“I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic…”
So begins the Oath of Enlistment for the U.S. military, but in an explosive interview with a National Guard whistleblower shown below, soldiers are now being advised they will be ordered to break that oath should civil unrest erupt across the country.
Referred to only as “Soldier X” under promise of anonymity, an Army National Guardsman spoke via phone with Infowars Nightly News Producer Rob Dew regarding a recent briefing his unit underwent on actions the military would take in the event that an Obama election loss sparked rioting in America’s streets.
Citing not only recent widespread threats to riot if Mitt Romney were to become the next U.S. president, but threats to actually assassinate him should he win, Soldier X’s superiors dispensed plans of how the National Guard would be responsible for “taking over” and quelling such unrest.
The soldiers were reportedly told “Doomsday preppers will be treated as terrorists.”
In addition, guns will be confiscated.
“They have a list compiled of all these doomsday preppers that have gone public and they plan to go after them first,” Soldier X said. He claimed those in charge are acting under the belief that preppers will be “the worst part” of any potential civil unrest.
Soldier X was also told that any soldiers in the ranks who are known as preppers will be deemed “defects.” He explained the label meant these soldiers would be treated as traitors. “If you don’t conform, they will get rid of you,” he added.
Unit members also warned not to associate with any fellow soldiers who are preppers.
Not only does the military reportedly plan to target preppers should mass chaos break out, but Soldier X also voiced his concerns regarding civilian gun confiscation.
Soldier X admitted, “Our worry is that Obama’s gonna do what he said he’s gonna do and he’s gonna outlaw all weapons altogether and anybody’s name who is on a weapon, they’re gonna come to your house and try to take them.”
It would not be the first time the National Guard has been used to unconstitutionally disarm law-abiding citizens, robbing them of their Second Amendment right to bear arms. In the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, police and military took to the streets disarming lawful gun owners, including those who were on dry land and had plenty of stored food and water.
Fast forward to this past summer when a leaked Army manual dated 2006 entitled, “Civil Disturbance Operations” surfaced outlining plans not only to confiscate firearms domestically during mass unrest, but to actually detain and even kill American citizens who refuse to hand over their guns. This manual works in conjunction with “FM 3-39.40 Internment and Resettlement Operations,” another Army manual leaked this year, which instructs troops on how to properly detain and intern Americans into re-education camps, including ways that so-called “psy-op officers” will “indoctrinate” incarcerated “political activists” into developing an “understanding and appreciation of U.S. policies and actions.”
Add these manuals to the plethora of Executive Orders Obama has signed during his term which have dismantled our Constitution piece by piece, including the martial law implementing National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order which gives the president the power to confiscate citizens’ private property in the event of any national emergency, including economic.
Add it all to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) in which Obama granted powers to disappear and indefinitely detain American citizens without any due process, and it is easy to see the tyrannical big picture our government has painted.
When asked if he would go along with gun confiscation, Soldier X replied he and his fellow like-minded guardsmen planned to stand down — not answer the phone or show up to post.
“I’m sorry but I don’t believe in suicide,” he said.
Preppers are becoming regular government targets these days, most recently when a Missisippi prepper group member with a clean record was suddenly taken off his flight halfway to Japan and informed he was on the no-fly list, an FBI terrorist watchlist, stranding him in Hawaii. Other preppers have been denied their Second Amendment rights without legitimate cause.
It is beyond glaringly obvious at this point the U.S. government is gearing up for mass civil unrest. Not only has the DHS sparked controversy by purchasing billions of rounds of ammo, but the department even went so far as to begin classifying further purchases, blacking out bullet figures it is using taxpayer money to buy.
In addition, while FEMA can procure a billion dollars in bulk food supplies, the FBI’s Communities Against Terrorism project released a flier instructing military surplus store owners to report any customers who “make bulk purchases of items” including “meals ready to eat”.
Should society as we know it collapse following the election, it would seem the ultimate prepper and the ultimate terrorist is, indeed, the U.S. government.
The How to Escape America Guide is an audio book that explains why you should leave the United States before the empire collapses. It explains how you can immigrate to New Zealand and Australia where wages are higher, unemployment is lower, economic conditions are better, and where people enjoy far more freedom than in the US
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Officials who apparently thwarted an alleged terror plot against Europe used voiceprinting technology to catch several suspects.
The British Government Communications Headquarters, which snoops on criminal suspects and works with MI6 spies, used voice identification technology to help uncover the plot, AP says. Several of the voices were recorded along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Voiceprinting compares known voice recordings to new conversations to determine who is speaking. It involves recording words to capture the frequencies associated with a person’s voice, and using statisical models to extrapolate speech patterns. Advocates say it is as accurate as a fingerprint, and can be more useful especially for monitoring overseas suspects.
“Advances in these types of technology have been key in thwarting plots and catching suspects,” an anonymous British government official said.
Critics say voiceprints can be inaccurate, however, because a person’s voice is affected by variables like mood and health.
The reputed plot involved Britain, France and Germany, sparking travel warnings this week. Suspects reportedly spoke of a Mumbai-style shooting spree, recalling the 2008 attacks that killed 166 people.
Police in southern France arrested 12 suspects Tuesday, AP reports.
The recent arrests are the not the first time criminals’ own voices have betrayed them. In 2007, police arrested Colombian drug kingpin Juan Carlos Ramirez Abadia, who used plastic surgery and multiple aliases to dodge authorities, after the US Drug Enforcement Agency matched his voice to a tape recording made by Colombian authorities. The Pentagon even uses voiceprinting in Iraq.
Law enforcement agencies are reportedly considering how a voice database could help prevent future plots, AP says. An Interpol official said voice samples could be stored and shared with its 188 member countries.
One of the oldest Maya tombs ever found has been uncovered in western Guatemala, say archaeologists.
Located at a temple site in Retalhuleu province, the grave is thought to be that of an ancient ruler or religious leader who lived some 2,000 years ago.
Carbon-dating indicated the tomb had been built between 700 and 400 BC, said government archaeologist Miguel Orrego.
A rich array of jade jewels, including a necklace depicting a vulture-headed human figure, were found.
The scientists found no bones at the tomb in the Tak’alik Ab’aj site – some 180km (110 miles) south of Guatemala City – probably because they had disintegrated.
But the vulture-headed figure appears to identify the tomb’s occupant as an ajaw – or ruler – because the symbol represented power and economic status and was given to respected elder men.
Big chief
The scientists named the grave’s occupant K’utz Chman, which in the Mayan language, Mam, means Grandfather Vulture.
“He was a big chief”, said Mr Orrego. “He bridged the gap between the Olmec and Mayan cultures in central America.”
The leader may have been the first to introduce elements which later became characteristic of the Maya culture, such as the building of pyramids and the carving of sculptures depicting the royal families, Reuters news agency cited historians as saying.
The Olmec empire began to fade at around 400 BC, while the Maya civilisation was starting to grow and develop, said Christa Schieber, another archaeologist working at the site.
The Mayas went on to rule much of Central America from 250 to 800 AD; their empire extended from modern-day Honduras to central Mexico.
Complex, nonlinear math appears to explain a primary dolphin hunting technique.
The math involves addition, subtraction, multiplication and ratio comparisons.
It is possible that dolphins possess remarkable inborn math skills.
Dolphins may use complex nonlinear mathematics when hunting, according to a new study that suggests these brainy marine mammals could be far more skilled at math than was ever thought possible before.
Inspiration for the new study, published in the latest Proceedings of the Royal Society A, came after lead author Tim Leighton watched an episode of the Discovery Channel’s “Blue Planet” series and saw dolphins blowing multiple tiny bubbles around prey as they hunted.
“I immediately got hooked, because I knew that no man-made sonar would be able to operate in such bubble water,” explained Leighton, a professor of ultrasonics and underwater acoustics at the University of Southampton, where he is also an associate dean.
“These dolphins were either ‘blinding’ their most spectacular sensory apparatus when hunting — which would be odd, though they still have sight to reply on — or they have a sonar that can do what human sonar cannot…Perhaps they have something amazing,” he added.
Leighton and colleagues Paul White and student Gim Hwa Chua set out to determine what the amazing ability might be. They started by modeling the types of echolocation pulses that dolphins emit. The researchers processed them using nonlinear mathematics instead of the standard way of processing sonar returns. The technique worked, and could explain how dolphins achieve hunting success with bubbles.
The math involved is complex. Essentially it relies upon sending out pulses that vary in amplitude. The first may have a value of 1 while the second is 1/3 that amplitude.
“So, provided the dolphin remembers what the ratios of the two pulses were, and can multiply the second echo by that and add the echoes together, it can make the fish ‘visible’ to its sonar,” Leighton told Discovery News. “This is detection enhancement.”
But that’s not all. There must be a second stage to the hunt.
“Bubbles cause false alarms because they scatter strongly and a dolphin cannot afford to waste its energy chasing false alarms while the real fish escape,” Leighton explained.
The second stage then involves subtracting the echoes from one another, ensuring the echo of the second pulse is first multiplied by three. The process, in short, therefore first entails making the fish visible to sonar by addition. The fish is then made invisible by subtraction to confirm it is a true target.
In order to confirm that dolphins use such nonlinear mathematical processing, some questions must still be answered. For example, for this technique to work, dolphins would have to use a frequency when they enter bubbly water that is sufficiently low, permitting them to hear frequencies that are twice as high in pitch.
“Until measurements are taken of wild dolphin sonar as they hunt in bubbly water, these questions will remain unanswered,” Leighton said. “What we have shown is that it is not impossible to distinguish targets in bubbly water using the same sort of pulses that dolphins use.”
If replicated, the sonar model may prove to be a huge benefit to humans. It might be able to detect covert circuitry, such as bugging devices hidden in walls, stones or foliage. It could also dramatically improve detection of sea mines.
“Currently, the navy uses dolphins or divers feeling with their hands in such difficult conditions as near shore bubbly water, for example in the Gulf,” he said.
In terms of dolphin math skills, prior studies conducted by the Dolphin Research Cetner in Florida have already determined that dolphins grasp various numerical concepts, such as recognizing and representing numerical values on an ordinal scale. Marine biologist Laela Sayigh of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said, “In the wild, it would be very useful (for dolphins) to keep track of which areas were richer food sources.”
While dolphins are among the animal kingdom’s most intelligent animals, they are not likely the only math champs.
Parrots, chimpanzees and even pigeons have been shown to have an advanced understanding of numerical concepts. The studies together indicate that math ability is inborn in many species, with number sense, mathematical skills and verbal ability perhaps being separate talents in humans that we later learn to combine.
How online privacy tools are changing Internet security and driving the (probably quixotic) quest for anonymity in the digital age.
