Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

USAHitman | Conspiracy News

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• Stanford neuroscientist: ‘We’re now able to eavesdrop on the brain in real life’
• Schwarzenegger intends to challenge law and run for president
• NSA failed to install anti-leak software at Snowden’s workplace
• JPMorgan Chase Agrees to $13 Billion Settlement with DOJ
• UK prisons have reached 99 percent capacity
• Car bomb near Egypt army intelligence building wounds six
• Device Can Disable Car and Boat Engines 50 Meters Away in Under 3 Seconds
• Obamacare sites pirated copyrighted web scripts
• Chilling Video of Dallas, PD Attempted Execution of Mentally Ill Man
• Mystery blonde girl found in Greece prompts search for parents
• A Tyrant’s Dream: Congress Cedes Control Of Federal Debt

Stanford neuroscientist: ‘We’re now able to eavesdrop on the brain in real life’ Posted: 19 Oct 2013 07:24 PM PDT Neuroscientists at Stanford University have made a major breakthrough with regards to how the human brain engages in quantitative thought, and some say it’s opening the door for being able to someday eavesdrop on the mind’s inner-workings. A team at Stanford’s School of Medicine had their findings published this week in the journal Nature Communications, and their eye-catching result is being considered a big step to understanding how the brain operates, specifically in terms of numbers. After monitoring the brain waves of three seizure patients, the scientists determined that a particular part of the mind became active when the subjects were asked to solve mathematical equations, but also when quantitative terms — such as “more than” or “an extra little bit” — were spoken during routine discussions. Bruce Goldman wrote about the study for the Stanford School of Medicine website and said the team of scientists “collected the first solid evidence that the pattern of brain activity seen in someone performing a mathematical exercise under experimentally controlled conditions is very similar to that observed when the person engages in quantitative thought in the course of daily life.” According to the scientists who conducted the study, however, it could be the start of something much more. “We’re now able to eavesdrop on the brain in real life,” Dr. Josef Parvizi, the director of Stanford’s Human Intracranial Cognitive Electrophysiology Program and lead scientist behind the studio, said to Goldman. To conduct the study, Parvizi and company monitored electrical activity in a region of the brain called the intraparietal sulcus which, according to earlier studies, has ties to numerosity, or the mathematical equivalent of literacy, as Goldman explained. As expected, the Stanford scientists experienced a reaction occurring on that part of the brain when basic math was asked of the subjects. His team also compared those results with video recordings of the patients interacting with friends and family, and determined that just discussing quantitative concepts caused that part of the brain to become active. “You are able to see how neurons within the human brain are working in a real life setting,” Parvizi told Time Magazine. “The patient doesn’t need to talk to you. They can think about numbers and you can see that red mark (corresponding with activity in a particular brain region) go up,” he said to CNN. As the team also learned, quantitative concepts cause similar reactions. When the subjects hear phrases such as “some more” and “many,” electrodes attached to the intraparietal sulcus alerted the doctors of activity. In one patient’s case, her intraparietal sulcus became active when she spoke over the phone about being given “some more Vicodin” and while discussing a “ten-to-fifteen minute seizure.” Dr. Parvizi told Time that “[t]he only thing we can tell is that they were thinking about numbers,” and not specifics such as what integer in particular. As technology advances, though, new possibilities might someday emerge. “This is exciting, and a little scary,” Henry Greely, the chair of Stanford’s Center for Biomedical Ethics, said in a statement. “It demonstrates, first, that we can see when someone’s dealing with numbers and, second, that we may conceivably someday be able to manipulate the brain to affect how someone deals with numbers.” As far as Dr. Parvizi is concerned, that’s still a long way coming. “We’re still in early days with this,” he told reporters. “If this is a baseball game, we’re not even in the first inning. We just got a ticket to enter the stadium.” Source

