelengths.

In the new study, scientists combined observations of far-infrared to millimeter wavelengths, which shed light on star formation, with those of X-rays, which are clear signs of active galactic nuclei, to help show these supermassive black holes apparently do suppress star formation.

"Even though the black hole is little more than a speck in size compared to the galaxy, basically that speck controls the fate of the whole galaxy," Page told SPACE.com.

The research is detailed in tomorrow's (May 10) issue of the journal Nature.

Submillimeter observations from the Herschel Space Observatory revealed that rapid star formation was common in the host galaxies of active galactic nuclei when the universe was 2 billion to 6 billion years old. However, X-ray observations from the Chandra X-ray Observatory showed that vigorous star formation was not seen around black holes that had X-ray luminosities of 10^44 ergs per second. (An erg is a unit of energy, and 10^44 is short for a 1 with 44 zeroes behind it.)

"10^44 ergs per second is about 25 billion times the luminosity of the sun; it is about 10 times the luminosity of the Milky Way," Page said. "But this is only the luminosity of the active galactic nucleus in X-rays — it will radiate about 20 times as much power over the rest of the electromagnetic spectrum."

All this energy should be enough to drive powerful outflows of gas, stripping the areas around the black holes of stellar construction materials.

Future research can focus on "catching some galaxies as they're actually going through the stage of having their star formation switched off, rather than seeing them before or after, as we do for most of the objects we've looked at here," Page said. "The biggest obstacle to that is the need to have infrared and X-ray observatories in space. A successor to the Chandra and XMM-Newton X-ray observatories is what I'd like."

Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

The Monsters at the Turning of the Age

The Monsters at the Turning of the Age - Snordelhans



The Heretic presents... AN EXCERPT from Les Visible's "The Monsters at the Turning of the Age" found here. http://www.zippittydodah.com/2012/03/monsters-at-turning-of-age.html Images sourced by unclest1nky.

Editor's note: From the American Heritage Dictionary 1992-6

Fascism (noun) 1.a. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. b. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government. 2. Oppressive, dictatorial control, Italian fascismo, from fascio, group, from Late Latin fascium, neuter of Latin fascis, bundle.

Police State Montreal: Brutal Treatment of Protesters

Police State Montreal: Brutal Treatment of Protesters - GRTV



Compilation of footage of protests in and around Montreal, Quebec, Canada, and the ever-increasing use of brutal and often illegal police tactics to break up the crowds. This is what democracy looks like?

« Vos mensonges, nous les dynamitons
Nous refusons ce passé où déjà vous nous empaillez
Comme des trophées malheureux
Vous nous voulez civilisés nous vous savons barbares ­»
L'Afficheur hurle, Paul Chamberland, 1964

Vidéo monté à base d'images disponibles publiquement, exclusivement du printemps 2012 et principalement à Montréal.

Made with publicly available footage from spring 2012, mostly in Montreal.

TSA Agent Whacks Congressman in the Testicles - Original Video Below

TSA Agent Whacks Congressman in the Testicles - Original Video Below - ArizonaSean



Rep. Francisco Canseco (R-TX) claims that he was assaulted by a TSA agent during a pat-down at the San Antonio International Airport.

"I went through the full-body scanner, they stopped me and they said 'we're going to have to pat you down,'" Canseco, a freshman representative, said. "I said OK; I lifted up my arms, they start patting my leg very, very aggressively. The guy goes up close to my groin and when you get pat there it hurts! And there's a very human reaction when it hurts there — you move the offensive thing out of the way and you step back."

He continued, "In doing so, I would expect the TSA agent to say hey, I'm sorry, which would have been OK. Instead he raises his hand, he says ,'I need a manager here, I've been assaulted!'"
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/congressman-details-gropey-tsa-encounter-%E2%...

ORIGINAL STORY AND VIDEO: http://www.kens5.com/home/I-TEAM-EXCLUSIVE--Video-of-TSAs-aggressive-pat-down...

TSA is under the executive branch. Dictator Obama could stop the pat downs and x-rays with an executive order. Call your whimps in congress today.

Brain Represses Bad Words for Bilingual Readers

© Lim Yong Hian, Shutterstock
Mandarin Chinese depends on tones
to differentiate word meanings.
Brain Represses Bad Words for Bilingual Readers - LiveScience

Reading a nasty word in a second language may not pack the punch it would in your native tongue, thanks to an unconscious brain quirk that tamps down potentially disturbing emotions, a new study finds.

When reading negative words such as "failure" in their non-native language, bilingual Chinese-English speakers did not show the same brain response as seen when they read neutral words such as "aim."

The finding suggests that the brain can process the meaning of words in the unconscious, while "withholding" information from our conscious minds.