For many of us, the Internet is like a puppy—lovable by design and fun to play with, but prone to biting. We suspect that our digital footprint is being tracked and recorded (true), mined and sold (super true), but we tolerate these teeth marks because, for many of us, the Internet is irresistible, its rewards greater than its risks. In a 2011 Gallup poll, more than half of those surveyed said they worried about privacy issues with Google, yet 60 percent paid weekly visits to the search giant. As long as we clear our search terms, block cookies, use antivirus software and see that our social media presence isn’t too social, we’ll be OK. Right?
Increasingly, this sense of security is an illusion. “I don’t trust anything on the Internet,” says digital whistleblower John Young. “Cybersecurity is a fiction.” He would know: Young was a seminal member of WikiLeaks and runs Cryptome, a website that posts “documents prohibited by governments worldwide”—think FBI files and manuals detailing how Microsoft spies on us. He argues that the tenuous architecture of the Internet prevents it from being truly secure.
Case in point: Mat Honan, the wired.com writer whose entire digital existence was destroyed by hackers within the span of an hour last August. The cyberbaddies broke into Honan’s Gmail, accessed his Apple ID account and deleted data on his MacBook, iPhone and iPad, including photos of his family. The scariest part of this privacy breach—aside from the fact that its victim is a tech writer (ahem)—is that the hackers hijacked his online world using nothing more than his billing address and the last four digits of his credit card, information that’s relatively easy to obtain online if you know the right tricks. Honan’s story served as yet another reminder that THE INTERNET IS NOT SAFE, PEOPLE.
So is it time to go off the grid? That’s one option. Another is to ditch the puppy analogy and view the Internet the way those who demand higher than average levels of security do: as a giant tracking device that can be outsmarted. Countless tools exist to cloak your digital identity: email encryption services, “meta search engines” that promise private browsing and networks and software that offer a degree of anonymity and, in some cases, entry to previously inaccessible websites. Sounds like the stuff of spy novels, but these tools are available to anyone with an Internet connection.
Of course, the idea of online anonymity clashes with the prevailing “share everything” approach to the Internet—and the moneymaking opportunities therein—which makes it a fascinating and complicated topic. Its opponents say it fosters hate and crime (Mark Zuckerberg’s sister, Randi Zuckerberg, who used to head up marketing at Facebook, famously called for the end of online anonymity earlier this year, stating that “People behave a lot better when they have their real names down”), while privacy champions argue that anonymity grants greater security and freedom of expression. The John Youngs of the world will tell you that being truly unidentifiable online is a fairy tale. But every fairy tale has a lesson, and even if you get hives thinking about trading your identity for a more armored online existence, there’s plenty to learn from the heroes, villains and everyday secret-keepers attempting to go John Doe in the digital realm.
Photo by Richard Fleischman.
There’s a famous New Yorker cartoon from 1993 that shows two dogs in front of a computer, one saying to the other, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.” This was a novel proposition in the Web’s early days. Liberated from our actual identity, we chatted in forums using ridiculous pseudonyms such as “beaniebabyaddict47” and posted comments as “Anonymous,” our snarky alter ego. Anonymity felt great, even if technically it was just a state of mind. But then social media arrived, and with it the idea that transparency is power. Suddenly, we decided it was important to tell the Internet our real name and what we had for breakfast.
For those who want to keep their breakfast habits a secret, the rise of transparency created new security risks. Enter the digital cloaking device. In 2002, the U.S. Naval Research Lab debuted Tor, one of the more effective “anonymizers” to date. A group of M.I.T. grads developed it with the goal of masking one’s IP address, the string of numbers that reveals a given computer’s physical location (snoops and hacks love your IP because it brings them one step closer to determining the real you).
At the heart of Tor is a concept called “onion routing,” which sends the “packets” of info needed to get from points A to B online on a winding route through a network of randomly selected servers, each one knowing only the packet’s previous and next stops in the chain, thereby hiding the user’s IP and allowing a degree of anonymous Web browsing. Confused? In the simplest terms, Tor separates the origin and destination of your online communication, essentially tunneling you through the Web.
The U.S. Navy financed this tunnel to protect government communications, but its code was released to the public because, as Karen Reilly, development director for the nonprofit Tor Project, puts it, “A Navy anonymity network wouldn’t work. The idea is to have many diverse users so that you can’t tell who somebody is just by virtue of them using Tor.” Using seed money from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, the Tor Project formed a decade ago to grow Tor’s user base and maintain and improve its network. Today, Reilly estimates that Tor has about half a million daily users and 3,000 to 4,000 “nodes,” volunteer servers that hopscotch you through the network.
Tor is available as a free download on torproject.org. This software includes a Tor-enabled version of the Firefox Web browser that hides your IP address and forces an encrypted connection where available. Sounds great, but like most anonymizing tools, Tor is flawed. It slows Web browsing and, if someone decided to keep an eye on a large enough swath of the Internet, he could theoretically analyze data patterns to guess where the communication originated.
These weaknesses haven’t stopped hundreds of thousands from downloading the service. Reilly says most people use it to protect their browsing because “they think it’s creepy to be tracked. They don’t like the fact that there’s a file on them somewhere being kept by an advertiser who knows what cereal they like to eat.” And there are more weighty reasons to use Tor: Journalists and activists in oppressive regimes use it to circumvent Internet censorship. It’s been reported that Arab Spring revolutionaries tapped Tor to access Facebook and Twitter, both of which were blocked at various points by Egypt, Iran and others (incidentally, Iran has the second-highest number of Tor users; the United States has the most).
Criminals, trolls and other creeps also love Tor—no surprise given their affinity for the Internet in general. In the mood for some heroin? Silk Road is a one-stop online shop for illegal goods that uses Tor to hide its location from users and, ostensibly, law enforcement. Anonymity haters reference nasty sites like these when stating their case, but Reilly thinks this is misguided. “If Tor didn’t exist, criminals would have other options.”
Other options used by both crooks and law-abiders include virtual private networks, which are faster than Tor and sometimes less secure—and generally not free. Like Tor, VPNs provide a secure connection between computers and can be used as a gateway to websites that would otherwise be inaccessible. VPNs are all the rage in China, where government censorship of the Internet is the norm. Mara Hvistendahl, a Shanghai-based correspondent for Science magazine, has experimented with different privacy tools since moving to the city in 2004. She started with Tor, but found it too slow for regular Web browsing, so she switched to VPNs to access Gmail and Google Scholar, sites that have been blocked by Chinese censors. “Every foreign journalist I know in China uses a VPN,” she says. Another VPN user—a China-based English and journalism teacher who spoke to Sky on the condition of you know what—says she pays for a VPN called Astrill to reach Facebook.
Both women mentioned pairing VPNs with other privacy tools. Hvistendahl has heard of reporters combining VPNs, multiple SIM cards and the secure email service Hushmail to protect sources. If it’s true that no online cloaking device is totally effective, this bundling strategy might be our best bet for protecting ourselves online—though good luck trying to convince the average Web user to do it.
Most people have a difficult time with far-off risk,” says Ashkan Soltani, a former technologist with the Federal Trade Commission’s privacy division who’s currently a privacy/security researcher and consultant. “That’s why we passed seat belt laws. The likelihood of you getting in a car accident is low, but the harm that you might experience in that accident is potentially high. It’s the same online. We’re bad at figuring out how our data could be used against us in the future, so we don’t care.”
We should care, says Lee Tien, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, because data privacy laws are “not incredibly strong.” This is an understatement in countries such as China and Iran, where Web users have little or no online freedom. The US has the Wiretap Act and the Stored Communications Act, both of which address basic privacy issues such as police needing an interception order to tap emails. But these laws fail to look at how private corporations handle our digital footprint, and as a result, we’re at the mercy of, say, Facebook’s data policy or Google’s data policy, and we all know that they have our best interests in mind . . . .
But here’s the real stinger: Let’s say you decide to take control of your digital footprint and start using some of the tools mentioned above. Also, you begin paying closer attention to the privacy policies on the various sites you visit, clicking “do not track” when possible and opting out of initiatives such as Google’s targeted ads program, which is based on the content of your email. Congratulations, responsible netizen, you now have more online security than most—have fun on your cumbersome, hard-to-manage, less optimized version of the Internet!
Ken Berman puts it another way: “If you want to be on Facebook, there are certain things—anonymizing tools that prevent tracking, prevent cookies, prevent identifying behavior—that make some of these social media tools difficult to work with.” Berman, an IT security expert who for years worked at the Broadcasting Board of Governors (the United States’ international broadcasting arm), sees two options for Internet users: “Either you say, ‘I give in. I enjoy the Web, so I’ll put up with walking by a store and getting a text message that says go in this store and you’ll get an immediate 10 percent coupon.’ Or you say, ‘No, I don’t want to play in that world, so I’m going to use Tor or a VPN. I’m going to clean up my session every time I log out and not leave any remnants of my behavior.’ I don’t see how there’s anything in between.”
Soltani is more optimistic. He sees a future where governments pass stronger digital privacy laws and geeks build easier-to-use privacy controls that work seamlessly with the slobbering puppy version of the Internet we all love. In the meantime, he’s doing his best to educate as many people as possible on the virtues of proper digital hygiene, whether that means using anonymity tools or simply being more aware of the fact that you leave a data trail wherever you go these days (don’t even get us started on smartphones).
“My big thing is to demystify I.T.,” says Soltani. “It doesn’t help to think of it as magic or something that’s bringing the world to an end. Tech changes the way we interact with one another and our society—and we should be cognizant of that and adjust accordingly.”
For now, it remains to be seen how these changes will affect online anonymity, a concept that begs important questions about what sort of society we want to live in: Is anonymity a right? Should we be able to engage in discourse anonymously? Should beaniebabyaddict47 be allowed to have such an obnoxious alias? Stay tuned. // With consultation on information systems security from Matt Lange at Milwaukee Area Technical College.
Ask politicians whether campaign contributions influence their decisions, and they’ll tell you certainly not.
Ask any citizen, and they’ll likely give the opposite answer.
With that in mind, we’re re-introducing a web-based embeddable widget — for anybody to use — that lists the top 10 donors and their contributions to any member of the House and Senate, their opponents, and the presidential candidates. Wired updated the widget in conjunction with Maplight, the Berkeley, California-based nonprofit dedicated to following money and politics.
“Corporate influence in politics has gone off the charts, and it’s more important than ever for voters to understand who is financing candidates,” said Evan Hansen, editor in chief of Wired.com. “Maplight has done the hard work of compiling the data. At Wired, we’re happy to help get that information out to the wider public, and share it as broadly as possible with this web-based embeddable widget.”
The widget is free to steal and comes with a Creative Commons license. The widget displays a shadow outline of the politician adorned with NASCAR-style logos of some of the top donors giving that candidate money.