Schwarzenegger intends to challenge law and run for president Posted: 19 Oct 2013 05:20 PM PDT Actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is working to change the law so he can mount a 2016 presidential run, according to a New York Post report. The newspaper quotes unnamed sources who say the actor, who’s in New York City to promote his latest movie, “has been talking openly about working on getting the constitutional rules changed.” The source said the 66-year-old Schwarzenegger, a Republican, intends to file the necessary paperwork to challenge the rules. The U.S. Constitution forbids foreign-born citizens from holding the chief executive position, but some legal experts have said it’s not completely clear that courts would enforce the law instead of letting voters decide. Constitutional amendments require two-thirds majority approval in both the House and the Senate and then must be ratified by at least 38 of the 50 states. The Austrian-born Schwarzenegger, who became a U.S. citizen in 1983, said three years ago in a “Tonight Show” interview that he would run for president if the law were changed. If he mounted a presidential bid without a change in law, it would be interesting to see how Republican primary voters respond. According to a poll conducted in early 2012, more than 55 percent of self-described Republicans have always believed President Barack Obama was born in another country and another 8 percent once believed he was born in the U.S. but have since changed their minds. Read More Here

NSA failed to install anti-leak software at Snowden’s workplace Posted: 19 Oct 2013 05:10 PM PDT The reason Edward Snowden managed to download highly classified documents is because the NSA failed to install anti-leak software at its Hawaii facility, where the whistleblower worked, according to US officials. The security software was not installed at the site because it lacked bandwidth to ensure its effective operation, one official told Reuters on condition of anonymity. Other US government facilities began to tighten access controls well before Snowden started working at Booz Allen Hamilton, an NSA contractor company. However, intelligence agencies moved slower than non-spy government units when it came to installing anti-leak software, the news agency reported. NBC News revealed earlier that the former NSA contractor and CIA employee took advantage of the outdated security systems. However, details of the lapses in Hawaii were not previously exposed. The software, which should have been installed in the NSA’s case by a division of Raytheon Company, was aimed at spotting attempts by unauthorized people to access or download data. The government-wide crackdown on security began when US President Barack Obama mandated an executive order to block so-called “insider threats” in October 2011. The decision was prompted by the 2010 leak of hundreds of thousands of Pentagon and State Department documents by Army Private Bradley Manning to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks. In July 2013, government prosecutors argued in court that these actions threatened US national security and aided Al-Qaeda by indirectly providing them with secret documents. Obama’s National Insider Threat Policy included creating a special task force that shall “monitor user activity on classified computer networks controlled by the Federal government.” According to Reuters, one official said that Congressional oversight committees had repeatedly expressed concerns to the Obama administration about delays in updating the anti-leak software in agencies across the government – including surveillance departments. Meanwhile, an NSA spokeswoman declined to discuss details of the anti-leak security program. She did, however, say that Snowden’s disclosures speeded up efforts to tighten grips on internal security. “NSA and the Intelligence Community at large have been moving forward with IT efficiency initiatives for several years…The unauthorized disclosures have naturally compelled NSA and the rest of the IC to accelerate the timeline,” she said. Snowden began downloading information connected with the NSA’s surveillance while working for Dell Inc. in April 2012. In late March or early April 2013, he was assigned by Booz Allen Hamilton to the NSA Hawaii facility, known as a Remote Operations Center. The facility is tasked with intercepting communications from Asia. According to The Washington Post, it is also involved with operations in cyberspace such as mapping adversaries’ computer networks and implanting electronic beacons. After working in Hawaii for only three weeks, the whistleblower took time off and disappeared. The 29-year-old turned up in Hong Kong several weeks later, leaking documents on the top-secret NSA surveillance program PRISM to the Guardian and The Washington Post. He also handed over other classified information to Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald. Following the publications, he received temporary asylum in Russia. US intelligence agencies are still unsure whether they know how much surveillance details were handed over to journalists by Snowden. Source

JPMorgan Chase Agrees to $13 Billion Settlement with DOJ Posted: 19 Oct 2013 05:03 PM PDT JP Morgan Chase has agreed to pay a $13 billion fine to settle federal and state lawsuits over the bank’s residential mortgage-backed securities business, according to news reports. General terms of the tentative agreement between the bank and the Justice Department were reached Friday night in a phone conversation involving Attorney General Eric Holder, his deputy Tony West, J.P. Morgan CEO James Dimon and the bank’s general counsel, Stephen Cutler, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing an unidentified person familiar with the deal. The agreement does not require the Justice Department to drop a criminal investigation focusing on the same issues, Reuters reported, also citing an unidentified person with knowledge of the deal. Under the tentative agreement, the bank is likely to be required to cooperate in criminal investigations of individuals tied to wrongdoing associated with the bank’s mortgage practices, a person who requested anonymity said, according to Bloomberg News. Source