"We devised this experiment to unravel the unconscious interactions between the processing of emotional content and access to the native language system.

We think we've identified, for the first time, the mechanism by which emotion controls fundamental thought processes outside consciousness," study researcher Yanjing Wu, a psychologist at Bangor University in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. "Perhaps this is a process that resembles the mental repression mechanism that people have theorized about but never previously located."

Translating negativity

Bilingual people typically respond less emotionally to words in their second language. For example, swear words in a foreign tongue don't usually feel as shocking; likewise, some research has found that people are more comfortable talking about embarrassing topics in a second language.

To unravel the emotions of language, Wu and his colleague Guillaume Thierry, also of Bangor University, recruited 15 native English speakers, 15 native Chinese speakers, and 15 native Chinese speakers who were also fluent in English (all had first learned English around age 12). They set up an experiment in which these volunteers saw word pairs on a screen. One of the words was always neutral, while the other could be neutral, positive or negative. In addition, each word was two syllables in Chinese, with the first syllable of each word always sounding the same.

For example, the positive word "honesty" was paired with the neutral word "program." In Chinese, honesty translates to "chengshi" and program to "chengxu." Negative words included failure, war, discomfort and unfortunate.

The participants were asked to push a button if the words were linked in meaning. (In some pairs, they were.) Meanwhile, the scientists used electrodes on the scalp to measure the electrical response in the brain to reading these pairs of words.

Self-protection

The findings revealed that although they weren't aware of it, the bilingual participants' brains were translating the positive and neutral words into Chinese as they read them in English. But surprisingly, this response was absent when they read negative words.

"We were extremely surprised by our finding," Thierry said in a statement. "We were expecting to find modulation between the different words - and perhaps a heightened reaction to the emotional word - but what we found was the exact opposite to what we expected - a cancellation of the response to the negative words."

It's not yet clear why the brain dampens the response to these words, the researchers report Tuesday (May 8) in the Journal of Neuroscience.

"We think this is a protective mechanism," Thierry said. "We know that in trauma, for example, people behave very differently. Surface conscious processes are modulated by a deeper emotional system in the brain. Perhaps this brain mechanism spontaneously minimizes negative impact of disturbing emotional content on our thinking, to prevent causing anxiety or mental discomfort."

#NoWay: Twitter Rebukes Prosecutors for Subpoena of Occupy Messages

Malcolm Harris was among some 700
protesters who were arrested in October
during a march across the Brooklyn Bridge.

(Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images)
#NoWay: Twitter Rebukes Prosecutors for Subpoena of Occupy Messages - CommonDreams.org

Social media giant steps in to defend occupy protester against NY prosecutors


In a motion filed in a criminal court in New York this week the social media company Twitter argued that it should not be forced to turn over messages from one of its users because the 'tweets' belong to the user, not to them. The New York district attorney sought the messages in relation to a case stemming from hundreds of arrests made on the Brooklyn Bridge last fall at the height of the Occupy protests in Manhattan.

Twitter stepped in legally after the user targeted by the DA's office, Malcolm Harris, was told he had no standing to fight the order himself, because a court judge deemed the messages belonged to the company and not him.

In a ten-page memorandum for the court, Twitter wrote that its terms of service "make absolutely clear that its users own their content", giving users the right to move to resist subpoenas themselves.

“To the extent the desired content is publicly available, the District Attorney could presumably have an investigator print or download it without further burdening Twitter or the Court,” Twitter wrote in its motion.

The ACLU applauded the move. “This is a big deal,” wrote Senior Staff Attorney Aden Fine. “Law enforcement agencies—both the federal government and state and city entities—are becoming increasingly aggressive in their attempts to obtain information about what people are doing on the Internet. And while the individual Internet users can try to defend their rights in the rare circumstances in which they find out about the requests before their information is turned over, that may not be enough. Indeed, even though Twitter provided notice to the Twitter user in this particular case, and even though he was able to get an attorney to file a motion seeking to quash the subpoena, the court found that the Twitter user did not have legal “standing” to challenge the D.A.’s subpoena.”

"If Internet users cannot protect their own constitutional rights, the only hope is that Internet companies do so," he said.
*  *  *
The Guardian: Twitter sides with Occupy protester in NY court battle over tweet history
Harris was arrested in October and charged with disorderly conduct for his participation in an Occupy Wall Street march that ended with some 700 arrests after protesters walked onto the road section of the Brooklyn Bridge. New York prosecutors issued a subpoena to Twitter on 26 January, requesting three months worth of tweets from Harris's twitter account as well as "user information, including email address".