Maplight pulls down up-to-date campaign-financing figures from the Federal Election Commission, which are fed into a database so the widget stays current.
“In just a few weeks, voters will confront a ballot filled with candidates whose campaigns have been paid for by wealthy donors. People deserve to know the truth about whose interests their candidates are really representing,” said Daniel Newman, president and co-founder of MapLight. “We’re proud to work with Wired to give voters a tool they can use to draw back the curtain on the moneyed influence plaguing our political system.”
The widget shows where candidates are ranked in terms of how much money they’ve raked in compared to their peers. It also shows how they rank among all federal candidates.
President Barack Obama, for example, comes in first for presidential candidates, having garnered $201 million. His GOP rival, Mitt Romney, comes in second for presidential candidates with $150 million. Not surprisingly, the two rank first and second among all candidates for federal office.
When it comes to the top-10 donor lists, the total from each company or organization includes donations from individual workers and a firm’s Political Action Committee, if it has one. Goldman Sachs and its PAC has given Romney nearly $544,000 — Romney’s top contributor.
The largest contributors to the president were government employees, at more than $2 million.
The Supreme Court ruled in 2010 that the First Amendment prohibited the government from limiting contributions from unions and Political Action Committees to political campaigns that are independent of an individual’s campaign. Of note, however, the widget does not keep track these types of independent expenditures.
We introduced the first version of the widget in 2010, with Maplight’s help. But that one only listed incumbents and did not have challengers, unlike the new widget. The older version was viewed millions of times.
When we unveiled the original widget, we used it to produce a story about federal funding and a controversial helicopter — Follow the Money: Pork-Powered Pig Preps for Flight, which highlighted pay-to-play contributions to select politicians from defense firms hoping to win a contract to build the next Marine One, the president’s personal helicopter.
What we learned was something we suspected and knew all along: There is a correlation to politicians’ voting records and where they get their money.
And we’re giving away the widget to help you prove it in other cases, as well.
Human history-altering newsflash: Scientists have demonstrated that injections of youthful blood carry semi-magical, rejuvenating qualities–at least for gray-whiskered mice. The researchers believe that the same might hold true for humans, suggesting that diseases like Alzheimer’s and indeed aging itself might be prevented through the transfusion of the youth’s vigorous lifeblood.
To clarify: No, this revelation is not the premise of the next blowout romance-vampire movie trilogy. It is a real scientific discovery made in Stanford University’s laboratories and presented earlier this week at the Society for Neuroscience conference in New Orleans.
The study showed that 18-month-old mice who had been received eight transfusions of young blood had a much easier time making it through the a watery maze than the old mice who had not received any transfusions.
“They were 18 months old but they were acting much younger, like a four to six-month-old,” said Dr. Villeda, one of the lead researchers.
The study also demonstrated that older mice who had received the blood transfusions also began to grow new synopses in their brain–connections which are essential for the retention of memory.
This result holds promise far beyond solving the plight of grandparents accompanying their grandchildren through those pesky Halloween hay labyrinths. The researchers said that this information could, in the future, be used to prevent mental aging itself.
“Do I think that having young blood could have an effect on a human? I am thinking more and more that it might,” said Dr. Villeda.
If the same does hold true for humans, this discovery could become a major scientific breakthrough at a time when the world’s elderly population is growing exponentially. Scientists predict that by 2050 global population over 60 will reach a dizzying two billion people, which could cause a massive health care and economic crisis as societies struggle to care for these seniors. Some scientists have said that this explosion of Alzheimer’s alone could cause a “ looming medical-care disaste r is beyond comparison with anything that has been faced during the entire history of humanity.”
Scientists are excited about the potentials of this study.
Chris Mason, professor of regenerative medicine bioprocessing at University College London , told The Guardian , “Even if the finding leads only to a drug that prevents, rather than reverses the normal effects of ageing on the brain, the impact upon future generations will be substantial – potentially outweighing other wonder drugs such as penicillin.”
As significant and surprising as this study is, the results are supported by past research. Last year, the same Stanford researchers demonstrated that injecting young mice with old blood led to mental deterioration in the rodents.
This research led them to undertake this more recent experiment to see whether the reverse could be true.
Moving forward, it is unlikely that a vial of youthful blood itself will become the treatment for aging. Instead, scientists say that the new challenge is to identify what compounds inside young blood carry this rejuvenating effect–potentially allowing researchers to extract or replicate these particularly chemicals.
Still, this study itself is a significant scientific breakthrough that once again shows the incredible predictive powers of both science fiction novels and despotic leaders.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: “Kim Jong-il was right!” (Korea’s late leader reputedly spent years injecting himself with the blood of healthy youths.) “Does that mean he was also right about communism?”
Unfortunately, the results in that aspect are inconclusive.
One aspect of its mass appeal: it tells the story of modern America. The world’s superpower — bigger, richer, stronger than any other nation — but we see ourselves as victims. Forced to invade our Latin neighbors, repeatedly, to see that our businessmen get a fair deal. Pearl Harbor and 9/11, forcing us to bomb nations into oblivion (the total weight of bombs dropped on Vietnam was 3x what we used in WWII, aprox 1,000/person). But we remain pure in our own eyes because our motives are pure.
Others see its appeal in the personal history of its readers: “Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender’s Game, Intention, and Morality“, John Kessel, update of an article originally published in Foundation – the International Review of Science Fiction, Spring 2004 — Excerpt:
Ender gets to strike out at his enemies and still remain morally clean. Nothing is his fault. Stilson already lies defeated on the ground, yet Ender can kick him in the face until he dies, and still remain the good guy. Ender can drive bone fragments into Bonzo’s brain and then kick his dying body in the crotch, yet the entire focus is on Ender’s suffering. For an adolescent ridden with rage and self-pity, who feels himself abused (and what adolescent doesn’t?), what’s not to like about this scenario?
Needless to say most of the people I know who Really Love the book aren’t soldiers, they’re socially-malformed geeks who’re attracted to the ‘meritocratic’ vision of the genius freak, ‘precociously’ outwitting everyone around him, morally pure though his thoughts are bloody and selfish, who wins battles with his brain but secretly is almost superhumanly effective at physical tasks – which you’d never guess to look at him.
Card’s writing comes, I think, from a more plainly geeky wish-fulfillment urge, and is a way of placing the misunderstood genius/asshole at the center of the moral universe. It’s no wonder that Ender spends most of his time lecturing his peers (moral/intellectual inferiors) and playing video games, and it’s no wonder so many people at (e.g.) MIT, where Ender’s Game is a kind of shared keystone text, live identical or very similarly narcissistic lives. The dominant social pathologies at MIT line up neatly with Ender’s own.
For such people, I think, the military side of the story functions on several levels: at once you (as Ender) can outwit the System, freak out the guys in uniform, and yet vicariously live through the quasi-military exploits of Battle School. The appeal of the book is then partly the faux-countercultural appeal of sticking it to the Man by listening to loud rock music while you work 60-hour weeks at the office, being cool rather than doing anything cool, or anything at all. Ender’s moral purity has nothing to do with his actions; it’s adversity that has blessed him.
(2) The powerful and often weird aspects of Ender’s Game
From the best analysis of the book, a chapter in Science fiction in the real world by Norman Spinrad (1990):
Card has faithfully followed the plot skeleton. He writes a terse, well-paced, transparent line of prose that expertly moves the reader through the story without calling attention to itself, which is the stylistic ideal of the pulp tradition. It is not surprising, therefore, that Ender’s Game would be a successful work of commercial sci-fi. But it ended up winning both the Hugo and the Nebula and, indeed, made Card’s commercial career. Yet from the plot-summary, it is not so easy to see why such a work should stand out from the pack.
Something must be going on at a deeper level. Something certainly is. For one thing, there is a truly bizarre subplot, in which Ender’s brother Paul and sister Valentine take over political leadership of the Earth while still in their teens. They do this by creating pseudonymous letterhack personas who debate each other on a worldwide computernetwork bulletin board. I kid you not, you could look it up.
For another thing, Ender, Valentine, and Paul simply do not come off as the young children Card tells us they are. Their speech patterns, their level of intellection, the style of their interaction with their peers, what they say, and what they do all mark them as adolescents.
Except for one factor. Superficially, at least, sex never rears its head. What Card gives us in the guise of young children are desexualized adolescents. Well, not exactly, for beneath the surface there certainly is a strong sexual subtext in Ender’s Game. Paul and Ender compete throughout the novel for the affections of sister Valentine, and in the denouement, Ender, the hero, gets the girl. Valentine goes off with Ender to colonize the home planet of the aliens in a complex, hurried, over-dense final chapter that reads like an outline for a whole other novel, while poor Paul must content himself with being ruler of the solar system.
Why has this novel struck such a strong chord with SF readers? The main plot would seem to be a rather ordinary variation on the standard plot skeleton. Card’s realization of his future civilization is narrowly confined to a few self-contained locales and game-realities, the subplot is entirely unbelievable, and the main character relationship is a thinly sublimated incestuous love triangle.
No, the strength of Ender’s Game as a piece of sci-fi can’t rest on the plot, or the uniqueness of the speculation, or the world building, all of which, while certainly craftsmanlike, are no stronger than similar jobs of work in hundreds of novels. But when we compare the psychic profile of the typical sci-fi fan to the characters Card has created as reader- identification figures, we see at once why Ender’s Game does such a world-class job of pushing the buttons of the targeted audience.
Talk about sympathetic heroes with whom the reader can identify! How about a sexually arrested adolescent who becomes the savior of the human race through his prowess at war-sports and video games? How about two other sexually arrested adolescents who take over the world as electronic fanzine letterhacks? This is as close as identification of the audience with the hero can get — the identification figures are the audience’s fantasy images of themselves.
… It is difficult to believe that such a writer would name the central figure in his incestuous love triangle Valentine (as in Be My Valentine) were he not deliberately pointing to the nature of the relationship.
Even more difficult to believe that he was unaware of the obvious sexual connotations when he named his aliens the “Buggers.” That’s right, the insectoid aliens who are never really described, aren’t called “Bugs” or “Bug-Eyed Monsters,” but Buggers throughout the whole novel. The little boys and girls, the desexualized adolescents, are trained by the adults to go out and fight buggers, and Ender, the hero, wins his Valentine, at least in plot terms, when he exterminates Buggery.
What is Card actually addressing in this subtext? He’s certainly playing with powerful symbology! Incest, buggery, genocide, and power fantasies lurking darkly below the surface of his supposedly desexualized adolescents, and in the context of a militaristic milieu that seems to indicate that he is groping toward some libidinal equation between military power fantasies, war games, and the sublimated sexual dynamic. Alas, all this powerfully evoked psychosexual subtext never coheres into a comprehensible thematic statement, nor does it really seem to mesh with the overt storyline in a way that adds resonance.