UK prisons have reached 99 percent capacity Posted: 19 Oct 2013 05:01 PM PDT UK prisons have reached 99 percent capacity, sparking fears that offenders may have to be kept in police stations or be released into the community ahead of time. The latest statistics from the Ministry of Justice show that there are currently 84,987 inmates, while the total “usable operational capacity” of the system is 85,828 – meaning that only 841 places remain in the whole of England. Usable operational capacity is measured as the total number of spaces minus 2,000, as not all places can be filled at all times because some inmates need to be kept in the prison category that matches their sentence and gender. “Making sure there are enough spaces in our prisons for all those that need locking up is one of the basics of the job for any Justice Secretary,” said MP Sadiq Khan, Labour’s shadow justice secretary. “The public need confidence that when a judge sends someone down for a serious or violent crime, they can be locked away securely.” The actual number of prisoners is lower than it was 12 months ago, but 13 prisons have shut down in the past three years, with four more scheduled to close by next spring. In total, 5,000 places have been lost in the past year alone. The British government says that this is a planned streamlining of the penitentiary system, and that there is no immediate threat of criminals being let loose ahead of schedule. “We have more than enough space within our prisons to accommodate all offenders without relying on police or court cells,” Conservative Prisons Minister Jeremy Wright said. “I have been clear that we will never be in a position where we can’t take those sent to prison by the courts. What we won’t do is spend hard-earned taxpayers’ money on keeping open expensive capacity we do not need.” The government says it is opening 400 more places starting on Monday. It also plans to build a super-prison near Wrexham, which will accommodate up to 2,000 people when it opens in 2017. But Prison Reform Trust, a leading non-profit, says the issue is distracting from the real problem surrounding prison conditions and rehabilitation. “Questions need to be raised about the pace and scale of change in the justice system,” said its director Juliete Lyon. “Solutions lie not in closing small local prisons and building supersized jails but in effective community sentences, treatment for addicts and mental health care. Cramming ever greater numbers of people into overcrowded prisons with fewer staff and less time out of cell is no way to transform rehabilitation,” she said.

Car bomb near Egypt army intelligence building wounds six Posted: 19 Oct 2013 05:00 PM PDT At least five soldiers and a man whose occupation is yet to be revealed were wounded on Saturday when a car bomb exploded near an army intelligence building in Ismailia, northeast of Cairo, security sources and state media said. The sources said another undetonated car bomb was found while security personnel were sweeping the area. The force of the blast caused part of the military intelligence building’s wall to collapse, one of the sources said. Army recruit Abdel-Salam El-Sayed, 24, suffered a 3-cm wound to the head, while Mohamed Saber, a 21-year-old soldier, sustained a back injury and a 6-cm wound to the head. Senior Warrant Officer Ahmed El-Shafei, 40, suffered a 4-cm wound to the head. All three were rushed to the Military Galaa Hospital, according to Al-Ahram’s Arabic website. Sergeant Ahmed Ibrahim, 32, was wounded in the eye and was taken to the Public Hospital, while 20-year-old Abdel-Ghani Mostafa sustained a 2-cm wound to the neck. The latter was treated at the scene. Abdel Kader Ahmed, a 58-year-old man who lives in the area, is in a coma, Al-Ahram reported. He suffered injuries to the torso and abdominal area and is now in the University Hospital. Egyptian military spokesperson Ahmed Ali has labelled the explosion a “terrorist attack” against the Egyptian people. “This is a continuation of a series of cowardly terrorist attacks committed by sectarian factions against the people of Egypt,” he added in a Facebook statement. Read More Here