The New York Times has reported that prosecutors want to see three months of Harris's tweetsin the belief they may contradict his potential defence that police allowed protesters to walk in the road.

"The defendant may have used the account to make statements while on the bridge that were inconsistent with his anticipated trial defense," the Times quoted assistant district attorney Lee Langston as saying.

Harris is not the first Twitter user to be subpoenaed by a US prosecutor. In January 2011 an Icelandic MP's tweets were the subject of an order from the US justice department as part of an investigation into WikiLeaks.

Birgitta Jonsdottir lost her legal battle against in November when a judge ruled Twitter must release her details. In that case, as with Harris, Jonsdottir only heard of the subpoena request when Twitter challenged the court order.

Ben Lee, legal counsel for Twitter, said in a statement: "As we said in our brief, Twitter's terms of service make absolutely clear that its users own their content. Our filing with the court reaffirms our steadfast commitment to defending those rights for our users."
*  *  *
ACLU: Twitter Stands Up For One Of Its Users
Twitter has filed a motion in state court in New York seeking to quash a court order requiring it to turn over information about one of its users and his communications on Twitter. This particular case involves a Twitter user, Malcolm Harris, who is being prosecuted by the District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan for disorderly conduct in connection with the Occupy Wall Street protest that occurred on the Brooklyn Bridge last year.

This is a big deal. Law enforcement agencies—both the federal government and state and city entities—are becoming increasingly aggressive in their attempts to obtain information about what people are doing on the Internet. And while the individual Internet users can try to defend their rights in the rare circumstances in which they find out about the requests before their information is turned over, that may not be enough. Indeed, even though Twitter provided notice to the Twitter user in this particular case, and even though he was able to get an attorney to file a motion seeking to quash the subpoena, the court found that the Twitter user did not have legal “standing” to challenge the D.A.’s subpoena.

If Internet users cannot protect their own constitutional rights, the only hope is that Internet companies do so.

The Internet is an amazing way for people to communicate with anyone they want to, whenever they want to, on whatever subject they want to discuss—all (mostly) for free. It is, in some ways, the ultimate embodiment of the First Amendment. But one potential problem for free speech on the Internet is that, for almost all of us, we need to rely on Internet companies. And while the government is bound by the First Amendment, the First Amendment may not always prevent private companies from restricting our free speech rights.

That is why it is so important to encourage those companies that we all increasingly rely on to do what they can to protect their customers’ free speech and privacy rights. And that is why it is so important that the public—and other companies—know when a company actually stands up for its users’ rights.

Twitter did so here, and Twitter should be applauded for that. We hope that other companies will do the same thing. Our free speech rights may depend on it.
*  *  *

Wired: Twitter Hits Back at Court, Prosecutors Over ‘Occupy’ Order
Last January, the government, in an investigation of Malcolm Harris, asked Twitter to hand over all tweets posted to the account of @destructuremal between Sept. 15 and Dec. 31 last year, as well any information Twitter had about the owner of the account, including his e-mail address.

Harris was arrested last October for disorderly conduct during a protest that was conducted on the Brooklyn Bridge.

Prosecutors sought tweets made to the account “to refute the defendant’s anticipated defense, that the police either led or escorted the defendant onto stepping onto the roadway of the Brooklyn Bridge.” They sought the information using a 2703 order, which allows authorities to obtain data without a warrant under the Stored Communications Act, or SCA.

More powerful than a subpoena, but not as strong as a search warrant, a 2703(d) order is supposed to be issued when prosecutors provide a judge with “specific and articulable facts” that show the information they seek is relevant and material to a criminal investigation. The people targeted in the records demand, however, don’t have to themselves be suspected of criminal wrongdoing.

The Justice Department used the same type of order in December 2010 to demand information from Twitter about several people associated with the secret-spilling site WikiLeaks as part of a secret grand jury investigation. Twitter fought back in that case as well.

After Twitter received the demand for information about Harris’s account, the company notified Harris, who decided to fight it.

But on Apr. 20, Judge Matthew A. Sciarrino, Jr., denied Harris’s motion to quash the subpoena, saying that he had no standing to fight the order because he had “no proprietary interests” in the account holder’s information or in the tweets. To back this assertion, the judge quoted from Twitter’s terms of service agreement stating that account holders granted Twitter “worldwide, non-exclusive” right to use use, copy, or display the content. Since the defendant granted this license to Twitter by agreeing to the terms of service, this “demonstrates a lack of proprietary interests in his Tweets,” the judge wrote.

The judge also rejected Fourth Amendment protections Harris claimed, because the judge said that online content stored on a third-party server was not physical and therefore did not have the same privacy protections that applied, for example, to a home. Particularly when that data was published online where the public could see it.
#  #  #


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