… The bulk of the novel is something of a guiltless military masturbation fantasy, nicely epitomized by the fact that all the action takes place in war-games frameworks. Only when Ender is consumed by guilt after he learns that the final game was real does Card turn the moral tables and make a perfunctory anti-war statement, a thematic turnaround that, in plot terms, seems to come from deep left field.
Let me tell you about a book I just read. It’s the story of a young boy who was dreadfully abused by the grown-ups who wanted to mold him into an exemplary citizen. Forced to suppress his own emotions in order to avoid being paralyzed by trauma, he directed his energy into duty rather than sex or love. In time, he came to believe that his primary duty was to wipe out a species of gifted but incomprehensible aliens who had devastated his kind in a previous war. He found the idea of exterminating an entire race distasteful, of course. But since he believed it was required to save the people he defined as human, he put the entire weight of his formidable energy behind the effort to wipe out the aliens.
You’ve read it, you say? It’s Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card, right? Wrong. The aliens I’m talking about were the European Jews, blamed by many Germans for gearing up World War I for their own profit. The book is Robert G. L. Waite’s The Psychopathic God: Adolf Hilter.
… Hitler, like Ender, spent his formative years as the third of three children. Like Ender, he eventually grew away from all of his family except his older sister. The main difference is that it was her daughter, and not Angela herself, with whom he engaged in a chaste but emotionally compelling love affair. … Similarly, both children’s lives were deformed by physical and emotional abuse. Ender escapes the abuse of his peers to join the Battle School — where he is, of course, abused by adults. Hitler was literally treated like a dog by his father, who expected him to answer to his whistle and accept vicious beatings …
Ender’s chastity until his marriage at the age of 37 is puzzling. But, again, when we look at the Hitler connection, all becomes clear. Probably because of his childhood trauma, Hitler remained chaste for an unusually long time. He isn’t known to have felt love for any woman until — are you ahead of me here? — age 37.
Another bizarre element is the fact that Ender chooses a bitter, self-destructive woman for his mate. Why? I presume it’s to remind us that Hitler too chose self-destructive women. Of the seven close to him, six killed themselves or made serious attempts to do so.
Singularity reaches Humanity. Corporations deliver an Apocalyptic Transhumanist Cyborg Society. A brilliant and stunningly accurate short film. Must Watch!
Written & Directed by: Stephan Zlotescu
Director of Photography: H1
Original Music: J-Punch
Producer: Christopher Sewall
Manager: Scott Glassgold / IAM Entertainment
Most of us tend to think of geometry as a relatively dry, if not altogether boring, subject remembered from our Middle school years, consisting of endless axioms, definitions, postulates and proofs, hearkening back, in fact, to the methodology of Euclids Elements, in form and structure a masterly exposition of logical thinking and mental training but not the most thrilling read one might undertake in their leisure time. While the modern, academic approach to the study of geometry sees it as the very embodiment of rationalism and left brain, intellectual processes, which indeed it is, it has neglected the right brain, intuitive, artistic dimension of the subject. Sacred geometry seeks to unite and synthesize these two dynamic and complementary aspects of geometry into an integrated whole. Robert Lawlor addresses this fundamentally dualistic nature of geometry in his essential work: Sacred Geometry – Philosophy and Practice (1982), in reference to a medieval representation of geometry as a woman seated at a table, with compasses in hand, surrounded by the implements of the art:
“Geometry as a contemplative practice is personified by an elegant and refined woman, for geometry functions as an intuitive, synthesizing, creative yet exact activity of mind associated with the feminine principle. But when these geometric laws come to be applied in the technology of daily life they are represented by the rational, masculine principle: contemplative geometry is transformed into practical geometry.”
Geometry as a Woman
Lawlor here expresses a crucial idea in the definition of Sacred Geometry—it has both a contemplative side and a practical side, and an intuitive and intellectual side, it is an activity both right brained and left brained.
Further differentiating Sacred Geometry from the ordinary geometry of our school days is its’ relation to number and symbol. This difference, I think, is succinctly expressed by Miranda Lundy in her superb little book entitled simply Sacred Geometry (2001)
“Sacred Geometry charts the unfolding of number in space. It differs from mundane geometry purely in the sense that the moves and concepts involved are regarded as having symbolic value, and thus, like good music, facilitate the evolution of the soul.”
Sacred Geometry, then, charts the unfolding of number in space and has symbolic value and thereby has conferred upon it a qualitative status absent from common geometry. And here I must add that magnifying the inherent power of Sacred Geometry is the fact that it also charts the unfolding of number in time. This is an idea of such compelling ramifications that I must return to it in detail in another article.
At the very earliest appearance of human civilization we observe the presence and importance of geometry. It is clearly evident that geometry was comprehended and utilized by the ancient Master Builders, who, laboring at the dawn of civilization some four and one half millennia ago, bestowed upon the world such masterworks as the megalithic structures of ancient Europe, the Pyramids and temples of Pharaonic Egypt and the stepped Ziggurats of Sumeria. That geometry continued to be employed throughout the centuries from those earliest times until times historically recent is also clearly evident. That it was made use of by cultures far-flung about the globe is evident as well, finding expression in China, Central and South America, in pre-Columbian North America amongst Native Americans, in Africa, SE Asia and Indonesia, Rome and of course in classical Greece and in Europe, from the Megalithic era some 4000 years ago, as stated, and again some 3000 years later, magnificently expressed during the Gothic era of cathedral building.
Geometry is especially associated with Classical Greece and such illustrious figures as Pythagoras, Plato and Euclid, who wrote the first actual textbook on the subject, the aforementioned Elements. Geometry has also been held in particular reverence and high esteem by the ancient order of Freemasons, which, of course, hearkens back to the great Cathedral Building era of the 12th through the 14th centuries, from whom modern Masons derive their pedigree.
From the foregoing is should be obvious that geometry was, and is, closely associated with Architecture, that great manuscript of the human race, which provided the first and primary vehicle for the human employment of geometry. That it is closely associated with Art, Music and Handicraft is obvious as well to the student of the history of these subjects. Ultimately, it must be appreciated that it was apparent to archaic peoples, as it is becoming increasingly apparent to contemporary students of the subject, that geometry is intrinsic to the very order of Nature itself, both biological and cosmic, and, now, thanks to scientific inquiry, the realization dawns that geometry lies at the basis of the molecular and atomic levels of creation.
The word Geometry itself means ‘Earth measure,’ which definition is generally attributed to the fact that the ancient Egyptians regularly utilized geometry to resurvey the fertile farmlands of the Nile river floodplain in late summer, after existing boundaries were buried by the deposition of thick layers of alluvium from the annual flooding of the river. However, I would suggest the possibility that the idea of ‘Earth measure’ applied not only to the local measure of tracts of agricultural land in Egypt, but also on a much larger scale, literally, to the measure of the Earth itself, in a geodetic sense. More on that compelling idea later.
Anecdote has it that over the entrance to Plato’s Academy was inscribed the phrase “Let none enter here who are ignorant of geometry.” Whether or not this is a historical fact, the idea should make sense to anyone who has attempted to ascend the heights of metaphysical experience and knowledge, that a form of mental training designed to develop the rational faculties and the reasoning ability to high levels of proficiency, would be a prerequisite for successful completion of the metaphysical journey and avoidance of the many traps, snares and pitfalls that await the inattentive pilgrim who presumes to tread the path of knowledge.
An old Masonic lecture from several centuries ago states:
“If we consider the symmetry and order which govern all the works of creation, we must admit that geometry pervades the universe…By geometry we may curiously trace nature through her various windings to her most concealed recesses; by it we discover how the planets move in their respective orbits and demonstrate their various revolutions; by it we account for the return of the seasons and the variety of the scenes which each season displays to the discerning eye……By it we discover the power, wisdom and goodness of the Grand Artificer of the Universe and view with delight the proportions which connect the vast machine…”
‘Demiurge’ by William Blake
We are here introduced to a another fundamental idea lying at the heart of Sacred Geometry,— that it provided the means by which God, as the Great Architect of the Universe, was able to frame the template of Creation. Freemasons, Hermeticists and Initiates into the Mysteries have for centuries held the conception of the Universe as the material expression of a hidden reality, an invisible blueprint, set down by the hand of the Grand Geometrician, and to which the study of Geometry provided the key and the means to render visible that which is concealed from the undiscerning and untrained eye, and that these fundamental geometric relations, manifested through form, pattern and number, form the very basis of harmony.
The idea, vision rather, of God as a Great Architect and Geometrician has found expression through numerous sources throughout the ages. The great Christian theologian St. Augustine, who held both Pythagoras and Plato in high regard, grasped the significance of geometric form, pattern and proportion, and their representation through numerical symbolism, when he stated:
“Numbers are the thoughts of God.”
And further when he said:
“The construction of the physical and moral world alike is based on eternal numbers.”
Galileo clearly understood this geometrical/numerical dimension of reality when he said:
“Mathematics is the alphabet with which God has written the universe.”
And so did Johannes Kepler when he said:
“Geometry existed before the creation. It is co-eternal with the mind of God…Geometry provided God with a model for the Creation…”
Here in the Keplerian view Geometry is clearly envisioned as existing upon an archetypal level, prior to the manifestation of material creation, and serving as the model utilized by the Great Architect. Through the study and practice of Sacred Geometry this invisible geometric matrix begins to reveal itself as the template upon which the material universe, expressed through space and time, has been framed by the hand of the Great Architect.
The famous early 20th century architect Le Corbusier obviously appreciated the fundamental idea of archetypal geometry and its’ expression through number when he wrote:
“Behind the wall, the gods play, they play with numbers, of which the universe is made up.”
As did French architect Paul Jacques Grillo, who wrote:
“The world around us is a world of numbers―numbers that spell life and harmony. They are organized by the geometry of figures, all related to one another according to a sublime order, into dynamic symmetry.Glimpses into this magnificent kingdom form the basis of all our knowledge and it seems that in this domain the ancient civilizations had gone further than modern science.”
Form Function and Design (1960)
The term ‘dynamic symmetry’ refers to a concept that we will explore in depth a little further on. For now let it be said that dynamic symmetry describes a way of dividing space such that there is a specific relationship between the parts of a spatial composition and the whole of that composition, a specific relationship that can be expressed by certain constants of proportionality, as for example, the square root of two, or the square root of three, the Phi ratio, and so forth. Stated simply, dynamic symmetry is the idea of dividing space such that the proportions of the whole are found in the parts. Probably the most well known example of this principle is found in the famous Phi ratio, which, in its simplest representation as a straight line, is divided asymmetrically such that the small segment is to the large segment as the large segment is to the whole line. I will have much more to say about this proportion later on.