Device Can Disable Car and Boat Engines 50 Meters Away in Under 3 Seconds Posted: 19 Oct 2013 11:30 AM PDT Madison Ruppert Activist Post A new radio-beam device has been unveiled that can disable car and boat engines from up to 50 meters away in under three seconds and can be operated from a mobile platform or at a fixed location. Devices capable of remotely disabling electronics are nothing new, given that devices capable of remotely disabling phones, intercepting communications and tracking targets have been around for years. However, this is one of the first publicly unveiled devices capable of remotely disabling a wide range of vehicle engines. The device, dubbed RF Safe-Stop, produced by e2v, weighs around 771 pounds and is reportedly aimed at stopping vehicles suspected of being used as car bombs, according to The Engineer. RF Safe-Stop was first shown at DSEI 2013, dubbed “the world leading defense and security event” in September. The device typically causes engines to shut down in less than one second, without destroying the target engine. The company maintains that their “extensive testing and signal conditioning” ensure that the RF field emitted by the device is within international guidelines and is human-safe. So far, the unit has been tested on a Nissan Nevara and Toyota Land Cruiser, but Andy Wood, product manager for e2v, told The Engineer that it can also be used on a variety of other platforms. It can be fitted into fixed-base installations, rib-type boats and there are plans to integrate it into a helicopter, The Engineer reports. RF Safe-Stop works by generate powerful radio frequency pulses which “confuse” a vehicle’s electronics and make them temporarily inoperable, according to Wood. “Basically the ECU (engine control unit) or immobilizer…once affected, will try and reset,” Wood said. “As long as you keep it ‘confused’ the engine won’t restart.” The system is designed to be able to be used many times without running out of power and does not require any special training to use. The company is “aiming for a system that that allows the user to do nothing more complicated than push a red button when the target is in range,” according to The Engineer. So far, 17 countries and five government bodies in the United Kingdom have already expressed interest in the system. Wood said that orders for the system will probably be taken in the coming weeks and that their system can be tailored for the requirements of the particular agency that is placing the order. One must wonder how safe this would really be, especially on a car like a Prius that contains sensitive electronics systems that control everything the car does. This article first appeared at End the Lie.

Obamacare sites pirated copyrighted web scripts Posted: 18 Oct 2013 05:01 PM PDT The list of complaints waged at the White House over its Healthcare.gov site continues to grow, but the latest incident involving the online home of the Affordable Care Act is one that could end with legal action being taken. The main “Obamacare” website has been marred with bugs and glitches since it went online over two weeks ago, and the problems are still piling up. Now according to The Weekly Standard, the Department of Health and Human Services could be sued by the British developers who coded part of the site but were never credited. Standard reporter Jeryl Bier noted on Thursday that one of the scripts used in powering Healthcare.gov is called DataTables, and it was released by a British company called SpryMedia on condition that anyone who utilized the open-source software provide proper attribution. “DataTables is free, open source software that you can download and use for whatever purpose you wish, on any and as many sites you want,” Bier quotes from SpryMedia’s website. “It is free for you to use! DataTables is available under two licenses: GPS v2 license or a BSD (3-point) license, with which you must comply (to do this, basically keep the copyright notices in the software).” HHS, apparently, didn’t read that memo and now might end up in hot water. Bier has provided a number of examples showing how the Obama administration essentially pilfered the code piece-by-piece, except for the attribution that its developers insisted be included. The Standard said a representative for SpryMedia said they were “extremely disappointed” to hear about the misuse and would be pursuing the matter further with HHS. According to Bier, the company could pursue legal action over the unauthorized use of its copyrighted web script. SpryMedia’s Allan Jardine, the author of the script utilized on HealthCare.gov, told RT over Twitter that it was “[E]xcellent to see DataTables being used!” “Leaving the copyright head in place isn’t too much to ask,” he added along with a smiling emoticon. ardine added, however, that he had no plans to file suit. The incident comes amid ongoing reports about a number of issues that have plagued Healthcare.gov and other Obamacare websites since they went online on the first of the month. One week after the Oct. 1 launch, CNBC health care reporter Dan Mangan wrote that as few as 1-in-100 applications submitted through the federal exchange system contained enough information to properly enroll that person in one of the president’s plans. A week later, Andrew Couts of the website Digital Trends determined that the cost of getting those sites up-and-running exceeded $500 million, making them more expensive than the likes of Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Source

Chilling Video of Dallas, PD Attempted Execution of Mentally Ill Man Posted: 18 Oct 2013 05:00 PM PDT A day after a surveillance video went public showing a Dallas police officer shooting a mentally ill man for no apparent reason, Chief David Brown ordered that an aggravated assault charge against the wounded man be “immediately” dropped. The chief’s decision Friday came amid a growing chorus of outrage and calls from civil rights activists and others that an outside law enforcement agency — such as the Texas Rangers or the FBI — investigate Monday’s shooting of Bobby Gerald Bennett. “The videotape just cries out for an independent investigation,” said Bill Wirskye, a former high-ranking Dallas County prosecutor. Wirskye is currently one of the special prosecutors in the Kaufman County district attorney slayings. “Maybe there’s something that’s not in the video that would justify the officer’s actions, but at least based on the videotape and the documentation that I’ve seen, it’s not a justified shooting,” he said. Read More Here

Mystery blonde girl found in Greece prompts search for parents Posted: 18 Oct 2013 05:00 PM PDT Pale, blonde and blue-eyed, the 4-year-old girl looks shyly into the camera. This is no ordinary photo, though. The little girl pictured is at the center of a mystery. Police in Greece say they found her Thursday with a Roma couple posing as her parents but have no idea who she is or where her real parents are. They hope releasing the pictures of her might prompt people to come forward with information. The girl was discovered during a search of a home in a community of Roma, also known as gypsies, near the town of Larissa in central Greece, police said. Photo blog: The plight of the Roma Police first became suspicious because the girl, who is blonde with very pale skin and blue eyes, did not resemble the couple who claimed to be her parents. When the couple were then questioned, “they changed repeatedly their story about how they got the child,” a police statement said, compounding the officers’ suspicions. DNA testing then “showed that there was not any genetic compatibility” between the girl and the 39-year-old man and the 40-year-old woman, the police said, meaning they cannot be her biological parents. The girl was immediately taken from the couple and entrusted to the care of a charity called The Smile of the Child. The charity said it would look after her “until a solution in the best interest of the child is found.” The two people posing as her parents have been arrested and face charges of abducting a minor, as well as counts of falsifying identity documents, said the state-owned Athens-Macedonian News Agency. Among the suspect documents found by police was a 2009 birth and baptism registration from Athens authorities, the news agency said. Read More Here

A Tyrant’s Dream: Congress Cedes Control Of Federal Debt Posted: 16 Oct 2013 05:01 PM PDT By BETSY MCCAUGHEY The bargain rushed through Congress on Wednesday night clobbers the U.S. Constitution. It shifts control over the debt ceiling from Congress to the president, in violation of Article 1, Section 8, and pushes the nation toward a slippery slope of allowing the president unlimited power to borrow. Article 1, Section 8, states that “Congress shall have the Power To lay and collect Taxes … to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; . .. To borrow Money on the credit of the United States … “ Until 1917, the president had to ask Congress’ permission for each borrowing and frequently acquiesced to conditions. That year, Congress devised the debt ceiling, which gave the president flexibility to borrow up to a certain amount in order to fund a world war. Ever since then, presidents have come to Congress once or twice a year for a debt-ceiling hike. Until this year, Congress had never abdicated control over the nation’s indebtedness. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that Congress can’t surrender its powers to another branch of government or change how laws are made (INS v. Chadha, 1983). But that’s what the deal concocted Wednesday night does. Instead of raising the debt ceiling, the Default Prevention Act of 2013 suspends it and shifts power to the president to determine how much the nation should borrow. Congress’ check on borrowing is so diminished as to be laughable. It will now require a two-thirds vote — a supermajority — in both houses to “disapprove” the president’s decision on what the debt ceiling should be. No real negotiating, as all previous presidents have had to do. This is no more constitutional than if Congress ceded its taxing power to the president, telling Obama that he could impose whatever taxes he wants unless two-thirds of both houses disapprove. The Default Prevention Act of 2013 puts the president in the driver’s seat instead of Congress. It was done for the first time last January, at the urging of now former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. It moves the nation dangerously close to the Democratic Party’s goal of eliminating the debt ceiling permanently — a dictator’s dream. Read More Here