The Golden Mean or Phi Ratio
It is extremely interesting that Grillo recognized, back in 1960, when the source of the above quote was published, the significant fact that ancient civilizations were highly knowledgeable of the domain of number and geometry to an extent completely unappreciated by conventional scholarship of his time. Implicit in this idea regarding the degree of advancement of ancient cultures, is the recognition that a study of Sacred Geometry requires an immersion into the history and meaning of the archaic cultures for whom it provided a vehicle to produce some of the most awe-inspiring demonstrations of symbolic and sacred architecture to have been conceived and executed by the mind and hand of mankind, while at the same time providing a path to a deepened spiritual awareness of the fundamental principles of creation.
It could be said of Sacred Geometry that it provides one of the most, if not the most important key to unlocking the great Mysteries of the Ages. According to the famous 17 century Alchemical tract Atalanta Fugiens the great Hermetic Secret lies concealed behind the ‘Wall of Mystery’ which can only be penetrated through an astute employment of geometry.
The great Hermetic Secret lies concealed behind the ‘Wall of Mystery’ which can only be penetrated through an astute employment of geometry.
In the lodges of old, as in schools of Plato and Euclid the tools of Geometry were simply an unmarked strait edge and a pair of compasses. That’s all. With those two tools it was possible to draw straight lines and circles, or arcs of circles. Out of the combination of straight lines and arcs the entire edifice of Euclidian geometry could be generated. In the archaic conception, God was seen as working only with lines and arcs, or circles, to create the entire manifested universe. In modern language we might think of vector forces and scalar forces. Through a simple act of geometric construction using these two tools two lines could be drawn that intersect at an angle of 90 degrees. The same act of geometry can yield an intersection forming an angle of 60 degrees. These two angles lie at the base of the two great systems of Masonic geometry, Ad Quadratum and Ad Triangulum, that is ‘of the square’ and ‘of the triangle’, respectively, and, through their marriage emerges an infinity of form.
In a small handbook frequently given to newly initiated Freemasons we find a valuable elucidation on the meaning of Geometry:
“Geometry is an ‘exact’ science. It leaves nothing to chance. Except for its axioms, it can prove everything it teaches. It is precise. It is definite. By it we buy and sell our land, navigate our ships upon the pathless ocean, foretell eclipses, and measure time. All science rests upon mathematics, and mathematics is first and last, geometry, whether we call its extension ‘trigonometry’ or ‘differential calculus’ or any other name. Geometry is the ultimate fact we have won out of a puzzling universe….There are no ultimate facts of which the human mind can take cognizance which are more certain, more fundamental, than the facts of geometry.”
Foreign Countries (1925) Carl H. Claudy
A study of Sacred Geometry begins with the hands-on experience, the commission of a geometric act of creation, utilizing only the straight-edge for drawing lines and the compasses for the drawing of arcs. Following from engagement of the hand and eye, the most basic of geometric axioms can be easily and intuitively grasped by the mind. Familiarity with the simpler exercises is soon followed by an ever increasing mastery of the more complex principles. A comprehensive program of study would require both deep contemplation of the forms, patterns and proportions of Geometry and their meanings, as well as the ability to apply the knowledge of Geometry in practical applications of problem solving and creative work.
As we trace the manifestations of Sacred Geometry throughout history and around the world, we see that it is infinitely adaptable and constantly evolving. As we continue to recover from the wreckage of ages past and civilizations lost new knowledge and new understanding of our extraordinary cultural heritage, we begin to appreciate that Geometry played a profound role in opening up the mysteries and secrets of Nature to humankind, inspiring our predecessors on this planet to achieve glorious heights of creativity by mimicking the fundamental processes and harmonies of Creation. As modern science becomes ever more proficient at penetrating the finest recesses of Natures’ Order, we will have the opportunity to develop new and original applications of this ancient Craft.
It is difficult to convey the power of Sacred Geometry through the written word. It is best experienced first-hand through the process of geometric construction. In my classes and workshops over the years I have endeavored to provide students with the experience of Sacred Geometry by guiding them to a place where they can perceive for themselves the patterns and forms as they emerge beneath straightedge and compasses. And, I have attempted to show them examples of the myriad ways in which Sacred Geometry both conceals and reveals itself throughout the kingdoms of Nature, Art, Architecture and Life, and finally, to suggest the possibility of a revitalization of Sacred Geometry, that it might once again become a force for manifesting greater harmony in the world.
[Editors Note: If you are interested in taking Sacred Geometry classes or workshops with Randall please send us an email. Telecourses coming early 2013 for students outside of the Atlanta area.]
We’re used to thinking of robot swarms as consisting of lots and lots of similar robots working together. What we’re starting to see now, though, are swarms of heterogeneous robots, where you get different robots combining their powers to make each other more efficient and more capable. One of the first projects to really make this work was Swarmanoid, with teams of footbots and handbots and eyebots, and researchers presented a similar idea at IROS earlier this month, using an AR Drone to help a swarm of self-assembling ground robots to climb over a hill.
The focus of this research is communication: getting a flying robot to be able to communicate with a swarm of ground robots by relying exclusively on visual feedback from LEDs. All you need to get this to work are lights, cameras, and some mildly intelligent robots: you can leave your maps, GPS, IMU, hardware IDs, and all that stuff at home. Here’s a video of the system in action:
As interesting as the communication is, it’s the applications that really make this video worth watching. Since the ground robots can’t see very far, they rely on the quadrotor to scout ahead and estimate the parameters of upcoming obstacles. Then, the quadrotor instructs the swarm on the ground how to team up to best overcome those obstacles. With the hill, for example, the quadrotor can use stereo imagery to compute how steep it is, run an onboard simulation to see how many ground robots will have to team up to make it over, and then give instruction and direction to the robots below. Very clever.
“Spatially Targeted Communication and Self-Assembly,” by Nithin Mathews, Anders Lyhne Christensen, Rehan O’Grady, and Marco Dorigo, from Universite Libre de Bruxelles and Instituto Universitario de Lisboa, was presented at IROS 2012 in Vilamoura, Portugal.
“Cloud Democracy”: Could Russia’s opposition movement radically change how democracy works?
The Nordic country announced Tuesday that two-thirds of voters are backing a draft constitution based on comments from social media.
Iceland is creating a new, crowdsourced constitution in the wake of the country’s banking crisis and citizen protests, and government officials garnered feedback from users on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr to shape it.
The document, which went up for a non-binding vote on Saturday, was created by a panel of 25 citizens who compiled 3,600 comments and 370 suggestions from social media over the past year. Six questions appeared on the referendum, and the first two asked whether Icelanders want to adopt the user-generated constitution.
Nearly half of Iceland’s 235,000 eligible voters took part in the referendum, with 66 percent of those voting in favor. GigaOM said it makes sense that the Internet-backed option would have the most support.
“Give the people a chance to feed into the drafting, taking advantage of the internet’s convenience and low barriers, and they’ll stand behind the result,” wrote GigaOM’s David Meyer in a detailed analysis of the results.
Although the parliament is ultimately responsible for ratifying a new constitution, supporters hope the two thirds-backed constitution will be hard to ignore.
“This is a very clear conclusion for parliament,” said Thorolfur Matthiasson, an economist at the University of Iceland, to Reuters. “The majority of voters want changes in all the topics asked about in the vote.”
One of the major topics up for discussion was giving the government greater control of natural resources, including fish and geothermal energy, which are currently controlled by a handful of the island’s wealthy “sea baron” families.
It’s estimated that 320,000 Icelanders—two-thirds of Iceland’s population—are on Facebook, which was used to broadcast the 25-member panel’s weekly meetings. The gatherings aired live on Facebook so interested citizens could offer suggestions and debate along with the panel.
Parliament now has to decide if they want to turn the crowdsourced constitution into a reality. Whether they settle on this document, or a different one, something must be finalized prior to next spring’s elections.
An Iraq war veteran was made redundant just 72 HOURS before qualifying for a full Army pension.
Sergeant Lee Nolan will lose out on at least £100,000 after he became one of 20,000 soldiers who are being axed in savage military cuts.
He was so furious at losing his job, his Army home and financial security after risking his life for his country that he sent his six military medals to David Cameron.
And in a moving letter to the PM he wrote: “The events of the past 12 months have turned my life on its head and sullied my near-18 years of loyal and exemplary service to my country.
“The medals I have enclosed would only serve to remind me of the shocking way I have been treated.”
Sgt Nolan is one of at least 80 soldiers, sailors and aircrew made redundant when they are less than a year away from qualifying.
There have been claims that they are being intentionally selected to save the MoD millions of pounds.
And the axed troops’ plight has sparked calls for a review, with an online petition demanding that the issue is debated in Parliament.
Sgt Nolan, 43 – who did tours of duty in Bosnia, Iraq and Kosovo – joined the Army when he was 24.
He was made compulsorily redundant from his job as a medical technician in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers last September, leaving on August 31 after a 12-month notice period.
Depending on their rank, forces personnel aged over 40 need 16 or 18 years’ service to earn a pension and lump sum when they leave.
When Sgt Nolan’s redundancy was worked out he was stunned to find his service was 17 years and 362 days… just three days short.
He said: “I was absolutely dumbfounded. In one moment I lost my livelihood, my way of life and the pension I’d relied on to start again.”
He was given a redundancy payout of £93,000 and when he reaches 60 he will get a £5,000-a-year pension. If he had been made redundant three days later he would have received £188,500, made up of a £76,000 lump sum plus £6,250 a year until he was 60. After he complained, he made a heartbreaking discovery.
He said: “They discovered there had been an administrative error. They had only wanted 20 redundancies. I was the 21st.”
Appalled, Sgt Nolan, who has been forced to move in with relatives in Manchester, sent his letter and medals to Mr Cameron.
He received a letter dated a month ago thanking him and promising a reply but has not heard any more. He has now joined the campaign group Pensions Justice for Troops, which says redundant personnel will miss out on at least £40million between them.
Spokeswoman Jayne Bullock said: “People who leave the Armed Forces lose a whole way of life and need financial security as they adapt, retrain and start over again.”
A Number 10 spokesman declined to comment on the letter. The MoD said nearness to qualifying for a pension was not a factor in being selected for redundancy.
President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, where more than 33,000 people have been killed in 19 months of conflict, issued a law on GM food Thursday to preserve human life, state-run SANA news agency reported.
Assad, whose forces are locked in a bloody confrontation with armed rebels opposed to his rule, “has approved a law on the health security of genetically modified organisms… to regulate their use and production,” SANA reported.
The law is meant “to preserve the health of human beings, animals, vegetables and the environment,” the agency added.
Violence in Syria has killed at least 33,000 people, most of them civilians, since it erupted in March last year, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says.
The revolt began as pro-reform protests but morphed into an armed insurgency when demonstrations were brutally crushed, with some 100 dead each day.
If you like to express yourself through painting, writing, or any other form of artistic action, scientists now say that you must be suffering from a mental illness of some kind. In a new display of how truly insane the mainstream medical health paradigm has become, mainstream media outlets are now regurgitating the words of ‘experts’ who say that those who are creative are actually, more often than not, mentally ill.
After all, more than 50% of the United States is, by definition of the psychiatrists of the nation, mentally ill. Even questioning the government is considered a mental disorder. It should come as no surprise to know that upwards of 70% of the psychiatrists who write the conditions are — of course — on the payroll of those who produce the drugs to ‘treat’ the conditions. It should also therefore come as no surprise to note that the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which is the foundation of the entire diagnosis system) now contains over 900 pages of bogus disorders.
And perhaps creativity may soon be added to the massive textbook, which labels people who are shy, eccentric, or have unconventional romantic lives as mentally ill.
Is it any wonder that the 4th edition of the manual, which added hundreds of new ways to diagnose patients, led to a 40 times increase in bipolar disorder diagnoses. Even the lead editor of the DSM-IV Allen Frances, MD, has stated the book is utter nonsense:
There is no definition of a mental disorder. It’s bull****. I mean, you just can’t define it, he said.
Real information like this is what has led the mainstream news to re-title their pieces regarding the new classification of creativity as a mental illness, changing the headlines to more ‘ginger’ ways of linking the two together. Meanwhile, the writers of the study claiming that creativity is part of a mental illness are quite clear in stating that creativity is literally a mental illness. The extent in which you wish to ‘treat’ your creativity, however, is apparently up to you and your doctor.
Be of caution, however, as you have to decide at ‘what cost’ you will allow your creativity to exist. As the study writer stated:
If one takes the view that certain phenomena associated with the patient’s illness are beneficial, it opens the way for a new approach to treatment. In that case, the doctor and patient must come to an agreement on what is to be treated, and at what cost.
As expected the way to ‘treat’ your creativity is of course to take pharmaceutical drugs in the form of anti-depressants or hardcore psychotropic drugs. The same drugs that virtually all suicidal massacre shooters have taken before or during their rampages.
As virtually everything we think and do is classified as a symptom of a mental disorder, the mainstream psychiatric paradigm will continue to grow like a massive parasite alongside the pharmaceutical industry that profits off of the absolute laughable diagnoses of regular adults, children, and even toddlers. Until we realize that we need to shift into a new health paradigm that is centered around personal health freedom and shed corporate science as a whole, we will continue to see insane headlines classifying thought and emotion as mental illness.
A little-known plant with a truly bizarre name is now making headlines as a cancer killer, with the compound of the plant vanishing tumors in mice with pancreatic cancer. Known as the ‘thunder god vine’ or lei gong teng, the Chinese plant is actually integrated into Chinese medicine and has been used for ages in remedying a number of conditions including rheumatoid arthritis.
According to the new research out of the University of Minnesota’s Masonic Cancer Center, the thunder god plant compound led to no signs of tumors after a 40 day period — even after discontinuing the treatment. Published in the journal Science Translational Medicineand funded by the National Institutes of Health, even the scientists working on the project were stunned by the anti-cancer properties of the compound. Known to contain something known as triptolide, which has been identified as a cancer fighter in previous research, it is thought to be the key component that may be responsible for the anti-tumor capabilities.
Study leader and vice chairman of research at the Cancer Center explained to Bloomberg how he was blown away by the effects of the simple plant:
“This drug is just unbelievably potent in killing tumor cells,” he said.
And just like with numerous other powerful substances like turmeric and ginger, mainstream science is still slowly confirming what many traditional practitioners have known for their entire lives. This is, of course, due to the fact that there is simply no money for major corporations in researching the healing powers of natural herbs and compounds such as the compound found in the thunder god vine. Turmeric and ginger, for example, have been found to be amazing anti-cancer substances that are virtually free compared to expensive and dangerous cancer drugs.
Nevertheless, the Big Pharma sponsored corporate scientists have managed to ignore these spices as much as possible. In fact, they have even been caught time and time again faking thousands of studies to fraudulently demonstrate the supposed value of pharmaceutical drugs pushed by major pharma juggernauts — many of which are later forced to pay millions in fines which only slightly stack up against their billions in profits.
Profits that are threatened by the many real studies that were performed by scientists examining the rejeuvenating power of cheap ingredients like turmeric, which has been found by peer-reviewed research available on PubMed to positively influence over 590 conditions.
While it is great news that this study is bringing the beneficial effects of inexpensive and near-free plant compounds to light, the bad news is that the individuals responsible for the research are actually looking to create a pharmaceutical drug from the essential component triptolide. A drug that will seek FDA approval and ultimately be patented, nutritionally ruined, and sold for exorbitant amounts of cash. Instead, just get your hands on some thunder god vine for yourself.
“And so I went out to meet them. And they taught me about the stars.”
The human mind is a stargate. In fact, it is probably the only real stargate there is. We don’t realize that because from the time we become aware as children, we are told that we live in a tiny box called earth. Within that tiny box the mind inhabits another even tinier box called the human body. From these two boxes, there can be no escape but death, which is not really an escape from the box, but the moment the mind and its personality enters an eternal oblivion. Many people actually believe this and some of them have the audacity to call me a buzzkill.
I used to believe what people told me. I believed my brain held my personality and kept it within the confines of my skull. I thought my heart is what kept everything alive. My soul was some nebulous thing that also existed. I just wasn’t sure where it was located. The problem I had, of course, is that throughout my life I had been receiving messages and subtle clues from people that were not like me. These people didn’t seem to always use bodies or to live by the same rules that I did. Some of these clues were unimaginably terrifying, but perhaps only because I was so grounded to the world I was told to believe in, a world whose reality has begun to fall away to some extent.
Part of my problem was that I was a a devotee of my own anger and resentment. I used these as far as I could take them as an outlet to work through the dross I had both made through my own actions as well as what I inherited from my family lines. The more I was able to pull down the veil of my inward imperfections and shortcoming, the more the light was beginning to shine through. First as a tiny glimmer and then as a blazing sun.
What I witnessed did not terrify me, but for the first time allowed a clean break with the well-ordered world I had belonged to and believed in for so long. The old world was a world of laws and scientific explanations. In that world both meaning and mystique were crowded out by endless explanations that sapped the meaning out of things. Wonder was becoming eroded by unsatisfying ideas, each one new and innovative, yet wholly dead. If we couldn’t see, hear, touch, taste, or smell a thing it didn’t exist. The newly elected priests of the modern world explained everything away with science. The sun, moon, and stars had no significance. They were dead celestial bodies floating in space. Everything had an explanation, and if it didn’t have one somebody somewhere was hard at work on one. The modern world, sadly, has travelled an outward path away from what is real and therefore science becomes increasingly superficial. Instead of giving fulfilling answers, it can only give us explanations that may or may not be true.
While the intellect taken to its logical conclusion can deliver a person to the door of the real, it cannot nudge them through it. There comes a point where reason and intellection become a curse that anchors one to the world of death’s reign. If the imagination does not take over, the journey dies utterly. But it is not enough to merely imagine, one must literally exit the unreal by entering the doorway that has always remained open for us. The difficulty of that feat depends on how much we have come to believe in the world we were told to believe in. Ultimately, the depths of the mind must be plumbed to the point of finality, which is really the beginning point of the real world.
“Things began to change. A doorway within my mind opened, so I stepped inside to see what was there.“
To open that door to the real world, the reasoning mind must be kept absolutely still, it must put the world as we believe it to death. This doesn’t come with effort, but rather in the absence of effort. It doesn’t come by struggling to create landscapes and characters in the mind. It arrives, strangely, when the mind no longer puts forth any effort whatsoever. In a word, the mind literally surrenders any idea of knowledge upon realizing that the real world doesn’t require wisdom or knowledge, but spontaneity and being. It must simply become what it was before it was forged by the experiences of life, both good and bad. The ”reality” we see everyday is only one part of a much greater world that is unseen, but always present in the eternal now.
This world beyond is really the world we live in right now, minus the box we attempt to place it in. Death, no matter how you look at it, removes that box exposing us to the real world. Those that seek to keep that box in place, the box that leads to all pain and suffering, experience the worst of the postmortem states. They attempt to retain the piece because they cannot face the whole truth of what they are. For that reason alone a kind of pseudo-physical world is often entered upon death. I have seen it many times, I have spoken to those living there, and I have seen strange things that could not possibly come from me or the use of my imagination alone. These postmortem worlds run the gamut of ugliness and beauty.
“At some point I found that even though I was a single piece, a veritable illusion, that stars were growing in my mind. Slowly my identity was expanding into a completion that had no further need of growth or evolution. This is who I really was. I was becoming all while still remaining “me.” This was death and I was very happy. This was a happiness I had never known in life. ”
The world we have been told to believe in is a lie. This is not a new age platitude or an airy-fairy state of mind I am talking about. This is the unfathomable reality we are not yet ready to face. An apocalypse is on the horizon, and this apocalypse will create a divergent path in humanity. It may be collective, it may be individual. Some will remember and others will continue to forget. That is simply the way things are.
Despite facing often draconian measures, whistleblowers are increasingly winning public support, reveals a new survey
The Obama administration has gone in hard against alleged whistleblowers, such as Bradley Manning. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Whistleblowing is relevant in the UK now more than ever, as the recent stream of high profile cover-ups and the relentless clamp downs on truth tellers has shown. The Hillsborough Inquiry, the string of serious problems in the NHS and related health agencies, the recently revealed Ministry of Defence internal document gagging whistleblowers from revealing wrongdoing to their own MPs. The list of examples goes on and on. They illustrate exactly why we need whistleblowers in society in the first place.
Whistleblowing is when members of an organisation reveal inside information about serious wrongdoing to someone they believe can act on it. Whistleblowers don’t have to be employees; they can be members of a school or church community organisation, for example. A good example of this is the whistleblowers who stepped forward to confirm incidents of paedophilia in Catholic institutions over the past decade.
The word whistleblower used to evoke images of shady characters whispering secrets in dark car parks. Now it’s increasingly seen as central to a healthy democracy. This trend in public attitude is happening simultaneously around the globe. A 2012 random sample Newspoll survey in Australia of 1,211 people showed that 81% believed whistleblowers should be protected and not punished, even if they reveal inside information.
The advent of online leaks news sites like WikiLeaks have likely played a role in this. There are more than 15 leaks-related sites with another, Ljost (or ‘light’ in Icelandic) officially launched by the The Associate Whistleblowing Press on 30 September.
Technology such as anonymising software like Tor, free file encryption programs such as GPG, and access to journalists via Twitter have all converged to make fertile ground for 21st century whistleblowing. It’s faster, easier and doesn’t involve any dark car parks.
This may be why western governments are running crackdowns against whistleblowers with a vehemence rarely seen in recent history. The Obama administration has gone in hard against alleged whistleblowers and in some cases journalists. The target list includes former US NSA senior executive Thomas Drake, army private Bradley Manning and reporter James Risen.
Governments are now also frequently turning technology inward to spy on employees and others in an effort to thwart whistleblowing to the media. So while whistleblowing has become easier, spying technology has also made it riskier to do online.
However, it appears the public is becoming impatient with governments that spend all their time on whistleblower witch hunts instead of punishing the underlying wrongdoing. There also seems to be a growing sense of unfairness with the David and Goliath battles, where the little guy trying to do the right thing is so outgunned from the start.
Whistleblowing tends to go hand in hand with coverups. The independent panel investigating the Hillsborough tragedy in which 96 football fans died found that police had not only lied about what happened, they had deliberately altered evidence of those who tried to tell the truth. Public outrage at the cover up was so great prime minister David Cameron had to apologise to the victims’ families.
Like Hillsborough, the Mid Staffordshire NHS Inquiry highlights growing public concern over wrongdoing and coverups. In following up reports of unusually high hospital mortality rates, an independent inquiry criticised the Stafford Hospital’s handling of patients. The few whistleblowers who dared to stand up were ignored or suffered retaliation. Another apology from the PM had to be made, again to the victims and families.
Britain now waits for the results of a new, wider public inquiry chaired by Robert Francis QC. The final report, including review of the million-plus pages of evidence, was due to be released this month. However Francis recently announced that the report would not now be delivered until early 2013. There is skepticism among health workers as to whether this inquiry – the fifth – will truly be fearless in seeking to fix the sick system.
The NHS and related health agencies’ woes have continued to mount with two high-profile whistleblowing cases pointing to more allegations of wrongdoing. In the first, radiology service manager Sharmila Chowdhury revealed allegations that doctors were being paid to see NHS patients while they were actually moonlighting with their own private patients. Ealing Hospital NHS Trust sacked Ms Chowdhury but a Watford employment tribunal judge ordered that she be reinstated. She has subsequently been made redundant – after facing legal fees of more than £100,000 to defend herself.
In a second case, a non-executive director of the regulator the Care Quality Commission (CQC), Kay Sheldon, faced accusations of being ‘mentally ill’ and attempts to sack her after she blew the whistle at a public inquiry into CQC. This is a classic response to whistleblowers: they are either ‘bad’ or ‘mad’ and thus their criticisms must not be valid.
While whistleblowers play an important role in revealing wrongdoing to the public, there is surprisingly little academic research on whistleblowing to the media, and even less on the role of technology in it. I am the principal researcher on an international study team that hopes to shed light on how technology is impacting on whistleblowing, particularly to the news organisations. In addition to interviewing whistleblowers and the investigative journalists who interact with them, we are also running a detailed online survey.
The World Online Whistleblowing Survey (WOWs) is the first online survey aimed at gauging the general public’s attitudes to whistleblowing that is being run in so many languages. The anonymous survey is available in 11 languages and is open to everyone to participate, not just whistleblowers.
The study team includes researchers from Griffith University and the University of Melbourne in Australia, and Georgetown University in the US. Early data from the online survey points strongly to a public belief among both Australian and British respondents that there is too much secrecy in organisations (a breathtaking 90% in both cases).
However, British respondents were more cynical than Australians about the usefulness of official channels for reporting wrongdoing in organisations.
About 38% of Australians believed that going to authorities via official channels was the best way to stop serious wrongdoing while only 15% of respondents from the UK agreed. Instead 43% of UK respondents thought going to the media was the most effective way, compared to 27% of Australians.
The increasing importance of whistleblowing in the health area is evidenced by a recent conference on the topic run jointly between the British Medical Association and the Patients First group. Whistleblower pediatrician Dr Kim Holt, a speaker at the event, co-founded Patients First in response to the persistent mistreatment of whistleblowers in health. She said UK legislation did not properly defend whistleblowers, and it needed to be amended to address problems such as whistleblowers facing employer ‘gag’ clauses on revealing wrongdoing and huge legal defence costs.
It’s clear whistleblowing is an important part of a participatory democracy, yet many still remain confused about what value governments and legal scholars place on it. Time will tell what influence cases such as Wikileaks and the NHS will have on this value, but one thing seems likely – despite facing often draconian measures, whistleblowers are increasingly winning public support.
On Friday, EFF and the ACLU submitted an amicus brief in United States v. Rigmaiden, a closely-followed case that has enormous consequences for individuals’ Fourth Amendment rights in their home and on their cell phone. As the Wall Street Journal explained today, the technology at the heart of the case invades the privacy of countless innocent people that have never even been suspected of a crime.
Rigmaiden centers around a secretive device that federal law enforcement and local police have been using with increased frequency: an International Mobile Subscriber Identity locator, or “IMSI catcher.” These devices allows the government to electronically search large areas for a particular cell phone’s signal—sucking down data on potentially thousands of innocent people along the way—while attempting to avoid many of the traditional limitations set forth in the Constitution.
How Stingrays Work
The Stingray is a brand name of an IMSI catcher targeted and sold to law enforcement. A Stingray works by masquerading as a cell phone tower—to which your mobile phone sends signals to every 7 to 15 seconds whether you are on a call or not— and tricks your phone into connecting to it. As a result, the government can figure out who, when and to where you are calling, the precise location of every device within the range, and with some devices, even capture the content of your conversations. (Read the Wall Street Journal’s detailed explanation for more.)
In Rigmaiden, the government asked a federal judge in Northern California to order Verizon to assist in locating the defendant, who was a suspect in a tax fraud scheme. But after they received an order telling Verizon to provide the location information of an Aircard they thought to be the defendant’s, the government took matters into their own hands: they claimed this authorization somehow permitted its own use of a Stingray.
Not only did the Stringray find the suspect, Rigmaiden, but it also got the records of every other innocent cell phone user nearby.
The government now concedes that the use of the device was a “search” under the Fourth Amendment and claims it had a warrant, despite the fact that, as we explain in our brief, “the Order directs Verizon to provide the government with information and assistance, but nowhere authorizes the government to search or seize anything.”
In fact, the government’s application made no mention of an IMSI catcher or a Stingray, and only has a brief sentence about its plans buried at the end of an 18-page declaration: “the mobile tracking equipment ultimately generate[s] a signal that fixes the geographic position of the Target Broadband Access Card/Cellular Telephone.”
A judge initially signed off on this order, but clearly, the government did not accurately and adequately explain what it was really up to.
General Warrants: Unconstitutional, All You Can Eat Data Buffets
Beyond the government’s conduct in this specific case, there is an even broader danger in law enforcement using these devices to locate suspects regardless of whether they explain the technology to judges: these devices allow the government to conduct broad searches amounting to “general warrants,” the exact type of search the Fourth Amendment was written to prevent.
A Stingray—which could potentially be beamed into all the houses in one neighborhood looking for a particular signal—is the digital version of the pre-Revolutionary war practice of British soldiers going door-to-door, searching Americans’ homes without rationale or suspicion, let alone judicial approval. The Fourth Amendment was enacted to prevent these general fishing expeditions. As the Supreme Court has explained, a warrant requires probable cause for all places searched, and is supposed to detail the scope of the search to ensure “nothing is left to the discretion of the officer executing the warrant”.
But if uninformed courts approve the unregulated use of Stingrays, they are essentially allowing the government to enter into the home via a cellular signal at law enforcement’s discretion and rummage at will without any supervision. The government can’t simply use technology to upend centuries of Constitutional law to conduct a search they would be prevented from doing physically.
Stingrays Collect Data on Hundreds of Innocent People
And when police use a Stingray, it’s not just the suspects’ phone information the device sucks up, but all the innocent people around such suspect as well. Some devices have a range of “several kilometers,” meaning potentially thousands of people could have their privacy violated despite not being suspected of any crime. This is another fact the government didn’t fully explain to the magistrate judge in Rigmaiden.
The government now claims it protected privacy by deleting all third-party data on its own after it collected it. But the government’s unilateral decision to binge and purge comes with its own consequences. Now there’s no way to know what exactly the government obtained when it used the device.
Had the government told the court what it really was planning on doing and the amount of information it would obtain, the court may have exercised its constitutional role of ensuring the government narrowed its search. After all, it was for the court, not the government, to decide how best to balance the government’s need for information with third-party privacy, and any suspect’s future interest in access to potentially exculpatory information.
Enough Warrantless Excursions
Unfortunately, US government excuses for conducting warrantless searches are becoming all too familiar. Whether it’s the hundreds of thousands of searches for cell phone location information, the skyrocketing of warrantless surveillance of who and when you’re calling, or the NSA’s still-active warrantless wiretapping program, Americans are seeing their Fourth Amendment privacy rights under attack from all angles. We hope in this case and others like it, the court will prevent such violations of privacy from occuring again.
But Apple didn’t shout quite so loud about an enhancement to its new mobile operating system, iOS 6, which also occurred in September: The company has started tracking users so that advertisers can target them again, through a new tracking technology called IFA or IDFA.
Previously, Apple had all but disabled tracking of iPhone users by advertisers when it stopped app developers from utilizing Apple mobile device data via UDID, the unique, permanent, non-deletable serial number that previously identified every Apple device.
For the last few months, iPhone users have enjoyed an unusual environment in which advertisers have been largely unable to track and target them in any meaningful way.
In iOS 6, however, tracking is most definitely back on, and it’s more effective than ever, multiple mobile advertising executives familiar with IFA tell us. (Note that Apple doesn’t mention IFA in its iOS 6 launch page).
Users can switch off that targeting, but it’s tricky, as we discovered a couple of days ago. Although at least iOS 6 users are able to turn off tracking, which they weren’t before.
Here’s how it works.
IFA or IDFA stands for “identifier for advertisers.” It’s a random, anonymous number that is assigned to a user and their device. It is temporary and can be blocked, like a cookie.
When you look at an app, or browse the web, your presence generates a call for an ad. The publisher’s site that you’re looking at then passes the IFA to the ad server. The advertiser is then able to know that a specific iPhone user is looking at a specific publication and can serve an ad targeting that user. IFA becomes particularly useful, for instance, if an ad server notices that a particular IFA is looking at a lot of different car sites. Perhaps that user is interested in buying a new car. They’ll likely start seeing a lot of car ads on their iPhone.
More importantly, IFA will allow advertisers to track the user all the way to “conversion” — which for most advertisers consists of an app download. Previously, advertisers had no idea whether their ads actually drove people to download apps or buy things. Now IFA will tell them.
The IFA does not identify you personally — it merely provides a bunch of aggregate audience data that advertisers can target with ads.
iPhone Screengrab
Tracking is on by default
The new iPhone operating system comes with three things that make tracking easier for advertisers and reduce the likelihood that you’ll opt out.
iOS 6 comes in a default “tracking on” position. You have to affirmatively switch it off if you do not want advertisers to see what you’re up to.
The tracking control in iPhone’s settings is NOT contained where you might expect it, under the “Privacy” menu. Instead, it’s found under “General,” then “About,” and then the “Advertising” section of the Settings menu.
The tracking control is titled “Limit Ad Tracking,” and must be turned to ON, not OFF, in order to work. That’s slightly confusing — “ON” means ads are off! — so a large number of people will likely get this wrong.
Those three factors combined mean that a huge proportion of iPhone users are unlikely to ever opt out of tracking.
“It’s a really pretty elegant, simple solution,” says Mobile Theory CEO Scott Swanson. “The biggest thing we’re excited about is that it’s on by default, so we expect most people will leave it on.”
(His take on IFA’s capabilities was confirmed by two other mobile ad execs at rival companies.)
Again, IFA doesn’t identify you as a person to advertisers. What it does do, however, is provide advertisers with “a really meaningful inference of behavior,” Swanson says. “We haven’t had access to that information before.”
Study found war against violent Islamists has become increasingly deadly
Researchers blame common tactic now being used – the ‘double-tap’ strike
Drone strikes condemned for their ineffectiveness in targeting militants
Just one in 50 victims of America’s deadly drone strikes in Pakistan are terrorists – while the rest are innocent civilians, a new report claimed today.The authoritative joint study, by Stanford and New York Universities, concludes that men, women and children are being terrorised by the operations ’24 hours-a-day’.
And the authors lay much of the blame on the use of the ‘double-tap’ strike where a drone fires one missile – and then a second as rescuers try to drag victims from the rubble. One aid agency said they had a six-hour delay before going to the scene.
The tactic has cast such a shadow of fear over strike zones that people often wait for hours before daring to visit the scene of an attack. Investigators also discovered that communities living in fear of the drones were suffering severe stress and related illnesses. Many parents had taken their children out of school because they were so afraid of a missile-strike.
Today campaigners savaged the use of drones, claiming that they were destroying a way of life.
Clive Stafford Smith, director of the charity Reprieve which helped interview people for the report, said: ‘This shows that drone strikes go much further than simply killing innocent civilians. An entire region is being terrorised by the constant threat of death from the skies. ‘
There have been at least 345 strikes in Pakistan’s tribal areas near the border with Afghanistan in the past eight years.
‘These strikes are becoming much more common,’ Mirza Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer who represents victims of drone strikes, told The Independent.
‘In the past it used to be a one-off, every now and then. Now almost every other attack is a double tap. There is no justification for it.’
The study is the product of nine months’ research and more than 130 interviews, it is one of the most exhaustive attempts by academics to understand – and evaluate – Washington’s drone wars.
Despite assurances the attacks are ‘surgical’, researchers found barely two per cent of their victims are known militants and that the idea that the strikes make the world a safer place for the U.S. is ‘ambiguous at best’.
Researchers added that traumatic effects of the strikes go far beyond fatalities, psychologically battering a population which lives under the daily threat of annihilation from the air, and ruining the local economy.
They conclude by calling on Washington completely to reassess its drone-strike programme or risk alienating the very people they hope to win over.
They also observe that the strikes set worrying precedents for extra-judicial killings at a time when many nations are building up their unmanned weapon arsenals.
The Obama administration is unlikely to heed their demands given the zeal with which America has expanded its drone programme over the past two years.
Washington says the drone program is vital to combating militants that threaten the U.S. and who use Pakistan’s tribal regions as a safe haven.
The number of attacks have fallen since a Nato strike in 2011 killed 24 Pakistani soldiers and strained U.S.-Pakistan relations.
Pakistan wants the drone strikes stopped – or it wants to control the drones directly – something the U.S. refuses.
Reapers and Predators are now active over the skies of Somalia and Yemen as well as Pakistan and – less covertly – Afghanistan.
But campaigners like Mr Akbar hope the Stanford/New York University research may start to make an impact on the American public.
‘It’s an important piece of work,’ he told The Independent. ‘No one in the U.S. wants to listen to a Pakistani lawyer saying these strikes are wrong. But they might listen to American academics.’
Today, Pakistani intelligence officials revealed a pair of missiles fired from an unmanned American spy aircraft slammed into a militant hideout in northwestern Pakistan last night.
The two officials said missiles from the drone aircraft hit the village of Dawar Musaki in the North Waziristan region, which borders Afghanistan to the west.
Some of the dead were believed to be foreign fighters but the officials did not know how many or where they were from.
The Monday strike was the second in three days. On Saturday a U.S. drone fired two missiles at a vehicle in northwest Pakistan, killing four suspected militants.
That attack took place in the village of Mohammed Khel, also in North Waziristan.
North Waziristan is the last tribal region in which the Pakistan military has not launched an operation against militants, although the U.S. has been continually pushing for such a move.
The Pakistanis contend that their military is already overstretched fighting operations in other areas but many in the U.S. believe they are reluctant to carry out an operation because of their longstanding ties to some of the militants operating there such as the Haqqani network.
Greenwald is that increasingly rare commodity in the US, a true journalist. I don’t agree with him on a lot of things, but he is definitely correct here in debunking the hogwash about “humanitarian” wars. Nobody goes to war for humanitarian reasons. There may be an unplanned byproduct of humanitarianism, but it is never the objective. The objective of war is always the acquisition of land and resources or the defense thereof. That’s it.
Maybe it’s because the Times story never comes right out and says “drug money laundering.” It doesn’t have to.
What the Times article does say translates directly and unambiguously as DRUG MONEY LAUNDERING, in caps, exclamation point.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Romney’s company, Bain Capital, “paid out a stunning 173% in average annual returns over a decade.” “Stunning” is not the word. “Criminal” is more like it.
Bernie Madoff was arrested and went to jail because he was paying 10% annual returns. That’s how it came to light that he was running a criminal enterprise. You just cannot possibly pay 10% returns consistently, year in and year out, with legitimate investments. Never happened, never will.
Ponzi schemes sometimes pay as high as 20% – and soon collapse, and the perps go to jail. But a 173% annual return is far beyond the range of the craziest, most short-lived ponzi scheme.
Romney wasn’t running a ponzi scheme. He was running a drug money laundry. His clients, the Times explains, were shady characters from Panama. Here’s how it works:
A druglord hands Romney, a.k.a. Bain Capital, ten million dollars in cash. Romney puts it on his books as a one million dollar investment in Bain Capital.
At 173% interest, it only takes Romney a few years (officially) to return ten million laundered dollars to the druglord.
When the druglord is asked where he got his ten million dollars, he explains that he made a lucky investment with Bain Capital. And he has the papers to prove it.
Getting caught paying out an average 173% interest over ten years is like getting caught with a hundred pounds of cocaine. If you’re busted with a hundred pounds of cocaine, the presumption is that you’re dealing. If you’re caught paying 173% interest, the presumption is that you’re laundering drug money.
Romney’s secrecy in business is detailed, and revealed; as well as his role as a drug money launderer for GHW Bush; his connection, through Bush, to CIA death squads in Central America; his role in 9-11; in the murder of US ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens; and the significance of his endorsement of and by Cheney.
Tagg Romney, the son of Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, has purchased electronic voting machines that will be used in the 2012 elections in Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, Washington and Colorado.
“Late last month, Gerry Bello and Bob Fitrakis at FreePress.org broke the story of the Mitt Romney/Bain Capital investment team involved in H.I.G. Capital which, in July of 2011, completed a “strategic investment” to take over a fair share of the Austin-based e-voting machine company Hart Intercivic,” according to independent journalist Brad Friedman.
But Friedman is not the only one to discover the connection between the Romney family, Bain Capital, and ownership of voting machines.
“Through a closely held equity fund called Solamere, Mitt Romney and his wife, son and brother are major investors in an investment firm called H.I.G. Capital. H.I.G. in turn holds a majority share and three out of five board members in Hart Intercivic, a company that owns the notoriously faulty electronic voting machines that will count the ballots in swing state Ohio November 7. Hart machines will also be used elsewhere in the United States.
In other words, a candidate for the presidency of the United States, and his brother, wife and son, have a straight-line financial interest in the voting machines that could decide this fall’s election. These machines cannot be monitored by the public. But they will help decide who “owns” the White House.”
Both The Nation and New York Times confirm the connection between the Romney family, Solamere and the Bain Capital investment in the voting machine company, Hart Intercivic, whose board of directors serve H.I.G. Capital.
“Mitt Romney, his wife Ann Romney, and their son Tagg Romney are also invested in H.I.G. Capital, as is Mitt’s brother G. Scott Romney.
The investment comes in part through the privately held family equity firm called Solamere, which bears the name of the posh Utah ski community where the Romney family retreats to slide down the slopes.” Truth out added.
There are also political connections between Solamere and the Romney’s. “Matt Blunt, the former Missouri governor who backed Mr. Romney in 2008, is a senior adviser to Solamere, as is Mitt Romney’s brother, Scott, a lawyer,” according to the New York Times.
Voter ID and voter fraud have been top issues in the 2012 race, as have claims of Republican voter suppression. Mr. Romney’s campaign has also been the subject of controversy over misleading ads, false claims, sketchy math on his tax plan, and overall vagueness on women’s rights and other hot button issues.
Raising further questions of legitimacy in the Romney campaign is an audio recording recently made public, where Mitt Romney is heard asking independent business owners to apply pressure to their employees to influence their votes. What has also been made public are the emails those employers have sent to their employees with an implied threat that if they don’t vote for Romney they may lose their jobs.
What it all says is that Mitt Romney, with the help of his family and Bain Capital connections, is more than willing to try to take the White House through illegitimate and highly unethical, if not specifically illegal means.
With each passing day, the character and campaign methods of Mitt Romney cast an ever-darker shadow over free and fair American elections.
Yet there is an irony in the Romney campaign that cannot be ignored. For all the noise the right-wing has made in questioning the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency, there have been so many questionable efforts made to help put Romney in the White House, if he wins, there should be great dispute over whether his election could ever be called genuinely illegitimate.
The nagging question is why, if Mr. Romney truly has the qualities that American voters want in their president, does he have to go to such great and questionable lengths to try to win the election.
